The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

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.

FRAUD SIGNALS: AI, JOB CANDIDATES & THE CYBERSECURITY OF RECRUITMENT   The rise of AI and AI Agents will fundamentally change the way in which we discover information. We are heading into a future which will everything digital will be mediated first by AI. This has huge implications in many aspects of professional work, with job search and hiring perhaps being one of the first areas of work where early challenges might be detected.   Let's talk AI, job candidates and the cybersecurity of recruitment.   - What are the most risky things which recruiters do which expose company to fraud risk? - Should recruiters download documents which are speculatively sent in? - How to process candidates if document is not a PDF? - What are the main signals of potential ID fraud? - IP address inconsistencies - LinkedIn profile recency - LinkedIn profile incompleteness - Inconsistencies on online profile aggregation - Time delay during interview - Camera off/on during interview - Implications for DEIB - Which jobs are most at risk for fraud? - Which companies, in which countries are most regular targets for fraud? - Implications for bias / racial profiling - How to be rigorous yet also fair - the challenge of CX in the era of high cybersecurity risk     We are on Tuesday 2nd October, 10am / 3pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep337 is sponsored by our friends Greenhouse   Hiring is hard, and getting it right is even harder. It’s a core business-building function with high stakes that takes a lot of moving parts to see real success. You need workflows that accommodate how you function given your company size and goals. You need a user experience that hiring managers actually buy into. And you need an application process that locks talent in.   Only Greenhouse gives you all that in one platform.   Learn more

WHAT HAPPENS TO RECRUITMENT WHEN AI IS YOUR COPILOT?   2025 will turn out to be the year when AI Agents mainstreamed into the recruiting profession. We're going to move past the semantic conversations on what is or is not 'Agentic AI' and simply get on with working with software which is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting work for us.   I think we will be surprised in two ways: how effective these AI agents are in delivering results and how much wider a scope they will end up having, on many parts of the hiring funnel.   The question needs to asked: what does this mean for Talent Acquisition? What does our function look like when every recruiter - every hiring manager - has a hiring co-pilot? Talent Acquisition, as well as the wider Human Resources function, urgently need to centre the discussion on what the 'human value added' really is when it comes to creating great organisations.   We're going to do taking on the hard conversations in today's debate on the future of recruitment when everyone has a copilot.   - General vs Verticalised AI Agents - What can Verticalised AI Agents do today - What level of performance by AI Agents are required for work to be transferred? - AI ethics & legislation - are they paper tigers? - What is the human value added? - When does low cost mass produced 'Good enough' beat high cost, custom made, artisanally produced? - Human Value Added - what is this, can we articulate it? - What gets automated - expert or non-expert, routine or episodic? - Do we even control this, or do vendors determine what tasks get automated? - Humans-in-the-loop - how do we make this substantive, rather than rubber stamp? - Under what circumstances do we believe a human can / should veto AI recommendation? - How do Talent Acquisition professionals need to reposition in with the advent of effective AI Agents? - Do we need to talk about Capitalism?     We are on Friday 3rd October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep335 is sponsored by our friends Metaview   Our most ambitious agent yet is here: AI Sourcing   This isn’t sourcing as you know it. Not another Boolean search. Not another rigid filter. This is flexible, agentic search - built on your hiring DNA.   ✔ Proactive: From your first intake call, the agent automatically runs a search. ✔ Collaborative: You guide the search, AI does the heavy lifting. ✔ Flexible: Context-aware and learns from unstructured data and feedback.   Source high-fit candidates faster than you ever thought possible with an AI teammate that learns from every action and hiring manager’s feedback—getting more precise, personalized, and effective over time.   Be the first to try it. Join the waitlist.

