The Josh Bersin Company

Josh Bersin

Insider Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology, with analyst perspectives, executive interviews, and in-depth vendor analysis.

  1. 4D AGO

    Five Things We Didn't Talk About Much In 2025: The Human Capital Agenda

    In this podcast I reflect on five big things we didn’t talk about much this year, and each falling into the “Human Capital” agenda. We spent much of our year worrying about AI, agents, productivity, and jobs, largely putting the “Human Capital” agenda on the back burner. While AI is certainly the defining technology of our times, there are human capital issues to consider. As I discuss, these “soft” issues help us address the “socio-technological” impacts of AI. There’s no question that AI is amazing and it will change our lives. As business people, however, we need to remind ourselves of the human capital issues that matter too. PS: The impact of AI on the job market is already taking a toll. Younger workers are now experiencing much higher unemployment rate than tenured workers, largely because companies believe AI can replace apprenticeships. I’m not a fan of this strategy but you can listen to this analysis to understand. Our big 2026 Imperatives report comes out in January, stay tuned. Additional Information The Dynamic Organization (the human capital strategies that matter during change) The Collapse And Rebirth Of Online Learning And Professional Development Human Centered Leadership (Galileo Learn program) The Healthy Organization (research)     Chapters (00:00:00) - The Business Agenda for 2025(00:09:57) - Human Capital Issues for 2021(00:13:57) - The Future of Jobs Is Uncertain

    23 min
  2. DEC 17

    The Online Learning Market Is Collapsing, And It's Good

    This week Coursera announced the acquisition of Udemy, demonstrating the accelerating collapse of the 25-year old traditional online learning industry. As I explain in this podcast, this industry is not going away but it’s being quickly and radically transformed by AI. The upside here is a new, highly personalized world of professional development ahead. While courseware, certifications, credentials, and online curricula won’t disappear overnight, the business model of providers is changing very quickly. In this podcast I explain this shift and also show you how our particular Galileo business model works. As someone who participated in the birth of this industry in 1998, I could not be more excited about this new world. If you’re a corporate HR or L&D professional, this transforms your training function. If you’re a vendor or consultant, this changes your business model. And if you’re a business person or senior leader, you have an exciting new world of professional development appearing before your eyes! Stay tuned for more as this market shift accelerates. Like this podcast? Rate us on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Additional Information How AI Is Blowing Up The Corporate Learning Market: The Whole Story The Revolution of Corporate Learning: Join The Crusade (research and case studies) Galileo: The AI Rebirth of The Josh Bersin Academy     Chapters (00:00:00) - The collapse of the online learning industry(00:07:29) - The New Paradigm of Continuous AI-(00:17:43) - The Transformation of L&D

    19 min
  3. DEC 11

    The Art, Science, And Magic Of Recruiting In The World of AI

    Talent Acquisition is perhaps the most important but also complex part of business. In this podcast I explain the intricate details of this $750 billion market, which is now being transformed by AI. As you’ll hear, recruitment is far more nuanced than you may think, so “experts” in HR can do some pretty amazing things. I hope this podcast helps you see the entire landscape and also understand where and why AI can have such an impact. Many tech companies have tried and failed to transform the market (Google Jobs failed, Facebook Jobs failed), yet some thrive and deliver tremendous value. As you listen to this podcast I hope you get a better sense of where this market is going and I encourage you to get Galileo and ask Galileo to explain the vendor market in detail (it is updated almost daily). As always I welcome your feedback and if you have an amazing or interesting story to share, please reach out to us. Like this podcast? Rate us on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Additional Information The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting (research) AI-First TA Transformation: Join the Revolution! (certificate course) Talent Acquisition Factbook (Benchmark your TA team).   Chapters (00:00:00) - The Process of Hiring and Talent Acquisition(00:07:42) - The 3 Step Process on Hiring Process(00:12:49) - Interviewing the Right People(00:22:23) - One more message about talent acquisition(00:26:18) - A message for recruiters and talent acquisition professionals

