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Recruiting Future with Matt Alder – What’s Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring? — Business
Recruiting Future with Matt Alder – What’s Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Talent acquisition is undergoing unprecedented disruption as AI, economic uncertainty, and the ever-shortening lifespan of skills radically reshape recruiting. On Recruiting Future, Matt Alder explores this evolving landscape, using insightful interviews with transformational TA practitioners and forward-thinking experts to spark your imagination and provide the insights you need to shape the future of talent acquisition in your organization.
Each episode explores topics such as AI, recruiting automation, recruitment marketing, employer branding, skills-based hiring, assessment, candidate experience, DEI, internal mobility, and the transformation of TA teams. Recruiting Future is an essential resource for everyone involved in hiring.
Matt Alder is a globally respected talent acquisition futurist, author, and speaker with over 25 years of experience exploring what’s next in recruiting. Renowned for his expertise in strategic foresight and technology trends, Matt provides a unique perspective that empowers leaders to navigate disruption. His deep industry knowledge and ability to spark meaningful conversations make Recruiting Future a must-listen for talent acquisition and HR professionals everywhere.

Latest Episodes:

EP 758: Extracting Real Value From AI In TA Jan 09, 2026

Show notes

Last year brought plenty of AI hype, but actual adoption in talent acquisition remained tentative. Some organizations ran pilots, most watched from the sidelines, and expectations stayed cautiously low. The technology advanced rapidly, yet widespread implementation lagged far behind the headlines.

Now, heading into 2026, there's a genuine opportunity to move beyond experimentation. But extracting real value won't come from simply buying the tools. It requires building entirely new capabilities around continuous workforce transformation and reskilling. The organizations that crack this will pull ahead. Those waiting for AI to deliver results on its own will be left wondering what went wrong. So what actually needs to change for companies to see a return on their AI investments?

My guest this week is Jonathan Kestenbaum, Managing Director at AMS. In our conversation, he shares his 2026 predictions for AI and outlines the transformation TA needs to make.

In the interview, we discuss:

The complexities of AI implementation
Is workforce planning the missing link in AI transformation?
Blockchain and identity
Hiring manager experience as the new KPI
The need for more context and the end of the resume
Innovation is outpacing regulation
Increasing velocity in internal mobility
How will the technology develop over the next few years?

AI Reality Check - What It Actually Takes to Transform Recruiting Dec 31, 2025

Show notes

AI is the most disruptive technology we've seen in our careers, but most industry conversations stay at the surface level of use cases and future predictions. This special bonus episode goes deeper.

These four interviews, taken from a behind-the-scenes film I recently made, explore how AI recruiting products actually get built. We're talking to the people who created SmartRecruiters' AI-first platform Winston to uncover the lessons TA professionals need for their own AI transformation.

Featuring:

Shefali Netke, VP of Design, on how design decisions shape AI adoption in enterprise recruiting
Thibaut Allard, Global Data Privacy & AI Lead, on navigating AI compliance where global regulations and rapid innovation collide
Dave Novak, Global Director of Managed Services, on what it actually takes to turn AI ambition into operational reality
Nicole Hammond, VP, Center of Excellence, on building true AI readiness from early mindset shifts to sustained capability

If you want to understand the architecture, the legal landscape, and the human side of making AI work in recruiting, this is the episode.

Ep 757: Building The Employee Experience Of the Future Dec 23, 2025

Show notes

The pandemic forced organizations to rethink how they engage their people, with many old rules torn up almost overnight. Five years on, AI has arrived and changed the game again.

Leaders are now facing a new set of questions. How do you design experiences that attract and retain talent while driving the performance your business needs? And how do you prepare for a future that’s increasingly impossible to predict?

So, how do you build a truly future-ready strategy for employee experience?

My guest this week is Jacob Morgan, author of the upcoming book The Eight Laws of Employee Experience. In our conversation, Jacob shares insights from over 100 CHRO interviews that he has conducted around employee experience and reveals the principles that separate thriving organizations from those struggling to keep up.

In the interview, we discuss:

What’s changed about the employee experience in the last five years?
Proactively planning for the future
The eight laws of employee experience
Empathetic excellence
Using AI to amplify humanity
Enablement and augmentation
Personalization at scale
Run culture like an operating system
TA & the employee experience
What are the biggest changes going to be in the next two years?

