Recruiting Future with Matt Alder - What's Next For Talent Acquisition, HR & Hiring?

Hi there, welcome to episode 822 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder.

Employer branding teams are still under sustained pressure. Budgets have shrunk and headcount has been reduced across many organizations, even when the hiring the business needs has become more specific and more critical. Despite all of the cuts, some employer brand leaders are still winning investment and influence.

What sets them apart is how closely their work connects to what the business is trying to achieve and how effectively they communicate its impact.

So what does it take to make employer branding matter to the business?

My guest this week is Stephen Quinn, CEO of Atomic, an insight-led agency working with employer brand leaders at some of the world's largest organizations. In our conversation, Stephen shares what the most effective employer brand leaders do differently, which metrics carry weight with the business, and how to plan employer branding for the long term.

In the interview, we discuss:

Trends and challenges in Employer Branding

What separates the most successful employer brand leaders

Attaching Employer Branding to the critical needs of the employer

Where should employer branding sit in the organization?

Building relationships across the business

Measuring and reporting on impact and ROI via the right metrics

Long-term strategy thinking rather than short-term campaign thinking

What does the future of Employer Branding look like

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Employer messaging has a sameness problem. Candidates researching potential employers find the same values, the same mission statements, and the same well-meaning phrases wherever they look, which makes choosing between companies harder than it should be. The upside is a genuine opportunity. Standing out is no longer about outspending the competition; it comes from understanding what your organization offers that others don't, and the work of finding and proving that difference is now within reach of employers of any size. So how do you uncover what genuinely makes you different?

My guest this week is James Ellis, founder of Employer Brand Labs and author of several books on employer branding. James has spent his career arguing that every company, whatever its size, can compete for talent by leaning into what makes it different. In our conversation, he shares why difference matters more than ever, why real proof beats nice-sounding claims, and where employers should start.

In the interview, we discuss:

Why so many employers sound identical

What scraping every Fortune 500 career site reveals

Why playing it safe has become the riskiest strategy

The opportunity for employers outside the Fortune 500

The chicken soup story and the power of proof

How AI changes the economics of employer brand work

Finding evidence in the material you already have

Why differentiation takes courage as well as insight

What does the future look like?

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The gap between claiming to be strategic and actually operating strategically has real consequences, and nowhere are they clearer than at the top of HR. CHRO turnover is unusually high at the moment, and it also spikes sharply in the first year under a new CEO. A change at the top usually brings a new thesis about what the business needs, and what the CEO needs from HR shifts with it. Many CHROs find themselves running a system built for the previous mandate, and by the time the gap becomes visible, trust has already eroded. The problem is structural rather than personal, which means it can be fixed.

So what separates the HR leaders who thrive in the role from those who don't?

My guest this week is Jackson O. Lynch, founder of Talent Sherpa and a former CHRO who works with CEOs, CHROs, and boards on connecting talent systems to business strategy. In our conversation, Jackson shares why mandate misalignment drives so much churn at the top of HR, what operating at the top level means in practice, and why AI is making the redesign of work urgent.

In the interview, we discuss:

Why is CHRO turnover so high?

Mandate misalignment and the conversation that rarely happens

What does strategic HR look like in practice?

Systems for transformation versus systems for stability

Looking at business strategy through the talent lens

Business logic versus compliance logic in the C-suite

The trust issue

Why AI is forcing a rethink of how work is designed

Can HR take this opportunity for reinvention, and what does the future look like?

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The job of Chief People Officer has never been more demanding, and the way organizations decide who gets it is changing fast. Appointment volumes have fallen sharply, boards are rethinking what they value in an HR leader, and the profile of the people winning the top seats looks different from even two years ago. Experience of having done the job before is no longer the deciding factor it once was, which changes the calculation for everyone with ambitions on the role. So what are boards really looking for when they appoint a Chief People Officer?

My guest this week is Olivia Sharp, a Partner at executive search firm Eton Bridge Partners, where she leads searches for Chief People Officers and board-level appointments and heads the firm's research into CPO hiring globally. In our conversation, she shares what the data reveals about experience versus potential, the skills that now define the role, and how TA leaders can position themselves for the top job.

In the interview, we discuss:

The fundamental shifts in what organizations value when hiring Chief People Officers

Why boards are taking calculated risks on potential rather than buying proven experience

What the appointment data means for first-time CPO candidates

The leadership qualities that now matter more than HR expertise

Where the traditional HR career path falls short

The commercial capability gap in HR development

How TA leaders can position themselves for the top job

The swing back to external hiring and why new doesn't mean radical

What will the Chief People Officer role look like in the future?

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Skills have been on the HR agenda for decades, but they rarely became the basis for real decisions; frameworks took so long to build that the business had moved on before they were finished. What's different now is that AI agents are starting to handle work that used to require a person, and that changes the question employers need to ask. It's no longer just about who to hire; it's about whether the work needs a human at all. When you can map work to the skills it requires, you have a basis for deciding what stays with people and what moves to an agent. Making that shift isn't straightforward, though; it raises questions about what HR itself needs to look like and what capabilities the function needs to develop. So what does it take to make skills the basis for deciding how work gets done?

My guest this week is Ciara Harrington, Chief People Officer at Skillsoft. In our conversation, Ciara shares how Skillsoft is rethinking which work needs a person, why HR has to become more technical to lead that conversation, and what happens when you add "bot" to your talent strategy.

In the interview, we discuss:

How is AI changing the way we think about skills?

Build, buy, borrow, bot

Helping leaders understand what work could be done differently

Tasks, skills, jobs, and units of work

How understanding skills underpins this transformation

AI can be more expensive than humans

Building an effective governance model

Hiring technical skills into HR and connecting the data

Critical human skills and why they need to be developed faster

What does the future look like?

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