Summary

In this episode of Recruiting Is No Joke, Joel talks with Duarte Rodrigo Mendonca, Director of Talent Acquisition Operations at PayPal. Duarte got into recruiting by accident, after a salesperson with a non-compete turned out to be a headhunter. He moved from agency work (cleared network engineers, then nurse recruiters) to corporate TA in healthcare and ecommerce. He now co-leads PayPal’s TA transformation, covering recruitment marketing, university recruiting, tech stack, compliance, and team enablement.

Main points:

What hasn’t changed: Recruiters still need to be self-taught, understand the business problem behind each req, and build a clear picture of