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

Matt Alder
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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. Each episode explores topics such as AI, recruiting automation, recruitment marketing, employer branding, skills-based hiring, assessment, candidate experience, DEI, internal mobility, and the transformation of TA teams. Recruiting Future is an essential resource for everyone involved in hiring. Matt Alder is a globally respected talent acquisition futurist, author, and speaker with over 25 years of experience exploring what’s next in recruiting. Renowned for his expertise in strategic foresight and technology trends, Matt provides a unique perspective that empowers leaders to navigate disruption. His deep industry knowledge and ability to spark meaningful conversations make Recruiting Future a must-listen for talent acquisition and HR professionals everywhere.

  1. 2 days ago

    Why Every Employer Brand Sounds The Same

    Employer messaging has a sameness problem. Candidates researching potential employers find the same values, the same mission statements, and the same well-meaning phrases wherever they look, which makes choosing between companies harder than it should be. The upside is a genuine opportunity. Standing out is no longer about outspending the competition; it comes from understanding what your organization offers that others don't, and the work of finding and proving that difference is now within reach of employers of any size. So how do you uncover what genuinely makes you different? My guest this week is James Ellis, founder of Employer Brand Labs and author of several books on employer branding. James has spent his career arguing that every company, whatever its size, can compete for talent by leaning into what makes it different. In our conversation, he shares why difference matters more than ever, why real proof beats nice-sounding claims, and where employers should start. In the interview, we discuss: Why so many employers sound identical What scraping every Fortune 500 career site reveals Why playing it safe has become the riskiest strategy The opportunity for employers outside the Fortune 500 The chicken soup story and the power of proof How AI changes the economics of employer brand work Finding evidence in the material you already have Why differentiation takes courage as well as insight What does the future look like? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

  2. 4 days ago

    What Strategic HR Really Means

    The gap between claiming to be strategic and actually operating strategically has real consequences, and nowhere are they clearer than at the top of HR. CHRO turnover is unusually high at the moment, and it also spikes sharply in the first year under a new CEO. A change at the top usually brings a new thesis about what the business needs, and what the CEO needs from HR shifts with it. Many CHROs find themselves running a system built for the previous mandate, and by the time the gap becomes visible, trust has already eroded. The problem is structural rather than personal, which means it can be fixed. So what separates the HR leaders who thrive in the role from those who don't? My guest this week is Jackson O. Lynch, founder of Talent Sherpa and a former CHRO who works with CEOs, CHROs, and boards on connecting talent systems to business strategy. In our conversation, Jackson shares why mandate misalignment drives so much churn at the top of HR, what operating at the top level means in practice, and why AI is making the redesign of work urgent. In the interview, we discuss: Why is CHRO turnover so high? Mandate misalignment and the conversation that rarely happens What does strategic HR look like in practice? Systems for transformation versus systems for stability Looking at business strategy through the talent lens Business logic versus compliance logic in the C-suite The trust issue Why AI is forcing a rethink of how work is designed Can HR take this opportunity for reinvention, and what does the future look like? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

  3. 21 Aug

    Who Gets The Biggest Job In HR?

    The job of Chief People Officer has never been more demanding, and the way organizations decide who gets it is changing fast. Appointment volumes have fallen sharply, boards are rethinking what they value in an HR leader, and the profile of the people winning the top seats looks different from even two years ago. Experience of having done the job before is no longer the deciding factor it once was, which changes the calculation for everyone with ambitions on the role. So what are boards really looking for when they appoint a Chief People Officer? My guest this week is Olivia Sharp, a Partner at executive search firm Eton Bridge Partners, where she leads searches for Chief People Officers and board-level appointments and heads the firm's research into CPO hiring globally. In our conversation, she shares what the data reveals about experience versus potential, the skills that now define the role, and how TA leaders can position themselves for the top job. In the interview, we discuss: The fundamental shifts in what organizations value when hiring Chief People Officers Why boards are taking calculated risks on potential rather than buying proven experience What the appointment data means for first-time CPO candidates The leadership qualities that now matter more than HR expertise Where the traditional HR career path falls short The commercial capability gap in HR development How TA leaders can position themselves for the top job The swing back to external hiring and why new doesn't mean radical What will the Chief People Officer role look like in the future? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

