The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep358 - 6 x AI Frameworks for Talent Acquisition

6 x AI USAGE FRAMEWORKS FOR TALENT ACQUISITION

 

Closing the gap between proclaimed capability of AI vs the practical impact of AI is set to become one of the main stories of 2026, as function leaders in every department scramble to deliver against the expectations of an increasingly impatient C-level.

 

Are there any frameworks or maturity models which can help?

 

Brainfooder Soeren Winter has identified 6 AI Usage Frameworks most commonly cited in change management discourse and we're going to apply them Talent Acquisition and see what we can learn. Vital show for anyone interested in accelerating AI adoption, maximising the opportunity window for gains from AI, whilst ensuring the humans in the team, remain in and some cases, above, the loop.

 

 

We're on Friday 30th January 2pm GMT / 3pm CET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

 

 

Episode 358 is sponsored by Juicebox

 

PeopleGPT is the leading outbound recruiting platform built on Generative AI. Find talent across 30+ data sources, get interactive Talent Insights, and reach out with personalized AI email campaigns.

 

Key features include:

1. PeopleGPT (Search): the world’s first people search engine that uses natural language. Describe who you’re searching for and find the perfect match from over 30 data sources.
2. Talent Insights: Visualize your talent pool with 15+ interactive charts. Refine your search and dive deep into stats based on location, employers, job titles, skills, and more.
3. Email Outreach: Maximize candidate engagement with AI-powered email campaigns. Personalize messaging at scale using AI commands, and boost response rates by 40%.

 

Get 15% off your Juicebox subscription with code: BRAINFOOD15

 

Trusted by 400+ companies including Scale AI, Mindbloom, and Patreon. Free trial available. Try Juicebox today

Brainfood Live on Air - Ep357 - Why You Need RecOps To Accelerate AI in TA

WHY YOU NEED RECOPS TO ACCELERATE AI IN TA

 

Recruiters are the busiest people in white collar work because there is often no way to accurately forecast resource demands - you never know how long a requirement is going to take to fill or how many hours of time it is going to take to get it done. People are variable and in recruitment, there are people who will impact the state of any project, who are fully outside a recruiters sphere of influence.

 

This is why AI adoption in Talent Acquisition struggles to move beyond isolated pilots. The operators - the recruiters with headcount targets - are too busy to switch to new ways of working, even those that promise significant efficiency gains. That is apart from one type of TA structure - where Talent Operations has a specialised function in making every other member of the team more efficient.

 

We're going bold with this one folks - we believe that RecOps is the force multiplier for AI adoption and you need this specialist function in order to migrate to the new way of working. Evidence from RecOps pro's in panel.

 

 

We're on Friday 23rd January 2pm GMT / 3pm CET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

 

 

Episode 357 is sponsored by Ashby

 

Drive faster, more confident hiring decisions with native AI-Notetaker

 

Ashby’s AI Notetaker brings structured meeting data together with emails, notes, feedback, and more. It shortens time to feedback and provides rich candidate context, helping your team align quickly and make faster, more confident hiring decisions.

 

Spend less time typing and more time hiring with interview notes that practically write themselves.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep356 - How Police Use AI to Hire

TOO COMPLEX FOR AI? HOW POLICE SCOTLAND SOLVED THE UNSOLVABLE HIRING PUZZLE

 

Most recruiters think their organisation is too "unique" or "complex" to trust AI. Then there is Police Scotland. Operating across 13 regions, managing 22,000+ staff, and balancing the hyper-sensitive vetting requirements, their hiring process is as high-stakes as it gets. Yet, they didn't just implement AI—they used it to automate 90% of candidate enquiries and launch a 24/7 support system in just weeks.

 

Join us for Episode 356 as we deconstruct the PoliceScotland Model with Lorna Allison (ex-Police Inspector & HR Systems Manager). We’re going deep on how to overcome the three biggest barriers to AI adoption:

• The Trust Gap: How to use AI in a highly regulated environment where public accountability is everything.
• The Admin Wall: How they removed the burden of repetitive tasks to let recruiters focus on high-value human assessment.
• The Inclusion Mandate: Why a "judgment-free" AI bot actually improved their pipeline diversity and candidate experience.

