Matt Alder's Recent LinkedIn Posts

At Edinburgh airport heading to UNLEASH America. Always a great event and looking forward to some great discussions and debates about AI and the future of HR and TA. I obviously have opinions to share! I love the opportunity to meet people face to face and this is quite a long trip as I'm staying on for Transform next week! If you are going to either or both events it would be great to talk I also have my podcasting gear packed so listen out for some conference episodes of Recruiting Future coming soon to wherever you listen to podcasts.

Recruiting Future Round Up Live Join me and my special guest, Ritu Mohanka, as we review six interviews that were published on Recruiting Future during February Topics covered will include: metrics to prove the business value of TA, employer brand strategy at EY, managing AI risk, science-driven hiring, AI-powered recruiting processes, and the impact AI is having on the future of strategic workforce planning Recruiting Future Round Up is supported by VONQ. VONQ helps employers connect with top talent through AI-powered job distribution, deep ATS integrations, and recruitment intelligence that drives smarter, faster hiring decisions.

Recruiting processes were designed around human capacity. What happens when AI removes that constraint? Recruiting has always been shaped by time and resource limits. Resumes are short because recruiters only have so long to review them. Shortlists are small because hiring managers can only meet a handful of candidates. The whole funnel narrows because no recruiting team can always fully evaluate everyone who applies These constraints have defined hiring for decades. AI agents now have the ability to screen hundreds of candidates in hours, operate beyond business hours, and return structured, evidence-based insights for recruiters to assess. Early data from large scale AI interviewing is already challenging assumptions about how processes should work. At the same time, when algorithms influence who progresses, questions of fairness, ethics, and regulatory accountability become unavoidable. This creates a genuine inflection point. If time and capacity are no longer the bottlenecks, how should recruiting be redesigned? What needs to change, and what must remain firmly human? My guest on Episode 771 of Recruiting Future is Sachit Kamat, Chief Product Officer at Eightfold AI. In our conversation, Sachit shares early results from AI interviewing at scale and explains why talent leaders need to rethink hiring architecture rather than simply automate existing workflows. We discuss: • Lifting traditional capacity limitations in recruiting • The impact of AI interviewing on the candidate experience • What humans do better than technology • Designing processes built for agent scale • Meaningfully improving the candidate journey • Regulation, responsibility, and governance • First steps toward transformation • Whether time to hire could realistically fall below one hour • What the future of recruiting may look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts

The conversations at UNLEASH America are delivering. Last night I was the guest speaker at the Starred.com dinner, and it was an excellent evening. Senior TA leaders from large enterprise organisations sharing honest, unfiltered accounts of AI transformation, what’s actually working, what isn’t, and where the gap between expectation and reality is widest. That’s exactly the type of conversation I come to these events for! Thanks to the Starred team for the invitation. Good to catch up with Eric Knauf earlier in the day and hear about the work he’s doing in organisational performance. There’s a podcast episode in that conversation and I’m looking forward to making it happen. On the podcasting side, I’m recording with Paradox, A Workday Company while I’m here and also pulling together some interesting people for a special episode to be recorded at the show. More on that soon. The photo is me with the team at Statista , who are sponsoring Recruiting Future this month. They are partnering with Time magazine on the Excellence Workplace Rating and it’s definitely worth checking out. If you’re at the show, go and talk to them. More details in the comments.