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Ep 756: TA Trends That Matter For 2026 Dec 19, 2025

Show notes

Hi there, welcome to Episode 756 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

This episode is about Foresight.

Making sense of talent acquisition right now feels impossible. Every week brings new technology announcements, shifting economic signals, and conflicting advice about what comes next. It's tempting to chase the latest headline or follow gut instinct, but reactive decision-making rarely ends well.

Understanding key patterns helps separate signal from noise, and this is where genuine trend analysis grounded in real data becomes invaluable.

So what trends are shaping TA heading into 2026, and how should leaders respond?

My guest this week is Susan De La Vega, SVP Global Tech and Client Experience at Korn Ferry. Korn Ferry has just published their 12th annual TA trends report, built from interviews with over 1,600 global talent leaders, and Susan shares what the research reveals about where talent acquisition is heading.

In the interview, we discuss:

The biggest TA challenges we have seen this year
Methodology behind Korn Ferry’s TA Trends Report
Changing attitudes and approaches to AI
Why your next hire might not be human
The importance of mapping tasks
Investing in future talent
Can TA get a seat at the table?
Breaking the silos in the talent function
Advice to TA Leaders on strategies for 2026
What does the future look like in 3 years' time?

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Ep 755: Balancing Automation with Authenticity Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

We’ve been talking about automation in recruiting for a long time. The AI developments of the last two years have significantly shifted the landscape of what is possible with automation, making it a strategic imperative rather than a nice-to-have. However, the current situation is pretty problematic. Some recruiters and TA teams are doing it poorly, particularly in outreach, inundating candidates with generic, obviously AI-generated messages that all sound the same. Meanwhile, many recruiting teams are resisting automation entirely, concerned about losing the human connection that actually fills roles.

At the same time, in a world of AI sameness, brand, reputation, and genuine relationships with a talent pool are becoming the real competitive advantage and the key factor that actually drives response.

So how do recruiters balance automation with authenticity while building the credibility that cuts through the noise?

My guest this week is Mark Whitby, founder of The Resilient Recruiter podcast. In our conversation, he discusses what should be automated, what must remain human, why investing in your brand now will determine your future success, and the role external recruiters can play in rebuilding trust in the hiring process.

In the interview, we discuss:

The current situation with automation in recruiting

Reticence, bad strategies, and poor implementations

The importance of the personal touch

What are the essentially human parts of the hiring process?

Multi-touch and multi-channel outreach

How external agencies can help build trust with candidate

How will AI change the agency market?

The vital importance of brand and relationship building

What will the future look like?

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Round Up November 2025 Dec 12, 2025

Show notes

If you’ve not listened to Roundup before, it’s a short review of the episodes that I’ve published in the last month to make sure you don’t miss out on the valuable insights that my guests are sharing.

I hope you have been enjoying the live Round Up episodes we’ve been doing over the last few months. This month sees a brief return to the old school format, but don’t worry, Round Up Live will return in January

Episodes featured in this Round Up:

Ep 742: Aligning Hiring with Values

Ep 743: The Talent Acquisition Revolution

Ep 744: How Job Ads Impact Quality Of Hire

Ep 745: Recruiting Excellence In Disruptive Times

Ep 746 Building Digital Trust In Hiring

Ep 747: Rethinking Fairness in Hiring

Ep 748: The Real Value Of AI Agents

Ep 749: Recruiting Past, Present, and Future (Live at TA Tech)

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Ep 754: Finding Clarity in Recruiting Chaos Dec 09, 2025

Show notes

It's easy to feel overwhelmed by the pace of change in talent acquisition. AI developments, vendor mergers and acquisitions, a confusing technology landscape, and shifting candidate behaviours are just some of the current trends making everything feel chaotic. But if we take a step back and look carefully, patterns start to emerge. There are clues everywhere to what the future will look like.

So how do we make sense of it all?

