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GEO, What Do We know?   Candidates are no longer just typing "marketing jobs in Manchester" into Google. They're asking ChatGPT "what's it really like to work at Company X?", prompting Claude to compare benefits packages, and letting AI agents shortlist employers on their behalf. Welcome to the world of Generative Engine Optimisation - where the goal is no longer to rank on page one of search results, but to be cited, quoted and recommended by the AI answer engines that job seekers increasingly trust. The rules of visibility are being rewritten in real time, and most talent acquisition teams haven't even seen the new rulebook. So what do we actually know about GEO? In this session, we'll explore how organisations can make sure their employer brand is discoverable, credible and compelling in an AI-mediated job search world.   Key Themes We'll Cover: From SEO to GEO – Why the optimisation playbook talent teams have relied on for two decades is being disrupted, and what replaces it How AI Engines Decide Who to Recommend – The signals generative engines actually use when citing employers, from review sentiment to structured careers content Your Employer Brand vs The AI Summary – What happens when an LLM synthesises your EVP for a candidate, and why losing control of that narrative matters Job Advertising in the Answer Engine Era – How job ads get surfaced (or ignored) when candidates ask AI to find opportunities for them Content That Gets Cited – What kinds of employer brand content AI engines favour, and why depth and specificity beat volume every time Reviews, Reputation and Retrieval – How employee reviews, Glassdoor scores and third-party mentions feed into what AI tells candidates about you Structured Data and Careers Sites – The technical foundations that help (or hinder) AI engines understanding who you are and what you offer Measuring GEO – If no one clicks anymore, how do you track whether your employer brand is winning in the generative channel? First Movers and Early Learnings – What the TA teams experimenting with GEO right now are discovering, and the mistakes they're making so you don't have to What Comes Next – How talent attraction strategy evolves when the candidate journey starts with a conversation, not a search bar Whether you're responsible for employer branding, job advertising or the full talent attraction stack, this session will give you the grounding you need in what might be the most important shift in candidate discovery since Google itself. Join Hung Lee and our panel of experts as we ask the question every recruiter should be asking right now: GEO, what do we know?   We're on Friday 6th November, 2pm GMT   Follow the Brainfood Live channel here (recommended) and register for the show to make sure you don't miss it - the future of your employer brand's visibility may depend on it.   Ep417 is supported by friends Joveo   High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS. Find out more here

How to Use Claude for TA (Talent Acquisition)   Every week there's a new AI tool promising to revolutionise recruitment — but amidst the noise, a handful of platforms have genuinely earned a permanent place in the TA toolkit, and Claude is one of them. More than a chatbot, Claude has become a genuine thinking partner for recruiters: drafting outreach that actually gets replies, structuring interview loops, analysing hiring data, prepping hiring managers, and pressure-testing your EVP. But knowing Claude exists and knowing how to wield it are two very different things. In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel of practitioners share the real, practical, copy-paste-worthy ways talent acquisition teams are putting Claude to work — today.   Key Themes We'll Cover: Why Claude? – What distinguishes it from other AI tools, and why it's become a favourite among recruiters The Prompting Foundations – How to talk to Claude so it gives you recruiter-grade output, not generic fluff Sourcing & Outreach – Building Boolean strings, personalising messages at scale, and reviving dead pipelines Job Ads & JDs – Turning dry, compliance-heavy job descriptions into compelling, inclusive candidate magnets Interviewing with Claude – Generating tailored question sets, scorecards and candidate briefs in minutes Hiring Manager Alignment – Using AI to run better intake meetings, challenge briefs and keep stakeholders honest Data & Reporting – Making sense of funnel metrics, offer declines and sourcing channel performance — without a data team The Guardrails – What to watch out for: hallucinations, bias, confidentiality and keeping humans in the loop Building Your TA Prompt Library – How top teams are codifying their best prompts into repeatable workflows Whether you're a Claude novice who's been meaning to get started, or a power user looking for new tricks, this session will be packed with live demonstrations and tactical advice you can apply the very next morning. No theory, no vendor pitch — just real recruitment work, done faster and better.   Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. See you on air!   Ep415 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 Next Generation of Background Screening: Identity, Behaviour & Personalisation with Ben Mones, CEO of FAMA   The background check hasn't changed much in decades. A criminal record search, a reference call, maybe a credit check - and yet the risks employers actually face have moved somewhere else entirely. Workplace harassment, threats, intolerance and misconduct now leave observable traces online, long before they ever show up in a court record. At the same time, AI has made it trivially easy to fabricate an identity - a polished CV, a deepfake video interview, a candidate who exists only in the aggregate of a language model.   