What if your talent strategy is working against you? In this episode of Leading Through Growth, I sit down with Steve Cadigan — LinkedIn's first-ever CHRO — to unpack what he learned scaling the company from 400 to 4,000 employees in just 3.5 years through an IPO.
Steve challenges some of the most common assumptions growth-stage leaders have about retention, culture, and what it actually means to develop your people.
We cover:
Why LinkedIn couldn't out-hire Google — and what they did instead
The counterintuitive question every hiring manager should ask in the first interview
- Why "retention is dead" and what growth-stage leaders need to do differently
- The builder vs. sustainer trap that kills fast-scaling companies
- AI, workforce strategy, and why companies cutting people are playing the wrong game
- The Prudential case study: using AI to match every employee to every job in the company
Steve's book Workquake is available on Amazon. Connect with him at stevecadigan.com or on LinkedIn.
Connect with Tony Sanders:
Website: growwithgawlo.com
LinkedIn: tony@growwithgawlo.com
Leading Through Growth is a podcast for leaders navigating the messy, high-stakes work of growing a company without letting it outpace your people.
Timestamps
0:00 Intro
1:58 Day one at LinkedIn
6:44 Builder vs Sustainer
9:26 The part of the scaling story nobody asks about
12:11 How LinkedIn stopped trying to win the recruiting war
14:30 The Growth Trap: when company growth outpaces leadership capability
16:15 Hiring for learning velocity, not current skills
20:55 What broke first at LinkedIn — and how they fixed it
25:00 Designing culture when everything is changing fast
32:53 "Retention is dead" — what growth is the new loyalty actually means
42:25 AI: Are the robots actually taking our jobs?
56:25 Rapid fire: RTO, best and worst leadership trends in 2026