The Reality: If you can solve for the complexity of the Police, you can solve for anything.

 

Wed 21st January 12pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

 

 

Episode 356 is sponsored by Oleeo

 

AI is now used by 62% of companies for hiring, but rapid efficiency shouldn't come at the expense of fairness. Oleeo and Aptitude Research’s new report highlights a major gap: only 20% of employers have fully established AI governance frameworks, which can lead to unintended bias. To keep things fair and compliant, 85% of recruiters demand final decision-making authority.

 

Download 'Setting the Standard for Responsible AI: A Guide For Modern Recruiters' today to build a transparent, human-led strategy that uses AI responsibly.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep355 - Talent Strategy - What, Why, How and When

TALENT STRATEGY: WHAT, WHY, HOW AND WHEN

 

Does your company have a talent strategy?

 

It's probably the right thing to say that you do, but how much do we know about what a Talent Strategy is really? I asked this question within the Brainfood community and received some outstanding observations, so much so that we have to elevate this to a full discussion on Brainfood Live.

 

“Talent strategy is how the business ensures it has the capability to execute its strategy and win” - says Lisa Scales, Director of Talent at the Royal Mail.

 

What does this compose of?

 

Succession planning. re-deployment investigations, competence mapping and calculating the gap between Core & Strategic competencies, developing a plan for how to close the gap, overseeing the global Talent Acquisition function says Ana Moller,

 

Where does it live?

 

On a Github Repo says Mark Deubels (!). But the point is that it should be living document subject contribution by others in the business, presided over by TA / HR

 

Lets talk Talent Strategy - not only why you need one, but what it actually is, how it is built, what makes it an effective orientating vision and how it informs the recruiting tactics which recruits will ultimately adopt.

 

We're on Friday 16th January, 2pm GMT. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

 

 

Episode 355 is sponsored by Maki

 

At Maki, we help organisations like BNP Paribas, PwC, Booking.com, Nestlé, and H&M transform hiring with AI agents for screening, interviewing, and assessment.

 

By combining automation, behavioural science, and data, Maki enables talent teams to hire faster, fairer, and smarter.

 

Our global partnership with H&M saved 250 000 recruiter hours, cut time-to-hire by 4×, and reduced turnover by 22 %, delivering $85 M ROI.

 

Beyond automation, we’re building a continuous reinforcement system where every recruiter judgment and employee outcome makes our AI agents smarter; creating a unique data moat in HR.

 

Learn more: makipeople.com

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep354 - Vibe Sourcing 101 - Live Demo of Metaview Sourcing Agent

VIBE SOURCING 101: LEARN TO SOURCE FROM THE WEB & YOUR ATS WITH METAVIEW AI AGENT

 

We are going to look back at 2025 as the year it all changed for sourcing. AI Agents entered the market and immediately began to demonstrate talent acquisition teams could become massively more efficient by leverage the increasable ability of AI Agents to ingest huge amounts of candidate data and instantly return viable results from natural language prompts.

 

But we can already see that some recruiters are better than others when it comes to collaborating with AI Agents to source candidates. What are those recruiters doing, why do they get better results, what are the behaviours required to get the best out of your AI Agent?

 

We're going to deep dive how to source with AI Agents, revealing the techniques, the skills and the mentality which will reveal the best recruiters of tomorrow.

 

It's a mid week special - so we're on Wednesday 14th January, 4pm GMT / 11am ET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

 

 

Ep354 is sponsored by Metaview

 

Are you ready to supercharge your recruiting teams performance?

 

Metaview’s AI Sourcing will feel like a cheat code. It’s the first autonomous AI coworker that goes off and does the search for you and brings back spot-on candidates based on your exact brief.

 

Here’s what recruiters have been saying about it:

 

“I don’t know how you did it, but Metaview’s AI Sourcing is absurdly good.”

