How Hiring Works in 2026. Shared by 4 Top Design Recruiters
For once, the recruiters do the talking.
Not a "how to fix your CV" webinar. Three design recruiters who source, screen, and select every day are sitting down to show you how hiring REALLY works in 2026 — the tools, the filters, the red flags, the stuff nobody says out loud.
We're still locking the final details (agenda, tools, the surprises) — but the date is set and you'll want to be in the room.
Here's a taste of what we're getting into:
→ ATS & the AI myths — what the software actually does vs. the hype, and why a human still decides
→ How recruiters really source talent — live, inside the tools they use every day (LinkedIn Recruiter, ATS, GEM)
→ Real recruiter stories — what makes a candidate stand out, and the red flags that quietly kill an application
→ Big company vs. startup — how hiring changes from Meta-scale to a 10-person team
→ Live Q&A — your questions, collected ahead of time and answered on the spot
Who this is for:
Every level - from junior to the super senior leadership, you all need to understand what's happening behind the scenes.
🎤 Who's presenting:
Meg Rye
Founder, Design Recruiter + Coach @ Good Maven, xMeta
Meg grew the Meta international org from zero to 700 designers across London, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Singapore, Tokyo and beyond. She's logged 40,000+ hours hiring and coaching designers, and now runs Good Maven, placing design leaders everywhere from pre-seed startups to Series C+.
→ Why she's perfect: she's built hiring processes from scratch at the biggest scale there is, AND she's a licensed coach who sits on the candidate's side of the table. Nobody sees both halves of this room more clearly.
Meghan (McCormick) Jean-Felix
Director of Recruiting & Talent Programs @ Think Company · ex-Meta
Meghan came up through creative strategy at agencies like Deutsch and Horizon before moving into recruiting — which means she knows how creative people actually think, not just how to source them. She sourced Product Design leadership at Meta, recruited across agency powerhouses (UnitedMasters, Translation, Wieden+Kennedy, Dentsu), and now leads recruiting and talent programs at Think Company.
→ Why she's perfect: she's hired at Meta scale and inside lean agency teams, so she can speak directly to how the game changes between a giant and a boutique — and what leadership-level recruiters really screen for.
Jared Tredly
Design Recruiter @ Shopify
Jared has done one thing for 15 years: place designers. He co-built a design recruiting practice in Australia, led and scaled the design desk at Bamboo Crowd (where he was the highest global earner, quarter after quarter), and now recruits design talent at Shopify. He also hosts Design:Unfiltered, so being candid about how hiring really works on the record is basically his second job.
→ Why he's perfect: he's a pure design-recruiting specialist who lives in the sourcing tools daily and isn't shy about saying the quiet parts out loud — exactly the energy this panel needs.
Lena Kul
Founder @ kuːl, ex-Design Recruiter & UXR
LinkedIn · Substack · Youtube
After 8+ years hiring designers, UXRs, and leaders at Miro, and 5 years teaching designers how to move through their careers, Lena brings the top insights to er 60,000+ audience. Having hired 100+ top talent across the globe, supported hundreds of students and private clients, and signed their offers, she's built methodologies that convert in 2026.
Why now:
This is one of the bi-weekly live sessions, each built around one of the three pillars of the designer / UXR skillset:
Craft · Network · Positioning
Hiring is very specific right now, and the roles keep blurring — growth, AI, founding, product. A case study that only fits one title gets you screened out of the rest. This session is Craft: build the one case study you can adapt to any room, before your next interview, not after.
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🚨🚨🚨 The session will be recorded, and everyone who signs up will receive the recording. Please do not email me with this question 🖤