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The Recruiting Brainfood Podcast: Your weekly 60 minute dose of brilliant conversation about Recruiting & HR
Episodes
Friday May 02, 2025
Friday May 02, 2025
AI REGULATIONS IN TA & HR: 2025 Q2 UPDATE!
2025 has been the year of AI innovation in recruitment technology.
There hasn't been a serious recruitment tech vendor hasn't infused their product with AI, and more than a few are moving toward to next step with Agentic or Agent-like AI now taking on significant chunks of the recruiter / hr workload.
Time is perfect for us to update on our understanding of AI regulations in the US, UK and EU!
- What is the latest with AI regulations across different territories?
- Is the EU getting rid of GDPR, and if so, what does this signal?
- What technology innovations are clearly within compliance?
- Which are clearly outside?
- Which are somewhere in the middle?
- Humans in the loop: is this ethics or legislation at this point?
- Cyber security...what is best practice, what is legal / illegal?
- DOGE and AI....how legal is this??
- If law is broken by government, what does this mean for corporations and individuals?
- Has anyone been sued for breaches of AI usage yet?
- What is the current guidance we can give to vendors and buyers on the usage of AI?
We're with Jess Schofer, Founder (Stakked) , Dan Gallagher, Disrupt HR AI Advocate (Avanade), Martyn Redstone, Founder (genAssess), Bob Pulver, Founder (Elevate Your AIQ), Andrew Gadomski, Founder, (Aspen Analytics) & friends
We are on Friday 2nd May, 2pm BST
Greenhouse is sponsoring HR Technologies on April 23–24, 2025 at ExCeL London. Swing by stand CC14 to see how an all-in-one hiring platform simplifies and streamlines every step of the hiring process. Also, don't miss an insightful speaker session on April 24 with Nkem Nwankwo from Greenhouse and Chris Lees from Monzo Bank, as they dive into how AI is shaping both recruiter efficiency and candidate experience. Finally wind down your day with Greenhouse and Lattice on 23 April at 4 pm for a happy hour with refreshing drinks, great company and even better conversations.
Register here
Sunday Apr 27, 2025
Sunday Apr 27, 2025
MITIGATION STRATEGIES VS FAKE JOB CANDIDATES
Reports of fraudulent job applications are on the rise. A globalised internet, universal job insecurity and the reduction of friction provided by technology innovation from EasyApply to AI-powered mass personalisation, is a producing a perfect storm which is overwhelming recruitment teams.
As these trends accelerate, we can expect the volume and sophistication of fake job applications to likewise increase. Let's talk about the techniques job candidates are using and what counter measures employers are thinking about to ensure only authentic, honest candidates get through to process.
We will explore:
- What do we categorise as fraudulent?
- What types of candidate fraud can we describe?
- What is our current mechanism of mitigation?
- Detect or Deter?
- How do we ensure Candidate Experience, whilst protecting employers interests?
- Is the best way to change our talent attraction approach (i.e stop advertising) or can there be another solution?
- Using tech to fight agains tech
- What are the most fraud-proof assessment techniques
- How to balance between security vs efficiency?
- What skills does a recruiter need to be good at fraud mitigation?
- What do hiring managers needs to do to become good at fraud mitigation?
- What types of assessment are no longer viable?
- What are the long term implications for talent acquisition?
All this and more as we dive into the world of recruiting and the job search in 2025
We are on Friday 25th April, 2pm BST
BrightHire is the leader in Interview Intelligence trusted by the world’s fastest growing companies: Canva, Ramp, Toast, Axon, Zapier, Vercel, Klaviyo, Rippling, Attentive, HighTouch, Groq, Navan, and 000s more.
Not just another note-taking tool, BrightHire’s end-to-end AI platform is transforming how our clients hire — delivering substantial hiring efficiency and consistently raising the bar on quality.
“BrightHire has elevated both the quality and speed of our hiring process” - Tony James, Talent Acquisition Partner at AlphaSense
Discover why market-leaders call BrightHire a game-changer for how they hire.
If you schedule a demo with our team next week, and mention Hung sent you, we’ll send you a $50 eGift.
Thursday Apr 17, 2025
Thursday Apr 17, 2025
Agentic AI in the Wild: Live Demo
Some of you might have noticed that whenever a recruitment software business promotes their Agentic AI, Brainfood is here to challenge them to do a live demo. So far no one has yet shirked the challenge, nor have their agents disappointed - we're beginning to understand that the generalist agent is likely be to an aspiration goal for business, but those that domain specific are going to be in with a chance to truly transform our approach to recruitment.
Next up is Recruitment job advertiser, VONQ
Under CEO Ritu Mohanka and CTO Bill Fischer, VONQ have been experimenting with Agentic AI with enterprise clients already using different agents to optimise their hiring across organisations. What does all this look like for us on the outside? We're going find out as VONQ live demo's the agents on this special Brainfood Live On Air.
