The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

From Talent Acquisition to Organisational Performance

 

For years, Talent Acquisition has been measured by hiring metrics: time-to-fill, cost-per-hire, source-of-hire and offer acceptance rates. While these remain important, they only tell part of the story. The real question is not whether we filled the vacancy quickly, but whether hiring decisions improve business performance. As organisations become more data-driven and AI makes recruitment increasingly efficient, Talent Acquisition has an opportunity to redefine its value—not as a function that fills jobs, but as one that directly influences productivity, innovation, growth and competitive advantage. In this webinar, we'll explore how TA leaders can shift the conversation from recruitment outcomes to organisational outcomes.

 

Key Themes We'll Cover:

• Beyond Hiring Metrics – Why traditional recruitment KPIs no longer capture the full impact of Talent Acquisition
• Connecting Talent to Business Results – How hiring decisions influence productivity, revenue, customer experience, innovation and long-term organisational success
• Quality of Hire Revisited – Moving beyond performance reviews to understand the characteristics of hires who create lasting business value
• The Rise of Talent Intelligence – Using workforce data, labour market insights and AI to make better strategic hiring decisions
• Partnering Beyond HR – Building stronger relationships with finance, operations and business leaders to align hiring with organisational priorities
• From Filling Roles to Building Capability – Shifting focus from immediate vacancies to developing the workforce needed for future growth
• Measuring What Really Matters – Exploring new ways to demonstrate Talent Acquisition's contribution through business-focused outcomes rather than recruitment activity
• The Skills of the Modern TA Leader – Why commercial acumen, workforce planning, analytics and strategic influence are becoming core capabilities
• The Future of Talent Acquisition – How the function is evolving into a critical driver of organisational performance in an AI-enabled world

Talent Acquisition has the opportunity to become one of the most strategically important functions in every organisation—but only if it measures success differently and speaks the language of business. Join Recruiting Brainfood as we explore how leading organisations are making this shift, and what it takes to position TA as a driver of organisational performance rather than simply a provider of talent.

 

We are on Friday 21st August, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here and register for the show by saving your spot here.

 

Ep403 is supported by our friends Lavalier by Textio

 

Better hires, half the time. What happens when hiring is finally structured at scale.

 

Every TA leader has lived with the speed-versus-quality tradeoff for too long: go faster and quality slips; raise the bar and hiring slows down.

But slow hiring and bad hiring come from the same place: a process that isn’t structured.

 

When hiring criteria isn’t clear and interviews are improvised, every interviewer assesses something different, candidates aren’t evaluated fairly, and teams stall and re-interview to improve decision confidence. That’s what produces both the delay and the mis-hire. Fix the structure and you fix both at once.

 

Lavalier by Textio gives you a complete structured interview platform, connected to your ATS, so you can:

• Save 12+ hours per hiring cycle
• Eliminate time and $$$ spent on training
• Cut total interviews in half
• Reduce time-to-decision to minutes

Ready to save time and improve hiring quality? Book a structured interview demo and get a $50 Amazon gift card.

NATIONAL INTERVIEW WEEK - HELPING 100,000 YOUNG PEOPLE INTO THE WORKFORCE

 

National Interview Week is a nationwide movement designed to equip young people from state-educated schools with the confidence, skills, and professional exposure they need to succeed in interviews and access meaningful career opportunities.

 

Over the next five years, we aim to support 100,000 students through structured interview training, industry-specific preparation, and direct engagement with professional volunteers from leading organisations.

This initiative addresses a critical gap: many talented young people lack access to professional networks, tailored interview preparation, and industry insight. National Interview Week exists to change that.

 

We are getting together with an ensemble cast of recruitment practitioners to share insight on how to be a great job interviewee. We'll bring recruiters from agency side, RPO, in-house, from companies large and small, public and private in a collect

 

We're on Weds 19th August, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register by saving your spot here.

