TA Disruptors

When Euan McNair joined Aegon UK in 2022, the organisation was spending £2.5 million a year on agency fees. Time to offer sat at 100 days. Every call centre hire came from competitors. And recruiter engagement was just 41%. Three years later, agency spend had dropped to £100,000. Time to offer fell to 32 days. 40% of hires now come from outside financial services. And recruiter engagement hit a ma...

Most TA leaders know their hiring process needs to evolve. Fewer know how to actually make that change happen inside a complex organisation. Especially when you're managing 30,000 applications a year and the business is watching. Meet Jennifer Goldsmith and Helen Alkin, who jointly lead early careers resourcing at BDO UK, one of the largest professional services firms in the country. Between them,...

0:00 - Opening clip 0:44 - Introduction 3:20 - Consent, lawful basis and DUAA: the UK foundations 11:29 - Being auditable, transparent and defensible 28:27 - Working with privacy and legal as partners 48:49 - TA Disruptor tips TA teams are being pushed to move faster, automate more, and experiment with AI across the hiring journey. But regulators and courts are looking much more closely at how org...

0:00 - Introduction 2:47 - What high-volume, high-stakes hiring looks like at Entain 16:34 - Defining and running a behaviour-based hiring engine across 2,400 shops 36:00 - The results Entain saw 40:39 - The next challenge: transforming global hiring in Customer Care 49:46 - TA Disruptor tips TA DISRUPTORS Podcast 🚀 Season 5 - Ripping up the volume hiring rule book Attrition at 40%. Over 162,000...

AI is speeding up recruitment, but can it replace the human touch? Not quite. Becky Pradal-Rogers, Head of Talent Acquisition at Google DeepMind, knows what it takes to hire the right people in a world where top talent is rare, roles are evolving, and AI is changing the game. From using AI to map talent pools to piloting interviews where candidates use AI, Becky shares how her team balances effici...

Is AI forcing a total rethink of what we hire for — and how we measure it? If skills now “expire” in a couple of years, what signal should TA teams use at the top of the funnel to predict who will succeed when the job inevitably changes? Meet Fiadhna McEvoy C.Psychol, MCIPD, Psychometric Innovation Director at Arctic Shores — a business psychologist with nearly 20 years’ experience spanning occupa...

Meet Cath Possamai, Amazon’s Talent Acquisition Director for EMEA, APJC and LATAM. With over 20 years in recruitment and talent management, Cath has worn almost every hat in the industry — from in-house roles to outsourced partnerships — across Financial Services, IT, Telco, BPO, and even Defence. She’s a champion of collaboration, believing that great business outcomes and exceptional candidate e...

Applications are skyrocketing, AI is shaking up hiring, and recruiters are navigating uncharted waters. So how do talent acquisition teams harness AI without losing the human touch? And can teams really handle thousands of applications while keeping compliance and credibility intact? Meet Jessica Morgan, Chief Transformation Officer at Instant Impact and a technology transformation expert. Jess dr...

Is AI making the workplace more inclusive – could it really be the silver bullet for Neurodiverse talent? And what should Talent Acquisition be doing to ensure that they’re not accidentally failing neurodiverse candidates? Meet Theo Smith, Neurodiversity Expert, Podcast Host, the founder of NeuroMind, a tech company, and NeuroDiversity at Work, a consultancy helping organisations create thriving,...

AI is reshaping recruitment at every level. From graduate hiring to executive search. But while tools are evolving fast, the systems behind hiring haven’t kept pace. So how do you build a recruitment process that actually works in the age of AI? Meet Sam Schlimper, Randstad Enterprise Managing Director Advisory. With over two decades of experience leading talent strategy at global scale — from Bar...

Meet Angela Renfrew, Director of Talent Acquisition and Early Careers at First Bus — and a practitioner who’s proving that recruitment transformation doesn’t start with shiny tech. It starts with data, process, and winning over the toughest audience: hiring managers. In this episode of TA Disruptors, Angela shares the playbook she used to cut through scepticism, scrap outdated practices, and build...

AI is changing TA roles forever, but can this be a positive, especially as TA teams are being forced to do even more with less? Meet Emi Beredugo — a talent acquisition pro with over 18 years of experience helping companies find and hire great people. She's worked across the UK, Middle East, and Africa, leading teams and delivering some pretty complex recruiting projects along the way. These days,...

