Kim Acosta
Managing Director at UCentric
Kim Acosta is managing director of UCentric, a Sydney technology recruitment consultancy she founded after seven years at Amazon, where she rose from senior recruiter to recruitment manager leading talent acquisition teams across ANZ and EMEA, including a stint based in Luxembourg. UCentric specialises in cloud, data analytics and AI hiring, working as a preferred supplier to companies including Amazon, AWS, Monday.com and NTT Data. On Galah Cyber's Secured podcast, Acosta discussed how AI is changing recruitment and where it is quietly breaking candidate trust, arguing that human judgement and rapport still matter more than a polished interview answer.
In their own words
From AI, Hiring, and Trust: Why Shortcuts Break Interviews · Secured by Galah CyberInterviewers are not necessarily looking for the right answers each and every time. They want to know, is this a good person for my team?
Key moments
Jump straight to the part of AI, Hiring, and Trust: Why Shortcuts Break Interviews you want.
- 1:24 Meet Kim Acosta and UCentric
- 2:06 From Amazon to starting a recruitment consultancy
- 4:19 Data engineering demand vs AI hype
- 5:31 What data engineering roles actually look like
- 7:27 Adapting business models to real market needs
- 10:04 Where AI genuinely helps recruiters
- 11:09 Custom GPTs and interview preparation
- 13:43 One way interviews and candidate slop
- 15:09 Technical assessments and AI misuse
- 17:19 Trust, failure, and reapplying the right way
Connections
Spot something wrong? Suggest a correction Updated 25 September 2026
Want a show of your own?
W2D1 Media — the team behind the Day One Network, which helped build Blackbird Ventures' Wild Hearts — builds and produces podcasts for funds, founders and operators. If you want a show built around your brand, let's talk.