We are on Thursday 17th April, 2pm BST
VONQ is transforming recruitment advertising with a results-driven platform that combines AI-driven technology, deep ATS integrations, and recruitment expertise.
Trusted by global leaders such as Danone, Bayer, Randstad, and PwC, we help employers attract, vet, and shortlist top-quality candidates efficiently. Our seamless integrations and real-time insights optimize hiring workflows, enhance employer branding, and drive measurable outcomes.
With VONQ, businesses can streamline their recruitment process, improve ROI, and build diverse, high-performing teams.
Friday Apr 11, 2025
Friday Apr 11, 2025
Sourcing Automation: What can be done in 2025?
Finding and engaging candidates more efficiently remains the No1 concern of recruiters the world over - nothing gets more clicks on the Recruiting Brainfood newsletter than cool new ways! And in 2025, there are so many things we can do - perhaps no time since the beginning of the web era have we seen such an opportunity to massively scale up our sourcing efforts.
Let's see what leading experts in the European sourcing scene have to say about the Sourcing Automation in 2025. What can we do - and are we actually doing it?
- Finding candidates
- Enriching candidate data
- Pulling email / phone data
- Automated, personalised outreach
- Automated, multi-channel drip campaign
- DIY vs Vendor integrated
- How much time saved?
- Sourcing outcomes....does it bring results?
- GDPR: are we breaching all over the place??
- Candidate experience....what are we seeing?
- How long before automation scales outreach to far too noisy levels?
- Best targets to apply sourcing automation techniques
- Won't your ATS do this all anyway?
All this and more with with Alexey Geht, Talent Sourcing Lead (Added Value), Alla Pavlova, Recruiter (Riot Games), Kanwar Singh Kohli, Global Talent Leader (Booking.com) & friends
We are on Friday 11th April, 1pm BST
Run an intake meeting for a new role and automatically get a perfectly-tailored, on-brand, and compliant job post based on the conversation. 🤯
That’s exactly what Metaview’s new AI Job Posts deliver. It’s your AI-powered co-worker that guarantees job posts that stand out and get results. Here’s what it does:
📷 Thinks like your team: The AI bases your job posts on insights drawn directly from your actual intake meetings and interviews.
📷 Sweats the details: Job posts stay compliant and on-brand. Every word, every time.
📷 Delivers at scale: Automatically ensures consistency and quality across all your job posts, at lightning speed.
Thursday Apr 10, 2025
Thursday Apr 10, 2025
Brainfood on Tour - How to Hire in China in 2025 & Beyond?
China has an enormous workforce and therefore a huge amount of recruitment. Most of the rest of the world knows very little about it! So it is time to speak to local Chinese citizens and residents to better understand how labour circulates through what by some measure has been the largest economy in the world since the mid 2010’s
We’re going to speak with Lin Xin, Marketing Director (Avature), Maria Ma, Talent Acquisition Regional Head APAC and the legendary Beecher Ashley-Brown, CEO of AJINGA.com
- What is the state of the economy in China in 2025?
- What are the main strengths, main challenge here?
- What sectors are the largest employers?
- What is the competition for the top talent?
- What defines top talent here?
- How do candidates behave - what is the best channel of communication for first contact?
- What skills are most in-demand here?
- How is the use of AI changing how companies recruit?
- What are the 10 things a recruiter should know in order to become more successful in China?
All this and more, on Wednesday 9th April,1pm CST / 4pm AEDT
Click on here to follow the channel (recommended) and click on the green button to register for this show.
Thursday Apr 03, 2025
Thursday Apr 03, 2025
Key Recruitment Trends to Watch in 2025: What Top Agencies Are Doing Differently
Recruitment agencies continue to face major obstacles, including the paradox of a talent shortage despite a decrease in job openings. With more candidates rejecting job offers, it’s become essential to expand sourcing efforts for each vacancy.
According to this year’s GRID Industry Trends Survey by Bullhorn, the most successful agencies have developed strategies that have enabled them to grow revenue despite economic challenges.
Discover how these agencies are embracing automation, enhancing candidate engagement, and refining their market strategies, all while leveraging AI to elevate recruitment to new heights.
We're bringing proprietary data from Bullhorn with Lia Taniguchi, Senior Research Manager & Liam Ryan, Senior Product Marketing Manager, (Bullhorn) - join us on Thursday 3rd April, 1pm BST
Sunday Mar 30, 2025
Sunday Mar 30, 2025
Brainfood on Tour - How to Hire in Australia in 2025 & Beyond?
Australia is the 7th largest recruitment market by dollar value - a very decent barometer to how the global staffing market is performing. Let’s dive into the conversation with local recruiters and find out what’s going on in 2025
We’re going to learn:
- What is the state of the economy in Australia in 2025?
- What are the main strengths, main challenge here?
- What sectors are the largest employers?
- What is the competition for the top talent?
- What defines top talent here?
- How do candidates behave - what is the best channel of communication for first contact?
- What skills are most in-demand here?
- How has the cost of living crisis / do more with less mantra impacted hiring demand?
