The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

Candidates prefer AI Interviews? Candidate Experience for Different Demographic Cohorts AI interviewing isn't the future - it's the now. From one-way video screens to conversational chatbots, candidates are increasingly meeting algorithms before they meet humans. But here's what nobody's asking: does a Gen Z grad feel the same way about a bot interviewer as a mid-career professional? Does a neurodivergent candidate experience relief or anxiety? Are underrepresented groups finding equity -or erasure - in automated screening? We're diving deep into the demographic divide nobody's measuring. In this session, we'll unpack: • Do younger candidates actually prefer AI screens, or is that a myth? • How do gender differences show up in AI interview comfort levels? • What do candidates with disabilities really think about voice-analysis tools? • Are multilingual candidates disadvantaged by English-first AI systems? • Does AI reduce bias for candidates of color—or encode new barriers? • How do socioeconomic backgrounds shape "digital interview readiness"? • What makes veterans trust (or distrust) algorithmic evaluation? • Are remote rural candidates leveling up or getting left behind? • How do parenting status and career gaps interact with AI screening? • Which demographics are quietly dropping out of your AI funnel? Recruiters, HR leaders, TA innovators - this one's for you We're with Kevin Grossman, Oana Iordachescu, Yaz Dalal and friends, on Friday 10th April, 2pm GMT / 7 am PT / 3pm CET. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register on 'Save my Spot' for reserve your spot. Episode 372 is sponsored by Joveo As the global leader in AI-powered, high-performance recruitment marketing, Joveo is transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest employers, staffing firms, RPOs, and media agencies. The Joveo platform enables businesses to attract, source, engage, and hire the best candidates on time and within budget. Powering millions of jobs every day, Joveo’s AI-led recruitment marketing platform uses advanced data science and machine learning to dynamically manage and optimize talent sourcing and applications across all online channels, while providing real-time insights at every step of the job seeker journey, from click to hire. For more information about Joveo’s award-winning platform and solutions, visit www.joveo.com.

Ep371 is sponsored by our friends Pin. Join Pin and our recruiting industry experts for a live conversation on “How AI is Reshaping Sourcing in 2026.” We’ll explore how leading teams are moving beyond experimentation and turning AI into a true competitive advantage. In this session, we’ll cover: - How AI is changing the role of the sourcer - What automation should (and shouldn’t) replace - Emerging tools and workflows defining 2026 H- ow to balance efficiency with authenticity in candidate engagement Whether you’re a people leader, recruiter, or TA innovator, you’ll walk away with practical insights you can apply immediately. Save your spot and join us live to learn what the future of sourcing really looks like — and how to stay ahead of it. We're on Weds 1st April, 10am PT / 1pm ET. Follow the channel here (recommended) and click on green button 'Save my Spot' to register for this show.

AI Sourcing Agents in the Enterprise: Live demo! Following on from Archer's phenomenal success, it's time to catch up with CEO Mark Chaffey on what happens when a feature becomes a product, and that product turns into the main thing. Archer is the AI sourcing agent which has not only enabled hackajob to expand beyond the talent market place model but also expand scope beyond tech domain also. The stats are staggering: In its first 90 days: 🏹 35,000 double opt-in introductions between jobseekers and employers 🏹 15% of these connections are for non-tech roles in areas such as Sales & Finance 🏹 20:1 first-stage-to-hire conversion — 15x better than the industry average 🏹 1,500+ fraudulent candidates blocked before reaching hiring processes 🏹 60% are first-time applicants you’d never have found through active channels Let's hear from Mark on what the future of recruitment technology looks like when enterprise customers have an always on 24/7, multi-domain, multi-lingual recruiter working for them, within existing workflow. In fact, why don't we live demo and see Archer in action as enterprise customers would see it? We're on Tuesday 31st March, 4pm BST / 11am ET / 8am PT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep370 is sponsored by our friends hackajob AI agents for job seekers and employers—making hiring easier, faster and fairer.

OPTIMISING YOUR RECRUITER WORKFLOW WITH AI - EXAMPLES! AI is transforming recruitment at lightning speed. Recruiters who embrace it are filling roles faster, delivering better candidate experiences, and outperforming competitors stuck in manual processes. Yet many professionals hesitate - not because they doubt AI's potential, but because they lack concrete, real-world examples of how to implement it effectively. This livestream bridges that gap with actionable demonstrations you can apply immediately! What You'll Learn: - Getting started with Workflow automations - Finding a single manual process is currently repeats - Asking AI to help you identify those instances! - Real live demo from experts! Mastering techniques isn't going to happen in one episode of Brainfood Live, but getting people started isn't beyond us. This isn't just about working smarter - it's about future-proofing your career. Recruiters who integrate AI into their workflow consistently exceed KPIs, become indispensable strategic partners to hiring managers, and command higher salaries in an increasingly competitive market. Meanwhile, those who delay risk being outpaced by tech-savvy colleagues and automated alternatives. Join us to transform your daily workflow, elevate your professional value, and secure your position at the forefront of modern recruitment. We're on Friday 27th March, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 369 is sponsored by Juicebox PeopleGPT is the leading outbound recruiting platform built on Generative AI. Find talent across 30+ data sources, get interactive Talent Insights, and reach out with personalized AI email campaigns. Key features include: PeopleGPT (Search): the world’s first people search engine that uses natural language. Describe who you’re searching for and find the perfect match from over 30 data sources. Talent Insights: Visualize your talent pool with 15+ interactive charts. Refine your search and dive deep into stats based on location, employers, job titles, skills, and more. Email Outreach: Maximize candidate engagement with AI-powered email campaigns. Personalize messaging at scale using AI commands, and boost response rates by 40%. Get 15% off your Juicebox subscription with code: BRAINFOOD15 Trusted by 5000+ companies including Scale AI, Mindbloom, and Patreon. Free trial available. Try Juicebox today

LINKEDIN CONTENT INTELLIGENCE REPORT Q1 2026 The LinkedIn newsfeed has completely changed how professional content gets seen and shared — and old posting playbooks are now obsolete. In “LinkedIn Content Intelligence Report Q1 2026”, we’ll break down how LinkedIn’s evolving algorithm prioritises relevance, meaning, and audience interest — not just likes and vanity metrics — and what this means for creators and marketers focused on real visibility and real engagement. Real data, real trends, real tactical takeaways. What we’ll cover: The New Distribution Logic: LinkedIn now prioritises deep, meaningful engagement and professional relevance over broad viral reach, reshaping who sees your posts and why. Interest-Based Feed Signals: The feed is increasingly driven by topical relevance and user interest, not just network connections or follower count. Engagement Quality Over Quantity: Simple likes matter far less than sustained conversations and comments that signal real value. Post Formats That Win Now: Text, thought leadership, and content sparking discussion are outperforming generic posts — and tactics like saves and comments now carry disproportionate weight. Semantic Content Signals: LinkedIn’s new 360Brew AI reads meaning and topical authority, rewarding posts that speak clearly to a defined audience. Saturation and Signal Noise: More posts and noise mean generic content gets buried — creators must craft specificity and relevance to break through. Profile + Content Alignment: Your profile and the themes you post about now act together as signals to the algorithm — misalignment can suppress reach. Every creator has wondered, why isn’t this getting seen anymore? The answer isn’t a mystery - the algorithm has shifted fundamentally. This livestream will turn complex technical changes into actionable strategy, outlining where visibility is going, what LinkedIn actually rewards, and how you can reclaim reach and influence on the platform. Whether you’re a content creator, marketer, or brand strategist, this session will give you the context and tactics to adapt and win in 2026. We're on Friday 20th March, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 368 is sponsored by Maki At Maki, we help organisations like BNP Paribas, PwC, Booking.com, Nestlé, and H&M transform hiring with AI agents for screening, interviewing, and assessment. By combining automation, behavioural science, and data, Maki enables talent teams to hire faster, fairer, and smarter. Our global partnership with H&M saved 250 000 recruiter hours, cut time-to-hire by 4×, and reduced turnover by 22 %, delivering $85 M ROI. Beyond automation, we’re building a continuous reinforcement system where every recruiter judgment and employee outcome makes our AI agents smarter; creating a unique data moat in HR. Learn more: makipeople.com

HUMAN JUDGEMENT VS AI RECOMMENDATION: WHAT 'HUMAN-IN-THE-LOOP' ACTUALLY MEAN? AI is now embedded across sourcing, screening, matching, and interview scheduling. Yet one phrase keeps appearing in every vendor pitch and compliance policy: human-in-the-loop. But what does that actually mean in practice? In this livestream, “Human Judgement vs AI Recommendation – What does it really mean to say ‘human-in-the-loop’?”, we’ll examine how decisions are truly being made inside AI-enabled hiring workflows. When the algorithm scores, ranks, and recommends, where does human authority begin — and end? This debate goes beyond tooling. It cuts to accountability, fairness, performance, and power. What we’ll explore: The Meaning of “Human-in-the-Loop”: Is it oversight, veto power, rubber-stamping, or genuine decision control? Right of Veto: Should recruiters and hiring managers override AI recommendations — and under what conditions? The Return of Gut Feel: If humans retain final say, do bias and intuition simply re-enter through the back door? Would it be more honest to say it never left? The Comeback of Cultural Fit? Aggregate Fairness vs Individual Judgment: If machines outperform humans statistically, should we defer to them — even when a single case feels wrong? Liability and Accountability: When a hiring decision is challenged, who owns it — the recruiter, the hiring manager, or the model? Designing Decision Architecture: How to structure workflows where AI augments cognition without replacing responsibility. The future of hiring will not be AI-only or human-only. It will be a system of delegated judgment. Recruiters, TA leaders, HR executives, and HR tech builders need clarity on how authority, bias, and performance interact inside that system. If you care about fairness, effectiveness, and control in AI-enabled hiring, this session will challenge assumptions and force sharper thinking about what “human-in-the-loop” truly requires. We're on Friday 13th March, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 367 is sponsored by Metaview Are you ready to supercharge your recruiting teams performance? Metaview’s AI Sourcing will feel like a cheat code. It’s the first autonomous AI coworker that goes off and does the search for you and brings back spot-on candidates based on your exact brief. Here’s what recruiters have been saying about it: “I don’t know how you did it, but Metaview’s AI Sourcing is absurdly good.” Michael, Partner @ Super Recruiter “Metaview’s AI Sourcing really helps with niche roles. It surfaces profiles I wouldn’t have found.” Dea, TA Manager @ Miro “So impressed by how Metaview’s AI Sourcing turns a natural language prompt into great profiles.” Leslie, Recruiter @ Cockroach Labs Metaview gives high-performance teams a genuine unfair advantage in hiring. Join teams like ElevenLabs, Deel, and Pleo — along with 4,000+ others — and try it for free today.

THE STATE OF THE TALENT ACQUISITION & HR JOB MARKET Q 2026 The talent acquisition and HR profession is facing its own reckoning. After years of contraction, cautious hiring, automation investment, and cost discipline, the very functions built to fuel growth are now navigating scarcity themselves. In this livestream, The State of the Talent Acquisition & HR Job Market Q1 2026, we’ll unpack exclusive data from AspenTech Labs to examine what is really happening inside the TA and HR labor market. How deep are the cuts? Which roles are stabilising? Where is AI augmenting versus replacing? And what does this mean for practitioners planning their next move? What we’ll cover: Three Years of Contraction The AI Effect Shrinking Teams, Expanding Scope: Which Roles Are Resilient: The Geography Shift Compensation Trends What Employers Want Now TA and HR functions traditionally scale with expansion. In a prolonged slowdown, they are forced to justify value in sharper, more measurable terms. This session will translate AspenTech Labs’ data into practical insight: whether you’re a TA leader defending budget, an HR executive redesigning structure, or a practitioner navigating career risk. If you want clarity on where opportunity remains—and how to future-proof yourself in a leaner market—this conversation will provide the signal you need. We're on Wednesday 11th March, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 366 is sponsored by Oleo AI is now used by 62% of companies for hiring, but rapid efficiency shouldn't come at the expense of fairness. Oleeo and Aptitude Research’s new report highlights a major gap: only 20% of employers have fully established AI governance frameworks, which can lead to unintended bias. To keep things fair and compliant, 85% of recruiters demand final decision-making authority. Download 'Setting the Standard for Responsible AI: A Guide For Modern Recruiters' today to build a transparent, human-led strategy that uses AI responsibly.

THE RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING BENCHMARK REPORT 2026 The labor market story of 2026 cannot be told through a single headline. Behind the macro narrative of cooling growth lies a structural split that is reshaping how recruiting actually works. In this livestream, we’ll break down Joveo’s Recruiting Benchmarks Report 2026 and discuss 9x surge in applicant volume for some roles to the persistent drought in others, this session will translate benchmark data into practical strategy. What we’ll cover: The 9x Applicant Avalanche Why More Applicants Doesn’t Mean Easier Hiring: The Occupational Split: Demand Intensity in Healthcare and Skilled Trades: Two Markets, Two Strategies: The Experience Cliff: Capability Over Credentials Recruiters and recruitment marketers who continue to run one hiring process across two fundamentally different markets risk underperforming in both. This session will equip you with the insight to recalibrate metrics, rethink CPA obsession, and align strategy to the actual hiring environment you’re operating in. If you want to move from reactive benchmarking to intentional advantage in 2026, this is a conversation you cannot afford to miss. We're on Friday 6th March, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 365 is sponsored by Joveo As the global leader in AI-powered, high-performance recruitment marketing, Joveo is transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest employers, staffing firms, RPOs, and media agencies. The Joveo platform enables businesses to attract, source, engage, and hire the best candidates on time and within budget. Powering millions of jobs every day, Joveo’s AI-led recruitment marketing platform uses advanced data science and machine learning to dynamically manage and optimize talent sourcing and applications across all online channels, while providing real-time insights at every step of the job seeker journey, from click to hire. For more information about Joveo’s award-winning platform and solutions, visit www.joveo.com.

HOW TO HIRE IN SOUTH AFRICA IN 2026 Friends, I am back in South Africa, in one of my favourite cities for one of my favourite conferences, Recruiters Unite! As has become tradition, we're going to do a Brainfood Live on the day the event, to speak to local South African recruiters and discuss the main challenges in hiring in South Africa in 2026. We hope to share knowledge between local recruiters and increase awareness for outsiders on how things roll here in the Rainbow Nation! A few things we'll cover: Macro hiring outlook for 2026 Understanding South Africa’s labour law framework Employment Equity & B-BBEE in practice Permanent vs contract vs EOR models Compensation benchmarks & pay transparency trends Scarce skills and critical talent pipelines Remote and hybrid hiring dynamics Managing unionised environments Immigration and cross-border hiring Retention in a high-mobility market All this and more, as we dive into the nuance of hiring in one of the most dynamic and complicated countries in Africa. We're on Tuesday 3rd March, 12pm GMT / 2pm SAST Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep364 is sponsored by Recruiters Unite It's the event of the year for recruiters in South Africa. Get together with 400 local recruiters and a handful of brilliant experts from overseas and share knowledge as to how recruitment is working today and how it will work tomorrow. Tickets here

THE AI IN HIRING REPORT 2026 AI now shapes how candidates are discovered, evaluated, progressed, and hired. What began as productivity tooling has become a decision-making layer across the hiring funnel, influencing speed, fairness, quality, and outcomes at scale. As adoption accelerates, the focus has shifted from novelty to impact: what AI is actually doing inside hiring workflows, where it adds value, and where risk is emerging. This session brings those realities into the open, grounded in fresh data from Greenhouse’s 2026 report on the state of AI in recruitment. The report investigates AI use across the full hiring funnel, including: • Attraction & employer branding – how AI shapes job ads, messaging, and candidate reach • Sourcing – automation, matching, and talent rediscovery inside ATS platforms • Screening & shortlisting – CV parsing, skills inference, and early-stage decision support • Assessment & interviewing – structured interviews, note-taking, and signal consistency • Candidate experience – communication, feedback loops, and process transparency • Hiring decisions - how are candidates evaluated and how offers are personalised and shaped. All this and more on Brainfood Live On Air. We're on Friday 27th February, 2pm GMT. Follow the channel here (recommended) and click on the green button (save my spot) to reserve a place! Ep363 is sponsored by Greenhouse Want to dive deeper into the results of the Greenhouse AI In Hiring Survey? Discover how hundreds of candidates, recruiters, and hiring managers feel about working with AI in 2026. Read the key findings and actionable insights by downloading here:

FROM TALENT ACQUISITION TO TALENT OPERATIONS is a forward-looking show for TA leaders who can feel the function changing - but need clarity on what it is becoming. We’ll examine the rise of talent operations as a distinct capability, driven by automation across scheduling, screening, compliance, and workflow management. As logistics are increasingly handled by platforms and AI, the skills that matter inside TA are changing fast. Data literacy is no longer optional. Leaders must understand demand forecasting, funnel diagnostics, quality signals, and cost-to-hire at a systems level—not just at req level. At the same time, employer branding is making a return to centre stage. In a market shaped by transparency, social proof, and candidate choice, brand and messaging once again shape hiring outcomes. Talent intelligence becomes the strategic core: mapping skills, supply, pay, location, and future demand to inform decisions across the business. Meanwhile, execution is fragmenting. More organisations are moving actual recruiting delivery to on-demand models—combining RPO, freelance recruiters, and specialist vendors—while internal teams focus on orchestration, insight, and governance. This livestream will unpack what world-class talent operations looks like in practice, how leading teams are reorganising today, and what capabilities TA leaders must build next. Viewers will learn how to transition from recruiter-led execution to an operational, intelligence-driven TA model built for scale, flexibility, and impact. We're with Jamie Leonard, Founder of Recruitment Events Co, Jennifer Candee, Global Head of TA Transformation (IMI), Trine Rulffs, on Friday 20th February, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep362 is sponsored by Greenhouse 91% of recruiters and hiring managers have spotted or suspected candidate deception in the hiring process. Enter Greenhouse Real Talent™. Cut through spam and misrepresentation in your pipeline, verify a candidate's identity, and quickly identify which applicants are most aligned with your role. Learn more and book a demo today:

REDUCTION IN FORCE: HOW TO LEAD DURING CRISIS! This show focuses on the practical reality of TA downsizing, told by leaders who have already been through it. Not theory. Not platitudes. Real decisions, real mistakes, and hard-won lessons. We explore how leaders decide when reductions are unavoidable, who to let go, and how to do it in a way that is fair, defensible, and humane—while still protecting the business. The discussion covers: • Early warning signs that TA capacity is misaligned with demand • Objective vs subjective decision-making in role reductions • Legal and process risks specific to TA teams • Communicating layoffs with clarity, dignity, and credibility • Supporting managers who deliver the message • Handling survivor guilt and rebuilding trust post-reduction • What leaders wish they had done differently Grounded in recent workforce data and employment best practice, this episode gives TA leaders a clear-eyed framework for making difficult calls without losing their values—or their teams. Learn how to approach TA layoffs with structure, empathy, and confidence, while minimising risk and preserving long-term organisational trust. We're with Andrea Marston, Head of Talent Acquisition (Nutanix), Yakub Zolinsky, VP of People (XYZReality), Julia Levy, Global Head of TA (ex-Commscope, Fiserv) & friends on Friday 13th February, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep361 is sponsored by Maki At Maki, we help organisations like BNP Paribas, PwC, Booking.com, Nestlé, and H&M transform hiring with AI agents for screening, interviewing, and assessment. By combining automation, behavioural science, and data, Maki enables talent teams to hire faster, fairer, and smarter. Our global partnership with H&M saved 250 000 recruiter hours, cut time-to-hire by 4×, and reduced turnover by 22 %, delivering $85 M ROI. Beyond automation, we’re building a continuous reinforcement system where every recruiter judgment and employee outcome makes our AI agents smarter; creating a unique data moat in HR. Learn more: makipeople.com

THE STATE OF TALENT INTELLIGENCE 2026 As we barrel through the year 2026, labour markets are being redefined by emerging technologies, shifting skills demand, and data-driven workforce strategies. Organisations worldwide are adopting sophisticated talent intelligence tools to forecast skills gaps, optimise hiring, and build resilient workforces — but staying ahead requires deeper insight and expert foresight. Drawing on the latest research and real-world experience from leading platforms like TalentNeuron, Lightcast, Horsefly, Gartner and Korn Ferry, The State of Talent Intelligence 2026 will provide practical, actionable perspective on where the industry is headed and how you can lead in your organisation. Our expert panel will dive into the trends transforming talent strategies, from the rapid evolution of AI skill demand and skills-based hiring to the integration of internal and external workforce analytics for strategic planning. The evolving role of talent intelligence platforms and how continuous labour market data is powering strategic workforce planning and skills forecasting. AI skills demand and compensation shifts, including insights showing AI-related roles commanding premium salaries in a competitive market. Transitioning from job titles to skills-based hiring as organisations seek quality and fit over traditional credential-based approaches. Balancing automation with human strategic insight as AI reshapes recruiting workflows and recruiter roles. Data analytics driving talent decisions, from predictive labour market insight to internal mobility optimisation. Employer branding and candidate experience in the age of intelligent hiring, aligning organisational value with talent expectations. Future workforce challenges and opportunities, including leadership pipelines, hybrid work models, and evolving HR capabilities for 2026. We're on Friday 6th February, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep360 is sponsored by Joveo As the global leader in AI-powered, high-performance recruitment marketing, Joveo is transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest employers, staffing firms, RPOs, and media agencies. The Joveo platform enables businesses to attract, source, engage, and hire the best candidates on time and within budget. Powering millions of jobs every day, Joveo’s AI-led recruitment marketing platform uses advanced data science and machine learning to dynamically manage and optimize talent sourcing and applications across all online channels, while providing real-time insights at every step of the job seeker journey, from click to hire. For more information about Joveo’s award-winning platform and solutions, visit www.joveo.com.

