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

By Matt AlderBusiness Careers Management

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

August 14, 2025Ep 726: How AI Is Finally Killing The Resume
The explosion of AI-generated applications isn't just breaking traditional recruiting - it's creating an unprecedented opportunity by making sophisticated assessment tools accessible for early-stage screening. There is now the opportunity to filter thousands of applicants based on actual predictive data. However, the vendor landscape here can be confusing, and some offerings lack the transparency that employers need.

So how can organizations identify tools that leverage AI's efficiency while respecting established peer-reviewed assessment science?

My guest this week is Djurre Holtrop, Assistant Professor at Tilburg University. In our conversation, Jura reveals how AI could democratize evidence-based assessment for organizations of all sizes and offers advice on best practices and the future assessment landscape.

In the interview, we discuss:
The science-practice gap in assessment
The tension arising from the rapid development of AI and the need to evaluate work performance results over time.
AI isn't making the process worse because CVs and cover letters have no predictive validity.
How is AI improving the science?
Transforming recruiting with early-stage screening
How bias carries through the recruiting process
Resetting our mental models
What does the future look like?
Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
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27 min
August 13, 2025Ep 725: Making Neurodiversity Work
Up to 20% of the global workforce is likely to be neurodivergent and mostly undiagnosed. Understanding how to unlock the full potential of people with non-typical brains should be important to all employers. The difference between the right and wrong job fit for someone with ADHD or other neurodivergent conditions can be the difference between struggling daily and becoming a top performer.

So what if the key to creating exceptional teams lies not in trying to fit everyone into the same mold, but in asking the right questions to understand what each person needs to thrive?

My guest this week is Shell Mendelson, an ADHD career coach with 35 years of experience helping neurodivergent individuals find their ideal work fit. In our conversation, Shell shares her proven process for identifying the "must-haves" that enable neurodivergent employees to perform at their highest level and explains why understanding individual needs benefits both employees and employers.

In the interview, we discuss:
The challenges for ND people at work
Why everyone's needs are different
The benefits of recognising the spectrum of different brains in your organization
The contradictions of neurodiversity
The importance of job fit and asking the right questions
How small accommodations can make a massive impact
Making work better for everyone

Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify.
37 min
August 08, 2025Ep 724: Search, Social, And Strategic Recruitment Marketing
Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.

This episode is about Talent and Technology.

The recruitment marketing landscape has been about more than just job advertising for a long time. However, many employers are still missing out on the unique benefits search and social bring to the marketing mix by approaching these channels in the same way they approach job boards.
As AI reshapes these platforms and candidate behavior evolves rapidly, there's a widening gap between companies seeing dramatic results and those struggling with failed campaigns and wasted investment. The difference isn't budget—it's about building long-term strategies based on data and a strong understanding of each channel's unique strengths and differences.

So what can employers do to ensure they are getting full value from their recruitment marketing budgets?

My guests this week are Kelsey Krater, Chief Platform Officer at Appcast, and Appcast's Director of Digital Media, Alexandra Horwitt Anema. In our conversation, we talk about the unique strengths of search and social, how they are evolving and the critical importance of data in recruitment marketing.

In the interview, we discuss:
Driving quality hires from recruitment marketing
Why search and social aren't job boards
Search and intent
Filling funnel gaps and building diversity
A layered media approach
Telling stories with social
The danger of prioritising quick wins over long-term strategy
Recent developments in search and social
The critical importance of data
Nurturing and remarketing
Pipeline building over transactional thinking
What does the future look like?

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22 min
August 06, 2025Ep 723: The Impact Of Career Gap Bias
For too long, gaps in resumes have been a red flag for recruiters. But what if this outdated bias is costing you your best hires? In today's world, where everyone's constantly reskilling and skills become obsolete within months, penalizing career breaks makes absolutely no sense. This red flag mentality drives ageism and automatically screens out experienced professionals. Organizations clinging to "recent experience" requirements are handing their competitors access to mature talent bringing fresh perspectives, proven loyalty, and decades of expertise.

So how can forward-thinking employers flip this nonsensical bias into strategic advantage by recognizing that career breaks often create stronger professionals, not weaker ones?

My guest this week is Hazel Little, CEO at Career Returners. Hazel exposes the real cost of resume gap discrimination and shares proven strategies for building returner programs that deliver business results. In our conversation, she reveals why the red flag mentality around career breaks belongs in recruiting's past.