TALENT POOLING: LESSONS FROM TA COMMUNITY BUILDERS   We all know that it easier to get engagement from people who already know you or your brand. Have a think about how you respond to known contacts in WhatsApp vs unknown callers on your phone! As we move toward a world where AI generated communication will come to dominate, we can anticipate that the establishment of trust relationships with your target audience is going to be key in effective hiring.   Lets deep dive:   - What is talent pooling, how is this different from 'collecting CV's - What needs to be done in order to 'acquire' someone into a talent pool? - How do you convert a database into a community? - What are the policies of exclusion in this community? - How do we balance this with an inclusive ethos? - How to police bad behaviour? - How formal should be safe spaces? - What is the best tech platform to use to organise communities? - If we are planning to hire from this community, do we remove people who then get a job? - What professions are most suited for community building? - What circumstances make most sense when putting together a talent pooling plan? - Do we need a specialist function to do this? - What can AI do to help build community - or is this antithetical to how things are done?   All this and more, with Willem Wijnans, Community Lead (Ashby), Marie Chaponiere, Founder (Behind the Mask), Vanessa Raath, Founder (Talent Hunter) & Mahmoud Aly, Community Lead (Egypt Recruiting Community) & Lars Schmidt, Head of Talent (Fruitist)   We are on Friday 26th Sep, 2pm BST - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep333 is sponsored by our friends Ashby   Ashby just raised $50M in Series D funding, and they’re going all in on what modern recruiting teams actually need.   So, what’s next?   AI is moving from novelty to necessity. Most tools talk about AI, Ashby makes it work. Their all-in-one platform gives AI real structure so recruiters get time back with AI note-taking, feedback summaries, and personalized outreach emails. In fact, 57% of Ashby's customer base is now using AI within the platform, up from 23% at the start of 2024.   Quality of Hire is finally getting real. More teams are rolling out Quality of Hire programs with Ashby than ever before. What used to be a slide in a quarterly review is now a real strategy, with surveys and reporting built in. It’s clearer, faster, and easier to connect to business outcomes.   Community is the new operating system. Ashby already made a big splash with Ashby One, their first customer conference that brought hundreds of talent leaders and RecOps professionals together for a week of sessions, panels, dinners, and live events. With this new funding, they’re doubling down on the community by expanding ACE (Ashby Customer Expert) chapters, scaling education programs, and giving local leaders more ways to connect, share learnings, and build lasting networks.   … and the word is out. Enterprise teams like Shopify and Snowflake are already in. With 123% growth and fresh funding to fuel what’s next, Ashby is just getting started.   Bottom line: Ashby is not just building software. They are building the infrastructure for modern recruiting.   See the full announcement.   Not on Ashby yet? Get a demo today.

GHOSTING: WHY THE AI JOB APPLICATION TSUNAMI IS NO EXCUSE   Diffusion of technology innovation across society is something to be celebrated. We need to be aware of the challenges to existing structures that this will inevitably bring and refactor our processes to account for the changes. One of the first ways in which employers are experiencing this challenge is in how to handle the increased volume of job applicants, who have improved both the quality and quantity of their outputs.   We're going to talk today about the AI job applicant tsunami and how this does not mitigate employer responsibility for candidate experience. It's no excuse for ghosting!   - What is the state of candidate experience in 2025? - What are the factors which explain the trend lines? - What is the impact of AI in the job candidate experience?\ - How can employers balance between efficiency vs experience? - Can we kill the idea that 'more human' is always better candidate experience? - What are the common themes to great candidate experience? - Faced with lean TA teams + increase workload, what are top TA teams doing about this? - Ghosting: what does it take to eliminate this? - What role can technology play in supporting candidate experience? - Hybrid human + AI = when human vs when AI?   All this and more, with Daniel Chait, CEO (Greenhouse), Kevin Grossman, VP of CandE Benchmark Research (Survale), Cheryl Petersen, Global Head of Candidate Experience (Arup) & Bradley Cooper, Associate VP Technology (SASR Workforce Solutions)   We are on Thursday 25th Sep, 5pm BST / 9am PT / 12pm ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.   Ep332 is sponsored by our friends Greenhouse   Hiring is hard, and getting it right is even harder. It’s a core business-building function with high stakes that takes a lot of moving parts to see real success. You need workflows that accommodate how you function given your company size and goals. You need a user experience that hiring managers actually buy into. And you need an application process that locks talent in.   Only Greenhouse gives you all that in one platform.   Learn more