    28 min
  4. DEC 9

    Kmart Australia’s Chief People Officer Tristram Gray Uses AI Assessment To Hire At Scale

    Tristram Gray, Chief People and Corporate Affairs Officer at Kmart Group in Australia, explains how the retail giant is revolutionizing high-volume hiring with AI. Managing 55,000 employees across 450 stores, Kmart recruits 12,000 people annually while processing hundreds of thousands of applications. Tristram shares how the company uses Sapia.ai to create a mobile-first, simulation-based AI assessment process that evaluates candidates on culture, values, and behaviors rather than traditional resumes, previous experience, or technical skills. The results are remarkable: 73% reduction in time-to-hire (from 44 days to 11 days), 2.5 times longer retention, enhanced diversity, significant cost savings, and 9 out of 10 candidate satisfaction – which translates to a better brand and customer perception of the retail company. Tristram discusses the importance of providing personalized feedback to every candidate, the transformation of recruiter roles from reactive hiring to proactive talent planning, the need for change agility with operations and HR, and his philosophy that AI, when used ethically and responsibly, can create deeply human impact. This conversation offers powerful insights for anyone navigating the introduction of AI in HR. Additional Information Powering the Frontline Workforce: How Frontline-First Companies Thrive The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting New Galileo Certificate Program: Elevating Talent Acquisition with AI Chapters (00:00:03) - What Works: Kmart's AI Hiring Strategy(00:01:04) - Kmart's Chief People and Corporate Affairs Officer on the challenges of(00:05:44) - What Makes a Good Fit for Your Company?(00:13:57) - Australia's diversity program(00:14:52) - The Return on Recruitment by 2020(00:17:11) - How did the role of the recruiters change(00:19:01) - The Professional Roles of Distribution Centers(00:19:56) - In the Elevator With AI Recruitment(00:21:22) - What Works in Your Hiring Process

    22 min
  5. DEC 1

    The Airline Industry's Rocketship Growth: IATA Navigates Future of Aviation Careers

    This podcast is one I’ve been working on for months. Jane Hoskisson, Director of Talent, Learning, and Diversity for IATA (the world’s advocacy, support, and training provider for 300+ airlines). Jane is joined by Alina Aronberga, HR Aviation Leader (former SVP of HR for Air Baltic), who partnered with IATA and others in GAAST, The Global Aviation and Aerospace Skills Taskforce. (You will hear Jane and Alina discuss GAAST in the podcast.) Jane and Alina discuss many things, including the rapid growth in airlines, the critical need for talent, skills, and diversity, and their comprehensive Future of Work Aerospace Industry Skills Matrix. This industry skills model, which defines skills at four competency levels, details the industry-wide skills for the major job roles in an airline. It also describes the way these skills will change with AI. And this entire model, which integrates detailed product and operation plans from Boeing, Airbus, and many airlines and service providers, was developed with Galileo® As Jane explains in the discussion, Galileo was the thought partner, AI consultant, and analyst that directly helped IATA develop this model. This means that any airline, airline provider, or aerospace manufacturer, can get the model from IATA and GAAST, and use Galileo to understand how these new roles and skills impact their operations, product plans, services, and internal talent strategies. Galileo, loaded with this data, is now available for thousands of aviation HR professionals to help with recruiting, job design, pay and benefits analysis, and training. And there’s more. Through Jane and Alina’s relationships with airlines and other sources of business and economic data, the model describes how aviation talent needs vary by geography. Aviation skills in demand in the US, for example, are tilted toward space travel and aeronautics. In the middle east, where airlines are doubling in size in 4-5 years, the critical skills are in pilots, crew, and front-office staff. You can download the latest version of the skills matrix here, and there’s lots to learn by simply reading it. You can see how this authoritative, highly researched model can be used for training, hiring, succession, pay, and all the critical decisions airlines must face in this unprecedented period of growth. Interested in the topics and stories shared here? Join us at our annual conference Irresistible 2026, on June 8-10 at USC in Los Angeles! For those of you who are in other industries, let me assure you that airlines have precisely the same talent, hiring, leadership, and training problems you have – but with a safety and regulatory-driven urgency not seen in any other industry. So these are complex, highly skilled HR teams and we can all learn a lot from their experiences and stories. I want to thank Jane, Alina, and all our airline clients and partners for supporting this work. We have much more to talk about in this fascinating industry, so please listen, learn, and join us at Irresistible. Like this podcast? Rate us on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Addit... Chapters (00:00:00) - Interview: Jane Hoskissen from IATA on Diversity in the(00:01:26) - Analyst: The airline industry's complexity(00:04:37) - Airline Diversity in 2017(00:05:49) - Your Group's Talent Work(00:07:10) - The Future of Work(00:09:29) - Employment Strategy: The Talent Model(00:17:55) - What is the role of skills in the airline industry?(00:20:02) - Do You Look to Airlines as Human Capital Leaders?(00:21:35) - Thanks for your Galileo work

