Everett Chaffin
Everett Chaffin
Leader, Talent Operations and Executive Recruiting, Zendesk
Everett Chaffin is one of the rare people who knew he wanted to be a recruiter as a kid.
His father has run a retained executive search firm since the late 1990s, and Everett grew up in that world. By age twelve he was sourcing candidates after school, combing through company org charts before LinkedIn existed. He still remembers nearly placing a CFO at twelve years old after surfacing a candidate who turned out to be the CEO’s long lost best friend. The offer eventually fell through, but the experience hooked him. If he could do this at twelve, he knew he could build a career around it.
He started in retained search full time, working for his father in California, then moved to Texas to join an agency. From there, Indeed recruited him at a pivotal moment in the company’s growth. When he joined, Indeed had roughly eight hundred and fifty employees and only a handful of recruiters. Everett owned product and non engineering roles at first, then expanded into about half of the company’s technical hiring as the business scaled to twelve thousand employees. Over seven years he grew from an individual contributor into a leader with a fifty five person team, helping build the recruiting engine behind one of the most influential platforms in talent.
A lifelong fan of Blizzard games, he later had the chance to align his work with a personal passion. A search firm approached him for a role leading recruiting for Diablo and Overwatch. He joined Blizzard, took global ownership of recruiting for the Overwatch franchise, and helped support the launch of Overwatch 2 while also assisting other game teams. After the Microsoft acquisition and resulting layoffs, his time there ended, but it opened space for his next chapter.
Today Everett sits at Zendesk in a role that blends operations, programs, and executive recruiting. He leads coordination, employer branding, early careers, enablement, and other non delivery functions that make the recruiting engine run. His focus is simple and very intentional: make recruiters’ lives easier, and make the business experience with talent better.
The work that energizes him most is the work that removes friction for his team. He thinks in terms of click reduction, automation, and leverage. If he can automate twenty to thirty percent of repetitive work for a team of thirty recruiters, it is like adding several headcount without increasing budget. That mindset shows up in how he evaluates tools, builds programs, and frames the value of operations.
Everett’s Advice for 2026
Embrace AI as a force multiplier
AI will not replace great recruiters. The recruiters and leaders who learn how to use AI well will outpace those who do not. Use it to handle resume review, outreach, ranking, drip campaigns, and other administrative work so you can show up as a true talent advisor.
Design for recruiter effectiveness, not activity
Think about operations as a product. Every process, system, and workflow should answer a simple question: does this make my recruiters more effective and my hiring managers better served
Do not be afraid to ask hard questions
For people early in their recruiting career, Everett’s advice is direct. Do not shy away from tough questions and do not be afraid to pick up the phone. Candidates want what you are offering just as much as you want their answers. You are often giving them something very valuable, the possibility of a better role.
Everett’s journey from sourcing for his father at age twelve to leading global operations and executive recruiting at Zendesk reflects a consistent theme. Treat recruiting as a craft, invest in tools that free people to do their best work, and never forget that at its core, this job is about helping people move into opportunities that can change their lives.
