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

In frontline retail hiring, speed is everything. If the process is too slow, candidates take offers elsewhere, and stores are short-staffed, hurting both service and revenue. AI-powered automation is now helping some organizations close that gap, cutting hiring times, saving thousands of hours, and driving measurable financial value for the business. 

The organizations seeing real results started with the problem, not the technology, because layering AI onto a process that isn't working only makes things worse. They also had to answer a question that rarely gets asked: how quick is too quick, and when does speed start to feel impersonal? The goal isn't to remove humans from the hiring process. It's to remove the noise so candidates reach the right people faster.

My guests this week are Stef Nikitas, Director of Talent Acquisition at Ace Hardware, and Rachel Allen, Senior Director of Talent Acquisition at 7-Eleven. In our conversation, they share how they transformed frontline hiring with AI, the results it delivered, and where they chose to keep humans firmly in the process.

In the interview, we discuss:

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When organizations hire thousands of frontline workers, delivering a personal candidate experience becomes almost impossible. Recruiters spend all of their time answering calls, responding to messages, and running through the same screening questions over and over. There is little time left for the conversations that actually matter. Meanwhile, candidates want speed, flexibility, and a process that respects their time, including outside business hours.

So how can AI solve this?

My guests this week are Jeroen Klerkx, People Operations Leader at Picnic, and Bill Fischer, CTO at VONQ. In our conversation, recorded live at HR Tech Europe, they share what happened when Picnic gave candidates the choice of a human or AI screening call, the surprising feedback they received, and how they built 10 years of recruiting knowledge into an AI agent that frees up time for their recruiters to have more valuable conversations.

In the interview, we discuss:

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HR is at a pivotal moment. AI has shifted the conversation in a way nothing else has in years, the demands on the function are growing faster than its capacity to respond, and the questions being asked of it are bigger than they have ever been. The opportunity is significant, but so is the gap between where HR is and where it needs to be.

So what does it actually take for HR to step into this moment?

In this episode, recorded at HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam, I'm joined by two guests with strong views on what's holding the function back and what good looks like. Anna Carlsson, an HR tech analyst based in Stockholm, shares what she's seeing across the Nordic market and why culture and infrastructure matter more than the technology itself. Nazhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/nazim-ünlü-0774b714/im Ünlü, a Global HRD and HR transformation leader, then joins me to talk about why HR is more needed than ever and the strategic shift the function has to make to stay relevant.

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Talent acquisition is sitting in a strange place right now. AI is in every conversation, but the work of actually hiring people is getting harder rather than easier. Application volumes are swinging in unpredictable ways, the workforce itself is changing shape, and the reality on the ground is some distance from the hype.

So what is actually going on in talent acquisition right now?

In this episode, recorded at HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam, I'm joined by two guests who have spent decades watching this industry evolve. 

Wolfgang Brickwedde from the Institute for Competitive Recruiting shares what his research is telling him about the market employers are navigating and where vendors are still getting it wrong. 

Mervyn Dinnen then joins me to talk about the reality behind the AI hype and how the multigenerational workforce is reshaping the world of work.

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The real value of AI agents in HR comes from connecting them to work across the employee lifecycle, not from deploying them on individual tasks. That's where most large organisations are getting stuck. Working in a fully agentic way means dealing with different systems and different data sources that often have no shared foundation.

The result is fragmented experiences for employees and managers, with the end-to-end potential remaining out of reach. Getting there requires some serious work in data governance, process design, and integration, the kind of foundational work that rarely gets mentioned at industry conferences.

So what needs to be in place before AI agents can work at enterprise scale?

My guest this week is Melissa Shelley Höjwall, Global HR Technology Lead at H&M Group. In our conversation, which we recorded live at HR Tech Europe, she explains what it takes to build a connected AI architecture across HR and why many companies are undermining their own progress.

In the interview, we discuss:

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We're living through one of the most consequential shifts in how work gets done. AI is everywhere in headlines and vendor pitches, but the reality inside organisations is far more nuanced than the noise suggests. Personal adoption is running well ahead of how companies are embedding the technology into actual workflows. Demographic changes continue to tighten labour supply, and the HR tech vendor landscape is consolidating and expanding all at once, leaving buyers uncertain about where to invest. 

So how should HR leaders be thinking about technology, workforce design, and the role they need to play in shaping what work actually becomes?

Recorded live at HR Tech Europe, my guest this week is Stacey Harris, Chief Research Officer at Sapient Insights Group. Stacey runs the longest-running HR systems survey in the market, and we discuss what her data shows about where things are heading.

In the interview, we discuss:

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Something has shifted in AI over the last few months. The pace of AI model updates keeps increasing, and strategies that made sense a few months ago are already out of date. New tools can take on long, complex pieces of work largely on their own, changing what's possible across hiring. For TA leaders, long-term planning has become almost impossible, while the recruiter's role itself is being rethought as candidates use AI just as actively as employers do.

So what does effective TA leadership actually look like right now?

My guest this week is Bryan Ackermann, Head of AI Strategy and Transformation at Korn Ferry. In our conversation, Bryan shares the changes he is seeing across the recruiting funnel and how organizations can build the resilience they need to keep pace.

In the interview, we discuss:

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We live in a world where recruiters can connect with thousands of people with a single click. LinkedIn, CRMs, and AI tools all promise to manage relationships at a scale unimaginable a generation ago. 

The challenge is that genuine trust doesn't scale automatically. When interactions become automated and transactional, the very thing that makes recruiting work starts to break down. People still hire people they trust, and the best referrals still come through relationships, not algorithms.

So how do you build and maintain trust at scale?

My guest this week is Denise Chaffin, Founder of Top Source Talent and host of the Talking TA podcast. In our conversation, she shares how nearly four decades in recruiting have shaped her thinking on building trust at scale and ensuring technology strengthens relationships rather than undermines them.

In the interview, we discuss:

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Many organizations are struggling with attrition, disengagement, and costly mis-hires that quietly destroy value. The real problem isn't finding talent, it's creating conditions where people can perform.

Research suggests that when people feel they belong, organizations see significant gains in productivity, retention, and innovation. Belonging can be measured, built into how work gets done, and connected directly to business outcomes.

So how can talent acquisition use belonging to change how it hires and the strategic value it delivers?

My guest this week is Eric Knauf, Founder and CEO of BelongHQ and author of The 56% Solution. In our conversation, he shares a practical framework for measuring belonging and explains how it could reshape TA's role in an AI-driven world.

In the interview, we discuss:

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AI skills are quickly becoming a baseline expectation in hiring, with more employers adding AI fluency to their job descriptions every month. Yet when you ask those same employers what AI fluency actually looks like for the vast majority of roles that aren't deeply technical, most struggle to answer. 

Universities still treat AI primarily as a cheating problem, restricting how students use it rather than helping them become fluent. So there's a growing gap between what the workplace demands and what education delivers. 

How do we define AI fluency in practical terms, and who should be leading that conversation?

My guest this week is Kathleen deLaski, Founder of the Education Design Lab and author of Who Needs College Anymore?. In our conversation, she shares what employers and students are revealing about AI readiness, and why the current approach risks failing a generation of new talent.

In the interview, we discuss:

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