The talent market is sending mixed signals. Employers insist they can't find the people they need, while experienced, capable candidates say they are applying into a void and hearing nothing back. Both are describing the same market, so something in the middle is failing. A lot of recruiting technology was built to handle volume, to move large numbers of applicants through a process quickly. What it struggles to do is read signal, to interpret whether someone actually has the judgment and context to solve the problem a business has.

So how do we fix this problem, and will AI give us the solution?

My guest this week is James Gardner, a talent acquisition and transformation leader who has spent over twenty years building and scaling talent functions. In our conversation, he shares what his own data-driven job search revealed about the market, why volume systems and signal systems pull in opposite directions, and how AI could either fix the problem or make it considerably worse.

In the interview, we discuss:

What's really happening on both sides of the talent market
Why the market isn't short of talent; it's short of signal.
Running a job search as a data funnel
Why silence, not rejection, is the real problem
Why volume systems and signal systems contradict each other
Where AI screening still can't read potential
Applying AI to a broken process just makes it fail faster.
Moving TA from a service function to a commercial lever
Owning the outcome, not just the shortlist.
What does the future look like?

Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.

Follow this podcast on Spotify