America’s hiring system is broken. It’s time to fix both sides of the interview table.
The HIRE traces the history of hiring—from early guilds to the Manhattan Project and modern job boards—to explain how we ended up here and how both sides of the interview table can do better.
Where hiring actually happens. The HIRE tells the unknown story.
5.2 million people start a new job every month in America. Most of them never got there by clicking “Apply” on a job board.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 5.2 million hires and 7.6 million job openings in May 2026, yet the public story of hiring is dominated by three platforms: LinkedIn, Indeed, and ZipRecruiter.
In The HIRE, Nicole Barbano calls them “LIZ”—the triumvirate that spends billions telling you this is where hiring happens.
The truth is very different. Roughly 80% of those monthly hires never came through a traditional job board. They were made through personal networks, referrals, recruiters, direct applications to company career pages, and confidential searches. The jobs exist. The hiring happens. Most job seekers are just not where the hiring is happening.
Meanwhile, the online ecosystem looks enormous. LinkedIn alone draws hundreds of millions of visits a month. Add in the rest of LIZ, more than 400 niche job boards, and an estimated 25,000 job boards in the United States that scrape and recycle postings, and you get a digital hall of mirrors—an endless echo of the same jobs, designed to monetize attention and hope more than actual hiring.
Only a small fraction of the 5.2 million people who start new jobs each month got there by doing what the job boards tell them to do. The HIRE is about understanding where the real hiring happens now—and how to get yourself to that side of the table.
About the Author- Nicole Barbano
Nicole Barbano founded Hunter Ambrose in 2006 in San Diego, California, building what she deliberately called a “lifestyle firm” so she could prioritize raising her three young children while doing work that mattered.
Two decades later, Hunter Ambrose celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2026, with more than 1,000 executive and specialized placements across healthcare, legal, corporate, and leadership roles.
After seeing, up close, how often smart people and good organizations were failed by a broken hiring system, she wrote The HIRE to put that playbook in the hands of the people who need it most. Today, through Hunter Ambrose & Co., Nicole focuses on executive coaching, corporate consulting, and serving as an expert resource to organizations that want to hire smarter—and to candidates who want to get hired faster.
Nicole is the Mother of three adult children, is married to Justin Wade Sipe, and they reside in Kansas City, Missouri.
“We have built an industry worth billions of dollars around a process that, by almost every measurable standard, doesn’t work well for anyone involved.”
“The person you hire is the most expensive decision you make that never shows up as a line item on the P&L. Leaders who understand that stop treating recruiting as a task and start treating it as a core strategy.”
“The system was never a meritocracy, and it was never designed to be one. Its primary function has always been to fill seats.”
“From guild halls to job boards, every era has invented a new way to match people with work. What has never changed is the one thing hiring still depends on: human judgment, exercised under pressure.”
“Understanding the other side isn’t optional anymore. You can’t hire well without understanding what job seekers are experiencing. You can’t get hired without understanding what employers need.”
“The Manhattan Project didn’t just build a weapon; it built a workforce. In total secrecy, the U.S. recruited and moved more than half a million people into roles so specialized that most of them didn’t even know what they were building—only that their skills, judgment, and trustworthiness had been handpicked for a mission that would change history.”
The HIRE
By Nicole Barbano
Edited by Nick A. M.
Audible narrated by Vinnie Adams
“There is nothing quite like the experience of looking for a job.”
“For most of us, these are life-changing steps taken, and we don’t need to shy away from them.
Whether you are the one searching or the one hiring, both of you are, at bottom, conducting the same desperate expedition: a search for intelligent life on the other side of the table.
Nothing else merges the personal and the professional like a job search.
It sits at the intersection of who you are and what you have to offer the world—and then asks you to package that into a résumé, sell it to strangers, and wait in silence for a verdict.”
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Get in Touch
Whether you have a question, an idea, or just want to say hello, feel free to reach out.
Questions?
Let’s connect. Hunter Ambrose is the publisher of The HIRE.