Recruiting Future

How far has the AI conversation drifted from hiring reality? Talent acquisition is in a strange place right now. AI is in every conversation, but the work of actually hiring people is getting more difficult, not less. Application volumes are swinging unpredictably, the workforce itself is changing shape, and the reality on the ground looks very different from the conference stage. In this episode, recorded live at HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam, I'm joined by two guests who have spent decades watching this industry evolve. Wolfgang Brickwedde from the Institute for Competitive Recruiting shares what his research reveals about the market employers are navigating and where vendors are still missing the mark. Mervyn Dinnen joins to discuss the reality behind the AI hype and how the multigenerational workforce is reshaping work. We discuss: • What's really happening with application volumes • Where vendors are still getting it wrong • The distance between AI hype and hiring reality • How the multigenerational workforce is changing TA • What employers are finding hardest right now Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Are employees outpacing their employers on AI? AI dominates every conference agenda and vendor pitch, but the reality inside most organisations is more complicated. People are adopting AI tools personally far faster than their companies are embedding them into workflows. That disconnect is creating pressure HR leaders can't ignore. The HR tech vendor landscape is shifting fast, with consolidation and expansion happening simultaneously, making it harder to know where to invest. Labour supply is tightening as demographic shifts bite, and the old model of workforce planning is no longer enough. My guest on Episode 790 of Recruiting Future is Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer at Sapient Insights Group. Stacey runs the longest-running HR systems survey in the market, and her data reveals where the real gaps are between what organisations say about AI and what they are actually doing. We discuss: • How AI differs from past technology shifts • The gap between personal and corporate AI adoption • Layoffs and the hidden cost of AI investment • Why "bring your own AI" matters • Making sense of the vendor landscape • The Platform Cluster Model • Demographics and labour supply pressures • From workforce planning to workforce architecting • How HR's role needs to change #JoinTheConversation

What does it actually take to make agentic AI work? The real value of AI agents in HR comes from connecting them across the employee lifecycle, not from deploying them on individual tasks. That's where most large organisations are getting stuck. Working in a fully agentic way means dealing with different systems and data sources that often have no shared foundation, and the result is fragmented experiences for employees and managers. Getting there requires serious work in data governance, process design, and integration. The kind of foundational work that rarely gets mentioned at industry conferences. My guest on Episode 791 of Recruiting Future is Melissa Shelley Höjwall, Global HR Technology Lead at H&M Group. Recorded live at HR Tech Europe, Melissa explains what it takes to build a connected AI architecture across HR and why many companies are undermining their own progress. We discuss: • The approach to agentic AI in HR at H&M • From niche agents to connected architecture • Process automation design and data integration • The role of data governance • Shadow AI and over-governance • Why cutting jobs isn't the way to get true value from AI • New roles for HR professionals • Breaking the silos in the talent function Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

How do you lead TA when AI won't stop accelerating? Something has shifted in AI over the last few months. The pace of model updates keeps increasing, and strategies that made sense a few months ago are already obsolete. New tools can take on long, complex pieces of work largely on their own, changing what's possible across hiring. For TA leaders, long-term planning has become almost impossible, while the recruiter's role itself is being rethought as candidates use AI just as actively as employers do. My guest on Episode 789 of Recruiting Future is Bryan Ackermann, Head of AI Strategy and Transformation at Korn Ferry. Bryan shares the changes he is seeing across the recruiting funnel and how organisations can build the resilience they need to keep pace. We discuss: • The accelerating pace of AI change • Why AI literacy now matters everywhere • Is candidate AI use cheating or demonstrating capability? • The superpowered employee • The evolving role of the recruiter • Agents talking to agents • Where human moments still matter • Resilience and shorter planning horizons Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Could belonging be the missing metric in talent acquisition? Many organizations are struggling with attrition, disengagement, and costly mis-hires that quietly destroy value. The real problem isn't finding talent it is creating the conditions where people can perform. Research suggests that when people feel they belong, organizations see significant gains in productivity, retention, and innovation. Belonging can be measured, built into how work gets done, and connected directly to business outcomes. My guest on Episode 787 of Recruiting Future is Eric Knauf, Founder and CEO of BelongHQ. Eric shares a practical framework for measuring belonging and explains how it could reshape TA's role in an AI-driven world. We discuss: • The five pillars of belonging • Measuring belonging against business outcomes • Why workforce planning comes before EVP • Breaking roles down to the task level • Belonging as a talent differentiator • Shifting TA from seats to strategy • The hidden cost of untapped potential • Building trust during the recruiting process Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Do you actually know what AI fluency means for your organisation? AI skills are quickly becoming a baseline expectation in hiring, with more employers adding AI fluency to their job descriptions every month. Yet when you ask those same employers what AI fluency actually looks like for roles that aren't deeply technical, most struggle to answer. My guest on Episode 786 of Recruiting Future is Kathleen deLaski, Founder of the Education Design Lab. Kathleen shares what employers and students are revealing about AI readiness, and why the current approach risks failing a generation of new talent. We discuss: • What is an AI-fluent workforce? • Preparing learners for a new world of work • Current student attitudes to AI • Is the education system able to evolve quickly enough? • Moving beyond prompts • What replaces degrees in early-career hiring? • Assessing human skills at scale • Articulating what AI skills look like in your organisation Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts. #JoinTheConversation

