A different kind of week: Findem at Unleash 2026

Unleash America is always a lot. The energy, the announcements, the conversations that start on the expo floor and follow you back to your hotel. I've been to enough of these to know what a typical week feels like.

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This one wasn't typical.

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Between a brand launch, a major acquisition, and a session that pushed back on AI hype in a room full of AI vendors, it was the kind of week where you leave feeling like something actually shifted. For Findem and for me personally, it was a meaningful few days.

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Here's what happened.

A new chapter, unveiled

Findem's rebrand dropped on Monday. By Tuesday, we were at Unleash, which turned out to be exactly the right room for it.

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It wasn't just the new look that struck me. It was how clearly the brand reflected where the product has actually gone.

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Findem started as a sourcing tool. Over time, it became something more foundational, a way for companies to understand candidates in context, not just locate them. Their career paths, their networks, the experiences that shaped what they're actually capable of. Unleash, a room full of talent leaders hungry for exactly that kind of depth, was the right place to say so.

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Read the full story behind the rebrand

A sit-down with Josh Bersin

Getting time with Josh Bersin mid-Unleash is not a small thing. He's everywhere during the week, and yet he sat down with us for a conversation at our booth.

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He talked about what he finds genuinely useful about Findem, specifically how having that depth of context lets recruiters focus on the work that actually requires a human. And he pushed back on the automation panic: recruiting isn't going away. The role is shifting, but the need for people who can build relationships, read a room, and make judgment calls isn't.

That's the kind of perspective you don't always get at a conference. I'm grateful to Josh and his team for the time. (And yes, we have the team photo to prove it happened.)

Spotlight session: The Intelligent Job Post

Ash Ahluwalia, Findem's Chief Product and UX Officer, has been thinking hard about what it actually takes for AI to deliver ROI in hiring. His session was one I'd been anticipating all week.

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Quality was never the point of a job post. Views were. And most of what passes for AI in hiring right now is just optimizing the same broken top of funnel, faster. The Intelligent Job Post is Findem's answer to that — a way to turn an open role into something that actively sources, engages, and qualifies candidates using verified data, rather than waiting for the right person to scroll past a listing.

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What I appreciated most was that Ash didn't shy away from the skepticism in the room. He opened with the stat that 95% of AI projects fail to deliver real ROI. In a room full of AI vendors, that takes a certain confidence. He wasn't indicting the industry, but drawing a line between AI that generates activity and AI that produces outcomes.

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Learn more about the session

The big news: Glider joins Findem

On Wednesday, Findem announced the acquisition of Glider AI. We celebrated with champagne at the booth.

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Glider AI brings candidate validation and skills verification into the picture, which extends what Findem can do well past the sourcing stage. Discovery, assessment, verification — in one connected workflow, before a candidate ever reaches a hiring team. Anyone who's hired knows the moment a strong pipeline quickly unravels in the interview stage because no one validated the fundamentals early enough.

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We also welcomed Joseph Cole, Glider's VP of Marketing, to the team, joining in the middle of quite a week. Getting to work alongside him and our CMO, Liv Anderman, on our first event together was one of those unexpected highlights. A good sign of what's ahead.

Until next time, Unleash

Weeks like this don't happen without a lot of people doing a lot of work behind the scenes. To the Findem team — everyone who staffed the booth, prepped the session, executed the acquisition announcement, and made a new colleague feel welcome in the middle of all of it — thank you. It showed.

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This is a team that knows how to make a week count. Can't wait to see what comes next!