# Dan Medlin

Dan Medlin works in recruiting and talent acquisition. Medlin teaches a structured STAR hiring approach for finding high achievers and presents himself as a fractional recruiting partner for growing companies.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/dan-medlin/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danmedlin
- LinkedIn followers: 20,820
- Topics: recruiting
- Based on 9 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Dan Medlin is most useful for structured hiring training and fractional recruiting support for growing companies.

- Best for: A B2B recruiting firm building a hiring-manager workshop series is clearest match.
- Not for: A staffing marketplace or high-volume hourly hiring platform seeking short-form video campaigns.
- Check first: Confirm course materials, audience breakdown, and recent workshop registration results.

### Takeaways

- Structured hiring is presented as the fix for gut-feel decisions.
- A bad hire is framed as a financial problem, not an HR chore.
- Founders should keep the final interview and hand off the pipeline.

## Main ideas

- **Structured hiring is presented as the fix for gut-feel decisions**: Dan Medlin argues that polished resumes, standard interview questions, and gut feelings are poor grounds for hiring decisions. Instead, the posts lay out a defined framework: structured interviews, assessment of past performance, scorecards, and market salary bands. They call people worth hiring STARs and frame identifying them as a skill managers can learn, not a talent some leaders happen to have.
- **A bad hire is framed as a financial problem, not an HR chore**: Dan Medlin puts a price on hiring by linking failure to lost productivity, team instability, and future recruiting costs, and success to substantially greater value than an average hire. The framing gives leaders a reason to treat hiring as a business decision rather than leave it to chance.
- **Founders should keep the final interview and hand off the pipeline**: Dan Medlin challenges the story that legendary founders personally found every hire. They argue that those founders protected the final gate — judging vision, trajectory, and mission alignment — rather than sourcing candidates late at night. The post compares delegating recruiting mechanics to an outside partner with founders’ existing practice of delegating the cap table to an outside CPA and intellectual property to legal counsel. The partner handles sourcing, screening, compliance questions, salary bands, and scorecards.
- **Teaching combines a live session with an on-demand module, and attendees are encouraged to bring a colleague**: The delivery format is part of the method: instruction comes with live questions, and registration is designed to bring a second person from the same company — a co-interviewer, recruiter, or business partner — so more than one person involved in hiring shares the framework. Module 1 is also available on demand afterwards.

## Work to read

- [STAR Hiring Masterclass Series: Module 1 overview](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danmedlin_star-hiring-masterclass-module-1-activity-7507787148163489792-iJCE)
- [A bad hire costs $210,000: STAR Hiring Masterclass Module 1](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danmedlin_star-hiring-masterclass-module-1-activity-7496663768526086144-NRiH)
- [Founders should own the final interview, not every recruiting task](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danmedlin_startups-founders-talentacquisition-activity-7511133795534942209-SSj5)

## Brand relationships

- **STAR Hiring Masterclass** (disclosed_partnership)

## Partnerships

Dan Medlin’s posts show two commercial arrangements: paid enrollment in the STAR Hiring Masterclass Series and a fractional, on-demand recruiting partnership in which they run the hiring process while the founder stays in the final interview. Neither is described as a brand sponsorship. For a hiring-manager workshop series, approach Medlin as a training provider and recruiting operator, not as a sponsored creator. If you’re seeking a brand deal, ask whether they offer a formal sponsorship route and request their rates.

## Alternatives

- Lindzi Cox: Choose Lindzi Cox when the firm wants a session that unsettles how the room thinks about hiring rather than a step-by-step method to install. The two posts use sharp borrowed provocations: a TEDx talk by Mads Faurholt-Jorgensen on the fact that nobody taught us how to recruit, and the line 'don't pave the cowpath' about automating inherited processes instead of redesigning them. Those ideas address the same buyer task as a hiring-manager workshop: interviewers who want a candidate good at everything instead of a specialist, managers who hire people like themselves, and resume screens that filter out strong performers who lack the right pedigree. The 'what would we build from a blank page' question is a ready-made exercise for a room that already distrusts its own funnel. The argument that a linear interview gauntlet may not deserve to exist at all is a stronger opening for a culture-change session than a checklist.
- Molley Ricketts: Choose Molley Ricketts when the workshop's centre of gravity is the integrity of applications rather than the interview itself. The posts focus on screening and clarity: 73% of HR professionals surveyed report challenges with fabricated or misleading candidate information, 36% say AI-generated candidate content has reduced confidence in hiring decisions, and shifting job descriptions, interview expectations and accountability between posting, interview and first day start the relationship with a disconnect. For a firm whose audience is drowning in AI-polished applications, or whose client employers attract plenty of applicants but cannot keep the right ones, this framing is closer to the daily problem than structured scoring. The posts also offer a consultation route, inviting readers to book a free workforce consultation, which suits a workshop sold as the front end of an advisory relationship.
- Daryn Edelman: Choose Daryn Edelman when the workshop needs the candidate's side of the interview. Both posts offer the same set of questions a strong candidate should ask about the recruiter, the job, the team, the manager and the company's direction: why the role was created, what top performers in the role share, what the first 90 days should accomplish, and how the company evaluates disruptive technology. For a session teaching hiring managers what an engaged, selective candidate is probing for and how to answer well, this material is directly usable. It also suits a firm that wants to pair interviewer training with candidate coaching or interview preparation, since the questions are written for the person being interviewed.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/