What's really changing in tech hiring? AI is reshaping how work gets done, but the hiring process hasn't caught up. Employers are asking for AI skills they can't clearly define, application volumes are at record levels, and resumes mean less than ever because candidates can now use AI to tailor them to any job in seconds. Despite predictions that coding would be the first job to disappear, engineering hiring is actually up in some areas. But the roles themselves are shifting fast, and forward-thinking employers are turning to work sampling and integrating AI use into assessment rather than treating it as cheating. My guest on Episode 785 of Recruiting Future is Amanda Richardson, CEO of CoderPad. Amanda shares what's really happening in technical hiring, why traditional screening is failing, and where it's all heading next. We discuss: • What are AI skills? • Previewing the actual work in the recruiting process • AI-assisted assessment • Upskilling, adaptability, and curiosity • How AI coding is changing tech jobs • Why candidates are ahead of employers on AI adoption • What the future of jobs and hiring looks like Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Are you hiring individuals when you should be building teams? Talent acquisition has always been built around the individual. Find the right person for the right role. But once someone joins a team, something far more complex takes over. How people combine matters as much as who they are on their own, and gut feel can never predict that. Every person brings a unique mix of human qualities that affect how they work with others. Factor in all those qualities across all the possible ways a team could be put together, and the number of combinations quickly reaches into the trillions. My guest on Episode 784 of Recruiting Future is Dr. Bernhard Züenkeler, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Smycles. Bernhard explains how data can reveal hidden team potential, why AI should be treated as a team member rather than a replacement, and what hiring looks like when organizations start thinking in combinations rather than individuals. We discuss: • The gap between hiring and performance • The importance of team intelligence • AI as the new team member • The science behind team dynamics • Internal mobility and hidden talent • Solving skill shortages differently • What the future of hiring looks like Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

When will AI actually change how you hire? AI features in recruiting tools have seen massive adoption over the past year. But if you ask TA teams whether AI has actually changed how they hire, most will say no. Individual productivity is up, but organizational transformation hasn't followed. At the same time, AI tools on the candidate side are flooding employers with credible applications from people who may not be seriously interested. The funnel is getting noisier, and the traditional recruiting model wasn't built to cope. My guest on Episode 781 of Recruiting Future is Nikos Moraitakis, Co-Founder and CEO of Workable. Nikos explains why the real transformation is now close, how agentic AI could take over sourcing and screening, and why the recruiter role is about to shift dramatically towards the bottom of the funnel. We discuss: • Why AI adoption hasn't yet driven a significant transformation • AI-driven applications with low candidate intent • How AI capabilities have advanced in the last few months • Using agentic AI like a staffing agency • Why recruiters need to focus on the bottom of the funnel • Trust, transparency, and human oversight • What hiring looks like in the future Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Is your workforce actually ready for AI? Every organization knows it needs to adopt AI. Far fewer have worked out how to bring their whole workforce along for the journey. Telling employees to use new tools rarely works, and many companies are stuck with pockets of enthusiastic early adopters alongside large groups who feel the pace of change is simply too much. Getting from scattered experimentation to genuine organization-wide adoption requires a very different approach. Upskilling, learning culture, and the right mindset matter as much as the technology itself. My guest on Episode 783 of Recruiting Future is Katya Laviolette, Chief People Officer at 1Password. Katya shares how her team built an AI adoption strategy co-led by HR and the technology team, why soft skills now matter more than technical training, and how to cut through the noise when every vendor is selling AI. We discuss: • Building organization-wide AI adoption • The role of AI champions • Balancing human and AI work • Why curiosity and adaptability matter • Upskilling versus hiring new talent • Evaluating AI tools and vendors in a noisy market • Privacy and security considerations Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation