Ep 750: Agents, Data, and the Future of Talent Acquisition

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?