 

Ep401 is supported by our friends Equitas

 

All-in-one interview platform harnesses the power of technology to make hiring more efficient and less biased. Focus more on candidates, and less on note-taking. Say goodbye to old-fashioned, paper-based interviews. Say hello to one source of truth.

 

Check it out here

MEET EMA - YOUR AI EMPLOYEE FOR HR, IT & FINANCE (LIVE DEMO)

 

We're back with another founder chat and live demo, this time with Surojit Chatterjee, CEO of Ema. Former CPO of Coinbase and Senior Exec at Google and Flipkart, Surojit is a vastly experienced tech executive. I'm delighted to be share some time with him to learn about his vision and why the future of human-AI collaboration is going to look lot like Ema.

 

Live demo folks so make sure you register

 

We're on Tues 18th August at 6pm BST / 10am PST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

 

Ep398 is supported by our friends at Ema

 

Ema builds AI employees for the enterprise - purpose-built to automate complex workflows across HR, IT, and Finance, from hire to retire.

 

Ema's AI employees work end-to-end across the full employee lifecycle: sourcing and screening candidates, onboarding new hires, resolving IT and HR queries, managing benefits, and processing finance requests - delivering speed, precision, and security at enterprise scale.

 

Trusted by Fortune 500 companies worldwide, Ema is backed by leading investors and partners like Accel, Workday, ADP, and Hitachi. With a library of pre-built agents and dedicated deployment teams, Ema delivers fast time-to-value, taking enterprises from proof-of-concept to secure, large-scale production.

 

Learn more about Ema today here

The State of AI Readiness: A Framework to Gauge Your Organisation's AI Readiness

 

Every organisation says it's embracing AI - but very few can answer a simple question: how AI-ready are we, really?

 

While new tools continue to appear at breakneck speed, successful AI adoption depends on much more than buying software. It requires the right leadership, governance, skills, culture, data, processes and appetite for change. In this webinar, we'll introduce a practical framework for assessing AI readiness across your organisation, helping talent leaders understand where they are today, what gaps need closing, and what it will take to move from experimentation to sustainable transformation.

 

Key Themes We'll Cover:

• What AI Readiness Actually Means – Looking beyond technology to assess the organisational capabilities required for successful AI adoption
• The AI Readiness Framework – A practical model for evaluating your organisation across leadership, people, processes, technology and governance
• Leadership and Vision – Why executive sponsorship and a clear AI strategy are essential before scaling implementation
• Skills for the AI Era – Assessing whether your workforce has the capabilities needed to effectively work alongside AI systems
• Culture and Change Readiness – Understanding how curiosity, experimentation and trust influence successful adoption
• Governance Without Bureaucracy – Establishing policies for responsible AI that encourage innovation while managing risk
• Data: The Hidden Foundation – Why data quality, accessibility and security remain critical enablers of effective AI
• From Pilot Projects to Enterprise Scale – Identifying the common barriers that prevent promising AI initiatives from delivering lasting business value
• Benchmarking Your Organisation – How to identify your current maturity level, prioritise investments and build a realistic roadmap for progress

AI readiness isn't a destination - it's an ongoing capability that organisations will need to strengthen as technology continues to evolve. Whether you're just beginning your AI journey or already rolling out AI across multiple functions, this session will give you a practical framework for understanding where you stand today and the actions that will have the greatest impact tomorrow.

 

We're on Friday 14th August, 2pm BST - make sure to follow the channel here (recommended) and register by saving your spot here.

 

Ep400 is supported by our friends CoderPad.

 

CoderPad is the technical hiring platform built for the AI era - trusted by over 4,000 organizations in 165+ countries to evaluate real engineering skill, not test-taking ability. From first screen to final interview, we help companies confidently hire developers who can build, collaborate, and thrive in modern, AI-integrated environments.

 

Request a demo now!

The Employer Branding Reckoning: Authenticity vs Automation

 

Employer branding has entered a new era. AI can now write careers content, personalise candidate outreach, generate videos, and automate engagement at a scale that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. At the same time, candidates have never been better at spotting generic messaging, over-produced content, or a culture that doesn't match reality. So where should employers draw the line? In this session, we'll explore how organisations can embrace AI without losing the authenticity that attracts - and retains - the right talent.

