Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Remote hiring, freely available deepfake tools and harvested identities have created an opportunity that organized criminals are now taking seriously. State-backed operations are training workers to apply for remote roles using stolen credentials and proxy interviewers. The aim is the salary and access to source code, customer data and intellectual property once they are inside. Recruiters are the ones meeting these people first, and in most organizations they are assessing them with a background check and their own judgment while IT, InfoSec and legal are rarely involved. So how seriously should employers be treating this, and what does a credible response look like?

My guest this week is Lauren Furey, Principal Product Manager at Proof, where she leads product work on candidate fraud and identity verification. In our conversation, Lauren explains how these attacks work, where hiring processes are most exposed, and what TA teams can do about it.

In the interview, we discuss:

Bots, deepfakes, identity harvesting and proxy interviewers

The criminal motivations behind state-backed infiltration

Why the background check is no longer enough on its own

How much recruiters overestimate their ability to spot a fake

Why remote hiring created the gaps bad actors exploit

Building identity continuity through the hiring process

Making fraud prevention a shared responsibility with IT and InfoSec

The candidate experience trade-off and where to place verification

Verifiable credentials and protecting candidates' own identities

Practical first steps and what does the future look like?

https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurennfurey/

https://www.proof.com

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If you've not listened to Round Up 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.

This month Round Up returns to its live format, and this is a recording of my live conversation with my guest co-host Rhona Pierce from Workfluencer Media, about six of the episodes published during July and August 2026

Episodes featured in this Round Up:

Ep 803: AI Native Recruiting

Ep 807: Trust, Transparency And The AI Interview

Ep 809: The Data Foundation For AI In Hiring

Ep 812: Who Trains The Human In The Loop?

⁠⁠https://recruitingfuture.com/2026/07/ep-812-who-trains-the-human-in-the-loop/⁠⁠

Ep 816: Hiring For Judgment In The AI Era

https://recruitingfuture.com/2026/08/ep-816-hiring-for-judgment-in-the-ai-era/

Ep 821: Why Every Employer Brand Sounds The Same

https://recruitingfuture.com/2026/08/ep-821-why-every-employer-brand-sounds-the-same/

Inside most organizations, the pressure has shifted from proving that AI works to showing what it is worth in cost, productivity and headcount. Some workforce plans are now being decided on that basis before anyone has looked closely at how the work is done. The organizations getting the most from AI are treating it as a question of work design rather than technology.

So what does designing work around AI involve, and what does it cost the organizations that skip that step?

My guest this week is Matt Campbell, Managing Director at Alvarez & Marsal, where he leads the Talent, Organization & People practice and advises organizations on workforce strategy and organization design. In our conversation, he explains why most AI pilots produce an inconclusive result, a five-stage model of AI's impact on work, the ways organizations misread their own people, and why cutting too far, too fast creates a talent debt.

In the interview, we discuss:

- Why most AI pilots are designed to prove the wrong thing

- Who owns AI?

- Why big tech's approach to AI and headcount is the wrong template for everyone else

- The difference between a job and a role

- The five A's: avoid, assist, augment, automate and autonomous

- How to put numbers against cost, productivity and capacity

- The four things organizations most often get wrong

- Why unauthorized AI use gives employees the benefit and the organization the risk

- Talent debt and the cost of cutting too far, too fast

- Are you designing work around AI, and what does the future look like?

In software development, AI tools now write much of the code, and at a growing number of organizations junior developers are no longer doing that work themselves. Tech is where the impact on a first job is clearest, and likely a preview of what other industries will see next. When the tools handle the technical work, what is left requires judgment, collaboration and communication, capabilities that take much longer to develop. That changes how people are prepared for work and what employers should be hiring for. What should the pathway into a tech career look like now? My guest this week is Reuben Ogbonna, Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Marcy Lab School, a one-year alternative to college in Brooklyn that prepares young adults for careers in tech. In our conversation, he explains why the traditional college model is falling behind, what people are still needed for when AI writes the code, and how employers should rethink entry-level hiring.

In the interview, we discuss:

The impact AI is having on first jobs

The rising bar of expectations for early careers

What skills should students now be learning

Why developing judgment matters and why it is difficult to teach

The difference between tasks and jobs

How do educators keep up with changing needs?

Learning that has to mimic the real workplace

How should employers redesign entry-level hiring?

What does the future look like, and how might AI drive job creation?

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Hi there, welcome to episode 822 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder.

Employer branding teams are still under sustained pressure. Budgets have shrunk and headcount has been reduced across many organizations, even when the hiring the business needs has become more specific and more critical. Despite all of the cuts, some employer brand leaders are still winning investment and influence.

What sets them apart is how closely their work connects to what the business is trying to achieve and how effectively they communicate its impact.

So what does it take to make employer branding matter to the business?

My guest this week is Stephen Quinn, CEO of Atomic, an insight-led agency working with employer brand leaders at some of the world's largest organizations. In our conversation, Stephen shares what the most effective employer brand leaders do differently, which metrics carry weight with the business, and how to plan employer branding for the long term.

In the interview, we discuss:

Trends and challenges in Employer Branding

What separates the most successful employer brand leaders

Attaching Employer Branding to the critical needs of the employer

Where should employer branding sit in the organization?

Building relationships across the business

Measuring and reporting on impact and ROI via the right metrics

Long-term strategy thinking rather than short-term campaign thinking

What does the future of Employer Branding look like

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