In the interview, we discuss:
What is a career returner?
What are the common issues returners face
The human impact of bias
What drives career gap bias?
Incorrect perceptions, false assumptions, and outdated approaches to hiring
The significant advantages of tapping into the returner talent pool
The significance of the decreasing shelf life of skills
Advice to employers
What might the future look like?

Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify.
33 min
August 01, 2025Ep 722: Soft Skills, Hard Data – Making Predictive Hiring Work
How do we move from reactive recruiting to predictive talent acquisition? In an era where performance metrics drive every business decision, recruitment often remains stubbornly intuition-based, especially when evaluating soft skills like empathy, communication, and critical thinking.
What if AI could help us predict performance before a candidate even starts? And what happens when we connect hiring decisions to actual performance outcomes, creating a feedback loop that makes recruiters smarter over time? Can technology help us understand which risks are worth taking, and which gut feelings we should trust?

My guests this week are Veronique Lacasse, Senior Manager at Bell Canada, and Stephane Rivard, Co-founder and CEO of HiringBranch. In our conversation, Veronique and Stephane walk us through Bell's integrated approach to talent acquisition, which utilizes AI assessment data on soft skills to create a predictive, performance-driven hiring system that is still very much driven by human recruiters.

In the interview, we discuss:
Soft skills and business performance
Measuring soft skills with AI driven assessments
Challenges in high-volume hiring
Building a feedback loop in recruiting, onboarding, and training
Showing recruiters the performance outcomes of their decisions
The candidate experience
Why human recruiters aren't being replaced
What does the future look like?

Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing their strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment; it takes less than 5 minutes.

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify.
24 min
August 01, 2025Ep 721: Inside Zapier's AI Transformation
Organizations face a critical AI inflection point: the pressure to implement quickly conflicts with uncertainty about the right approach. While some companies are still cautiously experimenting with basic AI tools, others have fundamentally reimagined how work gets done. What separates the companies achieving remarkable results from those stuck in endless pilots? Often, it's not the technology itself but the culture and approach to adoption.

So how exactly are companies at the cutting edge getting to the cutting edge?

My guest this week is Brandon Sammut, Chief People Officer at Zapier. Ever since Zapier's"CEO issued a 'Code Red" on AI back in March 2023, Zapier has been undergoing an AI transformation in every part of its business.. In our conversation, Brandon shares how their AI strategy is boosting both productivity and employee engagement, why and how every new hire must demonstrate AI fluency, and why it is critical to keep the human touch in talent acquisition and throughout the employee journey.

In the interview, we discuss:
Competing in an AI-first world
AI is a tool, not an outcome in itself.
AI in People Operations
Increasing personalization and connection in talent acquisition
Understanding the moments that matter
Using the human touch as a competitive advantage
The critical importance of psychological safety and experimentation
Why culture beats skills
The four levels of fluency in Zapier's AI Fluency Framework
Bias & ethics
Where is AI transformation heading, and what will the future look like

Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Teyou'regy.

If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately.

Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment—it only takes a few minutes.

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify.
39 min
July 30, 2025Ep 720: Why Talent Acquisition Can Drive An HR Revolution
We are on the cusp of a significant transformation in the world of work, with HR and Talent teams currently at the frontline of change. CHROs face unprecedented questions about the impact of agentic AI on the structure of organisations and the continuing need for agility and adaptation as skills go in and out of relevance at an ever-accelerating pace.

The most innovative CHROs are looking in two directions - collaborating with IT teams in entirely new ways and studying how product teams operate with their test-learn-iterate mindset.

Over the last few years, talent acquisition has often been more exposed to constant tech experimentation and workflow optimization than their HR colleagues. So could TA Leaders play a significant role in driving this workforce transformation?

My guest this week is Amy Schultz, VP Market Development & Operations for RPO at Korn Ferry ANZ. Amy brings a unique perspective from a career spanning agency, RPO, and senior in-house roles at LinkedIn and Canva. In our conversation, she shares her belief that TA's natural product mindset and tech experience well-position recruiting teams to guide HR's evolution from fixed programs towards an agile, iterative product development mindset. This is a fascinating discussion!