 

Key Themes We'll Cover:

• The New Employer Brand Toolkit – How AI is changing the way organisations create, distribute and measure employer brand content
• Authenticity Still Wins – Why real employee stories continue to outperform polished corporate messaging in building trust with candidates
• Scaling Without Sounding Generic – Practical ways to use automation while keeping your employer brand distinctive and human
• Personalisation at Scale – Where AI can improve candidate engagement, and where human interaction still makes the biggest difference
• The Candidate Trust Factor – How job seekers evaluate employer claims through reviews, social media and employee-generated content
• Balancing Speed with Substance – Avoiding the temptation to prioritise content volume over meaningful communication
• The Role of Recruiters and Employer Brand Teams – How AI is changing workflows, skills and responsibilities rather than replacing them
• Examples That Get It Right – Organisations successfully combining AI-powered efficiency with genuine employer storytelling
• What Comes Next – How employer branding is likely to evolve as AI becomes a standard part of every talent acquisition function

Whether you're building an employer brand from scratch or adapting an established strategy for the AI era, this session will provide practical insights to help you stay credible, competitive and connected with candidates. Join Recruiting Brainfood as we explore what authentic employer branding looks like when automation becomes the norm.

 

We're on Friday 7th August, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show (save my spot) here.

 

Ep396 is supported by our friends at Joveo

 

High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS.

Find out more here

Essential Guide for Increasing Talent Density

 

In an era of relentless cost optimisation, organisations face a pivotal choice: maintain headcount breadth or concentrate excellence. Talent density—the concentration of exceptional performers within a team, function, or entire company—has emerged as the decisive competitive advantage for high-performing organisations. This is not merely about hiring stars; it is about architecting environments where elite talent multiplies collective output, accelerates innovation velocity, and repels mediocrity through sheer gravitational pull. As remote work dissolves geographic constraints and AI democratises baseline competence, the organisations that win will be those that deliberately engineer density rather than accumulate volume. This webinar explores how talent acquisition leaders can become the architects of this transformation.

 

• Defining True Density – Distinguishing talent density from headcount reduction, and why ten exceptional performers routinely outperform thirty average ones

 

• The Multiplier Effect – How concentrated excellence elevates standards, accelerates peer learning, and creates self-reinforcing cycles of performance

 

• Hiring for Density, Not Just Fit – Shifting from culture-fit screening to identifying candidates who will raise the ceiling of those around them

 

• The Cost of Dilution – Quantifying how a single underperformer in a dense team erodes collective output, psychological safety, and retention of top talent

 

• Compensation Architecture – Why traditional pay bands suffocate density strategies, and how to justify asymmetric investment in exceptional performers

 

• Density in Distributed Teams – Maintaining and measuring talent concentration when physical proximity no longer enforces organic collaboration

 

• The Exit Imperative – Why protecting density requires the courage to move on underperformers faster than most organisations currently dare

 

• Measuring What Matters – Moving beyond individual performance ratings to team-level density metrics that reveal where excellence truly clusters

 

• TA as Density Curator – Elevating the recruiter's role from vacancy filler to strategic gatekeeper who protects and amplifies organisational capability

 

Watch this essential discussion to redefine your strategic mandate. Talent density is not a hiring philosophy—it is the operating system of future-ready organisations, and the recruiters who master it will shape which companies thrive or fade.

 

We're on Friday 31st July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

Ep399 is supported by our friends at Lavalier by Textio

 

Your interviews are where hiring decisions are made, but most aren’t designed to make good ones.

Vague requirements, inconsistent questions, slow feedback, and gut-based debriefs all undermine your hiring quality.

 

Lavalier gives recruiting teams one platform to make your interview process 2x better at predicting candidate job performance.

