The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

GEO vs SEO: What Recruitment Marketers Need to Know in 2026   Everyone know's the search landscape has fundamentally shifted.   In 2026, candidates are no longer typing keywords into Google - they are asking AI assistants where to work, who pays fairly, and which cultures actually thrive. If your recruitment marketing strategy still revolves around traditional SEO alone, you are optimising for a shrinking platform while missing the one that is exploding.   Join us for a critical livestream exploring the new battleground between Generative Engine Optimisation and classic Search Engine Optimisation.   • Why keyword density is dying while entity recognition and semantic context dominate AI search   • How AI engines summarize your employer brand without ever sending traffic to your career site   • The structured data revolution: schema markup that helps LLMs cite your jobs and culture pages   • From backlinks to citations: how GEO rewards authoritative mentions differently than SEO   • The zero-click crisis: when candidates get salary and culture answers without visiting your ATS   • Voice and conversational search: optimising for "best places to work near me" spoken to assistants   • Content architecture: why job descriptions must be parsed by machines before they impress humans   • The trust equation: how AI models rank employers based on aggregated web sentiment and reviews   • Measurement mismatch: why ranking #1 in Google matters less when ChatGPT answers the query first   • Budget reallocation frameworks: splitting your 2026 spend between discoverability and generative authority   The recruiters who win 2026 will not be those with the most backlinks - they will be the ones AI systems confidently recommend to curious candidates. Do not let your employer brand become invisible in the generative search revolution. We're on Friday 12th June, 2pm BST.   Register by clicking on the green button (save my seat) and follow the channel here (recommended) and bring your team the strategic blueprint that keeps your talent pipeline full as candidate behaviour evolves.   Ep387 is supported by our friends Joveo   High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS.   Find out more here

What if AI Actually Costs More Than Humans?   The headcount reduction mandate has landed on your desk: replace talent with AI and cut costs. But beneath the vendor demos and boardroom promises lies a dangerous assumption - that artificial intelligence is automatically cheaper than human expertise.   What if the token economics tell a different story?   Join us for a provocative livestream that flips the AI narrative and protects your workforce strategy.   • The hidden maths of token consumption -and why projected savings evaporate at scale   • Why cost-per-inference is rarely modelled against fully-loaded employee costs in vendor ROI   • Talent attrition: when top performers leave because they see AI replacement unfolding   • Quality degradation and the invisible cost of human-in-the-loop error correction   • Vendor lock-in: how API pricing volatility turns fixed labor into unpredictable OpEx   • The productivity paradox: why AI-augmented teams outperform pure replacement strategies   • Compliance blind spots: liability, bias audits, and regulatory costs headcount never triggered   • Retraining debt: the unbudgeted expense of prompt engineering and system maintenance   • The competitive cost of hollow teams when institutional knowledge walks out the door   • Frameworks to model true total cost of AI ownership before approving any reduction-in-force   This is not an anti-AI argument - it is a financial reality check for leaders pressured to cut first and calculate later. Before you trade headcount for tokens, understand the true cost of replacing humans with models.   We're on Friday 5th June, 2pm BST. Register now and bring your C-suite the data they need!       Ep386 is supported by our friends Ashby   The all-in-one recruiting platform that evolves at the speed of AI. ✨Empowering ambitious teams from Startups to Enterprises.   Ashby can handle the whole pipe - ATS, CRM & Sourcing, Scheduling, and Analytics - while incorporating the latest AI advancements every step of the way.   Learn how Ashby helps companies at every size up level their hiring - contact one of team here today

