Josh shares his unconventional journey from the Australian military to progressive HR at marketing agency Tier 11 and his recruiting venture, Super Hired. He explains how HR teams can shift from rushing to solutions toward discovery-led approaches that treat employees as customers.
🎯 Key Topics Covered:
Why "work as a product" changes everything about HR
Moving from transactional HR to discovery-led people operations
Real examples of iterative onboarding improvements (migrating from Jira to Asana)
The importance of talent density over just filling seats
Compensation dynamics and the matching problem in recruitment
How small experiments build momentum for HR transformation
💡 Three Key Takeaways:
Start with discovery, not solutions – Before building HR processes or solutions, take time to interview employees, understand their stories and experiences, and map out what's actually obstructing outcomes. Even 10 minutes of discovery beats rushing to a result.
HR as a matching exercise, not a numbers game – Recruitment and people management generate real value when viewed as careful matchmaking between what work a company offers and what employees are looking for, rather than just transactional headcount filling.
Make HR less transactional – Slow down important conversations around hiring, onboarding, and employee experience. These decisions deserve the same rigor companies apply to external product development, not just checkbox processes.
👤 About Our Guest:
Josh Hill is an HR professional with a non-traditional background spanning military service in the Australian Army and progressive people operations. He currently works at Tier 11, a US marketing agency, and co-founded Super Hired, a discovery-led recruiting agency that challenges assembly-line talent acquisition.
🎙️ About Definitely Maybe Agile:
Join Peter Maddison and Dave Sharrock as they explore the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale, diving into Agile, DevOps, and organizational transformation with practical insights from real-world experience.
📧 Connect with us:
Email: feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com
Website: definitelymaybeagile.com
#ProgressiveHR #PeopleOperations #TalentDensity #HRTransformation #AgileHR #WorkAsAProduct #EmployeeExperience #Hiring #Onboarding #OrganizationalChange #DefinitelyMaybeAgile
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:40 Josh Hill's Background: Military to HR
3:10 What is Progressive HR?
6:03 Discovery-Led HR vs Traditional HR
10:41 Work as a Product: The Paradigm Shift
15:17 Prerequisites for Progressive HR
19:07 Small Iterations: Onboarding Improvements
22:34 Super Hired: Rethinking Recruitment
27:09 Talent Density and Matchmaking
31:10 Compensation and Value Distribution
36:56 Key Takeaways