Katrina Ungar works in recruiting with beauty and wellness brands. Through The Talent Project, she describes a hands-on talent-partnership approach: adapting searches as roles change, keeping candidates informed, and advising clients on hiring needs and market feedback.
Katrina Ungar is most useful for embedded recruiting partnership with beauty and wellness brands.
Best for
A growing beauty or wellness brand with several open roles and shifting hiring priorities.
Not for
A paid creator sponsorship or consumer-facing product awareness campaign measured by reach and engagement.
Key takeaways
A recruiting partnership adjusts searches when roles change and keeps candidates informed through delays.
Company values are experienced through interviews, decisions, and how people are treated, not careers pages.
Technology can speed recruiting tasks, but assessing talent in a business needs human judgment.
Check first: Ask for a recent audience breakdown and documented search outcomes before committing.
Main ideas
A recruiting partnership is a working process, not a transaction · Human judgement stays in the loop at every stage, even as tools do more of the work · Company values are experienced through the hiring process, not the careers page
Katrina Ungar works with beauty and wellness brands through The Talent Project, treating recruiting as an ongoing partnership rather than a one-time candidate search.
They write about adapting searches as roles change, keeping candidates informed, and bringing clients candid market feedback.
Their posts also explore how company values show up in hiring and where human judgment matters alongside recruiting technology.
Their work offers practical perspectives on hiring, candidate experience, and the systems behind recruiting.
Ungar makes recruiting tangible.
In a post about what makes a recruiting partnership, they describe adjusting a search when a role changes, keeping candidates informed through delays, and advising clients on candidate response, compensation, and role positioning.
A reflection on company values and hiring makes the point that candidates experience a company’s values through interviews, decisions, and how people are treated—not just through a careers page.
They also argue that technology can speed up recruiting tasks, while assessing talent in the context of a business calls for human judgment (human judgment and recruiting technology).
A post on recruiting systems adds a useful question: when tools accumulate, might it be time to rethink the system rather than add another one?
Together, these examples offer a grounded look at their approach to hiring and the decisions that shape it.
Katrina Ungar’s posts return to one question: what does a recruiter do that a job description, sourcing tool, or careers page cannot?
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They describe a real recruiting partnership as an operating process—re-briefing or restarting a search when the role changes, keeping candidates warm when the brand is slow, and telling clients what the market is saying, even when it is unwelcome.
Underpinning that is a consistent position on technology: it should make recruiting faster, but judgement about people stays human at every stage.
They also turn hiring problems back on clients, arguing that candidates learn a company’s values from the interview process, not its careers page.
A recruiting partnership is a working process, not a transaction
Ungar’s fullest statement on a search relationship argues that finding the right person is only part of the job; the rest is how both sides work together.
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The Talent Project stays close to the search, adjusts when priorities shift, and starts over rather than pushing candidates into a profile that no longer makes sense.
When a brand-side delay drags on, the post says candidates stay engaged and informed so strong people do not disappear.
It also says the firm shares market feedback even when clients would rather not hear it, keeps the pipeline organised with regular updates, and offers perspective alongside candidates: what candidates respond to, where resistance shows up, whether pay is competitive, whether the role is positioned correctly, and whether the market is being asked for too much.
The closing argument is reciprocal: the firm works best with clients who value transparency, communication, collaboration and trust, and treat recruiting as a partnership rather than a transaction.
The commitment is not to force candidates into an outdated brief: when a role changes significantly, the post says the search restarts rather than being patched. During brand-side delays, candidates stay informed so great talent does not vanish because the process moved too slowly.
Human judgement stays in the loop at every stage, even as tools do more of the work
Asked where in recruitment a human is needed, Ungar answers “all of them” and separates the tasks.
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Technology, they say, can write job descriptions, source candidates, take interview notes, schedule, and move information quickly.