So what does the next generation of screening actually look like when identity, behaviour and personalisation converge?   To find out, we're sitting down with Ben Mones, founder and CEO of FAMA - the world's largest online screening company, with over 45 million reports produced. Ben founded FAMA in 2015 after experiencing first-hand a workplace misconduct incident that could have been prevented, and he's spent the decade since building the case that behaviour - not just records - is the signal employers should be screening for.   Key Themes We'll Cover: Beyond the Criminal Record – Why traditional background checks were built for a pre-internet world, and the gap they leave when it comes to workplace-relevant risk Identity in the Age of AI – Verifying that the person applying is actually who they say they are, as deepfakes, synthetic CVs and AI-generated candidates enter the funnel Behaviour First, Not Background First – How AI can surface intolerance, harassment, threats and violence in publicly available online content - across 100+ languages - and why Fama deliberately screens behaviour rather than protected characteristics The Compliance Tightrope – Running screening programs that stand up to FCRA, EEOC, GDPR, EU AI Act, PIPEDA and FCA's new non-financial misconduct regulations scrutiny: consent, consistency, and what candidates must be allowed to contest Personalisation vs. Consistency – Tailoring screening depth to role seniority and risk profile without introducing bias or disparate impact into the process The End of One-Size-Fits-All Screening – What a genuinely personalised screening stack looks like, and where configurability ends and subjectivity begins Screening Beyond the Offer – Continuous screening of existing employees: legitimate risk management or the thin end of a surveillance wedge? What to Ask Your Screening Vendor – The hard questions recruiters and TA leaders should be asking about AI accuracy, explainability and bias before they sign anything Whether you run screening in-house, outsource it to a background check provider, or are simply wondering what AI means for candidate trust and privacy, this session will give you a clear-eyed view of where screening is heading - and what it means for how you hire. Join Hung Lee and Ben Mones for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of background screening.   We're live on Wednesday 28th October, 10am ET. Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel here (recommended) and register for the show by saving your spot here. Must attend folks.

New Series: How AI Is Changing the Job — Software Engineering   Software engineering was supposed to be one of the first professions AI would disrupt — and yet here we are, with demand for engineers still climbing, job descriptions changing faster than ever, and hiring managers struggling to define what a "good developer" even looks like in 2026. AI hasn't eliminated the role; it's transformed it. The craft of writing code has shifted towards reviewing it, architecting systems, prompting agents and judging output. So what does that mean for how we hire software engineers? In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air — the first in a brand new series examining how AI is reshaping specific professions — Hung Lee and our panel of experts look at the world's most scrutinised tech role and ask: how do you recruit for a job that's mid-transformation? Key Themes We'll Cover: A New Series, A New Lens – Why we're going deep on individual professions, and what we'll be covering across the series The Real Impact So Far – What the data says about AI's effect on engineering productivity, output quality and team structures The Death of the LeetCode Interview? – Why traditional coding assessments may be measuring the wrong thing in an AI-assisted world New Skills, New Signals – The emerging competencies hiring teams should screen for: system design, AI oversight, debugging judgment, taste Junior Engineers: An Endangered Species? – What happens to entry-level hiring when AI handles the tasks juniors used to learn on The Experience Paradox – Why senior engineers are more in demand than ever, and whether that's sustainable Assessing for What Matters Now – Practical changes engineering hiring teams are making to interviews, take-homes and technical rounds Should Candidates Use AI in Interviews? – The great debate: testing for AI-assisted performance, or assessing raw coding skill? What Engineering Teams Will Look Like in 2030 – Predictions on team size, composition and the engineer-to-AI-agent ratio If you recruit for engineering roles — or any technical role facing similar disruption — this episode will help you cut through the noise and rethink your hiring strategy for the AI era. Expect data, debate and plenty of practical takeaways.   We're on Friday 23rd October, 2pm BST.   Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. See you on air!   Ep414 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

