Many organizations treat retention as something that happens after the hire…
Alex Lozano, a talent acquisition leader at Trinity University, sees it as the scoreboard that tells you whether your recruiting process actually worked. Highlights From Alex’s Work at Trinity University:
- Zero turnover across two historically high-churn divisions in six months
- A previously failed search filled in six weeks after two prior searches had closed without a hire
- Multiple weeks removed from the average hiring cycle by cutting redundant interview rounds
- Hiring committee buy-in was earned across faculty and staff search processes in a tradition-heavy environment
Listen to the full podcast episode below to hear step by step how he did it.
Retention Is a Recruiting Metric
Retention is usually framed as an HR challenge addressed through benefits, engagement surveys, and manager training. All of those matter, but by the time those levers come into play, the hire has already been made. The most important decisions about whether someone will stay have already been made, and they were made during the recruiting conversation. That is the thesis Alex has tested across more than two decades of TA leadership, and his current work at Trinity is proving it out in real time.
Meet Alex Lozano
Alex Lozano leads talent acquisition at Trinity University, where he is aligning hiring processes for faculty and staff while working closely with academic leadership and search committees. He has more than two decades of experience building and rebuilding TA functions across multiple industries before bringing that experience to higher education, and he is currently writing a book on talent acquisition leadership titled It’s Non-Negotiable.
Forward-Looking Screening Versus Resume Review
When Alex meets a candidate, he isn’t trying to validate the resume. He’s trying to find out whether they will still be in the role two years from now. His questions are designed to surface whether a candidate will align with how the team actually works, whether they’ll buy into the organization’s mission, and whether they’ll weather the parts of the job that are genuinely hard.
“I don’t want them to recite the resume. I can read it. I want to know how they implemented their experience.”
That shift — from backward-looking resume validation to forward-looking fit assessment — does the work that retention initiatives often try to do after the fact. The candidates Alex hires this way aren’t always the most polished on paper, but they’re the ones who stick around and grow with the organization.
Get the Candidate’s Real Answers to the Hiring Committee
Hiring committees and search committees often include subject-matter experts who know the role better than the recruiter does. The traditional model, where the recruiter screens the candidate, then summarizes for the committee, is a real bottleneck. Information gets lost or filtered through someone else’s interpretation, and the eventual hiring decision suffers as a result.
Alex’s approach is to remove that interpretation layer entirely. Hiring committees see and hear what the candidate actually said, in the candidate’s own words, before the next round. When the committee evaluates real answers instead of a recruiter’s summary, the match is more accurate — which means fewer surprises after the hire and fewer reasons for either side to part ways early.
Lead With Listening, Then Find One Champion
Alex was only the second TA professional ever at Trinity, in a university where tradition runs deep across both faculty and staff hiring processes. The trust bar was high, and the appetite for new tools was low. Rather than push for top-down change, Alex spent time understanding what was working, what wasn’t, and where leaders saw the function going. Then he found one hiring leader willing to pilot a new approach on a search that had failed twice before.
That search closed in six weeks. Word spread from there, and hiring managers across other departments started asking for the same approach. In tradition-heavy environments, a single committee win creates organic adoption faster than any top-down rollout.
Speed Matters, and It Compounds
Cutting interview rounds is one thing. The bigger impact is the calendar coordination that disappears with each round removed. By the time stakeholders meet, discuss, and schedule the next step, a single round often consumes one to two weeks. Multiply that across a five- or six-round process, and the candidate is gone before the offer goes out.
“Candidates are moving on. Whoever offers them first is where they’re going 90% of the time. We don’t have the luxury of taking an extra two weeks.”
A tighter process doesn’t just save calendar time. It protects the match itself because the candidate who would have thrived in the role is still available to accept the offer.
Bring the Human Back
Across every story Alex shared, one theme repeated. “It’s about people. Everything we do from this office is driven by people.
Using tools is great, but we need to keep the human in. That’s what sets us apart.”
Better retention, in the end, starts with better recruiting — and better recruiting starts with a better conversation.
Connect with Alex Lozano
Find Alex on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/alexanderlozano or visit silverbackrecruiter.com for updates on the release of his upcoming book, It’s Non-Negotiable.
If you like what you hear, book a demo or start a free trial to improve the interview experience and reduce turnover.