WHAT RESPONSIBLE AI MEANS FOR RECRUITERS? What is Responsible AI for Talent Acquisition Teams? is a practical, straight-talking podcast for recruiters who are already using AI—and now need to make sure they’re using it properly. AI is no longer a future experiment in hiring. It’s embedded in sourcing, screening, assessment, and workforce planning. The real question facing TA leaders today is not whether to use AI, but how to use it in a way that stands up to governance scrutiny, fairness expectations, and growing legal risk. Regulators, candidates, and internal stakeholders are all paying closer attention—and the margin for error is shrinking. This podcast explores the reality behind “responsible AI” in talent acquisition, cutting through vague principles and focusing on what recruiters actually need to know. We’ll examine why so many organisations still lack formal AI governance, why confidence in bias reduction remains low, and what that means for teams deploying AI at scale. Drawing on 2024–2025 data and real-world TA use cases, the discussion will unpack the tension between automation, efficiency, and human accountability. Key areas covered include: • What responsible AI really means in a TA context • Governance frameworks recruiters should understand—even if legal owns them • Bias, fairness, and explainability in screening and assessment tools • Legal and regulatory risk, including emerging obligations under the EU AI Act and employment law • The role of recruiters as AI operators, not just end users • How to balance speed, cost savings, and candidate trust • What “human-in-the-loop” looks like in practice Listeners will learn how to evaluate their current AI stack, ask better questions of vendors, reduce risk exposure, and build hiring processes that are efficient, defensible, and fair. We're with Martyn Redstone, Head of Responsible AI & Industry Engagement (Warden.AI) & friends on Wednesday 4th February, 12pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep359 is sponsored by Oleeo AI is now used by 62% of companies for hiring, but rapid efficiency shouldn't come at the expense of fairness. Oleeo and Aptitude Research’s new report highlights a major gap: only 20% of employers have fully established AI governance frameworks, which can lead to unintended bias. To keep things fair and compliant, 85% of recruiters demand final decision-making authority. Download 'Setting the Standard for Responsible AI: A Guide For Modern Recruiters' today to build a transparent, human-led strategy that uses AI responsibly.

6 x AI USAGE FRAMEWORKS FOR TALENT ACQUISITION Closing the gap between proclaimed capability of AI vs the practical impact of AI is set to become one of the main stories of 2026, as function leaders in every department scramble to deliver against the expectations of an increasingly impatient C-level. Are there any frameworks or maturity models which can help? Brainfooder Soeren Winter has identified 6 AI Usage Frameworks most commonly cited in change management discourse and we're going to apply them Talent Acquisition and see what we can learn. Vital show for anyone interested in accelerating AI adoption, maximising the opportunity window for gains from AI, whilst ensuring the humans in the team, remain in and some cases, above, the loop. We're on Friday 30th January 2pm GMT / 3pm CET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 358 is sponsored by Juicebox PeopleGPT is the leading outbound recruiting platform built on Generative AI. Find talent across 30+ data sources, get interactive Talent Insights, and reach out with personalized AI email campaigns. Key features include: PeopleGPT (Search): the world’s first people search engine that uses natural language. Describe who you’re searching for and find the perfect match from over 30 data sources. Talent Insights: Visualize your talent pool with 15+ interactive charts. Refine your search and dive deep into stats based on location, employers, job titles, skills, and more. Email Outreach: Maximize candidate engagement with AI-powered email campaigns. Personalize messaging at scale using AI commands, and boost response rates by 40%. Get 15% off your Juicebox subscription with code: BRAINFOOD15 Trusted by 400+ companies including Scale AI, Mindbloom, and Patreon. Free trial available. Try Juicebox today

WHY YOU NEED RECOPS TO ACCELERATE AI IN TA Recruiters are the busiest people in white collar work because there is often no way to accurately forecast resource demands - you never know how long a requirement is going to take to fill or how many hours of time it is going to take to get it done. People are variable and in recruitment, there are people who will impact the state of any project, who are fully outside a recruiters sphere of influence. This is why AI adoption in Talent Acquisition struggles to move beyond isolated pilots. The operators - the recruiters with headcount targets - are too busy to switch to new ways of working, even those that promise significant efficiency gains. That is apart from one type of TA structure - where Talent Operations has a specialised function in making every other member of the team more efficient. We're going bold with this one folks - we believe that RecOps is the force multiplier for AI adoption and you need this specialist function in order to migrate to the new way of working. Evidence from RecOps pro's in panel. We're on Friday 23rd January 2pm GMT / 3pm CET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 357 is sponsored by Ashby Drive faster, more confident hiring decisions with native AI-Notetaker Ashby’s AI Notetaker brings structured meeting data together with emails, notes, feedback, and more. It shortens time to feedback and provides rich candidate context, helping your team align quickly and make faster, more confident hiring decisions. Spend less time typing and more time hiring with interview notes that practically write themselves.

TOO COMPLEX FOR AI? HOW POLICE SCOTLAND SOLVED THE UNSOLVABLE HIRING PUZZLE Most recruiters think their organisation is too "unique" or "complex" to trust AI. Then there is Police Scotland. Operating across 13 regions, managing 22,000+ staff, and balancing the hyper-sensitive vetting requirements, their hiring process is as high-stakes as it gets. Yet, they didn't just implement AI—they used it to automate 90% of candidate enquiries and launch a 24/7 support system in just weeks. Join us for Episode 356 as we deconstruct the PoliceScotland Model with Lorna Allison (ex-Police Inspector & HR Systems Manager). We’re going deep on how to overcome the three biggest barriers to AI adoption: The Trust Gap: How to use AI in a highly regulated environment where public accountability is everything. The Admin Wall: How they removed the burden of repetitive tasks to let recruiters focus on high-value human assessment. The Inclusion Mandate: Why a "judgment-free" AI bot actually improved their pipeline diversity and candidate experience. The Reality: If you can solve for the complexity of the Police, you can solve for anything. Wed 21st January 12pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 356 is sponsored by Oleeo AI is now used by 62% of companies for hiring, but rapid efficiency shouldn't come at the expense of fairness. Oleeo and Aptitude Research’s new report highlights a major gap: only 20% of employers have fully established AI governance frameworks, which can lead to unintended bias. To keep things fair and compliant, 85% of recruiters demand final decision-making authority. Download 'Setting the Standard for Responsible AI: A Guide For Modern Recruiters' today to build a transparent, human-led strategy that uses AI responsibly.