Sourcing: Dead or Alive? Reviewing SOSU 2026 — Past, Present and Future of Sourcing   It's the question that refuses to go away: with AI now able to find, engage and even screen candidates at scale, is sourcing still a profession — or just a feature of your ATS?   Every year, the Sourcing Summit (SOSU) brings together the sharpest minds in the field to interrogate exactly that. In this special episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel take stock of SOSU 2026, reflecting on how far sourcing has come, where it stands today, and whether the role as we know it survives the next wave of AI. Is this a renaissance moment for sourcers — or a farewell tour?   Key Themes We'll Cover: The SOSU 2026 Takeaways – The big themes, debates and moments from this year's Sourcing Summit From Phonebooks to Prompts – Tracing the evolution of sourcing from Boolean strings and X-ray searches to conversational AI Is Sourcing Really Dying? – Separating hype from reality: what automation has actually replaced, and what it hasn't The New Sourcer Skillset – Data literacy, AI orchestration, market mapping and the human craft that machines can't replicate AI as Co-Pilot, Not Replacement – How the best sourcers are using AI to amplify their reach, speed and insight The Talent Intelligence Pivot – Why more sourcing teams are evolving into strategic market intelligence functions Engagement Is the Differentiator – When everyone has access to the same tools and databases, outreach quality becomes the moat What Happens to Junior Sourcers? – Rethinking career entry points and training pipelines when the traditional apprenticeship tasks are automated The Next Decade of Sourcing – Predictions from the SOSU floor on where the profession goes from here Whether you're a battle-hardened sourcing veteran, a TA leader rethinking your team structure, or a newcomer wondering if there's a future in this craft, this episode will give you an unfiltered view of the state of play. Expect strong opinions, healthy disagreement, and zero fluff.   We're on Friday 16th October, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. See you on air!   Ep413 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 uplevel your hiring function?   Book a demo or start for free here.

HOW TO ASSESS FOR HUMAN JUDGEMENT   As AI takes over more of the heavy lifting in recruitment — screening CVs, drafting interview questions, even conducting first-round interviews — the skills we hire for are shifting. Technical proficiency can increasingly be automated, augmented or verified by machines. What's becoming harder to replace, and harder to find, is human judgement: the ability to weigh imperfect information, read the room, make a call under uncertainty, and be accountable for the outcome. But if judgement is the thing we need most, how on earth do we assess for it? In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel of experts dig into the science (and the art) of evaluating one of the most elusive qualities in any candidate.   Key Themes We'll Cover: What Is Judgement, Anyway? – Defining the capability before we try to measure it, and why it matters more in an AI-augmented workplace The Failure of the Hypothetical – Why "what would you do if..." questions reveal rehearsed answers, not real judgement Evidence-Based Assessment Design – Using case studies, work simulations and real scenarios to observe decision-making in action Judgement Under Pressure – Whether stress-testing candidates actually predicts on-the-job decision quality Learning from High-Stakes Industries – What medicine, aviation, the military and investing can teach recruitment about assessing decision-makers The Accountability Test – How to probe whether a candidate truly owns their decisions, or deflects when things go wrong Interviewing for Judgement – Questioning techniques, probes and red flags that reveal how someone actually thinks Can AI Assess Judgement? – Where AI-powered assessment genuinely helps, and where it falls flat on evaluating distinctly human qualities Avoiding Bias in Subjective Assessment – Keeping judgement-based evaluation fair, structured and defensible If you're hiring for roles where the cost of a bad decision is high — leadership positions, client-facing roles, anything involving ambiguity and consequence — this episode is essential listening. Recruiters, hiring managers, TA leaders: join us for a conversation that goes way beyond competency frameworks.   Follow the channel here (recommended) so you never miss an episode, and register for the show to get your questions answered live by the panel. We're on Friday 9th October, 2pm BST   Ep412 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

Employer Branding in the Era of AI Generated Career Sites - Who Owns the Story?   The career site is the front door to your employer brand — and until recently, building or even tweaking it meant months of agency briefs, dev tickets, and design sign-offs. Not anymore. A new wave of AI-powered platforms now lets recruiters and TA teams build entire career sites simply by typing what they want in plain language. "Create a landing page for our engineering roles in Berlin, add employee testimonials, and hook it up to our ATS" — and it just happens. In this episode of Brainfood Live on Air, Hung Lee and our panel of experts explore what natural language prompting means for the way employers attract, engage and convert talent — and whether the era of the bloated, three-year website redesign project is finally over.   