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

The world of work is changing quickly, and the way people move between roles is changing with it. Hiring for senior positions looks very different from the way it did even five years ago, while many people still approach their own careers with instincts shaped by a market that no longer exists. What does it mean to manage a career well in this environment, and how do the people who navigate transitions successfully approach them differently? My guest this week is Kelly O. Kay, Global Managing Partner of the Enterprise Software and AI Practice at Heidrick & Struggles. Kelly has spent more than twenty years in executive search, and together with his longtime colleague Jeff Sanders he has just published Show Up to Win, a Harvard Business Review Press book on how leaders should manage their careers and navigate transitions. In our conversation, he explains how hiring at the top has changed, why career management needs to be a continuous and strategic activity, where AI does and doesn't fit into the process, and what people misunderstand about the way search firms work. In the interview, we discuss: How hiring at the most senior level has changed What the best leaders do to get the best roles Career management as a continuous process, not a response to wanting to move Quality of company, quality of role, quality of offer Showing them how you think via executive dialogue rather than question and answer What people misunderstand about how search firms work Using AI as an interview coach What does the future of leadership careers look like? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

Recruiting is generating more activity than ever and less connection. Candidates are using AI to produce polished applications at scale, employers are using AI to screen and reach out at scale, and the result is a level of noise that is eroding trust on both sides. More automation applied to the same processes will only make this worse. Solving it means rethinking how matching works, with depth of understanding on both sides and transparency and fairness designed in from the start. So what does that look like in practice? My guest this week is Matt Wilson, Co-founder and CEO of Jack and Jill, whose AI agents work on both sides of the hiring market. In our conversation, Matt shares why supercharging existing processes deepens the noise problem, how transparency and independent auditing build trust in AI matching, and where human judgment remains essential. In the interview, we discuss: Why job hunting is still an inefficient, luck-based process How AI is supercharging broken processes and creating noise on both sides of hiring Building trust in agentic driven processes Bias, fairness, and transparency Challenging deep-seated beliefs about how recruiting gets done Where human judgment remains essential in the hiring process How Jack and Jill manage their own hiring process What does agent-to-agent recruiting mean for the future of hiring? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

AI is becoming more embedded across recruiting tools, but there is a meaningful difference between AI that automates workflows behind the scenes and AI that talks directly to candidates. When AI conducts the conversation, the stakes are higher; the first interaction shapes how candidates perceive the employer and the role. That is why many talent acquisition teams remain cautious about AI interviews, even as they adopt AI everywhere else. A growing number of enterprises are now running AI interviews at scale in high-volume hiring, and the data coming back on candidate experience and quality of hire improvements is difficult to ignore. So what does that evidence show, and what should it mean for how the industry thinks about AI in hiring? My guest this week is Dave Vu, Co-Founder and COO of Ribbon, who spent 15 years in talent and people leadership before co-founding the AI interview platform. In our conversation, Dave shares what enterprises are reporting from deploying AI interviews across thousands of candidates, how those candidates are responding, and what this could mean for the future of hiring. In the interview, we discuss: The shift from AI experimentation to enterprise deployment The difference between back-office AI and candidate-facing AI Moving from chatbots to natural conversations The impact on the candidate experience Building candidate trust and AI interviewing Improving speed, efficiency and quality of hire Detecting cheating and protecting interview integrity How will AI interviewing evolve over the next few years Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

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 Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

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/