TA is evolving. But are we measuring what actually matters? The talent market is full of contradictions. Hiring is happening, but it’s cautious. Candidates want more clarity. Employers are taking longer to make decisions. AI is everywhere in the conversation, but still nowhere near full adoption. Through it all, TA is changing. The best teams are thinking about skills, internal mobility, and workforce planning, not just filling roles. However, many are still reporting on time to hire and cost per hire, metrics that track activity rather than impact. So how should TA functions prove their value? What should be measured if the goal is real business influence? My guest on Episode 766 of Recruiting Future is Bharat Siyani Assoc CIPD Siyani, VP of People and Culture at ELMO Software. In our conversation, Bharat outlines what impact really looks like, which metrics actually matter, and how TA can position itself as a strategic partner in the business. We discuss: • The contradictions in today’s talent market • Finding the signal in the noise • Understanding nuance in recruiting decisions • What AI should do versus what humans must own • Moving beyond efficiency metrics • Measuring value, outcomes, and long-term fit • Tech hiring in a volatile landscape • Skills, context, and redefining roles • TA’s role in shaping the workforce • What the TA team of the future might look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Some employers are getting real results from AI. Others are still stuck in the fog. The noise around AI in talent acquisition has been relentless. For many TA leaders, it’s created fatigue and deep scepticism. The promises have often felt too good to be true. But while some teams remain hesitant, others are seeing measurable results. AI agents are now genuinely helping to improve speed, quality, efficiency, and the candidate experience. The gap between those making progress and those holding back is growing fast. So what does it actually look like when AI delivers value in the hiring process? My guest on Episode 762 of Recruiting Future is Maxime Legardez Coquin, Founder and CEO at MakiPeople. I saw Maki’s tech in action at UNLEASH last year and was genuinely impressed by the way it’s helping employers bring scientific precision to hiring. We discuss: • What it means to make recruiting a science • Capturing better signals to improve decision-making • Case studies showing how AI agents are working in practice • How candidates respond to this level of automation • Using compound intelligence to drive predictive hiring • Advice for TA leaders navigating transformation • Whether adoption will accelerate in 2026 • What the future of AI in recruiting could look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts

AI is context engineering, not software engineering. That was my biggest takeaway from UNLEASH America last week. The quote is from Ethan Mollick’s keynote, and it gets to the core of what makes this moment genuinely different from every previous wave of workplace technology. AI is not an upgrade to what already exists. It is the most radical shift in how work gets done that most of us will ever witness. But the technical developments, as extraordinary as they are, mean very little from a business perspective unless they are contextualised in a way that drives real value. The decisions that will determine whether organisations actually benefit are not technical ones. They are about skills, organisational design, and being precise about which parts of work should always remain with people. That theme ran through almost every conversation I had at the event and came through clearly in the podcast episode I recorded with Stef Nikitas from Ace Hardware and Rachel Allen, SPHR from 7-Eleven, which publishes in a few weeks time. For both of them, the core objective is business value, and they are achieving it by using AI and automation in talent acquisition to shape the kind of experience that candidates and hiring managers actually want. On the vendor side, the sheer volume of AI interviewing tools being pushed at the conference was off the scale! The underlying technology is largely interchangeable. What separated the ones worth paying attention to was whether they had properly thought through the value being created for the candidate, the recruiter, and the employer. Context is everything. Without it, one of the most powerful technologies we have ever seen just creates endless slop.

Automation is accelerating and so is the legal scrutiny that comes with it. Talent teams are under real pressure. Budgets are tight. Headcount is stretched. The mandate to move faster has pushed many organisations to automate quickly, often without redesigning the processes being automated. What used to be seen as routine workflow steps are now being examined as consequential decisions. Regulators and legal teams are paying attention. At the same time, AI has the potential to drive long overdue transformation in talent acquisition. It can force clarity, discipline, and better design. The opportunity is real, but so is the risk. So how do leaders navigate constraints without retreating into risk avoidance? My guest on Episode 769 of Recruiting Future is Kyle Lagunas, Founder of Kyle & Co. In our conversation, Kyle explores what defensibility actually means in practice, why talent teams need to move from risk avoidance to risk readiness, and how AI can act as a catalyst for better operating models. We discuss: • Credibility under constraint • The difference between being risk averse and risk ready • What defensibility really looks like • Balancing AI execution with human judgement • Designing human in the loop properly • Whether we hold machines to higher standards than people • The need for rigour in pilot programmes • Building AI literacy across the function • What the future may look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

