HR Interviews Playlist

On this special episode, The Chad & Cheese team up with our pal and fellow podcaster Matt Alder, who, in true Scooby-Doo fashion, rented a camper van for our East Coast tour. First stop? Glenkinchie Distillery in the Scottish Lowlands. Because, of course, in Scotland the best way to start the day is with some whiskey.

After the tour we whip out the mics and dive into a Tru Glasgow briefing, topics like whether resumes are finally six feet under, upskilling, kids deciding their careers (because they totally know what they want), and whether the US and Europe are finally sharing the same recruiting woes.

Big shoutout to Matt, our Scottish pals, and the sponsors of both Tru Glasgow and Tru Edinburgh:

DAXTRA TECHNOLOGIES

ASHBY

SOLUTIONS DRIVEN

GIGGED.AI

WILLO

and POETRY

Slàinte Mhath!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION COMETH 

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The distribution patterns of the global working-age population are starting to change dramatically. North America and Europe both have aging populations and by 2040, the African continent, with a projected population of 1.1 billion, will have the largest workforce globally.

So how are African countries preparing, and what opportunities are there for employers to tap into this mega talent market?

My guest this week is Hilda Kabushenga, CEO of The African Talent Company. The African Talent Company is a group of pan-African businesses working together to bridge the talent gap in Africa via career development and recruiting solutions. Hilda gives us a unique insight into the current African talent market and its incredible future potential.

In the interview, we discuss:

• How will global workforce demographics change over the next few years?

• Reskilling for the future for jobs where there is demand for talent

• Making interventions around the right skills, democratic access to opportunities, and job creation.

• How does upskilling work at scale?

• Delivering courses on WhatsApp to deal with data availability issues

• Opportunities for global employers to access African talent

• The potential impact of AI

• What will things look like by 2050

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Get my free whitepaper "10 Ways AI Will Transform Talent Acquisition" – Download Now 

Trend Spotting – Find out how my digital course will help you shape the future of talent acquisition in your organization – Click Here

It is becoming clear that company CEOs are taking AI very seriously, and it is starting to inform the strategic direction of many businesses. For example, 44% of CEOs responding to PwC's 2024 Annual Global CEOs survey believed that Gen AI will drive efficiency and boost profits in the next 12 months. 

It is now critical that Talent Acquisition leaders take AI seriously and build strategies that closely align with their business's strategic direction. Unfortunately, in most cases, this isn't happening with the urgency that the situation requires.

So, what are the barriers here? Do we fully understand the challenges, and what can TA leaders do to ensure they stay in step with the rest of their business?

My guest this week is Paul Maxin. Paul is a highly experienced Global TA Leader who has worked at a diverse range of major public and private organizations. Paul firmly believes in the importance of approaching AI strategically with a sense of urgency and shares some pragmatic advice on how best to achieve this. 

In the interview, we discuss:

Why TA is out of step with the rest of the enterprise

The challenges that stop TA from being strategic

The importance of scenario planning

Calls to action

• What questions should TA leaders be asking themselves?

• Data, measurement, and transparency

• Proving the strategic value of TA

• Auditing and the danger of AI being bias on steroids

• The continuing importance of the candidate experience

• An increasing risk of burnout

• What might the future hold?

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Round up is the monthly show on The Recruiting Future Podcast channel that highlights episodes you may have missed and gives you my take on some of the key learnings from the guests.

Episodes mentioned in this Round Up:

Ep 619: TA On The Brink Of Revolution

Ep 620: Hard Skills & Soft Skills

Ep 621: Rain, Whisky and Robots

Ep 622: Redefining Expertise

Ep 623: An Inclusive Candidate Experience

Ep 624: The TA Team Of The Future

Ep 625: What’s Next For Generative AI?

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Anessa Fike, author of The Revolution of Work, F!ck the Patriarchy, discusses her book and the need to dismantle the current systems in the workplace. She shares her journey into fractional HR and explains that fractional work allows organizations to have experts on a part-time basis at a fraction of the cost. Anessa talks about her decision to write the book and her choice of title, emphasizing the need for an uprising and the dismantling of patriarchal elements in society. She hopes that the book will empower those who already think this way and encourage conversations about change. The conversation explores the need for a revolution in the workplace, addressing issues such as obliviousness of leaders, the need for self-reflection, the rise of fractional work, the role of AI, the challenges with founder CEOs, the lack of diversity in funding, and the importance of pay equity. The conversation emphasizes the need for change and the role of allies in creating a more inclusive and equitable work environment.

The hype around the arrival of Gen AI was off-the-scale crazy. Now that things have calmed down and the use of LLMs is starting to normalize, it can be easy to think that the hype was overblown. However, we are about to see some developments in technology that will change our mindsets entirely and start to bridge the gap between the initial hype and our current reality.

