Stephanie Holman
Defense Unicorns
“You just got to be human, because the person on the other end is also human.”
Stephanie Holman 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 Stephanie's story.
For years, Steph Holman sat across from students and helped them choose a degree, then kept in touch to find out what the degree actually opened. That question, more than any career plan, is what carried her out of education and into technology recruiting, where she now works at Defense Unicorns as what she describes as the first point of contact for people considering a new chapter.
She frames the move as an evolution rather than a departure. The work is the same work, only further downstream. "It's very, very fulfilling to be kind of that first point of contact to potentially welcome someone in," she says. "It's just a different part of someone's journey."
A Counselor's Instincts, Applied to Hiring
Holman began her career in education as a school guidance counselor working with students from kindergarten through twelfth grade, then moved into higher education. In both settings she was part of someone's journey toward a credential, advising on degrees and hoping the job would follow at the end of it. What she could not stop wondering about was the chapter after graduation, the one she never got to see.
Recruiting handed her that chapter. Instead of advising on a degree and hoping an opportunity would appear, she is now the person telling people about the opportunities already in front of them. The counselor's habits carried over intact: listen closely, explain the process, and remember that the person on the other side of the exchange is making a decision that will reshape their life.
Why She Changed Her Mind About AI
Holman is unusually candid about the fact that she did not start out an enthusiast. "I was resistant to AI," she says, and she wants that on the record for anyone reading who feels the same way. Part of it was generational, she allows. Part of it was a specific and legitimate worry: when a conversation is being captured, something about its organic quality changes, and she was not sure how candidates would feel about that. She was not entirely sure how she felt about it either.
What moved her was thinking through why the product existed in the first place. A recruiter, as she puts it, has a stack of plates spinning in the air at any given moment, and one of them is the conversation happening right now. Holman recruits technical talent in the tech space, which is exactly why she is so precise about the limits of her own expertise. "I am not an engineer. I do not pretend to be an engineer," she says, and she considers the alternative the most dangerous thing someone in her position could do, because assumptions fill the space where deep knowledge should be. "I know a little bit about a lot." So she listens actively, converts what she hears into notes while the candidate is still speaking, and hopes the record she produces represents them fairly.
Technology like BrightHire, which she has used, closed that gap. When a conversation is captured and transcribed, nothing is lost in translation, and Holman reframed the whole category around a single word: advocacy. It helps her advocate accurately for the person she just spoke with, and it protects the candidate, who now knows that the experience they described out loud will reach the hiring team intact. Newer tools go further, layering intelligence on top of the transcript so a summary is legible to anyone who needs to understand what transpired. BrightHire is far from the only option, she notes, and the category keeps expanding.
Advice for the Year Ahead
Her counsel to business leaders and recruiters heading into 2026 is direct and unsentimental. AI is not going anywhere. Recruiters and businesses will have to embrace it in some form or fashion, and the sooner they engage the better. "Lean in and see where it can make sense for your business processes," she says. Crucially, that is not an argument for wholesale adoption. It does not mean you have to take it all. It means finding the specific pieces that, from a business standpoint, a resource standpoint, and a time standpoint, genuinely speed things up. "That's not a bad thing."
The through line across all of it, the counselor's chair, the mentors, the transcription tools, is the same conviction stated three different ways. The process should be clear, the record should be accurate, and the person on the other end deserves an advocate. In a profession that runs on generosity and rarely gets credited for it, that instinct to redirect the spotlight may be the most telling detail of all.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Stephanie. We are honored to welcome Stephanie Holman to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Stephanie. 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.