  4. 20 Aug

    The New Hiring Decision

    Skills have been on the HR agenda for decades, but they rarely became the basis for real decisions; frameworks took so long to build that the business had moved on before they were finished. What's different now is that AI agents are starting to handle work that used to require a person, and that changes the question employers need to ask. It's no longer just about who to hire; it's about whether the work needs a human at all. When you can map work to the skills it requires, you have a basis for deciding what stays with people and what moves to an agent. Making that shift isn't straightforward, though; it raises questions about what HR itself needs to look like and what capabilities the function needs to develop. So what does it take to make skills the basis for deciding how work gets done? My guest this week is Ciara Harrington, Chief People Officer at Skillsoft. In our conversation, Ciara shares how Skillsoft is rethinking which work needs a person, why HR has to become more technical to lead that conversation, and what happens when you add "bot" to your talent strategy. In the interview, we discuss: How is AI changing the way we think about skills? Build, buy, borrow, bot Helping leaders understand what work could be done differently Tasks, skills, jobs, and units of work How understanding skills underpins this transformation AI can be more expensive than humans Building an effective governance model Hiring technical skills into HR and connecting the data Critical human skills and why they need to be developed faster What does the future look like? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.

  5. 18 Aug

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part 5 The Market

    This is the final episode of Decoding the C-Suite, a five part miniseries from Recruiting Future about how leadership really thinks about AI, recorded with the leadership team at SmartRecruiters seven months into their acquisition by SAP. Three years into the AI boom, the marketing noise has never been louder. Everything is AI-powered and every vendor makes the same claims. In the final episode, Steve Hardy, who leads marketing at SmartRecruiters, is unusually candid about all of it: why he tells his own sales team to stop demoing, what he calls AI washing, why buyers should start with business priorities rather than features, and what actually builds trust with buyers and candidates alike. The series closes with the question that ran through every conversation: what does good leadership look like in an AI-driven world?

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part 5 The Market

  6. 18 Aug

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part 4 - The Product

    This is episode four of Decoding the C-Suite, a five part miniseries from Recruiting Future about how leadership really thinks about AI, recorded with the leadership team at SmartRecruiters seven months into their acquisition by SAP. AI is moving faster than any buyer can absorb, and that creates a genuine design problem: build for the boldest customers and you lose everyone else, build for the cautious and you fall behind. Shefali Netke, VP of Product Design at SmartRecruiters, lives in that tension every day. She explains how to design for a spectrum of readiness rather than an average user, why she refuses to keep designing for the old world, how her team builds AI fluency, and what it takes to merge two design cultures into one team.

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part 4 - The Product

  7. 18 Aug

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part One - The Thesis

    The organisations genuinely driving AI change in talent all have one thing in common: alignment with the C-suite. Decoding the C-Suite is a five part miniseries from Recruiting Future exploring how leadership really thinks about AI. Recorded over one day with the leadership team at SmartRecruiters, seven months into their acquisition by SAP, the series unpacks AI through five lenses: the thesis, the people, the money, the product and the market. If you want to understand the conversations happening around your own leadership table, and how to win them, this series is for you. In the opening episode, the tables are turned as SmartRecruiters' Allyn Bailey interviews Matt on the future of talent acquisition. Matt shares his honest assessment of the outdated stories the industry keeps telling itself, why mental models matter more than systems, how candidates are already breaking recruiting, and a prediction about AI agents talking to AI agents that he's prepared to be held to. It sets the agenda for the four leadership conversations that follow.

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part One - The Thesis

  8. 18 Aug

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part Three - The Money

    This is episode three of Decoding the C-Suite, a five part miniseries from Recruiting Future about how leadership really thinks about AI, recorded with the leadership team at SmartRecruiters seven months into their acquisition by SAP. If you've ever struggled to get AI investment signed off, this episode is for you. Tom DiDesidero, CFO at SmartRecruiters, explains exactly what he wants to see in a business case, why he backs short, measurable pilots over big commitments, and how to bring evidence rather than instinct. He also lifts the lid on the real economics of AI, from unpredictable inference costs to gross margins far below anything the SaaS world is used to, and makes a prediction about how the AI and SaaS worlds inevitably come together.

    Decoding the C-Suite: Part Three - The Money
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About

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. Each episode explores topics such as AI, recruiting automation, recruitment marketing, employer branding, skills-based hiring, assessment, candidate experience, DEI, internal mobility, and the transformation of TA teams. Recruiting Future is an essential resource for everyone involved in hiring. Matt Alder is a globally respected talent acquisition futurist, author, and speaker with over 25 years of experience exploring what’s next in recruiting. Renowned for his expertise in strategic foresight and technology trends, Matt provides a unique perspective that empowers leaders to navigate disruption. His deep industry knowledge and ability to spark meaningful conversations make Recruiting Future a must-listen for talent acquisition and HR professionals everywhere.

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