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The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast: Your weekly 60 minute dose of brilliant conversation about Recruiting & HR
Episodes
Thursday Oct 30, 2025
Thursday Oct 30, 2025
FASTER, SMARTER, MORE HUMAN: THE FUTURE OF RECRUITER ENABLEMENT.
Hiring has never been harder.
Recruiters are under pressure to move fast, personalise outreach, and tell a story candidates believe in.
But here’s the problem: recruiters don’t have the same tools that sales or marketing teams take for granted.
I’m teaming up with Vouch to show how recruiters can finally catch up — with a new way to cut through the chaos: Recruiter Enablement.
Join us live for a demo, discussion, and Q&A on Weds 29th October, 1230PM PT / 330pm ET follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Friday Oct 24, 2025
Friday Oct 24, 2025
A PSYCHOLOGISTS TAKE ON CANDIDATE FEEDBACK.
Bad feedback - or no feedback - is perhaps the most common criticism by job candidates looking for work. Why is feedback important, and why do recruiters do this so badly? We're going to take the psychologists perspective one of the most persistent problems in our industry and see whether we can learn from a field of study outside of our own!
- What are the current theories about why feedback is needed?
- What are the stories we tell ourselves about why we need feedback?
- What is really going on?
- Why is feedback particularly challenging in recruitment?
- Are there unusual psychological conditions in the context of job search which make feedback both difficult give and difficult to give well?
- Why do candidates vary in their demands for feedback?
- Under what conditions are candidates most upset about the job search experience?
- Will increased training help, or does this require simply more capacity on behalf of the recruiters?
- Are incentives correctly aligned for good feedback to be provided?
- What technology innovations can change the dynamic behind persistence bad feedback experience?
All this and more with brainfood favourite and professional psychologist, author and coach Nikolai Mihailov.
Ep340 is sponsored by our friends BrightHire
BrightHire, the AI copilot for exceptional hiring used by hundreds of game-changing companies like Canva, Vercel, Multiverse, up to the Fortune 500.
Thursday Oct 23, 2025
Thursday Oct 23, 2025
INTERVIEWS AREN'T EVALUATING THE RIGHT SKILLS: INSIGHTS FROM ANALYSING 1,311 INTERVIEW LOOPS
What is actually happening at interviews?
It's the most critical part of any assessment process yet it is also the one which we know least about, not least because we've never had the means to really study them at scale. That is why this latest research from Harvard Business Review is so significant - across 1300+ organisations, 50+_ organisations and tens of thousands of interviews, researchers using BrightHire proprietary data track what is actually happening in this crucial step of the process.
The insight reveals challenges to which we will in recruitment have an urgency in handling.
(a) the gap between what JDs communicate to candidates are the critical qualifications for positions vs. what's actually covered in interviews
(b) the effectiveness of interviews in the evaluation of skills
(c) the extent to which interviews are evaluating for AI skills
We're doing a Brainfood Live special with BrightHire CEO Ben Sesser and William Leeds, Head of Data Science - we're going through this research with the Harvard Business Review!
We are on Thursday 23rd October, 4pm BST / 11am ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Ep334 is sponsored by our friends BrightHire
BrightHire, the AI copilot for exceptional hiring used by hundreds of game-changing companies like Canva, Vercel, Multiverse, up to the Fortune 500.
Sunday Oct 19, 2025
Sunday Oct 19, 2025
ANNUAL BENCHMARK REPORT 2025: CORPORATE EXECUTIVE SEARCH
There probably isn't a recruitment function more shrouded in mystery than Corporate Exec Search! This is hiring for the function leaders who will make disproportionate impact on your organisations bottom line and often involves a high degree of discretion, especially as incumbent-in-place is a common scenario.
For organisations are able to tell us what this world looks like better than ESIX - the premier community of Corporate Exec Search professionals. With thousands of members, across hundreds of the top employers in the world, ESIX have access to the collective intelligence of what hiring has been like the internal headhunters.