It cannot understand the business behind a role, spot when a candidate who looks strong on paper is not the right fit, read between the lines of an interview answer, sell the opportunity to the right person, or recognise when a search is failing and needs a change of course.
Technology should make recruiting more efficient, but assessing talent still depends on expertise—specifically, experience judging how an interview answer would play out in the workplace.
The firm says its value lies in understanding a client’s business well enough to assess candidates through that lens and deliver a curated shortlist.
Ungar’s test is the strong-on-paper candidate: someone who checks every box but is not right for the business. The post says no scheduling or sourcing tool can make that judgement.
This complements Ungar’s openness to recruiting software. They describe using an AI sourcing tool and an agent, while arguing that assessment is where expertise matters: automate the mechanics, keep the judgement.
Company values are experienced through the hiring process, not the careers page
Ungar picks up a wall sign reading “Work Hard & Be Nice to People”—the same sign hung in their first corporate cubicle—and turns it into an argument about hiring.
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Internal values matter as much as external presentation, the post says, and the gap between the two is clearest in recruitment.
A careers page can say all the right things and a job description can list all the right qualifications, but candidates form their view of a company through the interview process, how decisions are made, how leaders communicate, how people are treated, and how the organisation operates.
The advice to founders struggling to hire: stop looking only at candidates and start looking inside out.
At a happy hour at the BeautyMatter office in New York, Ungar noticed a sign. The post uses that moment to argue that a founder’s hiring problem is often one of internal alignment, not the candidate market, and suggests talking to other beauty companies about how they approach it.
Adding another tool is not the same as fixing the recruiting system
Reflecting on a talent acquisition leadership dinner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hosted by Brandon Amoroso at Scalis, Ungar contrasts an all-in-one recruiting platform with the personal stack they have accumulated over the years: a note-taking system, an ATS/CRM, a separate AI sourcing tool, an agent, Excel spreadsheets for tracking data, and probably more they forget.
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The stack works, the post concedes, but it raises the question of whether teams keep bolting on tools to solve problems when the better answer is to rethink the system. The argument is about process design, not a particular product: teams should consider whether the way they work still makes sense.
Ungar uses a walk through their old neighbourhood on the way to dinner as an analogy: new buildings and businesses on streets that felt both familiar and completely different. Sometimes, the post argues, you need to take a different route to see what has changed and what needs to change next.
This is Katrina Ungar’s fullest account of the working relationship behind a search.
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Newcomers looking to understand the offer should start here.
The post sets out what Ungar says The Talent Project does once a search is underway: stays close, adjusts when priorities shift, and starts over rather than pushing candidates into a profile that no longer makes sense.
When a brand is slow, the firm keeps candidates engaged and informed so they don’t drop out while the process drags.
The post also describes sharing market feedback, even when it’s unwelcome; keeping the pipeline organized with regular updates; and asking what candidates respond to, where resistance appears, whether pay is competitive, and whether the role is positioned correctly.
It ends on reciprocity: the firm works best with clients who treat recruiting as a partnership, not a transaction, and value transparency, communication, collaboration, and trust.
For brands planning a campaign
For a beauty or wellness brand whose role is still in flux or whose approval chain moves slowly, this post sets the expectation that the search may need to be re-briefed or restarted rather than patched. Quote it when defining scope with a recruiter: how much change triggers a fresh start, and how candidates will be kept warm during internal delays.
It answers a question brands are likely already asking: if software can source and schedule, what is a recruiter still for?
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Asked at what stage of recruitment a human is needed, Ungar answers, "all of them."
The post lists what technology already does well: writing job descriptions, sourcing candidates, taking interview notes, scheduling, and moving information quickly.
But hiring isn’t just box-checking.
Someone has to understand the business behind the role, spot when a strong-on-paper candidate isn’t the right fit, read between the lines in an interview, sell the opportunity to the right person, and recognize when a search isn’t working and needs a change of course.
Technology should make recruiting more efficient; assessing talent is where expertise matters.