 

Michael, Partner @ Super Recruiter

 

“Metaview’s AI Sourcing really helps with niche roles. It surfaces profiles I wouldn’t have found.”

 

Dea, TA Manager @ Miro

 

“So impressed by how Metaview’s AI Sourcing turns a natural language prompt into great profiles.”

 

Leslie, Recruiter @ Cockroach Labs

 

Metaview gives high-performance teams a genuine unfair advantage in hiring. Join teams like ElevenLabs, Deel, and Pleo — along with 4,000+ others — and try it for free today.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep353 - Hiring Benchmarks - 16 x Most Common Job Occupations in the USA

HIRING BENCHMARKS FOR THE 16 MOST COMMON OCCUPATIONS IN THE USA

 

We all want to be 'data driven' but most of the time the only data we have access to are those which we have recorded of ourselves and our own activity. This is vitally important for tracking your progress over time, but not the complete picture when it comes to how you are doing against the market and against the competition.

 

In partnership with our friends Joveo, we are pulling together behaviour data from job candidates on the 16 most common job roles in the USA - book keeper, truck driver, construction worker, nurse practitioner, teacher - and finding out what the state of the Labour market is: what is the size of the labour pool, what is the average number of job applications per role in these sectors, what are the most important sources of hire, what is the CPA for the employer of each of these roles, what is the geographic distribution of the talent and so on.

 

Essential viewing for any US recruiter for some of the most employed positions in the country.

 

We're on Friday 9th January, 2pm GMT / 9am ET. Register by clicking on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended)

 

Ep353 is sponsored by Joveo

 

As the global leader in AI-powered, high-performance recruitment marketing, Joveo is transforming talent attraction and recruitment media buying for the world’s largest employers, staffing firms, RPOs, and media agencies. The Joveo platform enables businesses to attract, source, engage, and hire the best candidates on time and within budget.

 

Powering millions of jobs every day, Joveo’s AI-led recruitment marketing platform uses advanced data science and machine learning to dynamically manage and optimize talent sourcing and applications across all online channels, while providing real-time insights at every step of the job seeker journey, from click to hire.

 

For more information about Joveo’s award-winning platform and solutions, visit www.joveo.com.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep352 - Hiring Intelligence Report 2026

Informing Happy Hiring: Signals from Willo's Hiring Intelligence Report 2026

 

This year, Willo didn’t just watch hiring change, they measured it.

 

In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, we’ll explore what the data from Willo’s Hiring Intelligence Report 2026 reveals about how hiring teams are actually operating in the AI-era, how this compares to previous years, and what that means as we look ahead.

What will we be talking about?

• What’s really happening to CV-centric hiring
• Where AI is being introduced into hiring workflows, and where it isn’t
• How automation is influencing candidate screening and assessment
• Why final hiring decisions remain human-led
• How fairness and consistency are being approached in practice
• The role of asynchronous interviews in modern hiring
• What hiring leaders are prioritizing as they look toward 2026

All this and more on Brainfood Live on Air.

 

We’ll be joined by Euan Cameron, CEO at Willo and Tanya van Soest, Head of Content at Willo on January 7, 2026

 

Register by clicking the green button (“save my spot”) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be notified when we go live.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep349 - Review of the Year - Economy & AI

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - Economy & AI

 

Final part of our 4 part series on the Review of the Year. The two dominant mega themes of this year has undoubtedly been the global economy and the rise of AI. The two are becoming intertwined, especially with the AI investment boom drawing down investments from other parts of the US economy, whilst Trump Trade War 2.0 hobbles global economic growth, likely inadvertently accelerating the adoption of AI...

 

- Global economic growth 2025

- Jobs Growth / Loss

- Sectoral growth / decline

- Staffing agency figures

- ONS data on unemployed / underemployed

- Employment Rights Bill

- Immigration

- UK vs Europe

- UK vs US

- UK vs Global Mean

- Contact / FTE

- Wage growth / decline

- Entry level hiring

- AI Economy

- Adoption patterns and impact on employment

- Sectors most exposed, greatest risk / greatest opportunity?

