TALKING TALENT - AI, Graduate Hiring & Why TA Needs More Than Specialists | Jen Hulme, BPP

What does the future of Talent Acquisition look like when AI, skills-based hiring, graduate recruitment and workplace readiness are all changing at once?In this episode of Talking Talent, a RecTalk podcast, host Sean Kennedy — aka Sean the TA Guy — sits down with Jen Hulme, Head of Talent Acquisition at BPP, for a wide-ranging conversation about the realities facing recruiters, graduates and employers today.Jen shares her unconventional journey into recruitment, from studying maths and initially having no idea what she wanted to do, to building a career across recruitment, leadership, people analytics and talent acquisition.The conversation then dives into one of the biggest topics in TA right now: AI.Jen explains how she is using her analytical and coding background to explore AI, prompt engineering and talent transformation at BPP, including work on an in-house skills-based hiring mechanism. The discussion looks at how AI could help recruiters assess candidates more consistently, reduce the burden of manually reviewing hundreds of CVs and improve the connection between job descriptions, skills frameworks and candidate assessment — while keeping humans responsible for the final hiring decisions.Sean and Jen also tackle the growing challenges around graduate recruitment. With entry-level opportunities becoming harder to find and graduates struggling to understand which roles they should actually be applying for, Jen argues that employers, universities and education providers need to rethink how they prepare young people for work.They discuss the gap between being academically qualified and being genuinely workplace-ready, including communication, professional behaviour and the skills required to succeed once someone actually lands their first job.Other topics include:• Why AI should solve genuine problems rather than simply being added because it's fashionable• Build vs buy when it comes to TA technology• Skills-based hiring and the challenge of accurately measuring skills• Why traditional graduate job titles can make opportunities harder to find• Whether graduates really need to be in the office to develop workplace skills• The responsibility employers and universities have towards the future workforce• Why TA professionals need to develop their ability to lead and engage remotely• Jen's controversial take on specialist vs generalist recruiters• Why being a "Jack of all trades" can make you a stronger corporate TA professional• The importance of empathy and genuinely caring about candidates• Some of the worst — and strangest — behaviour Jen has encountered during her recruitment career• Why inclusion and ED&I shouldn't become an afterthought• The importance of keeping conversations around inclusion alive• What great Talent Acquisition professionals actually look likeWHO THIS EPISODE IS FORThis episode is for Talent Acquisition leaders, recruiters, HR professionals, graduate recruitment teams, hiring managers, people working in recruitment technology, and anyone interested in how AI and changing workplace expectations are reshaping the future of hiring.It's also particularly relevant for anyone involved in early careers or graduate recruitment — and for employers thinking about how to make graduates genuinely ready for the world of work.GUEST — Jen Hulme: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jen-hulme/Learn more about BPP: https://www.bpp.com/HOST —  Sean Kennedy: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanthetaguy/Discover recruitment tools and services: https://www.rectools.io/Listen to RecTalk on another platform: https://rectalk.co.uk/#RecTalk #TalkingTalent #TalentAcquisition #Recruitment #AIinRecruitment #SkillsBasedHiring #GraduateRecruitment #EarlyCareers #FutureOfWork #HR #TalentTech #RecruitmentTech #EDI #InclusiveHiring