In the interview, we discuss:
The core challenges employers are facing
A mismatch in AI readiness
What are the most innovative CHROs doing?
Learning from product managers to move from programs to products
TA's unique influence and tech adoption advantage
Removing silos in the talent function
The changing meaning of Build, Buy, Borrow, Bot, Bounce.
Human / Agent hybrid working.
Human first doesn't mean AI last and vice versa.
What does the future look like

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32 min
July 25, 2025Ep 719: Recruiting for Skills That Don't Exist Yet
Recruiting Future is a podcast that helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing their strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

This episode is about Foresight.

The pace of change has become relentless. Economic volatility, AI adoption, hybrid work challenges, and geopolitical shifts are forcing companies to completely rethink their workforce strategies. Organizations that once planned in five-year cycles now refresh their approaches on a quarterly or even monthly basis. This unprecedented disruption demands immediate action - but many HR and talent teams remain paralyzed by uncertainty. Traditional recruitment and development approaches simply can't keep pace with how rapidly skills requirements are evolving. What concrete steps should companies take today to build resilience into their talent strategies?

My guest this week is Peter Miscovich, Global Future of Work Leader at JLL. Peter has spent 25 years helping Fortune 100 companies navigate workforce transformation and has never been busier than right now. In our conversation, he shares practical insights on building adaptive talent strategies, why continuous learning has become non-negotiable, and the specific skills companies must prioritize immediately to remain competitive in a constantly changing environment.

In the interview, we discuss:
What are employers most concerned about?
AI integration and workforce transformation
The age of anxiety
Creating multiple flexible scenarios to shape the future
Building Liquid Workforces
Organisational structures that combine humans and AI
Continuous learning, psychological safety, and resilience
Anticipating the skills of the future and bridging the L&D gap
Reframing your professional identity
How should employers be preparing for 2030?

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34 min
July 19, 2025Ep 718: Is Skills-Based Hiring Hype Or Reality?
Recruiting Future is a podcast that helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing their strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology.

This episode is about Talent.

After years of hype surrounding skills-based hiring, the data is showing that it is really happening at scale and becoming strategically important across all sectors and company sizes, with some surprising patterns emerging. Organizations are seeing benefits beyond just filling roles, and the implications for TA and HR are significant. What's driving this shift, and what do TA teams need to know?

My guest this week is David Wilkins, Chief Product and Strategy Officer at Talent Neuron. David has produced some exclusive data insights for Recruiting Future that paint a clear picture of where skills-based hiring stands today. In our conversation, he shares where the market is, what specific companies are doing, the real benefits they're seeing, and his thoughts on how AI might change everything in the future.

In the interview, we discuss:
What the data tells us about how skills-based hiring is being adopted
Which types of companies are moving the fastest
Expanding talent pools
Driving internal mobility
Spotting potential at scale
Implications for talent acquisition
Breaking the silos in the talent function
The full impact of AI is not yet being felt.
The intersection between tasks and skills
What does the future look like?

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A full transcript will appear here shortly
23 min
July 17, 2025Ep 668: Strategic Budgeting For TA Leaders
Budgeting has long been challenging for talent acquisition teams, but the stakes have never been higher in today's volatile economic environment. Many TA leaders find themselves stuck in a cycle of defending past decisions, managing cuts, and struggling to align budgets with business strategy. Meanwhile, CFOs expect data-driven proposals, ROI insights, and long-term planning that TA teams often aren't equipped to deliver.

So, how can talent acquisition leaders transform their approach to budgeting, build trust with the C-suite, and position themselves as strategic business partners

My guests this week are Madeline Laurano, founder of Aptitude Research, and Joshua Secrest, VP of Client Advocacy at Paradox. We discuss Aptitude's new report, The Talent Acquisition Budget Playbook, which contains actionable strategies to move beyond reactive spending, harness automation for efficiency, and demonstrate clear ROI to unlock longer-term investment.

In the interview, we discuss:

The background behind the report

Some shocking stats about impending budget cuts, budget confidence, and wasted spend

Getting maximum return and building credibility

Thinking 3-5 years out

How to demonstrate ROI

Operations benefits versus financial benefits

Speaking the language of the CFO

The importance of automation and the results it delivers

What does the future of TA look like?

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33 min

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

From the publisher's feed

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.