 

Lavalier plugs into your ATS and helps you:

• Run structured intake that aligns your team on the right skills and competencies before the first convo.
• Auto-generate interview plans and assignments from intake, so everything is connected to role requirements.
• Guide interviewers in real-time with AI-powered prompts and notes that keep interviews consistent and give candidates a great experience.
• Get evidence-based hiring signals, so you can go from application to offer faster and with higher confidence.

Built by the OG AI for TA team at Textio, Lavalier is free to get started. Recruiting Brainfood readers get 250 bonus credits when you sign up!

CALCULATING EMPLOYEE LIFETIME VALUE

 

For decades, talent acquisition has been measured by speed and cost—time-to-fill and cost-per-hire dominated the conversation while the true economic impact of every hire remained frustratingly opaque. Yet as workforce strategy matures into a board-level priority, a critical shift is underway: organisations are finally beginning to quantify what an employee is actually worth over their entire tenure. Employee Lifetime Value (ELTV) represents the holy grail of people analytics—a single metric that captures productivity, revenue generation, retention savings, and cultural contribution from day one to departure. This webinar demystifies the calculation, exposes why most organisations get it wrong, and reveals how TA leaders can use ELTV to transform recruitment from a cost centre into a profit-driving strategic function.

 

Key Themes We Must Address:

 

• Defining the Metric – Breaking down the ELTV formula beyond simplistic revenue-per-employee to include performance trajectory, promotion velocity, and knowledge transfer value

 

• The Data Dilemma – Why HRIS fragmentation, inconsistent performance data, and short organisational memory make accurate ELTV calculations notoriously difficult

 

• Hiring for Longevity vs. Performance – The tension between selecting candidates with maximum immediate output and those who compound value over years of tenure

 

• The Cost of a Bad Hire, Revisited – How ELTV reframes traditional cost-of-vacancy models by revealing the exponential drag of underperformers who stay too long

 

• Segmenting by Role and Level – Why a one-size-fits-all ELTV approach fails, and how to build role-specific models for revenue-generators, innovators, and cultural anchors

 

• TA's Credibility Currency – Using ELTV projections to secure executive buy-in for longer search cycles, premium candidate experiences, and competitive offer strategies

 

• The Retention Multiplier – How onboarding quality, manager effectiveness, and development investment directly inflate or deflate ELTV before a recruiter's work is even tested

 

• Predictive ELTV in Sourcing – Emerging signals and assessment methodologies that forecast lifetime value at the point of application, not just post-hire

 

• From Metric to Movement – Building organisational accountability around ELTV so that talent acquisition, HRBPs, and line managers share ownership of the full employee journey

 

Watch this essential discussion to elevate your strategic influence. Mastering ELTV separates transactional recruiters from architects of sustainable workforce value—and the window to lead this evolution is narrowing.

 

 

We're on Friday 24th July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

 

Ep397 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse

 

With application volumes at historic highs, AI claims shaping procurement, and candidate fraud entering the funnel in ways most teams can't track, your ATS decision carries more weight than ever. Download this updated guide from Greenhouse for a practical roadmap to cut through vendor noise, understand true total cost of ownership, and choose the platform your hiring function actually needs.

 

Download now

The Death of the Junior Recruiter:

Where Is the Next Generation Coming From?

 

Since 2022, the talent acquisition landscape has undergone a seismic shift. Once a thriving entry point for ambitious professionals, the function has been systematically truncated as economic pressures mount, headcount budgets shrink, and AI tools increasingly optimise workflows that once demanded human intuition. Companies have all but ceased hiring early-careers recruiters, creating a dangerous vacuum at the foundation of the profession. This webinar confronts an uncomfortable truth: we are witnessing the extinction of the junior recruiter role, and with it, the pipeline that has sustained the industry for decades. Where will tomorrow's talent leaders come from if we stop cultivating them today?