I'm delighted to invite ESIX Chairman, Simon Mullins to do a 1-2-1 with us and share data from ESIX Annual Benchmark report on how Corp Exec Search is operating - from budget allocation, tool usage, role profile and state of the leadership job market. We might even get a glimpse of some data which is usually members only
We are on Friday 17th October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Fraudulent candidates in hiring pipelines are increasingly draining recruiting teams time and attention. In extreme cases they pose security risks. Launching this week, Ashby’s new feature automatically detects fraud signals so your team can mark candidates as fraudulent during your application review helping you focus on real candidates - all without disrupting the candidate experience.
Live Webinar: AI Notetaker in Action and see what’s next for AI at Ashby
Ashby’s All-in-One recruiting software spans ATS, Scheduling, CRM & Sourcing, and Analytics, and now they’re adding AI Notetaking to a platform already infused with useful AI.Their new AI Notetaker records, transcribes, and structures your meeting notes to help you make faster, more confident hiring decisions. In the event, you’ll also learn how Ashby is uniquely suited to help teams adopt AI responsibly while preparing for an AI and agent-oriented future.
Friday Oct 10, 2025
Friday Oct 10, 2025
RECRUITMENT AGENCY: 2028!
It's been an incredibly challenging 3 year period for the staffing agency market. Hostile de-globalisation, End of ZIRP, and the Rise of AI has prompted employers to radically rethinking their workforce requirements - and in the case of many of the highest paying sectors - finance, technology, consultancy - reduce absolute number of heads in order to do more with less.
Forward thinking recruitment agencies are responding to new market conditions with innovations of their own - in business development, in service offerings and in candidate acquisition. More transformation will inevitably occur as the external macro continues to be volatile and the staffing agency market continues to become more competitive
We will cover;
- What are the episodic vs persistent trends in the staffing agency market?
- How is business development changing?
- Where are technologies having the most impact in staffing agency operations?
- What markets will staffing agencies focus on going forward?
- Where will agencies find customers in 2028?
- Where will agencies find candidates in 2028?
- Will the solo recruiter + AI enabled be the default template of tomorrow's recruiter?
- What defensive moat do agents have against AI?
- Will organisations turn more to agencies are internal TA continue to get cut?
- What are the future proof techniques for maintaining relationships with clients who may not buy for 12 months or longer?
- What business model best suits a staffing firm in anticipated market conditions in 2028?
All this and more with some of the smartest people in the staffing agency space. Join Louise Triance, Founder (UKRecruiter), Kalpesh Baxi, James Osbourne, Chairman (The Recruitment Network), Keith Langbo, Founder (Kelaca), Keith Southern, Founder (The Power Hive) & John Chirikjian, CEO (Hire Inc).
We are on Friday 10th October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Hire.inc is an AI-powered recruitment platform that streamlines hiring with advanced AI sourcing agents, automated AI interview notes, bulk resume screening, and a collaborative ATS. Designed for startups & staffing agencies, Hire.inc helps recruitment teams find, evaluate, and engage top talent faster while integrating into existing workflows.
Question for all recruiters: how much is your time worth??
Answer: a lot more than you think
Demo and try for free here
Friday Oct 10, 2025
Friday Oct 10, 2025
RECRUITERS: SAY HELLO TO YOUR NEW CO-WORKERS ARCHER, CHASE & THENA! (LIVE DEMO OF AI AGENTS)
Is your recruitment supplier talking to you about AI Agents? Well this is the show where we challenge the founders to come on screen to live demo their new AI workers to the brainfood audience!
Not content will one agent, our friends at hackajob are have launched no less than three at the same time:
Meet:
🏹 Archer – Smarter inbound applications, 8x more likely to convert to interview. Reach passive audiences through structured data
🗣️ Chase – Your AI recruiter, holding tens of thousands of conversations weekly.
🔎 Thena – Resume screening powerhouse, cutting review time by 70%.
After extensive period of trialling, hackajob are seeing that early customers are reviewing 68% fewer interviews needed per hire, 8X more unique candidates progressed after application with Archer and Thena alone cuts manual review time by 70%
These are step change improvements in hiring efficiency. How does it all work?
Well lets see and hear it from the horses mouth with CEO Mark Chaffey doing live demo with us the Thursday
We are on Thursday 9th October, 3pm BST / 10am ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
AI agents for job seekers and employers—making hiring easier, faster and fairer.