The firm’s value, the post says, is understanding a client’s business well enough to judge candidates through that lens and deliver a curated shortlist.
For brands planning a campaign
Useful when a brand is deciding how much of its hiring funnel to automate. It suggests the brief should specify which steps stay human rather than leaving that to a tool’s defaults, and offers a vendor-neutral way to discuss AI in hiring on a careers or employer-brand page.
It shows how Ungar applies the values argument to hiring—and why this recruiter talks about culture before candidates.
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After a happy hour at the BeautyMatter office in New York, Ungar notices a wall sign reading "Work Hard & Be Nice to People" and connects it to the same sign in a first corporate cubicle.
The point: a company’s internal values matter as much as its external image, especially during hiring.
Candidates experience values through the interview process, how decisions are made, how leaders communicate, and how people are treated—not through the right words on a careers page or qualifications in a job description.
For founders struggling to hire during a busy recruiting season, the post advises looking inside the company, not just at candidates.
For brands planning a campaign
A direct angle for employer-brand content: claims on a careers page have to match candidates’ actual experience. For a beauty brand struggling to hire, the post reframes the fix as an internal audit of interviews and decision-making before writing another job description.
It’s a compact, first-person account of a fragmented recruiting stack and whether more software is the answer—a decision most hiring teams face.
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At a talent acquisition dinner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hosted at Scalis, Ungar takes a long walk through an old neighborhood and reflects on how systems change.
In that reflection Ungar inventories a personal recruiting stack: one tool for note-taking, an ATS/CRM, a separate AI sourcing tool, an agent, Excel spreadsheets for tracking data, and probably more that slip the mind.
It works, the post says, but it raises the question of whether teams keep adding tools to solve a problem when the better answer is to rethink the system altogether.
The neighborhood walk becomes the analogy: sometimes you need a different route to see what has changed and what needs to change next.
For brands planning a campaign
For a brand running several disconnected recruiting tools, this frames the useful engagement as a process audit rather than another subscription. It also signals where a partner might plug in: reviewing the whole stack and the process around it, rather than adding another point solution.
Recruiting partnership as an operating process, not a transaction
Katrina Ungar describes The Talent Project staying close to the search: adjusting when priorities shift, restarting a search when the role changes significantly rather than forcing candidates into an outdated profile, keeping candidates engaged during brand-side delays, sharing unwelcome market feedback and providing regular pipeline updates.
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They also frame partnership as two-way, with the best results coming from clients who value transparency, communication, collaboration and trust.
For brands planning a campaign
For a beauty or wellness brand reviewing its recruiting process, this is a direct signal to assess whether Katrina Ungar would operate as an embedded talent partner rather than a transactional sourcing channel. Useful questions include how they decide when to restart a search, keep candidates warm during delays and provide regular updates.
Values are experienced through the hiring process, not just the careers page
After attending a BeautyMatter happy hour, Katrina Ungar uses the sign “Work Hard & Be Nice to People” to argue that internal values matter as much as external company presentation.
Read more
Candidates experience values through the interview process, how decisions are made, how leaders communicate, how people are treated and how the organization operates. For founders struggling to hire, the advice is to look inside out rather than only at candidates.
For brands planning a campaign
This gives a brand a practical way to evaluate its recruiting process before adding search capacity: audit the interview experience, decision speed, leader communication and candidate treatment. It also suggests Katrina Ungar would likely press a beauty or wellness client on internal alignment, not just job descriptions and candidate slates.
Human judgment remains central across the recruiting process
Katrina Ungar answers the question of where a human is needed in recruiting with “all of them.”
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Technology can help write job descriptions, source candidates, take notes, schedule interviews and move information, but humans are needed to understand the business behind the role, identify a candidate who looks good on paper but is not the right fit, read between the lines in interviews, sell the opportunity and know when a search is not working. They position talent assessment as the point where true expertise matters.
