A morning with senior talent acquisition leaders, all of them practitioners and none of them there to observe. Anna came away with one thing she hasn't been able to put down. AI hasn't arrived in hiring. It is already here, on every side of the process at once.
She opens with the picture she gave the room. Four seats at every hiring table, the candidate, the recruiter, the hiring manager and the organisation, and all four have moved in about two years without anybody planning it. What follows is signal collapse, bias that travels faster and gets harder to see, and trust running in every direction.
She then holds that picture against what came back from the room, which matched her reading with a great deal more discomfort. Fake candidates are first-hand experience now. But nobody wanted to build a bigger machine for catching people out, and several had gone the other way entirely, allowing AI openly and assessing how somebody thinks rather than what they could look up.
The episode covers where the room thought AI belongs, the question none of them could answer about where administration ends and judgment begins, and why talent acquisition still doesn't have a real seat at the leadership table. Anna also flags what the room thought will grow in value. It isn't sourcing, and it isn't being good with the tools.
It closes with four practical takeaways and the argument Anna keeps coming back to: the strategic asset here is trust, not speed.
