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
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
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
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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Ep 750: Agents, Data, and the Future of Talent Acquisition
SAP's recent acquisition of SmartRecruiters has generated considerable interest across the talent acquisition community. The deal brings AI-native recruiting capabilities into a broader HR suite, creating complete visibility into data across the entire employee lifecycle. For recruiters, this means seeing what happens after a hire is made with the potential to connect talent acquisition decisions to performance, retention, and engagement outcomes.
This is where AI agents become significant. When agents can access and act on a complete, harmonized data set spanning the whole employee journey, entirely new possibilities open up for how work gets done across the talent function. Yet despite the rapid pace of innovation, AI adoption is still lagging. Vendors are shipping capabilities faster than most organisations can implement them, held back by regulatory concerns, change management challenges, and uncertainty about where to start.
So how can Talent leaders close this gap and take advantage of what is a huge strategic opportunity?
My guest this week is Lara Albert, Chief Marketing Officer at SAP SuccessFactors. In our conversation, she discusses the SmartRecruiters acquisition, explains how agents working across the employee lifecycle could reshape HR, and shares her advice on how employers can get started.
In the interview, we discuss:
Why SAP acquired SmartRecruiters and what happens next
Connecting recruiting data to employee outcomes
Layering Agentic AI on top of people intelligence
What's holding back AI adoption
Regulation, change management, and mindset
TA and HR have a once-in-a-career opportunity to lead transformation
Business cases, buy-in, and getting started
What will the future look like?
Sobre 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.
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