Hi there, welcome to Episode 756 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

This episode is about Foresight.

Making sense of talent acquisition right now feels impossible. Every week brings new technology announcements, shifting economic signals, and conflicting advice about what comes next. It's tempting to chase the latest headline or follow gut instinct, but reactive decision-making rarely ends well.

Understanding key patterns helps separate signal from noise, and this is where genuine trend analysis grounded in real data becomes invaluable.

So what trends are shaping TA heading into 2026, and how should leaders respond?

My guest this week is Susan De La Vega, SVP Global Tech and Client Experience at Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry has just published their 12th annual TA trends report, built from interviews with over 1,600 global talent leaders, and Susan shares what the research reveals about where talent acquisition is heading.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The biggest TA challenges we have seen this year
• Methodology behind Korn Ferry’s TA Trends Report
• Changing attitudes and approaches to AI
• Why your next hire might not be human
• The importance of mapping tasks
• Investing in future talent
• Can TA get a seat at the table?
• Breaking the silos in the talent function
• Advice to TA Leaders on strategies for 2026
• What does the future look like in 3 years' time?

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We’ve been talking about automation in recruiting for a long time. The AI developments of the last two years have significantly shifted the landscape of what is possible with automation, making it a strategic imperative rather than a nice-to-have. However, the current situation is pretty problematic. Some recruiters and TA teams are doing it poorly, particularly in outreach, inundating candidates with generic, obviously AI-generated messages that all sound the same. Meanwhile, many recruiting teams are resisting automation entirely, concerned about losing the human connection that actually fills roles.

At the same time, in a world of AI sameness, brand, reputation, and genuine relationships with a talent pool are becoming the real competitive advantage and the key factor that actually drives response.

So how do recruiters balance automation with authenticity while building the credibility that cuts through the noise?

My guest this week is Mark Whitby, founder of The Resilient Recruiter podcast. In our conversation, he discusses what should be automated, what must remain human, why investing in your brand now will determine your future success, and the role external recruiters can play in rebuilding trust in the hiring process.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The current situation with automation in recruiting

• Reticence, bad strategies, and poor implementations

• The importance of the personal touch

• What are the essentially human parts of the hiring process?

• Multi-touch and multi-channel outreach

• How external agencies can help build trust with candidate

• How will AI change the agency market?

• The vital importance of brand and relationship building

• What will the future look like?

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If you’ve not listened to Roundup before, it’s a short review of the episodes that I’ve published in the last month to make sure you don’t miss out on the valuable insights that my guests are sharing.

I hope you have been enjoying the live Round Up episodes we’ve been doing over the last few months. This month sees a brief return to the old school format, but don’t worry, Round Up Live will return in January

Episodes featured in this Round Up:

Ep 742: Aligning Hiring with Values

Ep 743: The Talent Acquisition Revolution

Ep 744: How Job Ads Impact Quality Of Hire

Ep 745: Recruiting Excellence In Disruptive Times

Ep 746 Building Digital Trust In Hiring

Ep 747: Rethinking Fairness in Hiring

Ep 748: The Real Value Of AI Agents

Ep 749: Recruiting Past, Present, and Future (Live at TA Tech)

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It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the pace of change in talent acquisition. AI developments, vendor mergers and acquisitions, a confusing technology landscape, and shifting candidate behaviours are just some of the current trends making everything feel chaotic. But if we take a step back and look carefully, patterns start to emerge. There are clues everywhere to what the future will look like.

So how do we make sense of it all?

My guest this week is Adam Godson, General Manager of Paradox at Workday. In our conversation, Adam cuts through the noise, explains how the agentic future is taking shape, discusses what Workday’s acquisition of Paradox means for the market, reviews the predictions he made on the show this time last year about 2025, and shares where he thinks things are heading in 2026

In the interview, we discuss:

• Whether Adam’s predictions from this time last year were accurate
• Workday’s acquisition of Paradox
• The power of end-to-end employee lifecycle data
• The potential power of agentic AI
• Frontline hiring and how it has evolved
• AI development
• Will candidates have their own career agents?
• The confusing TA and HR technology marketplace
• What will the future look like? Predictions for 2026

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Despite the challenging economic landscape and wave of layoffs across many sectors, finding exceptional senior talent remains a challenge, and many employers are making it worse for themselves.

Trust has eroded with lengthy interview processes, poor candidate experience, and misaligned employer branding are pushing top talent away. With as many as one in four workers set to be over 55 by 2031, age-related biases are also causing employers to overlook exactly the experience they need

The best insights always come from looking at things from the job seeker's point of view, and that is precisely the insight my guest this week can offer us.

Loren Greiff, Founder of Portfolio Rocket, is a career strategist for C-Suite executives. In our conversation, she reveals how top candidates assess roles, what builds and destroys trust in executive hiring, and why your process might be filtering out your best prospects. The frameworks Lauren discusses will also be very relevant to TA leaders navigating their own career moves.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The current state of the market

• Cutting through the noise

• Identifying urgent and expensive problems

• Use of AI in the executive job search

• The hidden cost of age bias

• Highlighting the trust issue

• Ability, agility, and adaptability

• The future of careers and jobs

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Skills, tasks, jobs, activities. These terms get used interchangeably across HR and talent acquisition, but they mean fundamentally different things. Skills are attributes of people. Tasks are components of work. Jobs are bundles of activities. 

Having clarity here matters more now than ever. As AI begins reshaping how work gets done, organisations need a precise understanding of their workforce at the task level. Without clear taxonomies, it becomes impossible to understand how to effectively implement AI for automation and augmentation. So how should companies be preparing to take the most advantage of the inevitable shifts AI will bring?

