"If you want to take the time to really understand every human being you're working with — that takes more time. And time is money. And that's inherently anti-capitalistic." — Meg Rye

Hiring is a power system. Most people on both sides of it (candidates and companies alike) have just accepted that as a fact of life.

Meg Rye hasn't.

Meg is the founder of Good Maven, a design recruitment and career coaching business built on a pretty radical premise: that recruiters can function as guardians rather than brokers. That the job isn't to scoot humans through a pipeline as efficiently as possible; it's to understand what each person actually needs, and make connections that honor that.

In this conversation, we get into the mechanics of what that looks like in practice: how Good Maven approaches underrepresented talent, why diverse pipelines don't happen by accident, and what it actually takes to redesign hiring around care rather than conversion.

We also go deep on the structural side — B Corp certification, Employee Ownership Trusts, EMI shares — because Meg is building the values into the bones of the business itself, not just the pitch deck. (Janel will be the first to admit this part of the conversation made her head spin a little. Anna loved every second of it.)

We explore:

• Why "there just aren't enough qualified candidates" is a load of hooey... and what actually widens the funnel
• What consent-based recruiting looks like in practice, from the first conversation to the final offer
• How to balance meaning and mortgage in a job market that's genuinely tough right now
• The structural scaffolding Meg is building at Good Maven: B Corp, EOTs, and why she's thinking about exit strategy before she's anywhere near exit
• Why the next generation of recruiters needs real mentorship, not just AI shortcuts

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