For brands planning a campaign
For brands adopting AI sourcing or screening tools, this is a clear argument for keeping human judgment in assessment, interview interpretation, candidate selling and course correction. A brand can ask Katrina Ungar how they use technology for efficiency while reserving expert evaluation for decisions that affect hiring quality.
At a Talent Acquisition leadership dinner, Katrina Ungar discusses recruiting systems and contrasts an all-in-one platform with a personal stack of separate tools for note-taking, an ATS/CRM, AI sourcing, an agent and Excel spreadsheets.
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The stack works, but the post asks whether teams keep adding tools instead of rethinking the system altogether.
For brands planning a campaign
This is useful context for a brand assessing whether its recruiting workflow needs another tool or a more coherent process. Katrina Ungar’s familiarity with multi-tool recruiting workflows can inform conversations about process design, consolidation and where technology fits in a talent-partnership engagement.
The posts mention two brands and one service relationship: BeautyMatter and SCALIS appear as event hosts or industry references; The Talent Project is the recruiting business Ungar references as the vehicle for Ungar's work, though the posts do not state whether Ungar owns or is employed by it.
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None of the posts describe a sponsorship or affiliate arrangement.
The Talent Project
Disclosed partnership
Ungar writes that “At The Talent Project, we stay close to the search” and says The Talent Project LLC adds value by understanding business nuances and assessing talent through that lens.
Ungar attended a talent acquisition leadership dinner in Williamsburg hosted by Brandon Amoroso at SCALIS, which they described as an all-in-one recruiting system.
Katrina Ungar writes on LinkedIn about hiring as a working relationship, not a transaction.
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Explore the posts by theme: start with the fullest statement of the talent-partnership model, in which a search restarts when a role changes and candidates stay informed through delays.
Then read the argument that technology should speed up recruiting while decisions about people remain human, followed by posts on company values and recruiting tools.
Across all four, Ungar turns a concrete moment — a sign on an office wall, a walk through an old neighbourhood, a question someone asked — into a position on how hiring should work.
The short, argument-driven posts, rather than case studies, offer practical recruiting thinking, especially for beauty and wellness brands.
Georgiou shares Ungar’s view that recruiting should prioritize quality over quantity and that whoever runs a search should understand the team, not just the role on paper.
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Georgiou’s posts describe building a recruitment business after working in HR and being let down by recruiters, echoing Ungar’s argument that candidates and clients should be treated as long-term partners, not transactions.
Georgiou runs a specialist headhunting firm focused on law, cybersecurity and tech, financial services, and healthcare, and writes about placements across many countries. Ungar focuses on beauty and wellness brands and embedded, process-level partnerships with client teams.
Ricketts traces hiring problems to what happens before a candidate arrives: unclear job descriptions, expectations that shift between posting, interview and first day, and the effect of AI-generated applications on employer confidence.
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Ungar makes a similar point: candidates experience a company’s values through the interview process, not the careers page.
Ricketts writes for organisations reviewing applicant recruiting and workforce strategy, using survey figures to make the case and addressing retention as well as hiring. Ungar focuses on the relationship between a brand and its recruiting partner, relying less on data and more on reasoning from individual situations.
Edelman covers the same territory from the other side of the table, coaching job seekers on how to use the final minutes of an interview and providing ready-made question lists by category.
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Both focus on interview quality and two-way assessment; Ungar argues that this is when candidates judge a company’s values.
Edelman writes for candidates and job seekers, with checklist-style, repost-oriented posts built around an infographic. Ungar writes for brands and founders, making the case for a partnership model that leaves judgement with the recruiter rather than handing candidates a script.
Katrina Ungar’s LinkedIn profile had 15,253 followers when recorded on October 7, 2026.
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Four posts published between September 17 and October 2, 2026 address founders and leaders of growing beauty and wellness brands weighing how to hire, as well as recruiting and talent-acquisition peers.
