My guess is that the cookie tag fails to run. The reason is that the variable getTalent.recordcount is undefined. In any case, this points to a potentially bigger problem.
It appears from your description that the query getTalent depends on the user. You should therefore scope it accordingly. For example, wherever the variable getTalent occurs, including in the cfquery tag that defines it, you should change it to session.getTalent.
Also, if only just to tidy things up, I would delete the spaces in the definitions of sessionTimeout and applicationTimeout. I would also set the value of applicatonTimeout to createTimeSpan(1,0,0,0). After all, the cookie is valid for up to a day.