319.3K
Downloads
430
Episodes
The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast: Your weekly 60 minute dose of brilliant conversation about Recruiting & HR
Episodes
Friday Nov 14, 2025
Friday Nov 14, 2025
GRADING MY RECRUITMENT FORECASTS FOR 2025
Every year I write a long post making 20 predictions for the year ahead. This year, for the first time ever, I'm going to grade my predictions and see how I have got on
20 x Predictions for Recruiting in 2025
1. AI Assessment mainstreams; 50% of high volume hirers (more than 5000 hires per year) will have a solution in place by EOY.
2. ‘Skill based hiring’ revives as employers describe deployment of AI assessment as commitment to SBH. %age of employers describing themselves as SBH increases 50%.
3. 2FA on job ads increases 400% as an attempt to suppress increased applicant flow.
4. Applications per job increase by 25% as AI-enablement mainstreams candidate side.
5. Big round of investment for AI voice interview vendors currently at Seed - $100M raised in this sector by EOY 2025.
6. Non-FTE vs FTE hiring increases by 10% in 2025.
7. Avg internal TA team goes 25% non-FTE.
8. Req load per recruiter increases 15%.
9. Percentage of solo TA function goes from 73% to 83%.
10. TA teams continue geographic dispersal - %age of TA teams with multinational component increases by 30%.
11. More companies decentralise talent acquisition - %age of employers where HM do outreach increases by 10%.
12. Candidate resentment stabilises - with 2% points either side of 2024 level.
13. ‘Chief Automation Officer’ becomes an industry talking point in 2025, same as Chief Diversity Officer in 2020.
14. Speaking of DEIB, clear Atlantic divergence in 2025 - US explicit retrench, Europe implicit progress.
15. US vs UK economic integration deepens - %age of new UK based TA jobs from US employers increases 100%.
16. Global Staffing agencies revenue / profit down another 10% (profit warning again in Q1 2025).
17. But medium sized agencies / RPO stage mini bounce back as employers push more requirements out from denuded TA teams.
18. RecOps, Talent Intelligence roles decline 20%, EB roles decline 30%. People & Culture roles increase 15%.
19. Somebody Ubersises the legions of fractional TA’s out there. Probably this is Indeed.
20. Over half of these predictions will be directionally incorrect, 20% will be absolutely incorrect.
What should the grading system be? I thinking a sliding scale A to E.
What should be the source of truth? That is where we will be bringing in experts from industry who can validate the claims.
It's going to be a good one folks.
Friday 14th November, 12pm GMT
Register by click on the green button (save my spot) and follow the channel here (recommended) to be noticed when we go live.
Ep 344 is sponsored by our friends Popp
Popp’s AI recruitment platform amplifies what your team can do by effortlessly and instantly scaling your recruiting capacity. Popp's recruitment platform sits between your ATS and your talent team, providing unprecedented hiring power at unlimited scale.
Our AI automates repetitive tasks throughout the hiring journey, intelligently and accurately. Meaning your team can focus on higher value tasks. Randstand, Robert Walters, Bloom & Wild, AMN Healthcare and more are using Popp to x10 their hiring capacity.
Want to know more?
Book a demo with one of Popp's friendly founding team
Friday Nov 07, 2025
Friday Nov 07, 2025
CAREER TRANSITION - LESSONS FROM EX-PRO ATHLETES
Changing career is never easy, especially if you've committed everything into a vocation which you might have thought to be your whole of life focus. I know well myself, having previously attempted to go down the tech entrepreneur path but now very happily but very fortuitously landing into what seems to be a media business!
Perhaps no other vocation is as tunnel focused as that of a professional athlete. You can imagine you cannot achieve elite performance without going all in. So what happens...when it doesn't happen and you have to switch?
We're going to bring in ex-pro athletes to help us better understand the techniques needed for transition.
- When did you know?
- What were the feelings when you knew it was time to change?
- Identity crisis: how did you handle the change of identity when changed?
- What are the internal and external challenges of switching into 'civilian' life?
- How did you choose your new path?
- What resources did you have to help guide you to a new path?
- How did you cope with the status change?
- Did you feel people treated differently now in civilian life?
- What does it feel like to work with a team / work by yourself?
- Have there been any techniques from elite sports which you have found useful in civilian life?
- What resources should be available for ex-pro athletes to more successfully transition?
- What resources should there be for other people from any other profession to transition?
- What are your top tips for successful career switch?
It's going to be a good one folks.
We're with Ben Stocken, Founder (West Peak) Charlie Mulraine, Personal Development (The Professional Cricketers Association), Agne Chmyznikova, Practice Lead (People & Transformation) on Friday 7th November, 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.
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.
Friday Oct 31, 2025
Friday Oct 31, 2025
BUDGETING FOR AN AI-ENABLED TALENT ACQUISITION FUNCTION
We're racing toward the end of the year and inevitably attention turns to plans for the future. But today we face a future which is increasingly difficult to predict and where agility, resilience and ability to quickly pivot without loss of performance are the qualities every function needs to develop to maintain value to the business. What does this mentality mean for how we allocate budget in talent acquisition? Today we're going to debate the issue with industry leaders who have experience of budget planning and have had to balance between competing priorities.
- Do we spend more on automation and less on payroll?
- Do we create a buffer to spend on RPO partners who can help us scale up capacity, whilst we retain a lean permanent staff?
- How about reducing payroll whilst maintaining headcount?
- Do we spend on hiring entry level talent and ramp up with intensive AI upskilling?
- What does the future look like in 2030 and should we start budgeting to a longer term framework?
- How much recruiting work do we expect hiring managers to be doing in 2030?
- Should we invest in diversification in related fields, adjacent to Talent Acquisition?
- Do we go large with enterprise grade master software, or continue with a core platform + point solutions?
- What about training and development?
- Do we even talk about DEIB today?
All this and more as we discuss how the changing world of work, is being reflected in the changing priorities of for the talent acquisition function,
With industry heavyweights Johnny Campbell, CEO (Social Talent), Elaine Atkinson, Leadership Coach (In Wonder Coaching), Kobi Ampoma, Head of Talent Acquisition (The HEINEKEN Company) & friends,
We are on Friday 31st October, 2pm GMT follow the channel here (recommended) and save your spotfor this demo by clicking on the green button.
It’s tough out there for today’s recruiting teams.
The rise of AI, slashed recruiting budgets and lean teams have made candidate funnels more chaotic than ever. Take back control of your candidate pipeline with new Greenhouse features that help put an end to application overload, messy data, and disconnected tools.
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.