Amber Costello

From Foreign Languages to the Front Line of Hiring

Costello did not know what human resources was when she was in college. She studied foreign languages, international relations and business, and her ambition was simple and unspecific: she wanted to work inside a big global organization, with people. Her first role out of school was in sales. When the economy turned and that job went away, she went looking for something that would let her do what she actually enjoyed, and recruiting was the door that opened.

Agency work suited her immediately. She fell in love with recruiting during an era when talent acquisition was not yet a standalone corporate function, when her clients were HR directors and HR leaders who simply needed an extra set of hands. The relationships she built with those leaders became the bridge to her next chapter. Someone took a chance on her, and she moved in-house into a high-growth environment as an HR generalist, wearing what she calls the many hats of a Jill of all trades. Through all of it, one constant held: she always owned the recruiting function for the company.

The turning point came in the form of a question. Someone asked her what she actually wanted to do, given that she was doing so many different things. At the time she had no answer, because curiosity had been carrying her forward and every new challenge felt like a gift. So she sat down and asked herself what she loved most about her days. The answer kept returning to the same place. "It always brought me back to recruiting," she says. She got the chance to focus exclusively on talent acquisition and never looked back.

Her languages have proved to be more than a biographical footnote. Costello speaks French and Spanish, and she calls fluency her hidden superpower, one that has paid off repeatedly as she has helped scale organizations globally. The point of studying languages, she says, was never to teach them. It was to meet people, learn about other cultures and bridge the global gap, an instinct that has only become more valuable as organizations are forced to think with a global mindset.

The People Who Took a Chance

Ask Costello about the people who shaped her and she does not reach for a list of famous mentors. She reaches for a pattern. Her first agency job, her first corporate HR role, and most of the moves since have happened because somebody was willing to bet on her before the resume said she was ready. She is deliberate about naming that dynamic rather than the individuals, because she believes it is the mechanism itself that younger professionals need to understand.

The corollary matters just as much to her. For most of her career, the majority of her moves have come not from applying to postings but from people reaching out and asking her to come work with them, a direct return on the network she built one relationship at a time. She now pays that forward reflexively, offering to serve as a reference, making introductions, and asking colleagues what she can do to help them build their own networks.

The proof point she is proudest of is durability. Costello is still in touch with the teams from every place she has worked, and she is still friends with the boss from her very first recruiting job more than 25 years ago. "Those relationships don't change over time," she says. In an industry with high churn and short memories, that is an unusual scorecard, and it is the one she uses.

Building the AI Muscle

Costello is unreservedly enthusiastic about artificial intelligence, and she is specific about why. At Capital Group, she says, the organization is embracing AI as fully as it can, with a technology roadmap that includes future AI tools and a leadership team genuinely passionate about the shift. For her function, the immediate prize is efficiency: better processes, faster identification of strong candidates, and relief for recruiters facing an unprecedented flow of applications.

Just as important is the cultural work. She actively encourages her teams to try things, experiment and get comfortable, because AI represents a different way of working rather than a bolt-on tool. She points to how much has changed in eighteen months, and to the personal growth visible in people who simply started using the tools. Her framing is that of a leader building a muscle, not rolling out software.

She is also clear-eyed that none of this is free. Real capability requires real investment, and she says she feels proud to work for an organization willing to put funds behind technology that enables her people to do their jobs better. Her team pilots new things constantly. Her assessment of where the industry stands is characteristically grounded: they are starting to scratch the surface, with a great deal of runway ahead.

Why the Work Still Matters

For all the talk of volume, tooling and roadmaps, Costello's definition of the job has not moved in 25 years. She loves leading a team, mentoring others and building relationships, and she frames every hire as something far larger than a requisition closed. "These are big life decisions," she says of the moments candidates trust recruiters with. Helping change someone's life, in her view, is what makes the career rewarding.

She is generous about her own good fortune and honest that she never imagined this path for herself. Graduating with an open mind and a vague wish to work with people inside a global organization, she had no way of knowing where recruiting would take her. Looking back, her verdict is unambiguous. "I totally landed in the perfect place. I just did not know that at the time."