How to Be a Talent Advisor

Brainfooder John Vlastelica has been one of the leading ‘thinker-doer’s in our space for a long time, and some of his ideas on the steps the TA profession needs to take to not only elevate its position within the organisational hierarchy must be taken seriously. The post is an excellent preview of what needs to happen - full deck is well worth a download also.

Your Time-to-Fill Data Is Lying to You (And 3 Metrics That Actually Matter)

Brainfooder Johnny Campbell is coming up with the goods on a weekly basis on these posts. His mini series on TA Operations is a must read. In this post, we’re discussing the problem of mean averages, where extraordinary outliers can disguise the reality for the vast majority. GDP is measured by mean averages. So is productivity. And so also are all recruitment metrics like TTH. Must read folks.

The Collaboration Gap

Fun experiment with AI Agents - lets see how they do when we ask them to collaborate with each other 🤣. The answer in this somewhat technical paper is ‘not very well’, which turns out to be a primer to questions we humans might find useful - how to train (both humans and AI) for collaborative intelligence. Extrapolating these agents to human collaboration and it would appear that they succeed and fail for similar reasons - not because of an inherent deficiency, but through problems in communication and context awareness. Lots to ponder, especially as I suspect we’re going to see AI Agents appear quite frequently in our workflows in 2026…

Talent Advisor 2.0: Why the Job You Were Hired For No Longer Exists

Brainfooder Johnny Campbell has been dropping some truth bombs of late and I hope some of these are landing with the sort of impact they deserve. Transformation is a term we overly use in business but I think it appropriate for us, now. The opportunity is to become the business enablement function which can deliver capability to the business need - and that need not always be a hire, or even a human. Must read folks.

The Agile Recruiting Playbook: A Practitioner’s Guide to What Actually Works

We haven’t heard about Agile for a while, so great to see it brought up back to the surface with this contribution from brainfooder Glen Cathey. As Glen says, the points based difficult grading on the requirements system is the most important component, as it sets up the trade off conversations we recruiter struggle to have with the line. Got to wonder though, how AI is going to change all of this - if we do manage to scale up capacity then the drivers which created Agile in the first place might no longer be there. Lots to ruminate on, some to takeaway here too.

Brainfood Live On Air - End of Year Review (1,2,3 & 4)- Friday 28th November, 2pm GMT

Last four shows of the year for Brainfood Live are always look back shows, so we’ve got the 4 episodes lined up for the next 4 weeks. We’re talking: State of Talent Technology this Friday, followed by CX, Assessment and DEIB, then Sourcing, Employer branding and RecOps and finally, with Economy & AI - make sure you register on the shows you’re interested in - all of them if you want full coverage!

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The Brainfood

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1. The Agile Recruiting Playbook: A Practitioner’s Guide to What Actually WorksWe haven’t heard about Agile for a while, so great to see it brought up back to the surface with this contribution from brainfooder Glen Cathey. As Glen says, the points based difficult grading on the requirements system is the most important component, as it sets up the trade off conversations we recruiter struggle to have with the line. Got to wonder though, how AI is going to change all of this - if we do manage to scale up capacity then the drivers which created Agile in the first place might no longer be there. Lots to ruminate on, some to takeaway here too.

What Do Brainfooders Think?

Looks like we’re fully on board with Skills Based Hiring here on Brainfood! Got to say, I’m going to try and change this in 2026 because I think it’s not only a massive chew but also a genuinely bad idea 🤣. Will explain as I go so watch this space. Thanks for all who voted - scroll down for this week’s poll.

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Brainfood Live On Air - End of Year Review (1,2,3 & 4) - Friday 28th November, 2pm GMTLast four shows of the year for Brainfood Live are always look back shows, so we’ve got the 4 episodes lined up for the next 4 weeks. We’re talking: State of Talent Technology this Friday, followed by CX, Assessment and DEIB, then Sourcing, Employer branding and RecOps and finally, with Economy & AI - make sure you register on the shows you’re interested in - all of them if you want full coverage!

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The Brainfood

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1. The Agile Recruiting Playbook: A Practitioner’s Guide to What Actually WorksWe haven’t heard about Agile for a while, so great to see it brought up back to the surface with this contribution from brainfooder Glen Cathey. As Glen says, the points based difficult grading on the requirements system is the most important component, as it sets up the trade off conversations we recruiter struggle to have with the line. Got to wonder though, how AI is going to change all of this - if we do manage to scale up capacity then the drivers which created Agile in the first place might no longer be there. Lots to ruminate on, some to takeaway here too.

The Future of Recruiting 2024

LinkedIn’s annual Future of Recruiting report was released this week and of course it is a must read. The optimistic tones through was probably a result of the methodology - a combination of survey and behavioural data - and I wonder whether we might have been better off which a bit more tough love. For instance: are we really moving up the value chain as GenAI increases out productivity? Seems to be like we’re mostly reducing costs and shrinking out departments. We’re going to be talking about this next week Brainfood Live (see above) so make sure you tune in. Meanwhile, download the LinkedIn report here

How to Measure & Improve Quality of Hire

Short answer is ‘new hire retention’ + ‘new hire performance’. There’s a lot more to it than that of course, but if you need to start somewhere then this post from our buddies BrightHire will give you some great building blocks to construct a suitable approach. Partner with hiring managers, take responsibility for interview training, create consistent standards, get the on-boarding right and yes, use an interview analytics platform. Have a read folks

How to Get the Most Out of Your 1:1s

Building A Strong Tech Talent Pipeline

Moneyballing for Talent

Human Centered Recruiting: Tech Is Not As Important As You Think

Scaling Hiring At Speed

4 x New Recruiter Roles

The Subtle Art of Making Recruiters & Sourcers Work Together

How to Report Recruiting Metrics to Senior Management

See-Think-Do Framework In Recruitment