Thomas Evangelista
Thomas Evangelista
VP, Business Recruiting & Recruiting Operations - Zip
For Tom Evangelista, recruiting began as an unexpected turn away from the path he thought he would follow.
Originally, Tom expected to enter financial services, inspired by his father’s decades-long career in stocks and bonds. While attending networking events to break into financial advisory, he met a recruitment agency that was recruiting financial advisors for its platform.
That conversation changed his direction.
Tom interviewed with the agency and quickly fell in love with the idea of helping people find their dream jobs.
“The rest is kind of history from there,” he says.
Learning Through Leaders Who Took a Chance
Looking back, Tom credits several leaders with shaping the way he approaches talent acquisition today.
The first is Jason Klein, who gave Tom his first opportunity to move from agency recruiting into corporate recruiting.
Jason hired him at Gartner and later worked with him again at Yext, helping him understand the foundations of corporate recruiting and how to operate effectively inside larger organizations.
The second is Al Lundy, who influenced Tom during his time in the RPO space.
Al taught him how to balance the agency mindset with the responsibility of representing a company from the inside.
To this day, Tom still turns to Al for career advice.
The third is Jerry Miller, who introduced Tom to the high-tech startup world at Snapchat.
After spending much of his career in more structured corporate environments, Tom credits Jerry with opening the door to hypergrowth, startup recruiting, and the IPO journey.
That experience helped shape the next decade of Tom’s career.
How AI Is Changing Recruiting
Tom believes AI is reshaping recruiting in two major ways: by changing how recruiters execute their work and by transforming the broader talent market.
On the market side, he sees AI companies reigniting a competitive hiring environment similar to 2021, when the war for talent was especially intense.
AI companies are raising the bar for top talent across recruiting, customer success, sales, engineering, and beyond.
On the product side, Tom sees AI tools changing how recruiters source, screen, and manage their time.
Tools that train agents to identify talent, surface profiles, record interviews, and generate transcripts are helping recruiters work more efficiently.
These tools can give talent teams time back in their day and help them work smarter.
Keeping the Human Element
While Tom sees the value in AI, he cautions talent leaders not to let technology take over the process.
“Don’t let the technology dictate your work,” he says.
For Tom, recruiting remains deeply personal.
It is still about building relationships, creating trust, and making meaningful connections with candidates.
If companies rely too heavily on automation, they risk losing the human touch that candidates still expect.
“As a candidate, you do want a little bit of a personalized touch,” he says.
Advice for Talent Leaders Heading into 2026
Tom’s advice for talent leaders is to embrace AI thoughtfully, but not blindly.
Technology can help recruiters become faster, smarter, and more efficient, but it should not replace human judgment or connection.
The best talent teams will use AI to support their work while continuing to prioritize relationships, personalization, and candidate experience.
For Tom, the future of recruiting belongs to leaders who can balance innovation with humanity.
By combining agency discipline, corporate recruiting experience, startup speed, and a people-first mindset, Tom Evangelista represents the kind of talent leader helping organizations navigate the next era of recruiting without losing sight of what makes the profession meaningful.