Key Themes We'll Cover: The End of the Static Career Site – Why the traditional "rebuild every few years" model is breaking down in a world where hiring needs shift week to week Prompt to Publish – How natural language prompting actually works under the hood, and what it can realistically deliver today Who Owns the Build Now? – Whether career sites become a recruiter's tool rather than a marketing or IT project Speed vs. Substance – Avoiding the trap of generating slick, AI-built pages that say nothing about what it's actually like to work at your company Personalisation at Scale – Building dynamic career site experiences that adapt by role, location or candidate segment — without a developer The SEO & Conversion Question – Do AI-built career sites actually perform better, or just launch faster? Employer Brand in a Prompt-Driven World – Protecting authentic storytelling when anyone can spin up a polished site in an afternoon Governance and Guardrails – Who approves what when content creation is democratised across the TA function Where This Is Heading – What the next generation of career sites will look like as prompting gets more conversational and multimodal Whether you're stuck with a careers page that's been "due a refresh" since 2022, or you're simply curious about what AI can do beyond writing job ads, this is a session you won't want to miss. Recruiters, sourcers, TA leaders and employer brand folks — join us for a practical, no-hype conversation about the future of your most important hiring asset.   We're on Friday 2nd October, 2pm BST. Follow the channel here (recommended) and register for the show here.   Ep411 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

Vibe Coding TA Tools - How Viable Is This Really?   The promise is intoxicating: describe the recruiting tool you want in plain English, and AI writes the code for you. No engineering team. No six-month procurement cycle. No budget request that dies in finance. Just you, a prompt, and a working prototype by lunchtime.   "Vibe coding" - building software through conversational AI rather than traditional programming - has already spawned a generation of side projects, internal dashboards, and "I can't believe this actually works" automations.   But before every recruiter starts spinning up their own ATS plug-in or candidate scoring app, we need to ask the hard questions. Does it scale? Is it secure? What happens when the person who "vibe-coded" it leaves the company and nobody knows how it works? In this session, we'll separate the genuine productivity breakthroughs from the hype, and figure out where vibe coding belongs in a professional TA tech stack - and where it absolutely doesn't.   Key Themes We'll Cover: What "Vibe Coding" Actually Means – A plain-English explainer of how AI code generation works in practice, and why the barrier to building custom tools has dropped through the floor The "It Works on My Laptop" Problem – Why a prototype that runs in a browser tab is a world away from a tool that handles real candidate data, integrates with your ATS, and doesn't crash on a Monday morning Security, Compliance, and the GDPR Nightmare – What happens to candidate data when it's flowing through AI-generated scripts that nobody technically owns or understands When Vibe Coding Makes Perfect Sense – The low-stakes, high-value use cases where a recruiter-built automation genuinely outperforms waiting for IT: custom reporting, outreach sequencing, internal workflow triggers When You Absolutely Should Not Vibe Code – The red lines around production systems, data infrastructure, and anything that touches payroll, compliance, or candidate-facing experiences The Maintenance Trap – How "no-code" tools built by one enthusiastic team member become "who-knows-code" liabilities when that person moves on Integration Reality Checks – Why your vibe-coded dashboard probably won't talk to Workday, Greenhouse, or LinkedIn Recruiter without a lot more than a clever prompt The Recruiter as Builder – Whether this trend signals a permanent shift in the recruiter skill set, or just a temporary novelty that will be absorbed back into proper tooling Enterprise vs. Startup Viability – Why a five-person agency can vibe-code its entire stack, and why a Fortune 500 TA function probably shouldn't Whether you're a recruiter who's already built three ChatGPT-powered automations this quarter, a TA leader worried about shadow IT creeping into your function, or just someone trying to figure out if "vibe coding" is a genuine capability shift or another buzzword destined for the graveyard, this session will give you a clear-eyed assessment. The tools have never been more accessible—but accessibility and viability are not the same thing. Join Hung Lee and our panel as we stress-test the vibe coding promise against the messy reality of enterprise recruiting.   We're on Friday 18th September, 2pm BST. Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel here (recommended) and register now - because before you ship that AI-generated candidate matching algorithm to production, you might want to hear this first.   Ep409 is sponsored by our friends SCALIS   This week’s brainfood is supported by our friends SCALIS   Your contract renews. The price goes up. You add another tool to patch what it still can’t do. Repeat.   SCALIS replaces the whole stack: AI sourcing, AI screening, CRM, ATS, AI scheduling, AI notetaker, offer management, conversational analytics, and 82 HRIS and payroll integrations, all in one system. It also runs inside Claude and ChatGPT, so your team can work requisitions and candidates without opening another tab.   Flat annual rate. No seats. No add-ons. No tiers or paywalls. No usage or AI token costs.   Here is the part that actually matters if you are mid-contract:   SCALIS does not bill you until your existing agreement expires. Start hiring with SCALIS today, pay when your current contract runs out, and if it isn’t working in the first 90 days, you get a refund.   Companies from 100-5,000+ employees like Fountain, Boundless Immigration, CoAdvantage, THNKS, Stronghold, and Intelligems all ran SCALIS alongside their existing setup before fully committing. You can do the same.   And if you claim it through this newsletter, you are not booking a demo with a sales rep. You get time directly with Brandon Amoroso, Founder and CEO, who has hosted 1,200 TA leaders across 75 dinners this year.   Bring your hardest hiring problem.   Learn More at SCALIS.ai | Schedule Time with Brandon

