Ep 722: Soft Skills, Hard Data – Making Predictive Hiring Work

How do we move from reactive recruiting to predictive talent acquisition? In an era where performance metrics drive every business decision, recruitment often remains stubbornly intuition-based, especially when evaluating soft skills like empathy, communication, and critical thinking. What if AI could help us predict performance before a candidate even starts? And what happens when we connect hiring decisions to actual performance outcomes, creating a feedback loop that makes recruiters smarter over time? Can technology help us understand which risks are worth taking, and which gut feelings we should trust?  My guests this week are Veronique Lacasse, Senior Manager at Bell Canada, and Stephane Rivard, Co-founder and CEO of HiringBranch. In our conversation, Veronique and Stephane walk us through Bell's integrated approach to talent acquisition, which utilizes AI assessment data on soft skills to create a predictive, performance-driven hiring system that is still very much driven by human recruiters. In the interview, we discuss: Soft skills and business performance Measuring soft skills with AI driven assessments Challenges in high-volume hiring Building a feedback loop in recruiting, onboarding, and training Showing recruiters the performance outcomes of their decisions The candidate experience Why human recruiters aren't being replaced What does the future look like? Recruiting Future helps Talent Acquisition teams drive measurable impact by developing their strategic capability in Foresight, Influence, Talent, and Technology. If you're interested in finding out how your TA function measures up in these four critical areas, I've created the free FITT for the Future Assessment. It'll give you personalised insights to help you build strategic clarity and drive greater impact immediately. Just head to mattalder.me/podcast to complete the assessment; it takes less than 5 minutes. Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.