- Will a change of government help?
- How is the use of AI changing how companies recruit?
- What are the 10 things a recruiter should know in order to become successful in Indonesia?
All this and more, on Friday 28th March,12pm AEST
Click on here to follow the channel (recommended) and click on the green button to register for this show.
Friday Mar 21, 2025
Friday Mar 21, 2025
DOGE, US Fed Gov and the Future of HR & TA in the USA
We have to talk about DOGE.
The US Federal Government is the largest single employer in the United States at 2.5 million employees. The intent of the Trump 2.0 administration is to radically reduce this number - by at least 10% in the first tranche - and maybe to end up with a workforce of about 10% when it is all said and done.
This is unprecedented downsizing of government function, the likes of which we have rarely seen outside of active conflict situations. The role of TA / HR and People Ops in general is multi-faceted. On of the one hand, there are thousands of colleagues in these roles who will be impacted (perhaps disproportionately so?) and so might now find themselves abruptly on the job market. On another hand, as People Ops' pros one of the most important functions is to ensure organisational compliance with employment law - how can one do this when the organisation itself seems intent in ignoring it? Finally, People Ops functions have responsibility and duty of care for other employees, who will no doubt by overwhelming HR departments right now with requests for advice and support on what to do.
Brainfood Live cannot solve any of these problems but it can help shine a light into what is going on, so that we can better understand the implications and in so doing, find a way to best support the people most impacted.
It's going to be an open mic style show folks, so if you are in the US and want to talk part in this conversation, dial in. We're with Steve Rothberg, Founder (CollegeRecruiter), Mike Bruni, Partner (Talent Acquisition Strategies), Kate Bischoff, Founder (K8bisch LLC) & friends
We are on Friday 21st March, 11am PST / 2pm EST
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.
Saturday Mar 15, 2025
Saturday Mar 15, 2025
IDEAL STRUCTURE OF AI-ENABLED TA
You might have noticed a run of AI Agent demo's on Brainfood Live recently - product makers are increasingly confident that they are going to produce intelligent software which will increasingly behave more like a colleague than a tool. What does this mean for the humans in the recruitment function?
Transformation is closer than we think and we need to get busy thinking about a future where AI indeed transforms our function, how that function needs to be structured for maximum efficacy and perhaps most importantly, how we ensure the efficiency gains provided by AI, convert to experience gains secured for humans.
We will discuss:
- State of AI in TA today
- Current structure of TA teams - what are the options?
- Will AI simplify TA structure - Y/N?
- What functions will human TA retain, which will be automated?
- How do humans 'stay in the loop'?
- SHOULD humans stay in the loop?
- What do we know about candidate experience and how will AI improve this?
- Bias: how do we ensure AI does not exacerbate bias in hiring?
- Where will recruiters be spending time in 2026?
- How will the role of hiring managers change with the increase use of AI?
- What does the optimal structure of TA look like going forward?
- How do TA leaders start the journey toward getting there today?
All this and more, with some of the smartest people in the industry talking us through it. We're with industry legends John Vlastelica, Founder (RecruitingToolbox), Kevin Wheeler, Founder (Future of Talent Institute), Jim Miller, VP of People & Talent (Ashby), Syeda Younus, Director Research (Gartner) & Mary Kay Baldino, Head of Talent Acquisition (Morningstar)
We are on Friday 14th March, 12PM PST / 3PM EST / 7PM GMT
Ashby is what an ATS should be: an integration of sourcing automation, AI-supported outreach sequencing, native interview scheduling, a searchable CRM, and advanced analytics – all in one ATS++ system. That means better data, less context switching, and more streamlined workflows.
Chosen by over a thousand companies, including Quora, Docker, Ironclad, and Multiverse, Ashby stands out as the top-rated ATS on G2. It is renowned for its real-time and reliable reporting, the ability to centralize the entire hiring process, and unparalleled customer support.
Talent Trends Reports are freely available: Download the latest here
Saturday Mar 08, 2025
Saturday Mar 08, 2025
Autonomous Agentic AI Recruiters: Here, Now?
If 2025 is going to be year of the Agentic AI, then companies like SeekOut are going to be one of the tech companies at the frontier of building them. We have already reviewed what Agentic AI is (see Ep293!) - and discussed how close and how far we are away from seeing them in production. Can product builders shed more light on where we currently stand - can we even see some of these agents in action?
I challenged SeekOut CEO Anoop Gupta to show us what is on the roadmap, and of course Anoop was up for the challenge! Not only will we see the next evolution of one of the most popular recruiting tools on the market, but in doing so better understand how this will shape the contours of future recruiting work.
Expectations are high: lets see whether Agentic AI is here, now!
We are on Friday 7th March, 1pm PT
SeekOut is one of the world's most popular recruitment technology platforms. Trusted by 1000's of employers worldwide to provide exceptional AI-enhanced candidate sourcing and personalising messaging services. Help your team hire the best talent by using SeekOut.