One describes a talent-acquisition leadership dinner in Brooklyn and the recruiting tech stack around it; another argues that human judgment belongs at every stage of hiring; two position The Talent Project as an extension of a client’s team during a search.
The posts show that their content speaks to hiring decision-makers in the category, but include no impressions, engagement counts, follower geography, job function, or seniority data to confirm whether their followers include founders, HR leads, or brand operators.
Before a campaign aimed at those groups, ask for a recent LinkedIn analytics audience breakdown covering geography, seniority, industry, and job function, or a documented audience survey if one exists.
Katrina Ungar's posts describe no sponsorship or paid-partnership formats.
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The partnerships they describe are client engagements with The Talent Project, a recruiting business: the content shows how a search is run, not a media offer a brand could buy.
They say the firm stays close to each search, adjusts when priorities shift, restarts a search when a role changes significantly rather than pushing candidates into a profile that no longer fits, and keeps candidates engaged and informed when delays on the brand side slow the process.
They describe the client's role as providing transparency, communication, collaboration and trust, and treating recruiting as a partnership rather than a transaction.
They prefer long-term relationships where values and ways of working align.
They also argue that assessment should stay human while technology handles sourcing, scheduling and note-taking, and position The Talent Project as learning a client's business and delivering a curated shortlist.
Ask directly for rates, package structure, contract terms and the appropriate inquiry channel; the posts provide none.
A growing beauty or wellness brand has several open roles, a search stalled by shifting priorities and slow internal approvals, and candidates dropping out during delays.
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Decision: Katrina Ungar is a reasonable fit for an embedded recruiting partnership, not a contingent sourcing transaction.
The posts describe The Talent Project staying close to a search, adapting when priorities shift, restarting when a role changes significantly rather than forcing candidates into an outdated profile, keeping candidates engaged through brand-side delays, sharing market feedback even when it is unwelcome, and providing regular pipeline updates.
Ungar also argues that assessment should stay human while technology handles sourcing, scheduling and note-taking.
Candidates experience company values through interviews, decisions, leader communication and how people are treated.
The posts describe recruiting services, not sponsorship formats.
Next step: ask for a recent audience breakdown and documented search outcomes before committing.
When to choose a specialist
A beauty brand wants a paid creator sponsorship or consumer-facing media placement to drive product awareness across a broad beauty audience, measured by reach and engagement.
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Decision: poor fit based on what the posts say.
The only commercial format described is a client recruiting engagement with The Talent Project; the posts do not describe sponsorship or paid-partnership formats, a rate card, package structure or inquiry page.
The four posts address founders and recruiting or talent-acquisition peers, not consumers.
One LinkedIn follower count cannot show whether the audience includes product buyers or whether a consumer campaign would reach the right people.
A campaign aimed at fully automated AI screening with minimal human review would also be a poor fit: Ungar says humans are needed at every stage and searches should be restarted, not patched, when roles change.
A worked campaign example
For the beauty or wellness brand with stalled hiring, the plan is a 90-day recruiting-process partnership.
Weeks 1-2: audit the interview process, decision speed, leader communication and candidate treatment; map current tools such as an ATS/CRM, AI sourcing, spreadsheets and any agent, then determine whether the problem is too many tools or a broken process.
Weeks 3-8: run two priority searches with weekly pipeline updates, keep candidates engaged through brand-side delays, and gather market feedback on compensation, role positioning and where candidates are resisting.
Weeks 9-12: review what candidates responded to, whether any role needs re-briefing, and where human judgment should remain if AI screening is used.
Handoff: a documented search playbook, updated role profiles and a curated shortlist.
Before launch, ask Ungar for audience analytics and measurable search outcomes so the brand can judge the partnership on results, not process description alone.
Choose Vas Georgiou over Ungar when the hiring need is in a specialist, credential-heavy field rather than beauty or wellness.
