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

TA leaders usually know what needs to improve in their function; the hard part is deciding what to do first. AI is adding to the confusion, with an ever expanding vendor landscape and technology that is getting stronger for many use cases while remaining weak in others. So what do the teams that keep improving do differently? My guest this week is Tony de Graaf, Co-Founder of the Recruiting Excellence Foundation, whose global benchmark measures the maturity of TA functions around the world against a single framework. In our conversation, Tony shares what the benchmark says TA does well and where it falls short, why no region is as far behind as it thinks, how to make sense of the AI vendor landscape, and the one question high-performing teams use to decide what to improve next. https://www.linkedin.com/in/graaftony/ https://recruiting-excellence.org In the interview, we discuss: Building a global benchmark of TA maturity What TA functions already do well, and where the gaps are Why so many regions believe they are behind the others Narrow AI tools and the time they do and don't save Do AI tools pay for themselves? Making sense of a confusing vendor landscape Personal AI agents and what they really cost The one test high-performing TA teams apply to every improvement Why improvement is continuous, not a project What does the future look like? Take the Recruiting Excellence assessment and contribute to the next global benchmark: https://mattalder.me/2027 Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

I recorded four conversations at UNLEASH World in Paris in October, and there was one theme that kept coming up in all of them. My interviewees argued that AI is starting to redesign the work itself, and with it how organizations are built, how roles are defined, and how people are hired. Most of them build HR technology for a living, so they see further ahead than most employers, but they obviously have a stake in the future they describe. So what does all of this mean for how companies are run and how they hire? My guests are Mervyn Dinnen, an analyst and author on HR and talent trends; Allyn Bailey, Senior Director of Corporate Narrative and Executive Communications at SmartRecruiters; Ronni Zehavi, Co-Founder and CEO of HiBob; and Dalit Brosh, Co-Founder and CEO of Glimpse. In our conversations, they discuss why talent acquisition may stop being a separate function, what it takes to put an agent on the org chart, how to assess people for roles that have not been created yet, and why the experience people have at work still decides whether they join and stay. In the interview, we discuss: The missing debate about what should stay human and what should go to AI Does talent acquisition still make sense as a separate function? Hiring people into the company rather than into a role The widening gap between forward-looking and transactional organizations Four dimensions of AI change, from employee psychology to government regulation Agents on the org chart and what it takes to onboard, govern and review them Is the era of the large enterprise over? Assessing what people are capable of rather than what they have done Measuring learning agility and adaptability to AI What will the big HR narrative of 2027 be? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

There is no shortage of predictions about AI in HR and hiring at the moment. Most of them come from analysts, vendors and commentators looking in from the outside. Far more useful, and much harder to come by, is the perspective of someone actually doing the work, running the transformation and making these changes inside their own organization. That is exactly why I wanted to talk to this week's guest. My guest is Vic Akosile, Head of AI Transformation and People Strategy at Cloudflare, where he also serves as Chief of Staff to the Chief People Officer. He sent me a set of predictions for AI in HR in 2027, and they make a great framework for understanding what is really changing and what it means for the people doing this work. In our conversation, Vic talks me through those predictions and what each one looks like in practice. In the interview, we discuss Vic's predictions, including: More HR teams will build and maintain their own AI agents and applications HR functions will appoint internal AI product leaders Businesses will judge AI on much more than time saved or cost avoided Employees who get faster with AI will hide that they are using it Work design will come before headcount planning Recruiters will use live exercises and work samples to assess judgment What the longer-term future holds beyond 2027 Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

AI can automate a large and growing share of the recruiting process, and within a few years it may be capable of handling almost all of it. For employers, the question is what AI should be doing in hiring, not simply what it could, and that means deciding where people still need to be involved. Human in the loop is the standard response, but it can amount to little more than a person reviewing and approving what the AI recommends. A recruiter in that position becomes a validator rather than a decision maker, and a process built that way can feel just as impersonal as one with no human in it at all. Human in the loop is not the same as human agency, where recruiters apply their own judgment, context, and knowledge of the business to the decision. So how should employers decide not just where people belong in the process, but what they are there to do? My guest this week is Rob Devlin, founder of Devlin Talent.. In our conversation, Rob explains why the problem has to come before the technology, what human agency looks like in practice, what recruiters should do with the time AI gives back, and how choosing which parts of hiring to keep human can become a competitive advantage. In the interview, we discuss: Starting with the problem, not the product What should AI be doing, rather than what could it do? Why AI won't fix a broken process Using AI to improve the intake meeting Human in the loop versus human agency What to deliberately choose not to automate Six lenses for looking at any AI decision Where human conversations create competitive advantage What TA leaders can build themselves before buying new technology Why the AI decisions being made today are designing the future of work 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 Jim Miller VP of People & Talent at Ashby about four of the episodes published in September 2026 Episodes featured in this Round Up: Ep 823: How AI Is Disrupting Entry Level Jobs Ep 824: Is AI Creating Talent Debt?  Ep 825: The Real Risks Of Candidate Fraud  Ep 827: Agent To Agent Recruiting