NEW RECRUITMENT KPI'S FOR TOMORROW'S TALENT ACQUISITION   We are beginning to see some step change improvements in recruiter capability. The promise of AI has been overblown in many areas, but it is clear huge efficiency gains have been seen in areas such as sourcing, CV review, interview note taking, interview scheduling and more. These are areas which previously took large teams for recruiters a lot of time to manage. Now with increased in capability, what does this do to how we measure recruiter performance?   Lets deep dive:   - Pre AI, what were the industry avg numbers: how many reqs per capita, how many hires per month - What is the number today in 2025? - What does it look like in 2026? - Areas of greatest efficiency gain: Applicant Review, Sourcing New Candidates etc - How has the time distribution changed once AI comes into production? - Are we spending more time per candidate? Do we have more or less candidate interviews? - QoH...does this measure change? - What would we expect once every TA team becomes AI-enabled? - How do we design a dynamic system of performance measures, which takes into account AI maturity? - What does this mean for people currently in TA - what skills to develop? - How do we ensure early entry talent flow?   All this and more, with Adriano Herdman, CEO (We Are Move), Emma Mirrington, Founder (The Talent Labs), Alan Price, Global Head of Talent Acquisition (Deel), Neil Morelli, Founder (Workplace Labs) & friends.   We are on Friday 19th Sep, 2pm BST - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep331 is sponsored by our friends Teamtailor   Let's change it up this week, updated copy below;   Remember when hiring felt simple? A candidate applied, you picked up the phone, and great conversations just… happened.   Somewhere along the way, recruitment became more complicated. Too many tools, too many tabs, and too little time for the human side of hiring.   That’s why Teamtailor exists, to put people back at the heart of the process. From creating career sites candidates love, to managing every step of the journey in one seamless platform, we help you focus on what matters most: building great teams. Join more than 185,000 recruiters and discover the new way to attract and hire top talent — with all the AI powered tools you need.   Let’s make hiring human again.   See why 11,000+ companies trust us

IMPACT OF AI IN THE BLUE CHIP GRADUATE CAREER   In the before times, the passport to comfortable middle class prosperity was go to a good University, get a 2.1 or above, and apply to a graduate scheme with a blue chip organisation. Most attractive were the global professional services firms - McKinsey, Accenture, PwC, KPMG, BCG and the rest. With the advent of AI replacing a great deal of the knowledge related tasks previously performed by graduate entry into these firms, is this path no longer as viable as it once was?     Lets deep dive:   - State of the blue chip graduate recruiting market - What is the volume of intake 2020-2025? - What type of work might we have expected from early entry employees in PS? - How much of this is 'exposed' to AI disintermediation? - Does AI have a different impact rather than direct replacing the task? - What do PS firms expect from early entry talent in 2025 and beyond? - How can early entry talent best position for a future in PS? - How will Management Consultancy itself change over time?   All this and more, with Yazad Dalal, Chief Growth Officer (Joveo), Marketa Simkova, Partner, Head of People, Performance, Culture - KPMG Middle East & Sophie Jablansky, Senior PM (Veris Insights)from within the Professional Services and Management Consultancy sector.   We are on Friday 12th Sep, 2pm BST - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep329 is sponsored by our friends Joveo   As the global leader in AI-powered recruitment marketing and candidate engagement, we are transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest and smartest employers, staffing businesses, RPOs, and recruitment advertising agencies.   Want to find out more?   Speak to one of our team today.

REALITIES OF AI - INSIGHT & ANALYSIS FROM 1000 HEADS OF TA   Get ahead of the AI curve with exclusive first-look insights from Fosway Group’s cutting-edge ‘Realities of AI’ research. Sven Elbert unpacks the biggest trends, priorities, and pain points Talent Acquisition leaders will face in 2025. Expect sharp analysis, no-nonsense guidance, and practical, data-driven advice to help you build smarter AI strategies – and finally cut through the hype.   Lets deep dive:   - What is the State of Talent Acquisition in 2025 - How have Talent Acquisition priorities shifted from 2024 to 2025? - Doing More With Less? Well, how are we doing with this? - Budget for tech vs Budget for Payroll - Avg size of Talent Acquisition teams - sector / region / country - Avg req load per capita - What investments in technology are going forward? - How is AI being adopted throughout the TA function? - How is talent acquisition being measured today? - AI Agents - where are they, are they now in the workforce?   All this and more, as Sven Elbert, Head of Analytical Services at Fosway, takes us through the research conducted on Heads of TA in US, UK, Germany and France.   We are on Friday 5th Sep, 2pm BST - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.     Ep328 is sponsored by our friends Teamtailor   Let's change it up this week, updated copy below;   Remember when hiring felt simple? A candidate applied, you picked up the phone, and great conversations just… happened.   Somewhere along the way, recruitment became more complicated. Too many tools, too many tabs, and too little time for the human side of hiring.   That’s why Teamtailor exists, to put people back at the heart of the process. From creating career sites candidates love, to managing every step of the journey in one seamless platform, we help you focus on what matters most: building great teams. Join more than 185,000 recruiters and discover the new way to attract and hire top talent — with all the AI powered tools you need.   Let’s make hiring human again.   See why 11,000+ companies trust us