In the last few weeks, many established software vendors have launched AI-augmented products, helping us move past the hype and get a much more hands-on view of what AI means for Talent Acquisition.
There are still a massive amount of unknowns, but it is evident that AI is a chief catalyst in what is now an unstoppable transformation of TA and the broader talent function. AI and automation fundamentally alter the speed and scale at which TA can operate, constantly pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
So, what does this mean for TA leaders and practitioners right now? How prepared are organizations for this level of transformation, and how can TA raise its game to drive more value for the organization?
This week, my guests are Dr. Swathi Palasamudram, Enterprise Business Architect at Bosch, and Nazim Ünlü, Global People and Organization Lead at Novartis, in two interviews recorded at the Smartrecruiters Hiring Success event in Amsterdam in September. Swathi and Nazim shared insights that reveal why the transformation of talent acquisition is truly unstoppable—and how TA leaders can harness this momentum to not only keep pace but lead the way.
In the interviews, we discuss:
• Fear, Adaptability, and the critical importance of strategic thinking
• Current AI use cases.
• How AI can raise the value of TA to the business
• Regional variations in AI adoption
• Retaining the vital human element of TA and HR
• Data literacy
• Building a personalized candidate experience
• The difference between Automation (efficiency through technology) and AI (insights and decision-making)
• Advice for TA Leaders
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Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast comes from Smart Recruiters. Smart Recruiters is your all in one platform for faster, smarter hiring, making recruiting easy and effortless. Smart Recruiters are making some big changes, revamping their user experience, adding AI features and refreshing the ui. I know from experience that they truly are a company that really values the recruiter and the practitioner. They understand the intricacies of the recruiting business and this has always been reflected in their functionality and customer support. So it’s exciting to hear that they’re making a bunch of updates. If you’re ready to be part of the future of talent Acquisition, head over to smartrecruiters.com and find out what they’re up to. Trust me, your team and your future hires will thank you.
Matt Alder [00:01:10]:
Hi there. Welcome to episode 648 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Over the last few weeks, many established software vendors have launched AI augmented products, helping us move past the hype and get a much more hands on view of what AI means for talent acquisition. There is still a massive amount of unknowns, but it is evident that AI is the chief catalyst in what is now an unstoppable transformation of TA and the broader talent function. AI and automation fundamentally alter the speed and scale at which TA can operate, constantly pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. So what does this mean for TA leaders and practitioners right now? How prepared are organizations for this level of transformation and how can TA raise its game to drive more value for the organization? This week my guests are Dr. Swathi Palasamudram, Enterprise Business Architect at Bosch, and Nazim Unloo, Global People and Organizational Lead at Novartis. Both interviews were recorded at Smart Recruiters Hiring Success event in Amsterdam in September. Swathi and Nazim share insights that reveal why the transformation of talent acquisition is truly unstoppable and how TA leaders can harness this momentum to not only keep pace, but to lead the way.
Matt Alder [00:02:38]:
Hi Swathi and welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:02:40]:
Thank you so much Matt for having me here.
Matt Alder [00:02:42]:
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please could you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:02:49]:
So I am Dr. Swathi Palasamudram and I work as an enterprise business architect at Bosch and my responsibility is basically IT strategy in HR and I get to work on a lot of cool topics. So be it AI or be it chain AI or be it process automation or digitalization and stuff like that. And I have around 10 plus years of experience, 12 to be really, very, very precise, and 10 years of experience in HR domain and I have worked across the entire HR it’s landscape, let’s put it that way. I started my journey with talent management and then I slowly moved on to talent acquisition skills and being a business architect. And yeah, off lately I have the role of an enterprise business architect.
Matt Alder [00:03:34]:
So lots of stuff.
Matt Alder [00:03:36]:
And as you say, right across the whole kind of HR function there, how do you see talent acquisition? How do you kind of break talent acquisition down and see what its function is within, within that sort of whole?