I'm very much looking forward to joining Brendan Jeannetti on Workable’s Next at Work podcast which we are recording live and in person in London on March 4. We will be diving into how AI is reshaping hiring, what pay transparency means for employers, and how talent teams can stay ahead in a fast changing market. If you are nearby, come join us for breakfast, networking, and the live discussion! Register for free here: https://luma.com/bia8erho

Recruiting Future Round Up Live Recruiting Future Round Up Live is back! Join me, Matt Alder, and my special guest, Mervyn Dinnen, as we review six interviews that were published on Recruiting Future in January Topics covered will include: The AI outlook for 2026, the future of the resume, the big problem with corporate careers sites, the power of TA and vendor co-creation, what the future role of a recruiter might look like, how AI interviews can hugely improve the candidate experience and the opportunity for TA to lead transformation in their organization

I'm looking forward to joining Ceipal Connect 2026 as the opening keynote speaker on Thursday, March 5, a virtual conference for the staffing and recruiting industry. The session is called "Futurecasting: How Leaders Can Shape What Comes Next," and it's a topic I've been thinking about a lot lately. The industry is facing more simultaneous forces of change than at any point in its history. AI, shifting workforce expectations, economic uncertainty, and evolving client demands are all colliding at once. The temptation for leaders is to wait and react. But the organizations that will thrive are the ones actively shaping what comes next rather than letting it happen to them. In the session, I'll be introducing a practical Futurecasting framework, a structured method for cutting through the hype, separating real trends from noise, and building scenarios that account for genuine uncertainty without defaulting to prediction or paralysis. If you work in staffing and recruiting and want to think more clearly about what's coming, I'd love to have you join us. It's free and fully virtual. Registration link in the comments. Steve Vittorioso

Looking for something to listen to this weekend? Our Chief Product Officer, Sachit Kamat, joined Matt Alder the Recruiting Future podcast to explore what happens when AI removes the traditional capacity limits in recruiting. In the episode, Sachit shares early insights on: - AI interviewing at scale - How candidate experience changes with AI - What must remain human in hiring - How talent leaders should rethink recruiting architecture 👉 Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gzKwdMur

There are things AI already does better than your recruiters. That’s uncomfortable to accept, yet understanding it is how you make your teams more valuable, not less. Consider what happens when you put AI against human experience in resume matching. For argument’s sake, let’s say a recruiter reviews 250,000 resumes over a twenty-year career. An AI can rank that same 250,000 resumes in under a minute, reading every single word without skimming, without fatigue, without unconscious shortcuts. The volume of deeper pattern matching it can do on that data in under an hour is beyond anything a human team can replicate, no matter how experienced they are. We place enormous value on experience in this industry, and rightly so, yet that same value makes us blind to where our real strengths actually lie. When your recruiters are spending their time on work that AI demonstrably does faster and more thoroughly, you’re wasting the capabilities that actually set them apart. The things that make recruiters genuinely valuable aren’t going away. Understanding nuance and context, knowing how a hire will actually play out in practice, building the relationships that surface insights no resume ever could, and navigating the regulatory and ethical complexities that come with every hiring decision. These are profoundly human skills, and AI is making them more important, not less. The challenge for TA leaders right now is a difficult one. You have to help your teams let go of tasks they’ve built their professional identity around so they can hold on to the things that only they can do.

Hiring is meant to find the right person. Too often, the process filters them out instead. Most hiring systems are built with good intentions. Job descriptions are designed to clarify expectations. Competency frameworks aim to define leadership. Assessment tools promise objectivity. In practice, many of these tools narrow the funnel long before employers realise it. Candidates are screened out for skills they could quickly learn. Leadership models reflect generic philosophies rather than what works inside a specific organisation. Some assessments lack scientific validation, while others identify average profiles when the role demands something very different. The result is missed talent and misaligned hires who spend months, sometimes years, trying to succeed against expectations that were never clearly defined. So how should organisations rethink how they assess and select talent? My guest on Episode 770 of Recruiting Future is Dr. Stefanie Puckett, founder of SynergyMind Consulting. Drawing on two decades in organisational psychology, Stephanie explains where hiring processes quietly break down and what happens when science is replaced by assumption. We discuss: • The most common mistakes employers make in hiring • How talent pools are unintentionally restricted • Skill and competency transfer • The risk of using tools without scientific validation • The critical role of talent acquisition teams • Data science versus psychology • Confirmation bias inside large datasets • The importance of realistic job previews • How hiring may evolve over the next two to three years 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