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Georgiou started Heilsa after working in HR and describes the firm as focused on four sectors — law, cybersecurity and tech, financial services, and healthcare — across the US, UK and EU, with specialist headhunting rather than generalist placement.
A beauty or wellness brand hiring a general counsel, a security lead or a finance director would get deeper sector coverage here than from a recruiting partner whose posts describe entirely consumer-brand hiring.
Georgiou's posts also emphasise the same quality-over-quantity and market-feedback themes as theirs, positioning Heilsa as an embedded partner rather than a CV-sending agency.
Heilsa's posts name no beauty, wellness or consumer-brand clients, and cite no search outcomes beyond a broad claim of placements across 30+ countries.
A brand hiring in product development, brand marketing or retail operations would be looking outside Georgiou's stated sectors, weakening the case for this specialist alternative.
The posts give less detail than Ungar's on candidate engagement during delays, pipeline reporting and restarting a search when a role changes.
Ask Heilsa how it handles those parts of the process.
Choose Molley Ricketts over Ungar when the underlying problem is hiring fundamentals rather than search execution.
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Ricketts's posts frame the work as workforce strategy: checking whether a job description reflects the actual role, whether expectations are consistent between posting, interview and first day, and whether candidates understand what they will own and how success is measured.
Ricketts cites a survey finding that 73% of HR professionals report challenges with fabricated or misleading candidate information and that 36% say AI-generated applicant content has reduced confidence in hiring decisions, then argues for clearer success profiles, stronger interviews and candidate verification.
A brand whose roles keep turning over because postings and interviews oversell the job, or whose screening is being flooded by AI-polished applications, would get more from that diagnostic work than from a search partner.
Ungar's posts also cover values showing up in the interview process, but Ricketts develops the theme into an explicit audit of role clarity.
Ricketts's posts describe consultation and strategy help, including an invitation to schedule a free workforce consultation, rather than the embedded search execution Ungar describes: staying close to a live search, managing candidate engagement through brand-side delays, restarting when a role changes and reporting weekly on the pipeline.
A brand with several open roles and no internal recruiter would need another partner to source and close candidates.
The posts name no beauty or wellness clients; ask about Ricketts's experience in those sectors before assuming industry-specific candidate networks.
Choose Daryn Edelman when the gap is the interview itself and the candidate experience around it.
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Edelman's posts are written for job seekers and lay out specific questions candidates should ask about the role, the team, the manager and the company's direction, framed around the idea that top performers interview the company as much as the company interviews them.
A beauty or wellness brand that keeps losing preferred candidates late in the process, or wants hiring managers to run more structured and informative interviews, could use that material directly: it shows what candidates are being told to probe and gives interviewers a practical checklist of what to be prepared to answer.
Edelman is the most candidate-side of the three alternatives, and the most useful for improving interview quality and employer signalling rather than filling seats.
Edelman's posts offer advice to candidates, not recruiting services, client engagements or a search process, so a brand would need another partner to run the searches Ungar runs.
The two posts carry the same text about interview questions, with only minor differences at the end.
A brand that needs candidates delivered, screened and kept warm through a slow process would need to buy that work elsewhere.
Katrina Ungar's LinkedIn posts cover recruiting partnerships, human judgment and recruiting technology, values-led hiring, and recruiting tooling.
No publication dates are given for these posts, so they are presented as themes rather than a dated sequence.
No videos, transcripts, or client case studies with outcomes are mentioned.
The recruiting business The Talent Project is referenced in the posts; they do not say whether Ungar owns or is employed by it, so no ownership claim is made.
BeautyMatter and SCALIS appear as event hosts or industry references only; the posts do not mention any sponsorship or affiliate arrangement.
The similar-creators comparisons draw on two LinkedIn posts each for Vas Georgiou, Molley Ricketts, and Daryn Edelman.
A LinkedIn follower count for Ungar's account was observed on October 7, 2026.
Open gaps for a future revision: post dates, any client outcomes, and audience detail beyond the follower count.