TALENT STRATEGY: WHAT, WHY, HOW AND WHEN Does your company have a talent strategy? It's probably the right thing to say that you do, but how much do we know about what a Talent Strategy is really? I asked this question within the Brainfood community and received some outstanding observations, so much so that we have to elevate this to a full discussion on Brainfood Live. “Talent strategy is how the business ensures it has the capability to execute its strategy and win” - says Lisa Scales, Director of Talent at the Royal Mail. What does this compose of? Succession planning. re-deployment investigations, competence mapping and calculating the gap between Core & Strategic competencies, developing a plan for how to close the gap, overseeing the global Talent Acquisition function says Ana Moller, Where does it live? On a Github Repo says Mark Deubels (!). But the point is that it should be living document subject contribution by others in the business, presided over by TA / HR Lets talk Talent Strategy - not only why you need one, but what it actually is, how it is built, what makes it an effective orientating vision and how it informs the recruiting tactics which recruits will ultimately adopt. We're on Friday 16th January, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Episode 355 is sponsored by Maki At Maki, we help organisations like BNP Paribas, PwC, Booking.com, Nestlé, and H&M transform hiring with AI agents for screening, interviewing, and assessment. By combining automation, behavioural science, and data, Maki enables talent teams to hire faster, fairer, and smarter. Our global partnership with H&M saved 250 000 recruiter hours, cut time-to-hire by 4×, and reduced turnover by 22 %, delivering $85 M ROI. Beyond automation, we’re building a continuous reinforcement system where every recruiter judgment and employee outcome makes our AI agents smarter; creating a unique data moat in HR. Learn more: makipeople.com

VIBE SOURCING 101: LEARN TO SOURCE FROM THE WEB & YOUR ATS WITH METAVIEW AI AGENT We are going to look back at 2025 as the year it all changed for sourcing. AI Agents entered the market and immediately began to demonstrate talent acquisition teams could become massively more efficient by leverage the increasable ability of AI Agents to ingest huge amounts of candidate data and instantly return viable results from natural language prompts. But we can already see that some recruiters are better than others when it comes to collaborating with AI Agents to source candidates. What are those recruiters doing, why do they get better results, what are the behaviours required to get the best out of your AI Agent? We're going to deep dive how to source with AI Agents, revealing the techniques, the skills and the mentality which will reveal the best recruiters of tomorrow. It's a mid week special - so we're on Wednesday 14th January, 4pm GMT / 11am ET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep354 is sponsored by Metaview Are you ready to supercharge your recruiting teams performance? Metaview’s AI Sourcing will feel like a cheat code. It’s the first autonomous AI coworker that goes off and does the search for you and brings back spot-on candidates based on your exact brief. Here’s what recruiters have been saying about it: “I don’t know how you did it, but Metaview’s AI Sourcing is absurdly good.” Michael, Partner @ Super Recruiter “Metaview’s AI Sourcing really helps with niche roles. It surfaces profiles I wouldn’t have found.” Dea, TA Manager @ Miro “So impressed by how Metaview’s AI Sourcing turns a natural language prompt into great profiles.” Leslie, Recruiter @ Cockroach Labs Metaview gives high-performance teams a genuine unfair advantage in hiring. Join teams like ElevenLabs, Deel, and Pleo — along with 4,000+ others — and try it for free today.

HIRING BENCHMARKS FOR THE 16 MOST COMMON OCCUPATIONS IN THE USA We all want to be 'data driven' but most of the time the only data we have access to are those which we have recorded of ourselves and our own activity. This is vitally important for tracking your progress over time, but not the complete picture when it comes to how you are doing against the market and against the competition. In partnership with our friends Joveo, we are pulling together behaviour data from job candidates on the 16 most common job roles in the USA - book keeper, truck driver, construction worker, nurse practitioner, teacher - and finding out what the state of the Labour market is: what is the size of the labour pool, what is the average number of job applications per role in these sectors, what are the most important sources of hire, what is the CPA for the employer of each of these roles, what is the geographic distribution of the talent and so on. Essential viewing for any US recruiter for some of the most employed positions in the country. We're on Friday 9th January, 2pm GMT / 9am ET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) Ep353 is sponsored by Joveo As the global leader in AI-powered, high-performance recruitment marketing, Joveo is transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest employers, staffing firms, RPOs, and media agencies. The Joveo platform enables businesses to attract, source, engage, and hire the best candidates on time and within budget. Powering millions of jobs every day, Joveo’s AI-led recruitment marketing platform uses advanced data science and machine learning to dynamically manage and optimize talent sourcing and applications across all online channels, while providing real-time insights at every step of the job seeker journey, from click to hire. For more information about Joveo’s award-winning platform and solutions, visit www.joveo.com.

Informing Happy Hiring: Signals from Willo's Hiring Intelligence Report 2026 This year, Willo didn’t just watch hiring change, they measured it. In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, we’ll explore what the data from Willo’s Hiring Intelligence Report 2026 reveals about how hiring teams are actually operating in the AI-era, how this compares to previous years, and what that means as we look ahead. What will we be talking about? What’s really happening to CV-centric hiring Where AI is being introduced into hiring workflows, and where it isn’t How automation is influencing candidate screening and assessment Why final hiring decisions remain human-led How fairness and consistency are being approached in practice The role of asynchronous interviews in modern hiring What hiring leaders are prioritizing as they look toward 2026 All this and more on Brainfood Live on Air. We’ll be joined by Euan Cameron, CEO at Willo and Tanya van Soest, Head of Content at Willo on January 7, 2026 Register by clicking the green button (“save my spot”) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be notified when we go live.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - Economy & AI Final part of our 4 part series on the Review of the Year. The two dominant mega themes of this year has undoubtedly been the global economy and the rise of AI. The two are becoming intertwined, especially with the AI investment boom drawing down investments from other parts of the US economy, whilst Trump Trade War 2.0 hobbles global economic growth, likely inadvertently accelerating the adoption of AI... - Global economic growth 2025 - Jobs Growth / Loss - Sectoral growth / decline - Staffing agency figures - ONS data on unemployed / underemployed - Employment Rights Bill - Immigration - UK vs Europe - UK vs US - UK vs Global Mean - Contact / FTE - Wage growth / decline - Entry level hiring - AI Economy - Adoption patterns and impact on employment - Sectors most exposed, greatest risk / greatest opportunity? - Forecast for 2026 - UK, Europe, US, Globe - Recommendations for TA, Staffing Agencies, Hiring Managers All this and more on brainfood live on air. We're with Neil Carberry, MD (Recruitment & Employment Confederation), Belinda Johnson, Founder, (Worklab) & Rt Hon Chloe Smith on Friday 19th December, 2pm GMT. Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep349 is sponsored by Recruiting Brainfood Thank you all for your support in 2025. We cannot do these conversations without the support of our amazing sponsors, our fantastic panelists but most of all, you the viewing public. Thank you and see you next year!

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - Sourcing, Employer Branding & RecOps Third of our 4 part series reviewing the major events and trends of the year in Sourcing, Employer Branding & RecOps What has happened this year that we got on talk about? - End of an Era? Irina Shamaeva - SOSU review - Is Sourcing dead or shifting toward automation of candidate discovery? - Demand for sourcing training being replaced by demand for AI training - Employer branding - how is AI being used to support this? - How is AI being ab-used to inadvertently damage this? - How do we understand 'AI first' through the lens of EB? - What happened to 'Mission focused' btw, was it anti-DEIB in disguise? - What is the percentage of AI ten content on career pages, going up or down? - Have any organisations consciously thought about their AI principles through an EB lens? - RecOps ...what have been the priorities for recruitment operations? - Have we seen AI operations leads in RecOps? - How has AI changed the RecOps role...replaced or expanded? - Forecasts for 2026 - sourcing, eb and recops All this and more on brainfood live on air. We're with Alla Pavlova, Recruiter (Riot Games), Chloe Morrison, RecOps (datadog), Steve Ward, Employer Brand Strategist (Blackbridge Communications) & Jeremy Lyons, Founder (RecOps Collective) on Friday 12th December, 2pm GMT Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep348 is sponsored by our friends Ashby Drive faster, more confident hiring decisions with native AI-Notetaking Ashby’s AI Notetaker brings structured meeting data together with emails, notes, feedback, and more. It shortens time to feedback and provides rich candidate context, helping your team align quickly and make faster, more confident hiring decisions. Spend less time typing and more time hiring with interview notes that practically write themselves.