How to Assess Skillful Use of AI   The way we assess engineering talent is undergoing a fundamental shift.   With AI now capable of generating functional code in seconds, the old evaluation playbook - whiteboard algorithms, take-home tests, "does it compile?"- is looking increasingly obsolete. The real question for hiring teams isn't whether a candidate can write syntax; it's whether they can exercise judgment, orchestrate multiple AI agents, and ship production-quality systems in a world where code generation is commoditised.   G2i has been on the front lines of this shift, spending the last two years embedded inside frontier AI labs building reinforcement learning environments, human evaluation workflows, and training data infrastructure. That hands-on experience has completely redefined how they vet engineers - not for what they can type, but for how they think, direct, and evaluate AI-generated output. In this session, we'll unpack how reinforcement learning principles are reshaping technical assessment and what it means for anyone hiring engineering talent right now.   Key Themes We'll Cover: Why Syntax Is No Longer the Differentiator – How AI code generation has flattened the playing field and why "can they code?" is the wrong question to ask in 2026 From Code Tests to Judgment Tests – What G2i's live technical evaluations actually measure now: agentic development, RL pipeline design, RAG architecture, LLM engineering, and the ability to evaluate AI output quality Inside the Frontier Lab – What G2i learned from two years building RL environments and human evaluation systems for cutting-edge AI models, and how that experience rewired their vetting philosophy Reinforcement Learning as Evaluation Framework – How RLHF-style feedback loops and reward modelling concepts are being applied to assess candidate decision-making under uncertainty The Orchestration Skill Gap – Why the engineers worth hiring today are the ones who can direct, critique, and refine the output of multiple AI agents—not just prompt them What "Taste" Looks Like in Practice – How G2i distinguishes between engineers who ship AI-assisted code and engineers who ship good AI-assisted code Building Multi-Agent Workflows – How G2i developed internal orchestration tools to coordinate complex agentic pipelines, and what that reveals about the skills they now screen for The Recruiter's Translation Challenge – How TA teams can bridge the gap between technical hiring managers and engineering candidates when the evaluation criteria have shifted this dramatically What Comes Next for Technical Vetting – How assessment is likely to evolve as AI capabilities accelerate, and why the platforms still testing for LeetCode-style problems are falling behind Whether you're a recruiter struggling to keep up with how engineering assessment is changing, a TA leader rethinking your technical interview process, or a hiring manager wondering why your last three "great on paper" hires couldn't ship reliable code, this session will give you a clear-eyed view of where evaluation is heading. G2i isn't talking theory—they've been building the systems that train the models.   Join Hung Lee and David House as we explore what reinforcement learning reveals about real engineering judgment, and why the best hires in the agentic era will be defined by taste, not syntax.   We're on Thursday 17th September, 10am PT / 1pm ET   Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel here (recomended) and register now - this is one skill shift you need to understand before your next technical search

The Future of Hiring, with Matt Wilson, CEO of Jack & Jill   Matt Wilson, CEO of Jack & Jill, joins Hung Lee live to discuss what happens when AI makes applying almost effortless, application volumes explode, and the traditional signals recruiters rely on start to disappear.   Key Themes We'll Cover:   The End of the Application? - What happens when applying becomes effectively free, and why more applications plus better filters may not be the answer   An Agent for Every Candidate - What changes when people have an agent that understands their experience, ambitions, salary expectations and what they actually want next   What Recruiters Do Next - Where agents can assist with searching, matching and introductions, and where human judgement, persuasion and relationships matter more than ever.   The Job Market in 2030 - What hiring could look like if agents continuously search the market on behalf of people and companies, without candidates needing to apply at all   Whether you're sceptical about AI agents or already exploring them for your team, this session will give you a clear-eyed view of where the technology stands and where it's going.   Follow Recruiting Brainfood here (recommended) and register (save my spot) now to join the live discussion on 15 September at 2pm - bring your questions, because this one is going to get interesting!