- Forecast for 2026 - UK, Europe, US, Globe

- Recommendations for TA, Staffing Agencies, Hiring Managers

 

All this and more on brainfood live on air.

 

We're with Neil Carberry, MD (Recruitment & Employment Confederation), Belinda Johnson, Founder, (Worklab) & Rt Hon Chloe Smith on Friday 19th December, 2pm GMT.

 

Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live.

 

 

Ep349 is sponsored by Recruiting Brainfood

 

Thank you all for your support in 2025. We cannot do these conversations without the support of our amazing sponsors, our fantastic panelists but most of all, you the viewing public. Thank you and see you next year!

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep348 - Review of the Year in Recruitment 2025 - Sourcing, Employer Branding & RecOps

REVIEW OF THE YEAR 2025 - Sourcing, Employer Branding & RecOps

 

Third of our 4 part series reviewing the major events and trends of the year in Sourcing, Employer Branding & RecOps What has happened this year that we got on talk about?

 

- End of an Era? Irina Shamaeva

- SOSU review

- Is Sourcing dead or shifting toward automation of candidate discovery?

- Demand for sourcing training being replaced by demand for AI training

- Employer branding - how is AI being used to support this?

- How is AI being ab-used to inadvertently damage this?

- How do we understand 'AI first' through the lens of EB?

- What happened to 'Mission focused' btw, was it anti-DEIB in disguise?

- What is the percentage of AI ten content on career pages, going up or down?

- Have any organisations consciously thought about their AI principles through an EB lens?

- RecOps ...what have been the priorities for recruitment operations?

- Have we seen AI operations leads in RecOps?

- How has AI changed the RecOps role...replaced or expanded?

- Forecasts for 2026 - sourcing, eb and recops

 

All this and more on brainfood live on air.

 

We're with Alla Pavlova, Recruiter (Riot Games), Chloe Morrison, RecOps (datadog), Steve Ward, Employer Brand Strategist (Blackbridge Communications) & Jeremy Lyons, Founder (RecOps Collective) on Friday 12th December, 2pm GMT

 

Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live.

 

 

Ep348 is sponsored by our friends Ashby

 

Drive faster, more confident hiring decisions with native AI-Notetaking

 

Ashby’s AI Notetaker brings structured meeting data together with emails, notes, feedback, and more. It shortens time to feedback and provides rich candidate context, helping your team align quickly and make faster, more confident hiring decisions.

 

Spend less time typing and more time hiring with interview notes that practically write themselves.

Brainfood Live On Air - Ep351 - Fraud Prood AI - Live Demo (Endorsed)

FRAUD PROOF AI? - ENDORSED LIVE DEMO

 

We will look back at 2025 as the year when candidate fraud escalated into amongst the top priorities of employers looking who were still looking to hire but also now needing to securitise their companies from risk.

 

Huge credit goes to technology vendors for responding to the demand - and we're seeing a lot of interesting techniques deployed to identify potential fraud risk. I'm delighted to welcome back one of those vendors at Live Demo to show us how his platform - Endorsed - is going to help recruiters find the right talent whilst mitigating risk of putting bad actors into the hiring process.

 

Its the man himself, David Head, CEO of Endorsed, at Live Demo! and we're on Weds 10th December, 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT.

 

Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the event now (save my spot) to get notified when we go live.

 

 

Episode 351 is sponsored by Endorsed

 

Endorsed.com is the AI recruiting agent platform for rapidly building talent-dense teams.

 

Rapidly growing companies like Quince, Eight Sleep, and Prokeep rely on Endorsed to surface hidden stars, combat candidate fraud, and streamline sourcing and applicant review workflows. Endorsed increases quality-of-hire, reduces time-to-fill by up to 75%, and boosts recruiter role capacity by up to 2x.

 

Get 10% off your subscription with the code BRAINFOOD

 

See Endorsed instantly triple your number of gold medal candidates on your real role by booking a demo.