FRAUD PROOF AI? - ENDORSED LIVE DEMO We will look back at 2025 as the year when candidate fraud escalated into amongst the top priorities of employers looking who were still looking to hire but also now needing to securitise their companies from risk. Huge credit goes to technology vendors for responding to the demand - and we're seeing a lot of interesting techniques deployed to identify potential fraud risk. I'm delighted to welcome back one of those vendors at Live Demo to show us how his platform - Endorsed - is going to help recruiters find the right talent whilst mitigating risk of putting bad actors into the hiring process. Its the man himself, David Head, CEO of Endorsed, at Live Demo! and we're on Weds 10th December, 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the event now (save my spot) to get notified when we go live. Episode 351 is sponsored by Endorsed Endorsed.com is the AI recruiting agent platform for rapidly building talent-dense teams. Rapidly growing companies like Quince, Eight Sleep, and Prokeep rely on Endorsed to surface hidden stars, combat candidate fraud, and streamline sourcing and applicant review workflows. Endorsed increases quality-of-hire, reduces time-to-fill by up to 75%, and boosts recruiter role capacity by up to 2x. Get 10% off your subscription with the code BRAINFOOD See Endorsed instantly triple your number of gold medal candidates on your real role by booking a demo.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - CX, Assessment & DEIB Second of our 4 part series reviewing the major events and trends of the year in CX, Assessment and DEIB. What has happened this year that we got on talk about?? - Mobley vs Workday, let's get an update on this, the quintessential CX challenge! - CX resentment rate...where are we tracking on this? - What do we know about AI and CX, can we see positive impact of AI on CX? - ID verification, this is both an CX and Assessment issue. In fact, it may also be a DEIB issu - How to deal with overcapacity of job applications into traditional hiring funnels? - How to do this whilst maintaining, improving CX? - Candidate agency - can enablement of great participation in shaping the experience improve both efficiency and CX? - What is the state of DEIB...rhetorical question... - How does the new inclusion work, can we still think about 'protected groups'? - Divergence between US and UK / EU - Yet migration of cultural influence from US to UK / EU - What do we think of AI Interviewing? - What do we think of other forms of AI powered Assessment? - Forecasts for 2026 on CX, Assessment and DEIB? We're with Morgan Lobb, Founder (Vercida), Maddy Roberts, Head of TA Solutions (Aon), Euan Cameron, Founder, (Willo) & friends & friends on Friday 5th December, 2pm GMT Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep 347 is sponsored by our friends Willo Hiring should be human, but too often it doesn’t feel that way.Recruiting isn’t slowing down; it’s more competitive and more global than ever. Yet too many teams are still buried in CVs, optimising for speed instead of connection. That’s why teams are switching to Willo - the #1 candidate screening platform built for a world where connection matters more than credentials. With thousands of customers worldwide, Willo helps you meet talent faster, fairer, and smarter.Our 2026 Hiring Trends Survey is open until the end of October, and we’d love your take. What’s keeping you up at night (or getting you excited) about the future of hiring? Share your voice or book a demo to see why hiring feels different with Willo.

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - TALENT TECHNOLOGY Can you believe that we're at the end of another year in Brainfood? As is tradition, we're going to do a 4 part series to conclude the year - and I will be a 4 part series where we review the major events and trends which have occurred on all the topics which matter to us. To kick off the series, let's talk about the the talent tech landscape - what is going on the tools we rely on every day? - Investment landscape in Worktech - Sector breakdown...where is the VC going? - Rise of AI sourcing tools - Big deals, the M&A's - what does this mean? - Linkedin Hiring Assistant - Open AI jobs - Monster / Career Builder Obit - Mercor... - Indeed, what is going on? - Verticalised AI Agents, what are the implications for core platforms? - ATS / HRIS combo - didn't happen? - ATS / CRM - did happen? - Job Candidate use of AI vs AI Assessment - Rise of Verification / Background Checking - What else is under-the-radar that we need to talk about? We're with Alexander Chukovski, HR Tech Consultant, George LaRocque, Founder (WorkTech), Louise Triance, Founder (UK Recruiter) & friends on Friday 28th November, 2pm GMT Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep 346 is sponsored by our friends Greenhouse Feeling buried under a backlog of disconnected tools, spammy applicants, and stalled workflows? This latest guide from Greenhouse shares how their innovative platform brings simplicity and control back to recruiting. Discover how to: Centralize sourcing, scheduling, and reporting seamlessly Gain end-to-end visibility into pipeline health Cut through noise with fraud detection and smart automation Download to see how your team can hire with confidence 👉 [Read the full article]

RECRUITMENT ADVERTISING ....WITH AI AGENTS? We may look back at 2025 has a pivotal year in online job advertising. Economic chaos, investment uncertainty, rise of AI, has made employers change how they think about headcount and are increasingly scrutinising the ROI of traditional job distribution. The flood of irrelevant applications has more or less killed the ppc model - what other iterations do we expect to see over the next 12 months? We're going to be speaking with the C-level team at VONQ to better understand state of market. - Recruitment Advertising 2025 - What are the available job advertising models? - Which ones seem to be on the rise / on the decline? - Niche vs Generalised Job Board advertising and relationship with business models - AI-enabled Job Applications, how big an impact on job advertising? - How does this force job advertising vendors to adapt? - What are the mitigation strategies? - AI Agents, verticalised vs generalised - What can they do - How does this impact candidate acquisition? - What does Recruitment Advertising look like over the next 12 months? We're with Ritu Mohanka, CEO & Bill Fischer, CTO, (VONQ) & friends on Friday 21st November, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep345 is sponsored by VONQ Transform recruitment advertising by leveraging AI-driven technology, deep ATS integrations, and expertise to deliver high-quality candidates to the shortlist while elevating employer brands. Our solution is now available via over 100 Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms, accessible to over 80% of the US and EU talent acquisition teams. We have a +5000 global media channels network and back our solutions with reliable automation, data-driven recommendations, recruitment marketing expertise, programmatic advertising, and meaningful reporting. Need to get more qualified, relevant and motivated job candidates at the top of the funnel? Get in touch with VONQ here

Diversity & Inclusion in an Era of Emerging AI and Cyberthreats The rise of candidate fraud has been a huge topic in recruitment in 2025, so much so that employers have had to take extreme steps to protect their businesses, from asking candidates to physically move on command in front of screen to come in person to attend interview on premise, to go through ID verification procedures which would have previously been reserved for high security roles. What does all this mean for diversity and inclusion? That the question we're going to ask in today's Brainfood Live - State of Candidate Fraud - What are the potential concerns for D&I - On premise, requires car - More rigid work patterns is bad for primary care givers - ID verification techniques depend on photo ID - Bank records / Criminal records / Credit records - Economically deprived are most likely to have disadvantage in ID verification processes - Gender: name change for women married / divorce - Trans: ID change, no longer recognised in some states? - Ambiguity on legislation, concern over future direction - How do we ensure that ID verification and candidate fraud mitigation steps do not over step into identity profiling and prejudice? All this and more on brainfood live on air. We're with Kyle Barry, CISO (Clear), Torin Ellis, Principal Analyst (The Torin Ellis Brand) & Daniel Chait, CEO (Greenhouse) on Friday 14th November, 2pm GMT. Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Episode 350 is sponsored by Greenhouse It’s tough out there for today’s recruiting teams. The rise of AI, slashed recruiting budgets and lean teams have made candidate funnels more chaotic than ever. Take back control of your candidate pipeline with new Greenhouse features that help put an end to application overload, messy data, and disconnected tools. Check out everything new at Greenhouse here!