Disconnected AI vs. Multi-Agent Ecosystems: Building a TA Tech Stack in the Agentic AI Era   For the past few years, talent acquisition teams have been bolting AI tools onto their existing tech stacks - an AI scheduler here, a chatbot there, a CV parser with some machine learning sprinkled on top. It's worked, sort of!   But we're now entering the agentic AI era, where autonomous AI agents don't just assist with tasks; they execute entire workflows, hand off work to other agents, and make decisions that ripple across your entire hiring process.   The question is no longer "Which AI tool should we buy?" but "How do we architect a system where multiple AI agents actually talk to each other?" A disconnected stack of point solutions risks creating more friction than it solves, while a well-designed multi-agent ecosystem could fundamentally reshape how recruiting gets done. In this session, we'll explore what it takes to build a TA tech stack that isn't just AI-enabled - it's agentic by design.   Key Themes We'll Cover: The Point Solution Problem – Why your current stack of disconnected AI tools is creating data silos, workflow gaps, and a fragmented candidate experience What "Agentic AI" Actually Means for TA – Moving beyond chatbots and auto-schedulers to autonomous agents that can source, screen, engage, and coordinate across the hiring funnel Multi-Agent Architecture 101 – The key design principles for getting AI agents to communicate, delegate, and collaborate without creating chaos The Integration Imperative – Why your ATS, CRM, assessment platform, and HRIS need to become agent-friendly, and what that looks like in practice Orchestration vs. Automation – How multi-agent ecosystems differ from traditional workflow automation, and why the distinction matters for scale Governance in a Multi-Agent World – Who's accountable when one agent's output becomes another agent's input? Building oversight without killing speed Vendor Landscape Shifts – Which platforms are pivoting toward agentic ecosystems and which are clinging to the old single-tool model The Recruiter's Role in an Agentic Stack – How the job changes when agents handle execution and recruiters focus on strategy, relationship, and judgment Building Your Roadmap – Practical steps to audit your current stack, identify integration gaps, and prioritise investments for an agentic future Whether you're a TA leader planning next year's tech budget, a recruiter wondering how your workflow is about to change, or an operations specialist trying to make sense of the vendor noise, this session will give you a clear framework for thinking about your stack in the agentic era.   The shift from disconnected tools to intelligent ecosystems is happening fast - don't get left stitching together point solutions while your competitors build agent armies.   We're on Friday 11th September, 2pm BST.   Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel here (recommended) and register for the show here now.   Ep407 is supported by our friends Joveo.   High-Performance Recruitment Marketing Powered by Agentic AI. Integrated Talent Attraction - everything before the ATS.   Find out more here

EU AI Act is Now in Force! What Recruiters Need To Do Now   The EU AI Act is no longer a future concern - it's live, enforceable, and already reshaping how organisations can use artificial intelligence in hiring. For recruiters and talent acquisition teams, this isn't just a compliance headache for the legal department. If your tech stack includes AI-powered sourcing, CV screening, video interviewing, or candidate assessment tools, the Act directly affects you. The stakes are high: non-compliance can trigger fines of up to 7% of global annual turnover, and the rules apply to any employer hiring within the EU, regardless of where the company is headquartered. Yet many TA teams are only now waking up to what "high-risk AI system" means in practice. In this session, we'll cut through the regulatory noise and focus on what recruiters actually need to do - and do quickly - to stay on the right side of the law without grinding their hiring process to a halt.   