The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

The Next Generation of Background Screening: Identity, Behaviour & Personalisation with Ben Mones, CEO of FAMA The background check hasn't changed much in decades. A criminal record search, a reference call, maybe a credit check - and yet the risks employers actually face have moved somewhere else entirely. Workplace harassment, threats, intolerance and misconduct now leave observable traces online, long before they ever show up in a court record. At the same time, AI has made it trivially easy to fabricate an identity - a polished CV, a deepfake video interview, a candidate who exists only in the aggregate of a language model. So what does the next generation of screening actually look like when identity, behaviour and personalisation converge? To find out, we're sitting down with Ben Mones, founder and CEO of FAMA - the world's largest online screening company, with over 45 million reports produced. Ben founded FAMA in 2015 after experiencing first-hand a workplace misconduct incident that could have been prevented, and he's spent the decade since building the case that behaviour - not just records - is the signal employers should be screening for. Key Themes We'll Cover: Beyond the Criminal Record – Why traditional background checks were built for a pre-internet world, and the gap they leave when it comes to workplace-relevant risk Identity in the Age of AI – Verifying that the person applying is actually who they say they are, as deepfakes, synthetic CVs and AI-generated candidates enter the funnel Behaviour First, Not Background First – How AI can surface intolerance, harassment, threats and violence in publicly available online content - across 100+ languages - and why Fama deliberately screens behaviour rather than protected characteristics The Compliance Tightrope – Running screening programs that stand up to FCRA, EEOC, GDPR, EU AI Act, PIPEDA and FCA's new non-financial misconduct regulations scrutiny: consent, consistency, and what candidates must be allowed to contest Personalisation vs. Consistency – Tailoring screening depth to role seniority and risk profile without introducing bias or disparate impact into the process The End of One-Size-Fits-All Screening – What a genuinely personalised screening stack looks like, and where configurability ends and subjectivity begins Screening Beyond the Offer – Continuous screening of existing employees: legitimate risk management or the thin end of a surveillance wedge? What to Ask Your Screening Vendor – The hard questions recruiters and TA leaders should be asking about AI accuracy, explainability and bias before they sign anything Whether you run screening in-house, outsource it to a background check provider, or are simply wondering what AI means for candidate trust and privacy, this session will give you a clear-eyed view of where screening is heading - and what it means for how you hire. Join Hung Lee and Ben Mones for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of background screening. We're live on Wednesday 28th October, 10am ET. Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel here (recommended) and register for the show by saving your spot here. Must attend folks.

New Series: How AI Is Changing the Job — Software Engineering Software engineering was supposed to be one of the first professions AI would disrupt — and yet here we are, with demand for engineers still climbing, job descriptions changing faster than ever, and hiring managers struggling to define what a "good developer" even looks like in 2026. AI hasn't eliminated the role; it's transformed it. The craft of writing code has shifted towards reviewing it, architecting systems, prompting agents and judging output. So what does that mean for how we hire software engineers? In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air — the first in a brand new series examining how AI is reshaping specific professions — Hung Lee and our panel of experts look at the world's most scrutinised tech role and ask: how do you recruit for a job that's mid-transformation? Key Themes We'll Cover: A New Series, A New Lens – Why we're going deep on individual professions, and what we'll be covering across the series The Real Impact So Far – What the data says about AI's effect on engineering productivity, output quality and team structures The Death of the LeetCode Interview? – Why traditional coding assessments may be measuring the wrong thing in an AI-assisted world New Skills, New Signals – The emerging competencies hiring teams should screen for: system design, AI oversight, debugging judgment, taste Junior Engineers: An Endangered Species? – What happens to entry-level hiring when AI handles the tasks juniors used to learn on The Experience Paradox – Why senior engineers are more in demand than ever, and whether that's sustainable Assessing for What Matters Now – Practical changes engineering hiring teams are making to interviews, take-homes and technical rounds Should Candidates Use AI in Interviews? – The great debate: testing for AI-assisted performance, or assessing raw coding skill? What Engineering Teams Will Look Like in 2030 – Predictions on team size, composition and the engineer-to-AI-agent ratio If you recruit for engineering roles — or any technical role facing similar disruption — this episode will help you cut through the noise and rethink your hiring strategy for the AI era. Expect data, debate and plenty of practical takeaways. We're on Friday 23rd October, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. See you on air! Ep414 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse With application volumes at historic highs, AI claims shaping procurement, and candidate fraud entering the funnel in ways most teams can't track, your ATS decision carries more weight than ever. Download this updated guide from Greenhouse for a practical roadmap to cut through vendor noise, understand true total cost of ownership, and choose the platform your hiring function actually needs. Download now