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:03:45]:
For me, talent acquisition is very, very close to my heart. Why? Because I kind of set up the recruiting ecosystem at Bosch. So I was part of the team that introduced our applicant tracking system. So that is smart recruiters. And then I bought on the candidate relationship management solution. And then we also implemented AI for screening and sorting. That is Hyatt Score, one of the vendors that smart recruiters very closely is associated with. So I am within my hire to retire journey. I have a very soft spot for talent acquisition. But I guess keeping my personal bias aside, what’s very interesting is you need to have the right kind of people in the organization to be able to take the organization forward. And for that I’m very much aware of the discussions that we are having in regards to process automation or AI or how it could be a game changer. But at the same time there is some kind of human element that is involved. You cannot replace all of the jobs by AI. So we need to have the right kind of people. And for me, these are the people that is going to define the strength of the organization, that is going to help the organization realize its mission or vision statement. So they are very, very instrumental. And yeah, it’s the key for the success both ways, you know. So I being part of the organization, I also get to learn a lot and the organization as well leverages on my skill set and what I bring to the table.
Matt Alder [00:05:20]:
The human aspect is kind of really important. I think we’ll sort of circle back and talk about that a little bit later. But let’s drill into that that AI part of it how is currently being used in tat acquisition. What are you seeing as the use cases at the moment?
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:05:31]:
I actually did a very interesting exercise a couple of weeks ago where I wrote down on a piece of paper the end to end hiring process. And I said, okay, this is step where we could automate. This is the step where we could Introduce AI. So this is an activity I did. And after that I kind of resonated it with business leaders as well as stakeholders within the organization. And somehow 90% of what I had written down is what the business is also asking. So we can start with screening as well as sorting, you know, depending on the volume of candidates that you’re kind of processing. So organizations as well as recruiters will be very, very happy to leverage on an AI solution to be able to sort that entire bunch of candidates that they get. And once the algorithm is able to tell this is your top five or top six, then comes a human element of wanting to interact with the person and trying to fit if this person matches what we are looking at from organization perspective. Yeah, so I guess we are not yet there within the talent acquisition space where we can leverage on large language models for you to mimic a human screening. And then probably once we start working in this area, it would be very interesting to compare the results of how a gen AI is kind of screening a profile versus how I as a recruiter would do it. And then that’s a different discussion altogether. But since we are not there, so I would say, at least at the first step, it’s very interesting to let AI do it. And then comes the human element of me wanting to talk to the candidate and trying to understand if he’s a benefit or not.
Matt Alder [00:07:09]:
In your presentation earlier you were distinguishing between automation and AI because, and you weren’t the only person who pointed out this, that, that this morning, that particularly in this sector they tend to just kind of mold into one. And people talk about, talk about automation very often with technologies that have been around for five or 10, five or 10 years. Tell us more about your sort of perspective on that.
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:07:29]:
There are a lot of, how do I say, service providers and there is also technology that is in and around the area of automation. But for me when I’m talking about automation, I’m actually looking at more inbuilt features and functionalities within the system. So here it’s more in system intelligence. And this can work on when you leverage on the data that is already existing in the system. Yeah, and this for me is actually a game changer because vendors are actually having solutions to support a particular process. And there is lot of process related data that goes actually untapped. You have candidate data, you have job data, but then there is process related data that’s resulting of an interaction between the job and the candidate. That could be as simple as, you know, the responses that the candidate gave in an interview or the feedback that the hiring team gave for a particular candidate or the questions that were asked from the interview. And there is so much of analysis that you could do and you could feedback pack the loop to did you write your job description properly? Did you ask the right questions in an interview? Was did you evaluate? So for me, all of this is where you can leverage on, you know, AI to be able to give you the results and then automate certain processes in regards to next step or even automation in regards to give insights to the hiring team. So this is why I said in my presentation earlier as well that we interchangeably use process automation as well as AI. And then we have to make up our mind, where are we going to use process automation and where is AI?
Matt Alder [00:08:58]:
Also talked about readiness in terms of where people are on this kind of, on this kind of journey. And you did something I’ve not seen anyone do before, which is kind of split that down geographically. Just give us some of the highlights of that about what some of the sort of the key differences are across different continents or how that works.