Key Themes We'll Cover: What the EU AI Act Actually Says About Recruitment – Which AI hiring tools are classified as high-risk and what that classification triggers in terms of legal obligation The Transparency Imperative – Why you now need to tell candidates when AI is being used to evaluate them, and how to do it without damaging the candidate experience Human-in-the-Loop Requirements – What "meaningful human oversight" really means and how to design workflows that satisfy regulators without creating bottlenecks Bias Testing and Documentation – The new standards for fairness auditing, dataset governance, and the paper trail you need to build around every AI-driven hiring decision Vendor Due Diligence – The hard questions to ask your HR tech providers right now, and red flags that suggest a tool won't pass regulatory muster The Extraterritorial Trap – Why US, UK, and APAC-based employers can't ignore the Act if they hire even a handful of people in Europe Building Your Compliance Roadmap – Practical, prioritised steps TA leaders can take in the next 90 days to assess risk, remediate gaps, and keep hiring moving What Comes Next – How the Act is likely to influence AI regulation globally and what early movers are doing to turn compliance into a competitive advantage Whether you're a TA leader scrambling to understand your exposure, a recruiter using AI tools day-to-day, or an HR tech buyer re-evaluating your vendor list, this session will give you the clarity and actionable steps you need. Join Hung Lee and our panel of legal, compliance, and talent acquisition experts as we unpack the EU AI Act and translate it into recruiter-friendly language. Follow the Recruiting Brainfood channel and register now - this is one compliance shift you can't afford to sleep on.   We're on Friday 4th September, 2pm BST / 3pm CEST. Following the channel here (recommended) and register for the show here   Ep405 is sponsored by our friends Ashby   The all-in-one recruiting platform that evolves at the speed of AI. Empowering ambitious teams from Startups to Enterprises. If you're looking for an upgrade to our core talent platform, you know you need to check out Ashby. Get a demo today here

IN CONVERSATION WITH JOHN VLASTELICA   Few people have done more to shape the modern Talent Advisor than John Vlastelica. From leading recruiting at Amazon and Expedia to founding Recruiting Toolbox, John has spent the past two decades helping hundreds of organisations transform Talent Acquisition from a transactional function into a strategic business partner. His ideas around recruiter capability, hiring manager excellence, quality of hire and organisational influence have become essential reading for TA leaders around the world. In this special conversation, we'll sit down with John to explore how the recruiter role is evolving once again in the age of AI - and what the very best talent organisations are doing differently.   Key Themes We'll Cover: The Evolution of the Talent Advisor – How the recruiter role has changed over the past twenty years, and what the next generation of Talent Advisors will look like Quality of Hire Above All Else – Why the most important metric in Talent Acquisition remains the hardest to define, measure and improve Building Better Hiring Managers – How organisations can create a culture where hiring managers become active owners of hiring success rather than passive stakeholders AI Changes the Work—Not the Mission – Where AI and automation can improve recruiting, and where human judgement, curiosity and influence become even more valuable Strategic Conversations That Matter – How recruiters and TA leaders can earn greater credibility by speaking the language of business rather than recruitment Developing World-Class Recruiters – The capabilities, behaviours and mindset shifts that separate exceptional recruiters from the rest Leading Through Change – Helping Talent Acquisition teams adapt to economic uncertainty, organisational transformation and rapidly evolving technology Differentiation in an AI World – Why organisations may need to become more human, not less, as AI becomes commonplace across hiring What's Next for Talent Acquisition? – John's perspective on the biggest opportunities and biggest mistakes facing TA leaders over the next five years Whether you've followed John's work for years or are discovering his ideas for the first time, this promises to be an insightful conversation with one of the profession's most respected thinkers. Join Recruiting Brainfood for a practical, thought-provoking discussion on the future of recruiting, leadership and Talent Acquisition—and what it will take to remain indispensable in the AI era.     We're on Friday 28th August, 10am PT / 6pm BST.   Make sure to follow the channel here (recommended) and register for this show by saving your spot here.   Ep404 is sponsored by Ashby   The all-in-one recruiting platform that evolves at the speed of AI. Empowering ambitious teams from Startups to Enterprises. If you're looking for an upgrade to our core talent platform, you know you need to check out Ashby. Get a demo today here

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