The hiring environment has fundamentally reset—and most talent acquisition teams are still using benchmarks built for a world that no longer exists. Between 2022 and 2025, everything changed: application volumes surged 385%, recruiter teams were cut by 57%, and AI simultaneously flooded pipelines with noise while offering new efficiencies. Yet against this backdrop, Greenhouse data from 17M+ applications across 800+ European organizations reveals a surprising truth—recruiters are actually performing better, not worse. Monthly hires per recruiter have jumped 113%. Jobs closed with a hire are up 13%. The teams thriving aren't those with bigger budgets or larger headcount. They're the ones who redefined what "good" looks like in this new reality. This webinar distills the definitive 2026 benchmarks from The Hire Standard report—the metrics that actually matter when volume is permanent, teams are lean, and AI is rewriting the rules.   • The Volume Reality Check • The Productivity Paradox • Interview Intensity as Quality Control • Days-to-Fill Reinterpreted • Stage Progression Intelligence • Sourcing ROI Reality • The Recruiter-Sourced Advantage • AI at the Top of Funnel • Structured Process Under Pressure • The Employer Brand Imperative   The teams still measuring against 2022 baselines are making disastrous decisions—cutting resources that are actually delivering, or maintaining processes that collapsed under new volume. The Hire Standard data reveals what "good" actually looks like when pipelines are flooded, teams are lean, and AI is both problem and solution.   Includes exclusive access to The Hire Standard 2026 Benchmark Toolkit with calibrated metrics by organization size and industry. Live Q&A with data analysis leads. Recording and materials restricted to registrants.   We're on Friday 29th May at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).   Ep384 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse   What do high-performing TA teams look like in 2026? Greenhouse analyzed data from over 6,000 companies and over 640M applications over the last 3 years to understand how recruiters are really doing and how hiring teams can keep up with industry standards. Check out their new benchmarking report, The Hire Standard.

INTRODUCING NEXT GENERATION AI RECRUITING AGENTS   Juicebox have been one of the most impressive businesses in the AI recruiting space. Now with 6,000 customers, they are ready to announce a step change in how Juicebox works for recruiters to keep a competitive edge.   Juicebox agents now   REMEMBER AND SELF CORRECT. When a search isn't surfacing the right people, Agents reflect on their reasoning and proactively edit their own criteria instead of waiting for you to bring it up.   THEY ASK QUESTIONS When requirements conflict or something doesn't make sense, the Agent clarifies. For example: "Would you prefer candidates with PLG or demo-led growth experience or both, but with a smaller candidate pool?"   THEY ADAPT TO CHANGING REQS Recalibrate by directly chatting to your Agent. For example, you can say: "Add GEO/SEO to the search" and the Agent adjusts and remembers context from your previous conversations.   LASTLY, THEY HANDLE OUTREACH Agent writes multi-step sequences in your team's voice, with company selling points and per-candidate personalization, at scale. CEO David Paffenholz with live demo - register here (click on the green button 'save my space') and follow the channel here for updates.

Everyone claims they're "good with AI" on their CV. Almost no one can prove it. As AI tools proliferate across every function, talent leaders face a critical gap: we need people who don't just use AI, but wield it strategically—and we have no reliable way to identify them. Enter Zapier. The automation platform that helped democratise no-code workflows has developing and refining a practical framework for assessing AI fluency in hiring. Everyone's been talking about it. But now we've got Soeren Winter to unpack it and tell us what it means for Talent Acquisition teams.   • Redefining "AI Fluency" for Hiring • The Portfolio Approach to Assessment Distinguishing candidates who've memorized one interface from those who understand underlying AI principles and can adapt across platforms, models, and use cases • Critical Evaluation as Core Competency • Integration & Workflow Design • The Ethics & Safety Screen • Cross-Functional Translation • Learning Velocity Indicators • Practical Assessment Design • Building Internal AI Fluency Benchmarks   AI fluency is now a baseline expectation, not a differentiator—but most hiring processes haven't caught up. Organizations still screening for "AI experience" on LinkedIn are filling roles with candidates who can't deliver. Meanwhile, teams using rigorous, practical assessment frameworks are building workforces that genuinely multiply productivity. The cost of getting this wrong isn't just a bad hire; it's the opportunity cost of teams waiting months for someone to actually become useful.   We're on Friday 22nd May at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).   Ep383 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse   AI is reshaping hiring across the UK, Ireland and Germany. But is trust keeping up?   Greenhouse surveyed over 2,200 jobseekers, recruiters and hiring managers to uncover where AI is building confidence in hiring, where it's eroding it, and what the most trusted employers are doing differently.   Download the full report