The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

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