My guest this week is Adam Godson, General Manager of Paradox at Workday. In our conversation, Adam cuts through the noise, explains how the agentic future is taking shape, discusses what Workday’s acquisition of Paradox means for the market, reviews the predictions he made on the show this time last year about 2025, and shares where he thinks things are heading in 2026

In the interview, we discuss:

Whether Adam’s predictions from this time last year were accurate
Workday’s acquisition of Paradox
The power of end-to-end employee lifecycle data
The potential power of agentic AI
Frontline hiring and how it has evolved
AI development
Will candidates have their own career agents?
The confusing TA and HR technology marketplace
What will the future look like? Predictions for 2026

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Ep 753: Hiring Exceptional Executive Talent Dec 08, 2025

Show notes

Despite the challenging economic landscape and wave of layoffs across many sectors, finding exceptional senior talent remains a challenge, and many employers are making it worse for themselves.

Trust has eroded with lengthy interview processes, poor candidate experience, and misaligned employer branding are pushing top talent away. With as many as one in four workers set to be over 55 by 2031, age-related biases are also causing employers to overlook exactly the experience they need

The best insights always come from looking at things from the job seeker's point of view, and that is precisely the insight my guest this week can offer us.

Loren Greiff, Founder of Portfolio Rocket, is a career strategist for C-Suite executives. In our conversation, she reveals how top candidates assess roles, what builds and destroys trust in executive hiring, and why your process might be filtering out your best prospects. The frameworks Lauren discusses will also be very relevant to TA leaders navigating their own career moves.

In the interview, we discuss:

The current state of the market

Cutting through the noise

Identifying urgent and expensive problems

Use of AI in the executive job search

The hidden cost of age bias

Highlighting the trust issue

Ability, agility, and adaptability

The future of careers and jobs

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Ep 752: Using Job Architecture To Drive Value From AI Dec 01, 2025

Show notes

Skills, tasks, jobs, activities. These terms get used interchangeably across HR and talent acquisition, but they mean fundamentally different things. Skills are attributes of people. Tasks are components of work. Jobs are bundles of activities.

Having clarity here matters more now than ever. As AI begins reshaping how work gets done, organisations need a precise understanding of their workforce at the task level. Without clear taxonomies, it becomes impossible to understand how to effectively implement AI for automation and augmentation. So how should companies be preparing to take the most advantage of the inevitable shifts AI will bring?

My guest this week is Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs and author of the new book Job Architecture. In our conversation, he explains how to build effective taxonomies cheaply and scalably with LLMs and why this foundation is critical for navigating change. Ben also teaches Data Science and The Future of Work at NYU Stern and talks through an invaluable framework for assessing the likelihood of AI-driven job displacement.

In the interview, we discuss:

Why grouping people is the core of any HR analysis.

What we get wrong about skills, jobs, tasks, and activities

Why skills aren't the right unit of observation to analyse jobs

AI automates tasks and activities, not jobs and skills.

The vital importance of taxonomies

Using LLMs to build taxonomies cost-effectively at scale.

What are the advantages of doing this properly?

The three forces that help measure the potential for AI-driven job displacement

What does the future look like

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Ep 751: The Trust Problem In Recruiting Dec 01, 2025

Show notes

Uncertain economic times, high volumes of layoffs, and easy access to AI tools mean many employers are dealing with an unprecedented number of applications.

Recruiters are overwhelmed, candidates are getting ghosted, and trust in the recruiting process is suffering. But are TA teams doing all they can to relieve the pressure at the top of the funnel and give job seekers the clarity they need? Employers want candidates to be more intentional about applying for the right roles for them, but often post roles with unclear requirements and don't approach hiring strategically.

So what should TA leaders be doing to fix the process and rebuild vital trust with job seekers?

My guest this week is Catherine Wylie, Senior Talent Acquisition Business Partner at Mavericks Recruiting On Demand. Catherine has recently joined the business after a six-month job hunt. She has some incredible, valuable insights and advice to share for both employers and other TA professionals in job search mode.

In the interview, we discuss:

Catherine's recent job search experience

Dealing with the extreme level of volume at the front of the recruiting funnel

Lack of clarity, unclear requirements, and the importance of transparency

Speed to delivery versus speed to quality

Why the matching process is broken

How employers can be intentional and hire holistically

Which companies are actually doing this well

Restoring trust in the hiring process

Advice to TA job seekers

What should the future look like

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