It’s great to see so many vendor podcasts launching in our space, and I just wanted to share something I’ve learned from my 11 years of podcasting. Growing a business podcast audience is always a challenge. Podcasting doesn’t follow the same rules as other media because of the lack of algorithmic discovery and the added complications of targeting and persuading people to change their current listening habits. Podcasts grow through word-of-mouth recommendations. The most effective way to market a podcast is to make the content so good that people want to recommend it. The next most effective way to market a podcast is to partner with more established podcasts in the same niche who have developed a high degree of trust with your target audience. It is much easier to persuade someone who already listens to podcasts to try your podcast than to market to people who don’t. TLDR - The best way to grow your podcast is to promote it on another podcast

Everyone’s talking about AI transformation. Almost no one is actually doing it. Leaders know AI is transformative. Many are making big statements and setting bold targets. But when it comes to real implementation, most companies are stuck. They launch small pilots, chase marginal efficiency gains, and fall far short of the change they’re promising. The technology isn’t the issue. The problem is structural. Most organisations aren’t built to support the kind of deep, cross-functional change AI requires. There’s often no clear owner, no shared direction, and no blueprint for how to move forward. My guest on Episode 764 of Recruiting Future is Stephen Wunker, co-author of AI and the Octopus Organization. In our conversation, Stephen unpacks what is really happening on the ground, what’s holding companies back, and what it means for talent leaders trying to keep up. We discuss: • The gap between what CEOs are saying and what is actually happening • What is holding AI transformation back • Distributed innovation and structural blockers • What it means to be an “Octopus Organization” • The role of human judgement and critical thinking • Examples of companies that are getting it right • What this all means for talent, culture, and capability • How adoption may accelerate over the next two years 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts Recruiting Future - Join The Conversation

Round Live is happening later today. Looking forward to digging into some big topics with Mervyn Dinnen. We will be dissecting the insights from my latest Recruiting Future interviews with Jonathan F. Kestenbaum, Bas van de Haterd (He/His/Him),Ritu Mohanka, Simon Bishop, Dr. Ali Raza, Maxime Legardez Coquin and Stephen Wunker Make sure you sign up and join the conversation

How much do we really know about bias in hiring? We talk a lot about bias in recruiting. But most of what we know comes from studies that isolate a single variable. That makes it difficult to see the full picture and even harder to build effective strategies for change. At the same time, the introduction of AI tools is raising expectations for transparency and accountability. Many organisations assume they understand how bias shows up in their hiring processes. But what if those assumptions are wrong? My guest on Episode 763 of Recruiting Future is Bas van de Haterd (He/His/Him) van de Haterd, Co-founder of the Talent Acquisition Audit Institute. In this conversation, Bas shares findings from a major new research project that challenges conventional thinking about how bias actually shows up in hiring. The results are more complex and more surprising than you might expect. We discuss: • How the research was designed and what was measured • How this work compares to previous academic studies • What the results really tell us about bias in hiring • Whether bias is universal, institutional, or personal • Are employers doing better than they think? • Using data to drive focused, effective change • Lessons learned and advice for TA leaders • Where the research is heading next 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts Recruiting Future - Join The Conversation