Sourcing: Dead or Alive? Reviewing SOSU 2026 — Past, Present and Future of Sourcing It's the question that refuses to go away: with AI now able to find, engage and even screen candidates at scale, is sourcing still a profession — or just a feature of your ATS? Every year, the Sourcing Summit (SOSU) brings together the sharpest minds in the field to interrogate exactly that. In this special episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel take stock of SOSU 2026, reflecting on how far sourcing has come, where it stands today, and whether the role as we know it survives the next wave of AI. Is this a renaissance moment for sourcers — or a farewell tour? Key Themes We'll Cover: The SOSU 2026 Takeaways – The big themes, debates and moments from this year's Sourcing Summit From Phonebooks to Prompts – Tracing the evolution of sourcing from Boolean strings and X-ray searches to conversational AI Is Sourcing Really Dying? – Separating hype from reality: what automation has actually replaced, and what it hasn't The New Sourcer Skillset – Data literacy, AI orchestration, market mapping and the human craft that machines can't replicate AI as Co-Pilot, Not Replacement – How the best sourcers are using AI to amplify their reach, speed and insight The Talent Intelligence Pivot – Why more sourcing teams are evolving into strategic market intelligence functions Engagement Is the Differentiator – When everyone has access to the same tools and databases, outreach quality becomes the moat What Happens to Junior Sourcers? – Rethinking career entry points and training pipelines when the traditional apprenticeship tasks are automated The Next Decade of Sourcing – Predictions from the SOSU floor on where the profession goes from here Whether you're a battle-hardened sourcing veteran, a TA leader rethinking your team structure, or a newcomer wondering if there's a future in this craft, this episode will give you an unfiltered view of the state of play. Expect strong opinions, healthy disagreement, and zero fluff. We're on Friday 16th October, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. See you on air! Ep413 is supported by our friends at Metaview Metaview is the Agentic Recruiting Platform built for radically efficient hiring, end to end. Source, engage, and hire better with agents that truly get your brief. Metaviews AI Agents finds candidates, reviews inbound applications, automatically captures notes, constantly learns and spots talent opportunities, whilst your recruiters spend time doing work which humans can only do - build relationships with candidates and hiring managers. Need to uplevel your hiring function? Book a demo or start for free here.

HOW TO ASSESS FOR HUMAN JUDGEMENT As AI takes over more of the heavy lifting in recruitment — screening CVs, drafting interview questions, even conducting first-round interviews — the skills we hire for are shifting. Technical proficiency can increasingly be automated, augmented or verified by machines. What's becoming harder to replace, and harder to find, is human judgement: the ability to weigh imperfect information, read the room, make a call under uncertainty, and be accountable for the outcome. But if judgement is the thing we need most, how on earth do we assess for it? In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel of experts dig into the science (and the art) of evaluating one of the most elusive qualities in any candidate. Key Themes We'll Cover: What Is Judgement, Anyway? – Defining the capability before we try to measure it, and why it matters more in an AI-augmented workplace The Failure of the Hypothetical – Why "what would you do if..." questions reveal rehearsed answers, not real judgement Evidence-Based Assessment Design – Using case studies, work simulations and real scenarios to observe decision-making in action Judgement Under Pressure – Whether stress-testing candidates actually predicts on-the-job decision quality Learning from High-Stakes Industries – What medicine, aviation, the military and investing can teach recruitment about assessing decision-makers The Accountability Test – How to probe whether a candidate truly owns their decisions, or deflects when things go wrong Interviewing for Judgement – Questioning techniques, probes and red flags that reveal how someone actually thinks Can AI Assess Judgement? – Where AI-powered assessment genuinely helps, and where it falls flat on evaluating distinctly human qualities Avoiding Bias in Subjective Assessment – Keeping judgement-based evaluation fair, structured and defensible If you're hiring for roles where the cost of a bad decision is high — leadership positions, client-facing roles, anything involving ambiguity and consequence — this episode is essential listening. Recruiters, hiring managers, TA leaders: join us for a conversation that goes way beyond competency frameworks. Follow the channel here (recommended) so you never miss an episode, and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. We're on Friday 9th October, 2pm BST Ep412 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse With application volumes at historic highs, AI claims shaping procurement, and candidate fraud entering the funnel in ways most teams can't track, your ATS decision carries more weight than ever. Download this updated guide from Greenhouse for a practical roadmap to cut through vendor noise, understand true total cost of ownership, and choose the platform your hiring function actually needs. Download now

Employer Branding in the Era of AI Generated Career Sites - Who Owns the Story? The career site is the front door to your employer brand — and until recently, building or even tweaking it meant months of agency briefs, dev tickets, and design sign-offs. Not anymore. A new wave of AI-powered platforms now lets recruiters and TA teams build entire career sites simply by typing what they want in plain language. "Create a landing page for our engineering roles in Berlin, add employee testimonials, and hook it up to our ATS" — and it just happens. In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel of experts explore what natural language prompting means for the way employers attract, engage and convert talent — and whether the era of the bloated, three-year website redesign project is finally over. Key Themes We'll Cover: The End of the Static Career Site – Why the traditional "rebuild every few years" model is breaking down in a world where hiring needs shift week to week Prompt to Publish – How natural language prompting actually works under the hood, and what it can realistically deliver today Who Owns the Build Now? – Whether career sites become a recruiter's tool rather than a marketing or IT project Speed vs. Substance – Avoiding the trap of generating slick, AI-built pages that say nothing about what it's actually like to work at your company Personalisation at Scale – Building dynamic career site experiences that adapt by role, location or candidate segment — without a developer The SEO & Conversion Question – Do AI-built career sites actually perform better, or just launch faster? Employer Brand in a Prompt-Driven World – Protecting authentic storytelling when anyone can spin up a polished site in an afternoon Governance and Guardrails – Who approves what when content creation is democratised across the TA function Where This Is Heading – What the next generation of career sites will look like as prompting gets more conversational and multimodal Whether you're stuck with a careers page that's been "due a refresh" since 2022, or you're simply curious about what AI can do beyond writing job ads, this is a session you won't want to miss. Recruiters, sourcers, TA leaders and employer brand folks — join us for a practical, no-hype conversation about the future of your most important hiring asset. We're on Friday 2nd October, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show here. Ep411 is supported by our friends at Joveo High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS. Find out more here