Tuesday Oct 07, 2025
Tuesday Oct 07, 2025
FRAUD SIGNALS: AI, JOB CANDIDATES & THE CYBERSECURITY OF RECRUITMENT
The rise of AI and AI Agents will fundamentally change the way in which we discover information. We are heading into a future which will everything digital will be mediated first by AI. This has huge implications in many aspects of professional work, with job search and hiring perhaps being one of the first areas of work where early challenges might be detected.
Let's talk AI, job candidates and the cybersecurity of recruitment.
- What are the most risky things which recruiters do which expose company to fraud risk?
- Should recruiters download documents which are speculatively sent in?
- How to process candidates if document is not a PDF?
- What are the main signals of potential ID fraud?
- IP address inconsistencies
- LinkedIn profile recency
- LinkedIn profile incompleteness
- Inconsistencies on online profile aggregation
- Time delay during interview
- Camera off/on during interview
- Implications for DEIB
- Which jobs are most at risk for fraud?
- Which companies, in which countries are most regular targets for fraud?
- Implications for bias / racial profiling
- How to be rigorous yet also fair - the challenge of CX in the era of high cybersecurity risk
We are on Tuesday 2nd October, 10am / 3pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Ep337 is sponsored by our friends Greenhouse
Hiring is hard, and getting it right is even harder. It’s a core business-building function with high stakes that takes a lot of moving parts to see real success. You need workflows that accommodate how you function given your company size and goals. You need a user experience that hiring managers actually buy into. And you need an application process that locks talent in.
Only Greenhouse gives you all that in one platform.
Friday Oct 03, 2025
Friday Oct 03, 2025
WHAT HAPPENS TO RECRUITMENT WHEN AI IS YOUR COPILOT?
2025 will turn out to be the year when AI Agents mainstreamed into the recruiting profession. We're going to move past the semantic conversations on what is or is not 'Agentic AI' and simply get on with working with software which is going to do a lot of the heavy lifting work for us.
I think we will be surprised in two ways: how effective these AI agents are in delivering results and how much wider a scope they will end up having, on many parts of the hiring funnel.
The question needs to asked: what does this mean for Talent Acquisition? What does our function look like when every recruiter - every hiring manager - has a hiring co-pilot? Talent Acquisition, as well as the wider Human Resources function, urgently need to centre the discussion on what the 'human value added' really is when it comes to creating great organisations.
We're going to do taking on the hard conversations in today's debate on the future of recruitment when everyone has a copilot.
- General vs Verticalised AI Agents
- What can Verticalised AI Agents do today
- What level of performance by AI Agents are required for work to be transferred?
- AI ethics & legislation - are they paper tigers?
- What is the human value added?
- When does low cost mass produced 'Good enough' beat high cost, custom made, artisanally produced?
- Human Value Added - what is this, can we articulate it?
- What gets automated - expert or non-expert, routine or episodic?
- Do we even control this, or do vendors determine what tasks get automated?
- Humans-in-the-loop - how do we make this substantive, rather than rubber stamp?
- Under what circumstances do we believe a human can / should veto AI recommendation?
- How do Talent Acquisition professionals need to reposition in with the advent of effective AI Agents?
- Do we need to talk about Capitalism?
We are on Friday 3rd October, 2pm BST follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Our most ambitious agent yet is here: AI Sourcing
This isn’t sourcing as you know it. Not another Boolean search. Not another rigid filter. This is flexible, agentic search - built on your hiring DNA.
✔ Proactive: From your first intake call, the agent automatically runs a search.
✔ Collaborative: You guide the search, AI does the heavy lifting.
✔ Flexible: Context-aware and learns from unstructured data and feedback.
Source high-fit candidates faster than you ever thought possible with an AI teammate that learns from every action and hiring manager’s feedback—getting more precise, personalized, and effective over time.
Be the first to try it. Join the waitlist.
Friday Sep 26, 2025
Friday Sep 26, 2025
TALENT POOLING: LESSONS FROM TA COMMUNITY BUILDERS
We all know that it easier to get engagement from people who already know you or your brand. Have a think about how you respond to known contacts in WhatsApp vs unknown callers on your phone! As we move toward a world where AI generated communication will come to dominate, we can anticipate that the establishment of trust relationships with your target audience is going to be key in effective hiring.