    23 min
  6. NOV 28

    Understanding Talent Density And Ditching Integrated Talent Management

    Everyone: one of the big existential changes in management and leadership is a whole new model for talent. Today, for the first time in human history, we’ve agreed to pay one person a $Trillion dollars for his skills (Elon Musk). And this trend is growing. Google paid $2.7 Billion to hire Noam Shazeer, the co-founder of Character AI. Mark Zuckerberg paid around $100 Million to hire Jiahui You, a top OpenAI researcher. And others, Lucas Beyer, Alexander Kolesnikov & Xiaohua Zhai, were rumored to receive $100 M signing bonuses to join Meta. What’s going on? What happened to our belief in the “bell curve” of performance, forced rankings, salary bands, and all the traditional ideas of talent management? Well it’s time to throw that stuff out the window and think differently. As many researchers have pointed out, including Boris Groyberg from Harvard, these “hyperperformers” can deliver 100 to 1000 times higher outcomes than an “average” employee and their utility and value is very hard to reproduce. Groyberg’s studies show that hyper-performers in one company turn into middling performers in another. And this is borne out by our research, which shows that individuals who fit the culture and behaviors of a company well can absolutely deliver 10-fold higher performance than those who “grind the gears.” All this said, the traditional talent management model has not worked out well, and I want to encourage you to ditch it. Even the job market itself bears this out: some “10x engineers” make 5 times as much money as engineers sitting next to them, and the same is true for sales people, consultants, politicians, and athletes. (The top ten NBA players make 7X more pay than the “average” NBA player.) So why do we try to “commoditize” this into a bell-curve based talent system? Integrated Talent Management, as defined by HR, leads to over-hiring, layoffs, and all sorts of “performance commoditizing” effects. If you use the Talent Density philosophy, by contrast, you wind up with a smaller company which performs at a much higher level. Listen to this podcast and I’ll explain all that needs to be addressed. Suffice it to say that in a world of AI-powered Superworkers, it’s your talent system (as a whole) that’s going to drive extraordinary growth and competitive advantage, not fitting people into the bell curve. Like this podcast? Rate us on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. Additional Information The Myth Of The Bell Curve: Look For The Hyper-Performers How To Create Talent Density We Wasted Ten Years Talking About Performance Ratings. Seven Things We’ve Learned. Galileo: The World’s Trusted Agent for Everything HR   Chapters (00:00:00) - Initiated Talent Management: The Future of Talent(00:06:11) - Talent Management and the Layoff Cycle(00:08:53) - Talent density and the management process(00:17:03) - Bradley: Talent density and the culture(00:22:14) - Airline Industry

    23 min
4.5
out of 5
52 Ratings

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Insider Insights on Corporate Talent, Learning, and HR Technology, with analyst perspectives, executive interviews, and in-depth vendor analysis.

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