Whitney Bardeleben
Blain's Farm & Fleet (Blain Supply, Inc.)
“Recruiting is hard. Being an HR practitioner is hard. But if you have great relationships and strong partnerships, people trust you. They stop seeing you as someone doing transactional work and start seeing you as an extension of their team.”
Whitney Bardeleben 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 Whitney's story.
For many talent leaders, recruiting is a career they discover unexpectedly. For Whitney Bardeleben, Director of Talent at Blain's Farm & Fleet (Blain Supply, Inc.), it began with merchandising, retail leadership, and a willingness to step into a role she had never formally trained for.
After studying merchandising, Whitney began her career as a shoe buyer for a Midwest retailer. A few years later, she moved back to her home state of Michigan and joined a family-owned furniture retailer in a managerial role, where part of her responsibility included staffing, onboarding, and training for the region she supported. It was a moment of transition for the business: the company was moving from paper applications to Taleo, and many stores were struggling to adopt the new system.
Rather than waiting for someone else to solve the problem, Whitney learned the platform, built a training process, and helped her store improve staffing consistency while reducing turnover. Leadership noticed. Soon she was asked to support other stores and share the process she had created, and as the company grew, she was “voluntold” into its first regional recruiting role.
“They had never had a designated recruiter,” she recalls. “I got to stand up the recruiting office.”
The launch itself was modest. On her first day, she received a laptop and a sticky note with the Monster and CareerBuilder logins. “They said, ‘Have fun,’” she says.
From there, Whitney built recruiting processes, partnered with leaders, identified gaps, and helped the organization staff new markets and store openings. Eventually, she was sent to Chicago to support new store builds and ground-up staffing efforts, learning the trade in the least theoretical way possible. “I’m not formally trained,” she says. “I fell out of the learning tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
Embracing AI as Assistive Intelligence
As recruiting continues to evolve, Whitney encourages talent leaders not to fear technology, and her own experience with it began early. While at McDonald’s Corporation, she was part of a team that worked with Paradox on an AI-driven recruiting system designed to automate the apply, interview, and onboarding process. That experience shaped how she views the technology today.
“AI can be scary,” she says. “But in talent acquisition, there is so much administrative work that takes us away from people.” In her view, AI should not replace recruiters. It should create more space for them to do the work businesses truly need: advising, consulting, supporting hiring managers, understanding the market, and improving the candidate experience.
“AI is assistive intelligence,” she says. Implemented thoughtfully, she believes it can help recruiters move away from repetitive tasks and into more strategic, relationship-driven work.
Advice for Talent Leaders Heading into 2026
Whitney’s advice for talent leaders is simple: do not be afraid of AI. Embrace it, but do so intentionally. Technology should be implemented with purpose, care, and a clear understanding of how it supports both recruiters and candidates. Used well, it can help talent teams become more consultative, more responsive, and more connected to the business.
The heart of recruiting, though, remains unchanged. Relationships, trust, resilience, and human judgment still matter most. By combining curiosity, adaptability, relationship-building, and a practical approach to technology, Whitney Bardeleben represents the kind of leader helping talent acquisition move forward while keeping people at the center of the work.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Whitney. We are honored to welcome Whitney Bardeleben to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Whitney. 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.