GRADING MY RECRUITMENT FORECASTS FOR 2025 Every year I write a long post making 20 predictions for the year ahead. This year, for the first time ever, I'm going to grade my predictions and see how I have got on 20 x Predictions for Recruiting in 2025 1. AI Assessment mainstreams; 50% of high volume hirers (more than 5000 hires per year) will have a solution in place by EOY. 2. ‘Skill based hiring’ revives as employers describe deployment of AI assessment as commitment to SBH. %age of employers describing themselves as SBH increases 50%. 3. 2FA on job ads increases 400% as an attempt to suppress increased applicant flow. 4. Applications per job increase by 25% as AI-enablement mainstreams candidate side. 5. Big round of investment for AI voice interview vendors currently at Seed - $100M raised in this sector by EOY 2025. 6. Non-FTE vs FTE hiring increases by 10% in 2025. 7. Avg internal TA team goes 25% non-FTE. 8. Req load per recruiter increases 15%. 9. Percentage of solo TA function goes from 73% to 83%. 10. TA teams continue geographic dispersal - %age of TA teams with multinational component increases by 30%. 11. More companies decentralise talent acquisition - %age of employers where HM do outreach increases by 10%. 12. Candidate resentment stabilises - with 2% points either side of 2024 level. 13. ‘Chief Automation Officer’ becomes an industry talking point in 2025, same as Chief Diversity Officer in 2020. 14. Speaking of DEIB, clear Atlantic divergence in 2025 - US explicit retrench, Europe implicit progress. 15. US vs UK economic integration deepens - %age of new UK based TA jobs from US employers increases 100%. 16. Global Staffing agencies revenue / profit down another 10% (profit warning again in Q1 2025). 17. But medium sized agencies / RPO stage mini bounce back as employers push more requirements out from denuded TA teams. 18. RecOps, Talent Intelligence roles decline 20%, EB roles decline 30%. People & Culture roles increase 15%. 19. Somebody Ubersises the legions of fractional TA’s out there. Probably this is Indeed. 20. Over half of these predictions will be directionally incorrect, 20% will be absolutely incorrect. What should the grading system be? I thinking a sliding scale A to E. What should be the source of truth? That is where we will be bringing in experts from industry who can validate the claims. It's going to be a good one folks. Friday 14th November, 12pm GMT Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep 344 is sponsored by our friends Popp Popp’s AI recruitment platform amplifies what your team can do by effortlessly and instantly scaling your recruiting capacity. Popp's recruitment platform sits between your ATS and your talent team, providing unprecedented hiring power at unlimited scale. Our AI automates repetitive tasks throughout the hiring journey, intelligently and accurately. Meaning your team can focus on higher value tasks. Randstand, Robert Walters, Bloom & Wild, AMN Healthcare and more are using Popp to x10 their hiring capacity. Want to know more? Book a demo with one of Popp's friendly founding team

CAREER TRANSITION - LESSONS FROM EX-PRO ATHLETES Changing career is never easy, especially if you've committed everything into a vocation which you might have thought to be your whole of life focus. I know well myself, having previously attempted to go down the tech entrepreneur path but now very happily but very fortuitously landing into what seems to be a media business! Perhaps no other vocation is as tunnel focused as that of a professional athlete. You can imagine you cannot achieve elite performance without going all in. So what happens...when it doesn't happen and you have to switch? We're going to bring in ex-pro athletes to help us better understand the techniques needed for transition. - When did you know? - What were the feelings when you knew it was time to change? - Identity crisis: how did you handle the change of identity when changed? - What are the internal and external challenges of switching into 'civilian' life? - How did you choose your new path? - What resources did you have to help guide you to a new path? - How did you cope with the status change? - Did you feel people treated differently now in civilian life? - What does it feel like to work with a team / work by yourself? - Have there been any techniques from elite sports which you have found useful in civilian life? - What resources should be available for ex-pro athletes to more successfully transition? - What resources should there be for other people from any other profession to transition? - What are your top tips for successful career switch? It's going to be a good one folks. We're with Ben Stocken, Founder (West Peak) Charlie Mulraine, Personal Development (The Professional Cricketers Association), Agne Chmyznikova, Practice Lead (People & Transformation) on Friday 7th November, 2pm GMT Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live. Ep342 is sponsored by our friends Ashby Drive faster, more confident hiring decisions with native AI-Notetaking Ashby’s AI Notetaker brings structured meeting data together with emails, notes, feedback, and more. It shortens time to feedback and provides rich candidate context, helping your team align quickly and make faster, more confident hiring decisions. Spend less time typing and more time hiring with interview notes that practically write themselves.

BUDGETING FOR AN AI-ENABLED TALENT ACQUISITION FUNCTION We're racing toward the end of the year and inevitably attention turns to plans for the future. But today we face a future which is increasingly difficult to predict and where agility, resilience and ability to quickly pivot without loss of performance are the qualities every function needs to develop to maintain value to the business. What does this mentality mean for how we allocate budget in talent acquisition? Today we're going to debate the issue with industry leaders who have experience of budget planning and have had to balance between competing priorities. - Do we spend more on automation and less on payroll? - Do we create a buffer to spend on RPO partners who can help us scale up capacity, whilst we retain a lean permanent staff? - How about reducing payroll whilst maintaining headcount? - Do we spend on hiring entry level talent and ramp up with intensive AI upskilling? - What does the future look like in 2030 and should we start budgeting to a longer term framework? - How much recruiting work do we expect hiring managers to be doing in 2030? - Should we invest in diversification in related fields, adjacent to Talent Acquisition? - Do we go large with enterprise grade master software, or continue with a core platform + point solutions? - What about training and development? - Do we even talk about DEIB today? All this and more as we discuss how the changing world of work, is being reflected in the changing priorities of for the talent acquisition function, With industry heavyweights Johnny Campbell, CEO (Social Talent), Elaine Atkinson, Leadership Coach (In Wonder Coaching), Kobi Ampoma, Head of Talent Acquisition (The HEINEKEN Company) & friends, We are on Friday 31st October, 2pm GMT follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spotfor this demo by clicking on the green button. Ep341 is sponsored by our friends Greenhouse It’s tough out there for today’s recruiting teams. The rise of AI, slashed recruiting budgets and lean teams have made candidate funnels more chaotic than ever. Take back control of your candidate pipeline with new Greenhouse features that help put an end to application overload, messy data, and disconnected tools. Check out everything new at Greenhouse here!

FASTER, SMARTER, MORE HUMAN: THE FUTURE OF RECRUITER ENABLEMENT. Hiring has never been harder. Recruiters are under pressure to move fast, personalise outreach, and tell a story candidates believe in. But here’s the problem: recruiters don’t have the same tools that sales or marketing teams take for granted. I’m teaming up with Vouch to show how recruiters can finally catch up — with a new way to cut through the chaos: Recruiter Enablement. Join us live for a demo, discussion, and Q&A on Weds 29th October, 1230PM PT / 330pm ET follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.