 

Key Themes We Must Address:

• The Great Early Career Hiring Freeze – Why organisations stopped investing in entry-level TA talent after 2022 and what this signals about perceived value

 

• AI's Double-Edged Sword – How automation optimised efficiency while simultaneously justifying the elimination of junior roles traditionally used for training

 

• The Experience Trap – The growing expectation for "senior-only" hiring that leaves no room for developing raw potential or diverse perspectives

 

• Broken Apprenticeship Models – The collapse of structured learning pathways where junior recruiters once absorbed expertise from seasoned professionals

 

• Skills Atrophy at the Top – What happens when senior recruiters lose the ability to delegate, mentor, or scale their impact without junior support

 

• The Succession Crisis – Who steps into leadership roles in 5-10 years when an entire generation of developing talent never entered the pipeline

 

• Redefining Value in TA – Moving beyond cost-per-hire metrics to recognise the long-term strategic damage of eliminating early-careers investment

 

• Alternative Pathways – Whether adjacent professions (HR tech, marketing, operations) can realistically feed experienced professionals into TA leadership

 

• Reversing the Trend – Practical frameworks for justifying junior headcount to CFOs who view TA as a cost centre ripe for automation

 

Watch this essential discussion on the long term future of the function!

 

We're on Friday 17th July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

 

Ep395 is supported by our friends at Greenhouse

 

With application volumes at historic highs, AI claims shaping procurement, and candidate fraud entering the funnel in ways most teams can't track, your ATS decision carries more weight than ever. Download this updated guide from Greenhouse for a practical roadmap to cut through vendor noise, understand true total cost of ownership, and choose the platform your hiring function actually needs.

 

Download now

Fixing Hiring Manager vs Recruiter MIS-Alignment

The recruiter-hiring manager relationship is the most consequential partnership in talent acquisition—and yet, according to Metaview's 2026 AI & Hiring Alignment Report surveying 505 recruiting and hiring leaders, it is also the most dangerously misaligned. While an overwhelming 90% of leaders describe their partnerships as "good," a staggering 58% privately admit they actively wish they could bypass their counterpart entirely. This silent fracture is not merely an interpersonal inconvenience; it is a direct driver of candidate loss, speed-to-hire erosion, and competitive disadvantage. As AI reshapes how hiring teams collaborate, the organisations that thrive will be those that confront this disconnect head-on and rebuild alignment as a strategic imperative rather than an assumed courtesy.

 

• The Alignment Illusion – Why 90% of partnerships self-rate as "good" while 58% of leaders secretly want to work around each other, and what this gap reveals about organisational honesty

 

• The Speed Tax of Misalignment – How recruiter-manager friction directly costs companies

talent, with well-aligned teams 60% less likely to lose candidates to faster-moving competitors

 

• AI as Collaboration Infrastructure – Why teams that treat AI as core to hiring report excellent working relationships at 3.8x the rate of AI-hesitant organisations, and how shared context replaces tribal knowledge

 

• The Intake Call Failure – Why initial role alignment remains the highest-leverage moment most teams squander, and how to engineer shared understanding before a single candidate is sourced

 

• Signal vs. Noise in Feedback – How inconsistent evaluation criteria, delayed scorecard completion, and contradictory feedback destroy candidate experience and recruiter credibility

 

• The Power Dynamic Problem – Why hiring managers still view recruiters as order-takers rather than strategic partners, and how to reframe the relationship as co-ownership of business outcomes

 

• Shared Accountability Frameworks – Moving beyond service-level agreements to joint KPIs that bind recruiters and hiring managers to the same speed, quality, and candidate-experience standards

 

• Calibrating on "Good" – How misaligned definitions of ideal candidate profiles lead to endless iteration, offer rejections, and the demoralising cycle of "send more, I'll know it when I see it"

 

• The Business Goal Connection – Why 85% of companies exceeding their business goals actively use AI in hiring workflows, and what this reveals about alignment as a competitive differentiator

 

Watch this essential discussion to diagnose your own alignment gaps before they cost you your next critical hire. The recruiter-manager partnership is either your greatest strategic asset or your silentest competitive liability—and the data says most teams are living in dangerous denial.