My guest this week is Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs and author of the new book Job Architecture. In our conversation, he explains how to build effective taxonomies cheaply and scalably with LLMs and why this foundation is critical for navigating change. Ben also teaches Data Science and The Future of Work at NYU Stern and talks through an invaluable framework for assessing the likelihood of AI-driven job displacement.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Why grouping people is the core of any HR analysis.

• What we get wrong about skills, jobs, tasks, and activities

• Why skills aren't the right unit of observation to analyse jobs

• AI automates tasks and activities, not jobs and skills.

• The vital importance of taxonomies

• Using LLMs to build taxonomies cost-effectively at scale.

• What are the advantages of doing this properly?

• The three forces that help measure the potential for AI-driven job displacement

• What does the future look like

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Uncertain economic times, high volumes of layoffs, and easy access to AI tools mean many employers are dealing with an unprecedented number of applications.

Recruiters are overwhelmed, candidates are getting ghosted, and trust in the recruiting process is suffering. But are TA teams doing all they can to relieve the pressure at the top of the funnel and give job seekers the clarity they need? Employers want candidates to be more intentional about applying for the right roles for them, but often post roles with unclear requirements and don't approach hiring strategically.

So what should TA leaders be doing to fix the process and rebuild vital trust with job seekers?

My guest this week is Catherine Wylie, Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Mavericks Recruiting On Demand. Catherine has recently joined the business after a six-month job hunt. She has some incredible, valuable insights and advice to share for both employers and other TA professionals in job search mode.

In the interview, we discuss:

Catherine's recent job search experience

• Dealing with the extreme level of volume at the front of the recruiting funnel

• Lack of clarity, unclear requirements, and the importance of transparency

• Speed to delivery versus speed to quality

• Why the matching process is broken

• How employers can be intentional and hire holistically

• Which companies are actually doing this well

• Restoring trust in the hiring process

• Advice to TA job seekers

• What should the future look like

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SAP's recent acquisition of SmartRecruiters has generated considerable interest across the talent acquisition community. The deal brings AI-native recruiting capabilities into a broader HR suite, creating complete visibility into data across the entire employee lifecycle. For recruiters, this means seeing what happens after a hire is made with the potential to connect talent acquisition decisions to performance, retention, and engagement outcomes.

This is where AI agents become significant. When agents can access and act on a complete, harmonized data set spanning the whole employee journey, entirely new possibilities open up for how work gets done across the talent function. Yet despite the rapid pace of innovation, AI adoption is still lagging. Vendors are shipping capabilities faster than most organisations can implement them, held back by regulatory concerns, change management challenges, and uncertainty about where to start.

So how can Talent leaders close this gap and take advantage of what is a huge strategic opportunity?

My guest this week is Lara Albert, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP SuccessFactors. In our conversation, she discusses the SmartRecruiters acquisition, explains how agents working across the employee lifecycle could reshape HR, and shares her advice on how employers can get started.

In the interview, we discuss:

• Why SAP acquired SmartRecruiters and what happens next

• Connecting recruiting data to employee outcomes

• Layering Agentic AI on top of people intelligence

• What's holding back AI adoption

• Regulation, change management, and mindset

• TA and HR have a once-in-a-career opportunity to lead transformation

• Business cases, buy-in, and getting started

• What will the future look like?

This is a special episode, recorded live on stage at TA Tech Europe in London earlier in November. It's a wide-ranging discussion about the state of our industry and where it's heading with one of recruiting's true pioneers, Jeff Taylor, the founder of Monster.com and the soon to be launched Boomband, . We debate AI's true impact on hiring, discuss why traditional tools and approaches are failing, and explore what recruiting could become.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The story behind Monster

• How Monster almost bought LinkedIn

• Why has Jeff returned after two decades out of the industry

• What has changed in recruiting in the last 20 years, and what hasn't

• Why resumes and job postings are failing

• AI's real impact on jobs

• What is Boomband?

• Rebuilding trust in recruiting

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The AI agent marketplace has become a confusing landscape full of chatbots and co-pilots that aren't agents, claiming revolutionary capabilities. But genuine AI agents represent something fundamentally different. They're digital workers that can handle complex, multi-step processes independently, making decisions and adjustments along the way.

The technology is already here and working, and the employers succeeding with it are focusing on change management, not just on technology deployment. So what are the early results looking like, and how will agentic AI change recruiting in the months and years to come?

My guest this week is Tom Zrubecky, founder and CEO of Talent Pilot. In our conversation, he shares case studies demonstrating how AI agents are reshaping recruitment workflows and what autonomous hiring looks like.

In the interview, we discuss:

• What an AI Agent is and what it isn't
• Building responsible AI with human oversight
• These are change management projects not technology ones
• The power of instant job interviews
• Where are employers getting the most value from agents
• The importance of pilot project
• Building a super recruiter
• What does the agentic future look like?

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Many organizations treat accessibility as just a compliance checkbox, checking the box to meet legal requirements and then moving on. But this mindset misses massive opportunities. When companies design truly inclusive hiring processes, they don't just help candidates with disabilities, but also improve the experience for everyone.

Forward-thinking employers are discovering that accessibility drives innovation, expands talent pools, and creates competitive advantages, so how do you move from minimum compliance to genuine inclusivity, and how do you do that at scale?

My guests this week are Business Psychologists Brittany Davies and Laura Kate Ruttle from Talogy. In our conversation, they share valuable advice on building an accessible assessment strategy, and we discuss how AI is shaping a whole new future for inclusive hiring.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The current challenges around accessibility and fairness in hiring

• The significant benefits to employers of going beyond the basic legal requirements

• Improving hiring for everyone

• Best practices for encouraging disclosure

• How AI can help

• How do you implement inclusive hiring at scale?

• Advice to TA leaders on what to prioritise

• The potential of personalized adaptive assessment

• What might the future look like?
  

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