My guest this week is Jack Houghton, Co-Founder of Mindset AI. Mindset AI uses cutting-edge AI technology in the HR and Learning space. Jack talks us through the potential of Autonomous AI Agents to change how we work forever and help some of the initial hype around AI become reality.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The huge developments coming in the next 12 months

• How will removing the current friction in accessing Gen AI accelerate adoption?

• How Autonomous AI Agents will bridge where we are and where we are going.

• Tools, APIs, and logical reasoning

• How do AI Agents communicate in Swarms to build workflows and intelligently manage tasks?

• Ask use cases and Do use cases.

• What are the limitations and the implications for jobs?

• The importance of taking a strategic approach

• Where might we be in 3-5 years?

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Much of the conversation about the future of talent acquisition focuses on absolutes. The questions debated revolve around whether there will actually be a need for talent acquisition in the future, whether robots will do all the recruiting, and whether most jobs will even still exist. 

While these discussions are essential, they tend to polarize opinion and don't do much to move the industry forward. We need to have nuanced conversations about the practicalities of this transformation process and focus on the skills and roles that will drive the change we need.

My guest this week is Andreea Lungulescu, Principal Talent Acquisition Partner at thermondo. Andreea strongly advocates for strategic talent acquisition and the importance of TA shaping its own destiny. She has done some significant work around the future roles talent acquisition will need and has some highly valuable insights to share

In the interview, we discuss:

• Elevating the role of TA and making it strategic

• The importance of understanding rapidly changing business priorities

• How are employers responding to AI?

• The enthusiasm vs. implementation gap

• What are AI skills?

• Removing silos in the talent function

• Disrupting the traditional career framework in TA

• What TA roles might we see in the future?

• What skills do TA professionals need to develop

• What is going to happen over the next 18 months

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This week we interview Recruitics CEO Adam Stafford in front of live audience at TATech. We cover a lot!

• Adam Stafford shares his diverse background, including roles as a product manager, restaurateur, and DOD supply chain specialist.

• Recruitics is known for pioneering programmatic job advertising.

• Launch of AI-powered conversational analytics tool Brion.

• Recruitics Brion helps non-technical users access recruitment data insights quickly.

• Discussion on the future of recruitment tech involving more AI and predictive analytics.

• The industry current challenges include fraud and the volume of AI-generated applicants.

• Emphasis on meeting candidates where they are and improving matching processes.

Get my free whitepaper "10 Ways AI Will Transform Talent Acquisition" - Download Now

Trend Spotting - Find out how my digital course will help you shape the future of talent acquisition in your organization - Click Here

When we talk about employers becoming more inclusive, the focus is often on big strategic thinking and a long process of organizational change. However, companies can often make significant progress by taking small steps in important areas.

The quality of the candidate's experience is the critical first step in an organization's inclusivity, and recent data indicates that quality has been dramatically deteriorating over the last 18 months.

So, what practical and immediate steps can employers take to be more inclusive with their recruiting?

My guest this week is Advita Patel from Comms Rebel. Advita is a communication and workplace culture strategist who helps organizations cultivate a culture of inclusion. In our conversation, she shares practical, pragmatic advice on how employers can build inclusive candidate experience by improving the quality of their communication.

In the interview, we discuss:

• The importance of inclusive communication

• Being a comms rebel

• How can the recruiting process be more inclusive?

• Job descriptions and degrees

• Recognizing bias

• Taking micro-steps 

• The impact of poor communication on candidates

• What can employers and individual recruiters do to improve the candidate experience?

• The dangers of overly generic AI-generated language

• Candidates calling out employers in public

• Changing expectations of work and the importance of belonging

• Will AI make things better or worse?

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It's been clear for a long time that the way we traditionally think about skills and expertise is out of step with our fast-changing and volatile world. This issue runs through the education system in many countries and also influences how employers attract and upskill talent.

So, what are the innovative approaches that could solve this problem?

My guest this week is Ed Fidoe, co-founder and CEO of the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS). LIS has been described as the most radical new university to open in decades. It offers degrees that use an interdisciplinary approach to solving some of the complex problems that business and society face. There are interesting lessons for employers here around the concept of interactional expertise.

In the interview, we discuss:

• What is LIS, and why was it founded?

• Building networks of knowledge

• Connecting academic learning to the workplace

• Enhancing employability by addressing the current mismatch of expertise between college and the workplace

• Intellectual curiosity and problem-solving

• Cultivating diversity of thought through diversity of background

• The power of interactional expertise in the knowledge economy 

• What future skills will be needed in an AI-driven world?

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