Episode notes
In this episode of the Leaders in Talent podcast, Adriaan Kolff sits down with Marcus Pask, a talent acquisition leader with 20 years in the field who is now helping AI infrastructure company Nebius scale from 300 to 3,000 people in 18 months.
Marcus started on an agency desk at 18, worked with investment banks at Hays, ran go-to-market hiring at Expedia, then joined Miro at around 200 people and helped scale it to 2,500 while leading global tech recruitment. Today he is a fractional TA consultant at Nebius, the engine room behind the AI boom, building the data centers that companies like Meta and Microsoft run on.
He explains why this growth is different: it is tied to contracts that are already signed, not projected revenue. He walks through the hiring problem nobody talks about, the builders, electricians and specialists who put data centers up in remote locations, who are not on LinkedIn and are now at a premium. And he shares how Nebius brings talent acquisition into the conversation early with talent maps, relocation incentives and rotating build teams.
Marcus and Adriaan also get into why neither of them is worried about AI replacing recruiters any time soon, how automation is shifting coordinators toward TA operations, and how both Nebius and Matchr are adopting AI with the right guardrails and context.
Timecodes
01:07 Welcome and Marcus's 20 years in talent acquisition
03:40 Leaving Miro, career coaching, and joining Nebius
07:30 Lessons from starting a podcast
13:30 MIT, robots, and exponential growth
15:43 What Nebius is: the engine room behind the AI boom
17:24 Why growth is tied to signed contracts, not projections
19:13 Hiring for data centers in the middle of nowhere
23:30 Will AI take recruiters' jobs?
29:26 From coordinators to TA operators
34:53 Using AI at Nebius and Matchr with the right context
48:21 How the Matchr and Nebius partnership came about
51:40 Where to find Marcus
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Connect with us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/matchr/
Get in touch with us: https://www.matchr.io/who-we-are/contact/
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Connect with Marcus Pask: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcuspask/
Connect with Adriaan Kolff: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaankolff/
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
Talent Unplugged Across the Pond, Marcus's podcast with co-host Megan: https://www.youtube.com/@talentunpluggedacrossthepond
Shaping Your Path, Marcus's job search and career coaching: https://shapingyourpath.com
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