Async Saturday #005: Dan Lockhart
Every Saturday, I drop something rare in your feed: a real conversation. No panels. No Zoom chaos. No PR fluff. Just straight talk.
Asynchronous Saturday is exactly what it sounds like — sharp, original questions answered in writing by the people actually building the future of work, tech, and culture. No corporate-speak. No filler. Just insights that cut through the noise like a hot knife through butter.
Why asynchronous? Because the best ideas don’t show up on calendar invites. They show up when you think, not when you’re told to think. Each guest answers in their own words, at their own pace, delivering clarity you won’t find in a soundbite or a viral clip.
Think of it as a weekend coffee with someone fascinating — minus the small talk, plus the substance. Grab a mug. Settle in. Skip the noise. Dive into the good stuff.
Dan Lockhart is not just another recruiter. He’s the guy who shows up with lighter fluid when everyone else is still fumbling with matches. A builder. A firestarter. A recruiter who actually scales teams instead of just filling reqs.
Most leaders hire. Dan builds hiring machines. That’s the difference.
While most corporate recruiters are drowning in Slack pings and outdated ATS systems, Lockhart is engineering recruiting like a product that’s scalable, repeatable, global. That’s startup DNA fused with enterprise muscle.
And here’s the kicker: he’s not just hoarding playbooks for himself. He’s up on stages, dropping truth bombs at conferences, mentoring, writing about burnout before it eats people alive. In other words, he’s not just playing the game — he’s teaching others how to win without torching themselves in the process.
So what makes him different?
Dual citizenship: He speaks fluent startup chaos and corporate scale.
Systems thinker: He builds processes that survive long after the hero recruiter is gone.
Customer-obsessed: Candidates and hiring managers walk away remembering the experience, not the paperwork.
Community firestarter: While others hide behind LinkedIn job postings, he’s out there giving oxygen to the industry.
He doesn’t posture like the fires aren’t there. He acknowledges the smoke, grabs the extinguisher, and refuses to get consumed. That’s resilience.
Dan has built his career not on heroics, but on systems that survive the chaos. He believes resilience isn’t about working harder. It’s about building recruiting processes that outlast the fire drill.
He leads with transparency, talking openly about burnout, hiring freezes, and broken pipelines not as failures, but as teachable moments. He thrives in dual worlds: the urgency of startups where you hire yesterday, and the bureaucracy of enterprises where you move mountains with patience. Through it all, he never loses sight of the candidate or the customer experience.
And maybe most important, he doesn’t hoard lessons. He shares them. On stages, in articles, with peers. That community orientation builds not just trust, but a brand. The kind of brand you follow into the smoke, knowing he’s already built the exits.
Bottom line: most leaders manage. Dan Lockhart builds.
And it’s because he’s a builder that he’s locked in to the hot seat that is Async Saturday.
Hi Dan! How would you introduce yourself if you were the featured speaker at your elementary school’s career day?
My job is putting puzzles together. Every person is a unique piece, and every company is missing the right pieces to grow. I help people find where they fit best so they can do great work and feel proud of what they’re building. When the right people and the right jobs come together, the whole picture comes to life.
When you walk into a company with no recruiting infrastructure, what’s the very first system you build and why?
An ATS won’t save you. A sourcing strategy won’t save you. If you don’t know how you evaluate talent, you’re just scaling chaos. That’s why the first system I build is a consistent interview process. Defined interview panels with focus areas that give candidates clarity, force hiring managers to think critically, and build trust on both sides. That’s the foundation for effectively scaling an organization.
Recruiting is the front door of culture. How do you ensure the candidate experience actually reflects the culture you’re building and not just the one you wish you had?
It starts with radical transparency. The worst feedback a company can get isn’t about comp or speed, it’s when a hire says, “this isn’t the job I was sold.”
That’s a culture problem, not just a recruiting problem.
Candidates don’t want a sales pitch, they want a preview of what it’s actually like to work here. That means sharing both the strengths and the challenges of the role and the company. I want the interview process to mirror the culture.
Most recruiters are trapped in reactive mode. How do you flip the script and move from “filling seats” to “designing a talent engine”?
The shift comes when recruiting stops being purely transactional and starts being built as a system. Instead of scrambling to fill whatever just opened, I work with leaders to forecast, build pipelines ahead of demand, and create processes that scale. But it requires a real commitment from the business.
In full transparency, you can’t get that buy-in when you’re actively in firefighting mode, you have to put out the fire first. Then you earn the right to say, “let’s not have this happen again, and here’s how we prevent it next time.”
That’s when recruiting becomes part of how the company grows intentionally.
What’s the hardest decision you’ve made that pissed people off in the short term but paid off in the long term?
There’s a saying, “good consulting can look like bad customer service”. That’s what it feels like when you implement new processes or ask hiring leaders to change. It can be unpopular, even piss people off, but I know from experience that unscalable, one-off practices hurt the business long term. The harder choice in the moment is usually the right one for equity and scale.
Recruiting playbooks rarely survive first contact with reality. How do you balance building repeatable processes with the agility to pivot when things blow up?
A playbook is a guiding light. You don’t write it expecting reality to follow it perfectly. You write it so people know where to turn when things go sideways. It creates alignment in the chaos. The best playbooks are alive, not rigid. They give you structure without locking you in. The principle is simple, enough consistency to anchor the team, enough flexibility to adapt when the business shifts.
Thank you, Dan!
Dan, thanks for joining Asynchronous Saturday and lighting the place up.
You reminded us that recruiting isn’t about filling seats — it’s about assembling puzzles. Every person, every company, every role is a piece of something bigger. When they finally click together, the picture comes to life.
You said it best: an ATS won’t save you. A sourcing strategy won’t save you. If you don’t know how you evaluate talent, you’re just scaling chaos. That’s gospel for anyone trying to grow with intent, not panic.
Your take on radical transparency hit hard. Recruiting is the front door of culture, and you don’t build trust by selling a dream: you build it by showing the truth, warts and all.
You showed how real leaders flip recruiting from reactive to proactive from fire drills to engines of growth. It’s about earning the right to build systems after you’ve put out the fires, not pretending they weren’t there.
And maybe my favorite line: “Good consulting can look like bad customer service.” Damn right. Real leadership means making decisions that sting today but compound tomorrow.
Your philosophy is simple and powerful: systems over heroics, transparency over polish, structure over chaos. And when the playbook meets reality, bend, but don’t break.
Thanks for bringing the fire, Dan. You didn’t just talk about recruiting. You showed what leadership looks like when the heat’s on.
— Brian