Lets deep dive:
- What is talent pooling, how is this different from 'collecting CV's
- What needs to be done in order to 'acquire' someone into a talent pool?
- How do you convert a database into a community?
- What are the policies of exclusion in this community?
- How do we balance this with an inclusive ethos?
- How to police bad behaviour?
- How formal should be safe spaces?
- What is the best tech platform to use to organise communities?
- If we are planning to hire from this community, do we remove people who then get a job?
- What professions are most suited for community building?
- What circumstances make most sense when putting together a talent pooling plan?
- Do we need a specialist function to do this?
- What can AI do to help build community - or is this antithetical to how things are done?
All this and more, with Willem Wijnans, Community Lead (Ashby), Marie Chaponiere, Founder (Behind the Mask), Vanessa Raath, Founder (Talent Hunter) & Mahmoud Aly, Community Lead (Egypt Recruiting Community) & Lars Schmidt, Head of Talent (Fruitist)
We are on Friday 26th Sep, 2pm BST - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Ashby just raised $50M in Series D funding, and they’re going all in on what modern recruiting teams actually need.
So, what’s next?
AI is moving from novelty to necessity. Most tools talk about AI, Ashby makes it work. Their all-in-one platform gives AI real structure so recruiters get time back with AI note-taking, feedback summaries, and personalized outreach emails. In fact, 57% of Ashby's customer base is now using AI within the platform, up from 23% at the start of 2024.
Quality of Hire is finally getting real. More teams are rolling out Quality of Hire programs with Ashby than ever before. What used to be a slide in a quarterly review is now a real strategy, with surveys and reporting built in. It’s clearer, faster, and easier to connect to business outcomes.
Community is the new operating system. Ashby already made a big splash with Ashby One, their first customer conference that brought hundreds of talent leaders and RecOps professionals together for a week of sessions, panels, dinners, and live events. With this new funding, they’re doubling down on the community by expanding ACE (Ashby Customer Expert) chapters, scaling education programs, and giving local leaders more ways to connect, share learnings, and build lasting networks.
… and the word is out. Enterprise teams like Shopify and Snowflake are already in. With 123% growth and fresh funding to fuel what’s next, Ashby is just getting started.
Bottom line: Ashby is not just building software. They are building the infrastructure for modern recruiting.
Friday Sep 26, 2025
Friday Sep 26, 2025
GHOSTING: WHY THE AI JOB APPLICATION TSUNAMI IS NO EXCUSE
Diffusion of technology innovation across society is something to be celebrated. We need to be aware of the challenges to existing structures that this will inevitably bring and refactor our processes to account for the changes. One of the first ways in which employers are experiencing this challenge is in how to handle the increased volume of job applicants, who have improved both the quality and quantity of their outputs.
We're going to talk today about the AI job applicant tsunami and how this does not mitigate employer responsibility for candidate experience. It's no excuse for ghosting!
- What is the state of candidate experience in 2025?
- What are the factors which explain the trend lines?
- What is the impact of AI in the job candidate experience?\
- How can employers balance between efficiency vs experience?
- Can we kill the idea that 'more human' is always better candidate experience?
- What are the common themes to great candidate experience?
- Faced with lean TA teams + increase workload, what are top TA teams doing about this?
- Ghosting: what does it take to eliminate this?
- What role can technology play in supporting candidate experience?
- Hybrid human + AI = when human vs when AI?
All this and more, with Daniel Chait, CEO (Greenhouse), Kevin Grossman, VP of CandE Benchmark Research (Survale), Cheryl Petersen, Global Head of Candidate Experience (Arup) & Bradley Cooper, Associate VP Technology (SASR Workforce Solutions)
We are on Thursday 25th Sep, 5pm BST / 9am PT / 12pm ET - follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spot for this demo by clicking on the green button.
Hiring is hard, and getting it right is even harder. It’s a core business-building function with high stakes that takes a lot of moving parts to see real success. You need workflows that accommodate how you function given your company size and goals. You need a user experience that hiring managers actually buy into. And you need an application process that locks talent in.
Only Greenhouse gives you all that in one platform.