Ep 806: The Real Trends In Talent Acquisition

Over the last year, I have been using AI to develop a searchable archive of the content in every episode of Recruiting Future, 3 million words from over a decade of unscripted conversations with practitioners and thought leaders across talent acquisition. James Whitelock, host of The Marketing Rules Podcast, has been doing the same thing with his own archive of more than 200 episodes over seven years.  Between us, we now have over a thousand real conversations we can interrogate for trends, and the picture that emerges is an industry caught in familiar tensions: fighting to prove its strategic value, grappling with AI that moves faster than it can be adopted, and trying to figure out which parts of hiring should stay fundamentally human.  So what do years of real conversations reveal about where talent acquisition actually stands?   In my conversation with James, we compare what our respective archives reveal about TA's shifting identity, the real pace of AI's change, and the tensions the industry keeps returning to. In the interview, we discuss: Using AI to turn podcast archives into industry intelligence TA's journey from growth engine to cost center and back again How the AI conversation has shifted over time Adaptability as the critical skill for TA Is TA becoming a marketing function? Standing out when AI content all sounds the same Ring-fencing the parts of hiring that should stay human Bias in humans and bias in AI What does the future look like? Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts. Follow this podcast on Spotify.