Meet Alan Bourne, a trailblazer in talent assessment and organisational psychology, and someone with a refreshing take on the AI-driven challenges facing talent acquisition today. With a PhD in Organisational Psychology and Chartered Occupational Psychologist status, Alan brings deep expertise and bold thinking to this episode of the TA Disruptors podcast. He's also a big believer in the power of...

You may have seen the big debate on LinkedIn - should we share interview questions with candidates beforehand? For Ellie Long, Global Head of Emerging Talent at Rolls-Royce, the answer is clear. While it’s a bold move, she believes it’s the right one. Her philosophy? Set candidates up for success so they can showcase their skills and potential. And in the age of AI, this has never been more import...

Most employers now recognise that banning or detecting AI usage is more likely to damage diversity than help your process. But how exactly do you embrace AI? And how can you clearly communicate this with applicants?  HMRC recently published, ‘Understanding Artificial Intelligence in your job application’ for candidates, which provides clear guidelines on exactly how to use AI within the appli...

If you’ve been following discussions on LinkedIn or at recent conferences, you’ve likely heard about Shoosmiths — the UK’s fastest-growing national full-service law firm — and their innovative approach to embracing the AI-enabled candidate. While others focused on deterring and detecting AI use, Shoosmiths chose to embrace AI use in the application process, providing candidates with clear guidance...

If you thought AI's impact on recruitment was limited to a few CVs and cover letters, think again. Gen Z candidates have access to more tools and learning resources than ever — and they’re using them to shift the balance of power in their favour.  But are recruiters ready to meet this wave of innovation –– with a clear plan and transparent communication about what that plan looks like? I...

AI has brought about a DDoS attack on recruitment. What do we do about it? Martyn Redstone talks shifting power dynamics, assessing AI capability, and the cost of inaction. If your technical team faced a DDoS attack — an onslaught of overwhelming traffic designed to disrupt your systems — how would you expect them to respond? Would you expect them to freeze and do nothing? Or take proactive steps...

Since the COVID pandemic accelerated reliance on unsupervised ‘take-home exams’, the education system has found itself with a fundamental problem –– one which has only been exacerbated by the recent rise in easily-accessible AI tools like ChatGPT. And new research shows just how great the scale and impact of the problem is for the education system and Early Careers teams alike.  Dr Peter...

There’s been a lot of debate recently about whether AI changes what we need to select for, to predict candidate success. But the reality is that most companies have needed to reframe how they select for quite some time.  At the end of 2022, Arctic Shores’ Senior Psychometrician Luke Montouri and Senior Applied Psychologist Sanchia Dennis set out to review a huge data set with one key objectiv...

Talent transformation and the shift to becoming a skills-first organisation has been a hot topic for years. And now AI is turning the pressure gauge up to boiling point, even the biggest industry players are feeling the impact.  Enter Harriet Newlyn –– a Partner in PwC UK’s HR Transformation and Technology practice who spent the last decade leading large-scale HR transformation programme...

What happens when you bring together two veterans of the psychometric assessment industry?  The headlines: some very strongly aligned views and some opposing ones.  This week, Robert is speaking to Ben Williams –– a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society with almost two and a half decades of experience in the assessment industry, and the Founder...

You’re interested in scrapping the CV, hiring for potential, and rolling out a skills-based hiring approach beyond early careers. But you’re TERRIFIED about how to actually do it.  Maybe you’ve done pretty much everything you can think of to improve the diversity of your talent pool and you’re moving the needle, but it’s not happening FAST enough. Or maybe you’re just curious about how one of...

Have you been considering making the switch to skills-based hiring but feel terrified about trying to persuade your hiring managers to let go of experience-based hiring and stop using the CV as a comfort blanket?  Can you see roles where you’re facing a skills shortage or where candidates seem like a good fit on paper but are missing critical qualities in the interview stage?  Do you kno...

James Uffindell is the CEO and founder of Bright Network. And he’s on a mission to build the workforce of tomorrow, using technology and data to connect the world's most forward-thinking organisations with the UK's brightest students and graduates –– improving the diversity and social mobility of our talent pools in the process.  As if that’s not enough, James also supports young entrepreneur...