 

We're on Friday 10th July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

 

Ep393 is supported by our friends at Metaview

 

Metaview is the Agentic Recruiting Platform built for radically efficient hiring, end to end. Source, engage, and hire better with agents that truly get your brief. Metaviews AI Agents finds candidates, reviews inbound applications, automatically captures notes, constantly learns and spots talent opportunities, whilst your recruiters spend time doing work which humans can only do - build relationships with candidates and hiring managers.

 

Need to uplevpel your hiring function?

 

Book a demo or start for free here.

 

The Recfest Recap 2026

 

We’re unpacking the absolute best moments, groundbreaking strategies, and actionable takeaways from RecFest 2026. Whether you were dodging the summer sun at Knebworth Park or couldn't make it across the pond, this exclusive recap session distills the high-impact content from the industry's top thought leaders. Get ready to supercharge your TA strategy, embrace the human advantage in an AI-driven world, and discover exactly what the future of recruitment looks like.

 

The Human Advantage in an AI World: Grace Lordan (LSE) explores how talent leaders can leverage AI, inclusion, and better decision-making to drive true performance rather than just processing efficiency.

 

From Recruiter to Talent Architect: A powerhouse panel featuring leaders from Amazon, EY, and Booking.com discusses the evolution of the recruiter role as AI absorbs operational tasks, shifting the focus to high-value, human-centric strategy.

 

The AI-Adjusted EVP: Joanna Hackett (Howden) reveals how forward-thinking organisations are evolving their Employee Value Propositions to focus on reskilling, internal mobility, and long-term career relevance in the age of automation.

 

TA as a Strategic Growth Engine: Chris Tennant (Infor) and fellow TA directors from Gilead and Mars share how to fundamentally redesign the talent acquisition function to operate as a core driver of business performance.

 

Amazon’s Strategic Business Partner Model: Beckie Longworth and the Amazon TA team reveal how they shifted from a transactional, requisition-driven service into a strategic business partner function that acts as a consistent interface for growth.

 

Talent Intelligence at Scale: Andrew Sinclair and Charles Rue (S&P Global) demonstrate how to build a connected workforce by turning overwhelming talent data into actionable, confident market intelligence.

 

The Early Careers Talent Crisis: Aisha Lysejko (2040 Leaders) and experts from Shell and Danone warn against cutting early careers investments, explaining how doing so creates a dangerous "missing middle" that cripples future leadership pipelines.

 

Standardised Hiring Metrics: Adrian Thomas (Walbridge) and Jonathan Berry (House of Commons) break down the UK’s first standardised hiring metrics, exploring what "good" really looks like in talent acquisition benchmarking today.

 

Global TA Transformation at Sanofi: Lia Manafova (Sanofi) shares the healthcare giant’s journey of taking back ownership of their global recruitment landscape, transitioning away from decentralized models to centralise and streamline their tech stack.

 

Why should you carve out time in your busy schedule to join 'The Recfest Recap 2026'? Because the recruitment landscape is shifting faster than ever, and relying on yesterday’s playbooks simply won't cut it. This webinar isn't just a summary; it’s your shortcut to the strategies that are actively reshaping the industry—from deploying AI without losing the human touch to transforming TA into a strategic business partner. By signing up, you’ll equip yourself with the tangible, future-proof tactics you need to attract top talent, elevate your employer brand, and lead your team into the next era of hiring. Secure your spot now and stay ahead of the curve!

 

We're on Wednesday 8th July at 2pm BST. Register by clicking on the green button (save your spot) and follow the channel here (recommended).

 

Ep392 is supported by our friends at Screenloop

 

Screenloop is the number one ATS for SMEs: covering interview intelligence, background checks, automations, candidate NPS and Quality of Hire analytics, all-in-one package.

 

Rated 4.9/5 on G2 our Interview Intelligence transcribes, fills scorecards, coaches hiring teams, so every hiring decision is faster, fairer and evidence-based. Importantly, our AI tools do hallucinate or over promise, it improves human led conversations.