The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

Key Recruitment Trends to Watch in 2025: What Top Agencies Are Doing Differently   Recruitment agencies continue to face major obstacles, including the paradox of a talent shortage despite a decrease in job openings. With more candidates rejecting job offers, it’s become essential to expand sourcing efforts for each vacancy.   According to this year’s GRID Industry Trends Survey by Bullhorn, the most successful agencies have developed strategies that have enabled them to grow revenue despite economic challenges.   Discover how these agencies are embracing automation, enhancing candidate engagement, and refining their market strategies, all while leveraging AI to elevate recruitment to new heights.   We're bringing proprietary data from Bullhorn with Lia Taniguchi, Senior Research Manager & Liam Ryan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, (Bullhorn) - join us on Thursday 3rd April, 1pm BST   Register by clicking the green button and follow the channel here (recommended)

Brainfood on Tour - How to Hire in Australia in 2025 & Beyond?   Australia is the 7th largest recruitment market by dollar value - a very decent barometer to how the global staffing market is performing. Let’s dive into the conversation with local recruiters and find out what’s going on in 2025   We’re going to learn:   - What is the state of the economy in Australia in 2025? - What are the main strengths, main challenge here? - What sectors are the largest employers? - What is the competition for the top talent? - What defines top talent here? - How do candidates behave - what is the best channel of communication for first contact? - What skills are most in-demand here? - How has the cost of living crisis / do more with less mantra impacted hiring demand? - Will a change of government help? - How is the use of AI changing how companies recruit? - What are the 10 things a recruiter should know in order to become successful in Indonesia?   All this and more, on Friday 28th March,12pm AEST   Click on here to follow the channel (recommended) and click on the green button to register for this show.

DOGE, US Fed Gov and the Future of HR & TA in the USA   We have to talk about DOGE.   The US Federal Government is the largest single employer in the United States at 2.5 million employees. The intent of the Trump 2.0 administration is to radically reduce this number - by at least 10% in the first tranche - and maybe to end up with a workforce of about 10% when it is all said and done.   This is unprecedented downsizing of government function, the likes of which we have rarely seen outside of active conflict situations. The role of TA / HR and People Ops in general is multi-faceted. On of the one hand, there are thousands of colleagues in these roles who will be impacted (perhaps disproportionately so?) and so might now find themselves abruptly on the job market. On another hand, as People Ops' pros one of the most important functions is to ensure organisational compliance with employment law - how can one do this when the organisation itself seems intent in ignoring it? Finally, People Ops functions have responsibility and duty of care for other employees, who will no doubt by overwhelming HR departments right now with requests for advice and support on what to do.   Brainfood Live cannot solve any of these problems but it can help shine a light into what is going on, so that we can better understand the implications and in so doing, find a way to best support the people most impacted.   It's going to be an open mic style show folks, so if you are in the US and want to talk part in this conversation, dial in. We're with Steve Rothberg, Founder (CollegeRecruiter), Mike Bruni, Partner (Talent Acquisition Strategies), Kate Bischoff, Founder (K8bisch LLC) & friends     We are on Friday 21st March, 11am PST / 2pm EST   Register by clicking the green button and follow the channel here (recommended)   Ep297 is sponsored by our friends at 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

IDEAL STRUCTURE OF AI-ENABLED TA   You might have noticed a run of AI Agent demo's on Brainfood Live recently - product makers are increasingly confident that they are going to produce intelligent software which will increasingly behave more like a colleague than a tool. What does this mean for the humans in the recruitment function?   Transformation is closer than we think and we need to get busy thinking about a future where AI indeed transforms our function, how that function needs to be structured for maximum efficacy and perhaps most importantly, how we ensure the efficiency gains provided by AI, convert to experience gains secured for humans.   We will discuss:   - State of AI in TA today - Current structure of TA teams - what are the options? - Will AI simplify TA structure - Y/N? - What functions will human TA retain, which will be automated? - How do humans 'stay in the loop'? - SHOULD humans stay in the loop? - What do we know about candidate experience and how will AI improve this? - Bias: how do we ensure AI does not exacerbate bias in hiring? - Where will recruiters be spending time in 2026? - How will the role of hiring managers change with the increase use of AI? - What does the optimal structure of TA look like going forward? - How do TA leaders start the journey toward getting there today?   All this and more, with some of the smartest people in the industry talking us through it. We're with industry legends John Vlastelica, Founder (RecruitingToolbox), Kevin Wheeler, Founder (Future of Talent Institute), Jim Miller, VP of People & Talent (Ashby), Syeda Younus, Director Research (Gartner) & Mary Kay Baldino, Head of Talent Acquisition (Morningstar)   We are on Friday 14th March, 12PM PST / 3PM EST / 7PM GMT     Register by clicking the green button and follow the channel here (recommended)     Ep296 is sponsored by our friends at Ashby   Ashby is what an ATS should be: an integration of sourcing automation, AI-supported outreach sequencing, native interview scheduling, a searchable CRM, and advanced analytics – all in one ATS++ system. That means better data, less context switching, and more streamlined workflows. Chosen by over a thousand companies, including Quora, Docker, Ironclad, and Multiverse, Ashby stands out as the top-rated ATS on G2. It is renowned for its real-time and reliable reporting, the ability to centralize the entire hiring process, and unparalleled customer support.   Talent Trends Reports are freely available: Download the latest here

Autonomous Agentic AI Recruiters: Here, Now?   If 2025 is going to be year of the Agentic AI, then companies like SeekOut are going to be one of the tech companies at the frontier of building them. We have already reviewed what Agentic AI is (see Ep293!) - and discussed how close and how far we are away from seeing them in production. Can product builders shed more light on where we currently stand - can we even see some of these agents in action?   I challenged SeekOut CEO Anoop Gupta to show us what is on the roadmap, and of course Anoop was up for the challenge! Not only will we see the next evolution of one of the most popular recruiting tools on the market, but in doing so better understand how this will shape the contours of future recruiting work.   Expectations are high: lets see whether Agentic AI is here, now!     We are on Friday 7th March, 1pm PT   Register by clicking the green button and follow the channel here (recommended)     Ep295 is sponsored by our friends SeekOut   SeekOut is one of the world's most popular recruitment technology platforms. Trusted by 1000's of employers worldwide to provide exceptional AI-enhanced candidate sourcing and personalising messaging services. Help your team hire the best talent by using SeekOut.