A PSYCHOLOGISTS TAKE ON CANDIDATE FEEDBACK. Bad feedback - or no feedback - is perhaps the most common criticism by job candidates looking for work. Why is feedback important, and why do recruiters do this so badly? We're going to take the psychologists perspective one of the most persistent problems in our industry and see whether we can learn from a field of study outside of our own! - What are the current theories about why feedback is needed? - What are the stories we tell ourselves about why we need feedback? - What is really going on? - Why is feedback particularly challenging in recruitment? - Are there unusual psychological conditions in the context of job search which make feedback both difficult give and difficult to give well? - Why do candidates vary in their demands for feedback? - Under what conditions are candidates most upset about the job search experience? - Will increased training help, or does this require simply more capacity on behalf of the recruiters? - Are incentives correctly aligned for good feedback to be provided? - What technology innovations can change the dynamic behind persistence bad feedback experience? All this and more with brainfood favourite and professional psychologist, author and coach Nikolai Mihailov. We are on Friday 24th October, 2pm GMT follow the channel here Ep340 is sponsored by our friends BrightHire BrightHire, the AI copilot for exceptional hiring used by hundreds of game-changing companies like Canva, Vercel, Multiverse, up to the Fortune 500.

INTERVIEWS AREN'T EVALUATING THE RIGHT SKILLS: INSIGHTS FROM ANALYSING 1,311 INTERVIEW LOOPS What is actually happening at interviews? It's the most critical part of any assessment process yet it is also the one which we know least about, not least because we've never had the means to really study them at scale. That is why this latest research from Harvard Business Review is so significant - across 1300+ organisations, 50+_ organisations and tens of thousands of interviews, researchers using BrightHire proprietary data track what is actually happening in this crucial step of the process. The insight reveals challenges to which we will in recruitment have an urgency in handling. (a) the gap between what JDs communicate to candidates are the critical qualifications for positions vs. what's actually covered in interviews (b) the effectiveness of interviews in the evaluation of skills (c) the extent to which interviews are evaluating for AI skills We're doing a Brainfood Live special with BrightHire CEO Ben Sesser and William Leeds, Head of Data Science - we're going through this research with the Harvard Business Review! We are on Thursday 23rd October, 4pm BST / 11am ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button. Ep334 is sponsored by our friends BrightHire BrightHire, the AI copilot for exceptional hiring used by hundreds of game-changing companies like Canva, Vercel, Multiverse, up to the Fortune 500.

ANNUAL BENCHMARK REPORT 2025: CORPORATE EXECUTIVE SEARCH There probably isn't a recruitment function more shrouded in mystery than Corporate Exec Search! This is hiring for the function leaders who will make disproportionate impact on your organisations bottom line and often involves a high degree of discretion, especially as incumbent-in-place is a common scenario. For organisations are able to tell us what this world looks like better than ESIX - the premier community of Corporate Exec Search professionals. With thousands of members, across hundreds of the top employers in the world, ESIX have access to the collective intelligence of what hiring has been like the internal headhunters. I'm delighted to invite ESIX Chairman, Simon Mullins to do a 1-2-1 with us and share data from ESIX Annual Benchmark report on how Corp Exec Search is operating - from budget allocation, tool usage, role profile and state of the leadership job market. We might even get a glimpse of some data which is usually members only We are on Friday 17th October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button. Ep339 is sponsored by our friends Ashby Fraudulent candidates in hiring pipelines are increasingly draining recruiting teams time and attention. In extreme cases they pose security risks. Launching this week, Ashby’s new feature automatically detects fraud signals so your team can mark candidates as fraudulent during your application review helping you focus on real candidates - all without disrupting the candidate experience. Follow their page to see when it launches Live Webinar: AI Notetaker in Action and see what’s next for AI at Ashby Ashby’s All-in-One recruiting software spans ATS, Scheduling, CRM & Sourcing, and Analytics, and now they’re adding AI Notetaking to a platform already infused with useful AI.Their new AI Notetaker records, transcribes, and structures your meeting notes to help you make faster, more confident hiring decisions. In the event, you’ll also learn how Ashby is uniquely suited to help teams adopt AI responsibly while preparing for an AI and agent-oriented future.

RECRUITMENT AGENCY: 2028! It's been an incredibly challenging 3 year period for the staffing agency market. Hostile de-globalisation, End of ZIRP, and the Rise of AI has prompted employers to radically rethinking their workforce requirements - and in the case of many of the highest paying sectors - finance, technology, consultancy - reduce absolute number of heads in order to do more with less. Forward thinking recruitment agencies are responding to new market conditions with innovations of their own - in business development, in service offerings and in candidate acquisition. More transformation will inevitably occur as the external macro continues to be volatile and the staffing agency market continues to become more competitive We will cover; - What are the episodic vs persistent trends in the staffing agency market? - How is business development changing? - Where are technologies having the most impact in staffing agency operations? - What markets will staffing agencies focus on going forward? - Where will agencies find customers in 2028? - Where will agencies find candidates in 2028? - Will the solo recruiter + AI enabled be the default template of tomorrow's recruiter? - What defensive moat do agents have against AI? - Will organisations turn more to agencies are internal TA continue to get cut? - What are the future proof techniques for maintaining relationships with clients who may not buy for 12 months or longer? - What business model best suits a staffing firm in anticipated market conditions in 2028? All this and more with some of the smartest people in the staffing agency space. Join Louise Triance, Founder (UKRecruiter), Kalpesh Baxi, James Osbourne, Chairman (The Recruitment Network), Keith Langbo, Founder (Kelaca), Keith Southern, Founder (The Power Hive) & John Chirikjian, CEO (Hire Inc). We are on Friday 10th October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button. Ep338 is sponsored by our friends Hire Inc Hire.inc is an AI-powered recruitment platform that streamlines hiring with advanced AI sourcing agents, automated AI interview notes, bulk resume screening, and a collaborative ATS. Designed for startups & staffing agencies, Hire.inc helps recruitment teams find, evaluate, and engage top talent faster while integrating into existing workflows. Question for all recruiters: how much is your time worth?? Answer: a lot more than you think Demo and try for free here

RECRUITERS: SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW CO-WORKERS ARCHER, CHASE & THENA! (LIVE DEMO OF AI AGENTS) Is your recruitment supplier talking to you about AI Agents? Well this is the show where we challenge the founders to come on screen to live demo their new AI workers to the brainfood audience! Not content will one agent, our friends at hackajob are have launched no less than three at the same time: Meet: 🏹 Archer – Smarter inbound applications, 8x more likely to convert to interview. Reach passive audiences through structured data 🗣️ Chase – Your AI recruiter, holding tens of thousands of conversations weekly. 🔎 Thena – Resume screening powerhouse, cutting review time by 70%. After extensive period of trialling, hackajob are seeing that early customers are reviewing 68% fewer interviews needed per hire, 8X more unique candidates progressed after application with Archer and Thena alone cuts manual review time by 70% These are step change improvements in hiring efficiency. How does it all work? Well lets see and hear it from the horses mouth with CEO Mark Chaffey doing live demo with us the Thursday We are on Thursday 9th October, 3pm BST / 10am ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button. Ep336 is sponsored by our friends hackajob AI agents for job seekers and employers—making hiring easier, faster and fairer.