Andy Decker
Goodwin Recruiting
“Recruiting is my superpower. Done right, AI puts the cape on the human.”
Andy Decker has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 leaders in each category of talent acquisition. Honorees are nominated by peers or found by committees that look for excellent work wherever it happens, then chosen for the depth of their craft and their impact on hiring. This is Andy's story.
Andy Decker, Chief Executive Officer of Goodwin Recruiting, did not begin his career in recruiting. He spent nearly a decade in organizational development before staffing entered the picture, and it entered almost by accident: while presenting at the Golden State chapter of the American Society for Training and Development, he met the field training leader of a large publicly traded staffing firm. That conversation led to an invitation to participate in an RFP for a field training program. Andy won the project and began working with the organization as a trainer.
The longer he worked alongside the industry, the more it intrigued him. He was not coming to it cold. While growing a startup in Silicon Valley, he had worked with staffing partners himself and had seen the value of the category from the client side, watching how the right talent strategy could help a business scale, solve problems, and operate more successfully.
“I had seen how staffing helped grow a business,” Andy says. “Our business was more successful because of it.”
So when he later relocated to the East Coast, joining that staffing organization directly was less a leap than a logical next step. More than 20 years later, he has built a career in staffing and recruiting leadership.
Helping Companies Thrive and Changing Lives
Across that career, Andy has learned from leaders who kept pointing him back toward the deeper purpose behind staffing and recruiting. Today he works closely with the founder and former CEO of Goodwin Recruiting, who set a standard for what a recruiting organization should aim to create in the first place. That philosophy shapes how Andy thinks about leadership, in part because he knows how much it demands. Creating an exceptional experience takes more than strong intentions. It takes the right tools, training, techniques, support, and culture, assembled deliberately and maintained over time.
“He has a very simple goal,” Andy says. “To make this the best professional experience of your life.”
That philosophy shapes how Andy thinks about leadership, in part because he knows how much it demands. Creating an exceptional experience takes more than strong intentions. It takes the right tools, training, techniques, support, and culture, assembled deliberately and maintained over time.
He points as well to his time with another organization, where he saw the same lesson from another angle: a successful staffing business balancing performance with genuine care for people. "Staffing is a business," he says. "But at the core, if we do it well, we help companies grow and we change lives."
During the COVID period, that belief became something more tangible than a mission statement, as the organization stepped up to support people affected by the crisis, including helping put meals on tables during the holidays. For Andy, those experiences confirmed a central conviction: great recruiting companies succeed by helping both businesses and people move forward.
Leading People, Not Just Companies
Earlier in his staffing career, Andy learned from leaders who shaped his view of management and team development. The lesson he carried furthest is deceptively simple. Leaders do not lead companies. They lead people.
“I don’t lead a team,” he says. “I lead a team made up of individuals.”
That distinction still governs how he operates. Whether he is growing a business, developing recruiters, or building culture, Andy starts from the assumption that success depends on understanding people as individuals and then giving each of them the tools, knowledge, and support they need to be their best. Leadership, in his framing, is less about direction than about unlocking potential.
AI as a Tool to Create Human Capacity
Recruiting, Andy believes, is changing faster than ever. After 20 years in staffing he has watched major shifts arrive and settle, but he argues the last five years have brought more change than the first 15, and he expects the next two to move faster still. Technology is the main engine of that acceleration, and AI most of all.
He sees tremendous opportunity in AI when it is used correctly, and he is precise about what correctly means. The goal is not to strip the human element out of recruiting. It is to make more room for it. “Humans hire humans,” he says.
The practical case follows from there. By automating the tasks that require no human intuition or judgment, recruiters can spend less time chasing fake resumes, bots, and unqualified applicants, and more time building meaningful relationships with real people. Used that way, AI returns recruiters to the heart of the profession rather than displacing them from it, and at Goodwin Recruiting that conviction has become central to how the organization thinks about its future.
“Recruiting is my superpower,” Andy says. “Done right, AI puts the cape on the human.”
Advice for Talent Leaders Heading Into 2026
As the landscape keeps shifting, Andy encourages talent leaders to embrace technology while staying anchored to what makes recruiting meaningful. AI should create capacity, not replace judgment. It should help recruiters work smarter, move faster, and go deeper in the human conversations that drive great hiring outcomes.
The future of the profession, in his view, belongs to leaders who can hold both halves at once: aggressive adoption of new tools alongside genuinely people-centered leadership. The tools will keep evolving and the market will keep changing, but the purpose of recruiting does not move. It is helping companies thrive and changing lives.
In combining business discipline, human connection, and a thoughtful approach to innovation, Andy Decker represents the kind of talent leader helping move the staffing industry forward.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Andy. We are honored to welcome Andy Decker to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Andy. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