The job board model is breaking. Can it be fixed before it collapses? Job boards have connected candidates and employers for over thirty years. But the relationship that made them work is starting to fall apart. Candidates are applying to roles that may already be filled or have been taken off the market. Employers are drowning in identical, AI-generated applications they can't properly assess. Job boards, caught in the middle, are still operating on business models that reward volume over quality. The result is a growing trust gap on both sides. When neither party believes the process is fair or effective, the whole system begins to unravel. So what would it take for job boards to rebuild that trust and stay relevant? My guest on Episode 765 of Recruiting Future is Lou Goodman, a job board strategist who recently partnered with Jobiqo on a major new report on the future of the industry. In our conversation, Lou explains why job boards are stuck in familiar patterns, what they can learn from other platforms, and whether this is a moment of evolution or extinction.  We discuss: • Why job boards still matter in today's market • The trust crisis threatening the ecosystem • How AI is amplifying weaknesses rather than solving them • Why fairness matters more than outcomes • The shift from quantity to quality • Where job boards can genuinely add value • How short-term fixes become long-term patterns • Lessons from other two-sided platforms • What the future might look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Recruiting Future Round Up is streaming live tomorrow. The brilliant Ritu Mohanka will be joining me to talk about the topics raised in February's Recruiting Future interviews. We'll be discussing my podcast interviews with Bharat Siyani Assoc CIPD, Sandra Oliver, Kyle Lagunas, Dr. Stefanie Puckett, Sachit Kamat, Jagrity Singh Please join us!

Please be aware that someone is impersonating me using a gmail address. If you are being messaged by someone using mattalder.executive.recruiterr@gmail.com then I’m afraid it’s a scam

AI is forcing hard choices about work, skills, and leadership. AI transformation is accelerating. Move too fast without a clear framework and organisations risk damaging culture, trust, and capability. Move too slowly while waiting for certainty and competitors gain ground. Talent leaders are caught in the middle, expected to drive change while protecting the workforce. There is no simple playbook, and the pressure is intensifying. So what does a disciplined, structured response to AI disruption actually look like? Where should HR and talent functions lead, and where should they challenge? My guest on Episode 772 of Recruiting Future is Jagrity Singh, a transformation leader who integrates AI-driven talent strategies with process excellence. In our conversation, she introduces a practical model for understanding where work sits on the spectrum between fully human and fully automated, and explains why organisations that succeed will be those that learn to ride the wave rather than resist it. We discuss: • Differences in AI approaches across Europe, the Middle East, and North America • The impact of AI on jobs and how employers should respond • Why AI is a people challenge, not just a technology one • The role of CHROs in orchestrating human and AI workforces • Strategic workforce planning • Deciding what should and should not be automated • Advice for talent leaders navigating disruption • What the future may look like 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

This is such a great case study for the value of developing deep partnerships and co-creating solutions to address the real challenges TA is facing

When AI transforms how work gets done, how do you make sure a global workforce has the right skills? Audit and assurance are facing a talent crisis. Fewer graduates are choosing the profession, and perceptions of the work haven’t kept pace with how it’s actually changing. Meanwhile, AI is transforming the nature of audit. Repetitive tasks are being automated, new service lines are emerging, and the profession now needs very different skills. Purpose, flexibility, and agility are rising expectations, but many traditional career paths aren’t keeping up. So how do you reskill more than 100,000 people while also making the profession more attractive to the next generation? My guest on Episode 767 of Recruiting Future is Sandra Oliver, Global Assurance Talent Leader at EY. In our conversation, Sandra shares how EY is reskilling its global workforce at scale, building career stories that resonate with Gen Z, and reframing audit as a launchpad for future business leaders. We discuss: • Attracting Gen Z to the audit profession • How AI is changing day-to-day audit work • Upskilling 130,000 professionals in AI • Bridging generational divides in technology adoption • Reverse mentoring between junior and senior staff • Purpose and meaningful work as drivers of retention • How audit careers may evolve over the next five years 🎧 Listen by searching Recruiting Future wherever you get your podcasts #JoinTheConversation

Really looking forward to attending Transform this year and delighted Recruiting Future is a partner again. Let me know if you're going!