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:09:16]:
This was a very interesting slide and I guess I was discussing with a colleague of mine before I came down to the conference and I was asking that person what would be interesting for him to understand if somebody’s talking about AI and talent acquisition position. And it was basically his idea where he said it would be so interesting if we could have an overview of the readiness from the world if they are ready to leverage on AI or not. And this was the initial discussion for me to put this thought up. And then I did a lot of research and I did talk to a lot of customers that we are working with as well. And it was very, very clear that North America or the Americas is more open in regards to advanced AI integration. And here when we are talking about advanced AI integration, it’s actually more on because they have a very good recruiting ecosystem and they’re able to connect the data, create intelligence out of it, and this is somehow baked into their processes as well as their solutions. This is what I actually mean by advanced AI integration. And the second point is also that they focus a lot on keywords like inclusion as well as diversity and so on and so forth. Sometimes when you as a recruiter is writing up a job description, not necessarily that, you know, you have the right choice of words by which you would like to add and so on and so forth, but then leveraging on AI and and then saying that, you know, please make this job description such a way that it talks to inclusion, talks to the diverse community. Then it picks up really good keywords to be very honest. And this for me is very, very evident in the Americas. And then when you come to Europe, we are still very, very toying with the idea of whether we would like to have AI within our processes. And it’s more in the regards of being compliant, you know, being ethical. And then we would like to look at the very obvious things of yes, there is between the skills, no, there is no match between the skills, and so on and so forth. And then when you look at the Asia Pacific, it’s a total game changer because you have so many candidates that apply to the jobs. And then in this regard, they are okay that the machine takes over the basic screening. They’re okay that the machine is moving a candidate from status X to Y, you know, and when you look at New Zealand and Australia, they also would like to play safe within the candidate within the areas of compliance as well as ethical. And they are having a dearth of skills. So they are okay to have remote hiring. And for that they need information in regards to which skill is available where. And all of this is where they leverage either on AI or process automation or the different insights that are available in the market as such.
Matt Alder [00:11:51]:
I find that fascinating in terms of just the context that’s kind of just setting that. So as you say, Asia, just far too many applications to deal with. Europe very much about regulation. So it’s interesting that it’s not kind of being applied as consistently as perhaps we think it is because of particularly things around the different candidate behaviors as well, I think is really interesting. I think let’s talk a little bit more about the candidate side of things because you were kind of flagging up the opportunity to give personalized candidate experiences, which I think which is a topic dear to my heart. How do you see that working? What is that?
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:12:29]:
I put this. I put those topics on the agenda on purpose. Why? Because I just wanted to give to the audience a feeling that just because we are talking about AI and personalized, sorry, process automation doesn’t mean that you remove the human as well as a personal experience of candidates. You know, and then two or three examples that I was thinking about was I need to be able to write a motivation in regards to why I’m applying for this job. And even if you look at smart recruiters, the E recruiting process. Yes. When I’m applying for a job as an applicant, towards the end I need to write a note to the hiring manager in regards to why I’m suitable for this job. Yeah. So this was one interesting idea that when I was going through end to end the process, I was like, oh, how cool it would be that I as a candidate, you know, can get a proposal. And for me this is the machine documenting my process or my abilities to be able to provide a proposal. Because at the end of the day it is me as a, a candidate who’s going to take a decision if I am going to keep the proposal for the system or I’m going to just override it. Yeah. And the other personalized use case that I was thinking about was rejections. Yeah. So every one of us have standard templates that you send, irrespective of whether you’re hiring a junior position, middle management position, or even a senior management position. So thank you so much for the interest and blah blah, blah. But then you actually have the data in the system like exactly in which step he was rejected, you know, was it in reviews it after an interview, you know, and all of this information is so useful that you can ask an AI to review this information and come up with a very personalized rejection email. So I, you know, I’m always thinking I as a candidate when I know why I was rejected and give me some more insights into it. It’s so helpful for me the next time. And all of these are the human elements. You see, it’s always a combination of using the machine to be able to do something for you, but at the end of the day it’s the human touch that we are able to get. And this is a very interesting thought, which I don’t think most of us are thinking in this direction.
Matt Alder [00:14:36]:
It also kind of illustrates the, you know, the kind of the journey that we’re on and how far a lot of organizations have got to go to even be thinking in the right way to deal with what’s going on. So I suppose, and as a kind of a final question, what would your advice be to talent acquisition leader who’s looking at all of this and you know, kind of wants to make these sort of changes, you know, what should they be focusing on to kind of make this happen and really get the full benefits that AI can bring?
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:15:04]:
Yeah. So first they have to invest in the right kind of infrastructure because it is money and the business should be ready to invest in it. Because when you have the right kind of infrastructure, then you can realize your goals sooner than faster. And you need to be able to see if you have the right people working on these tools to be able to get the intended results, you know, and sometimes these are some tough decisions that the talent acquisition leaders have to make and they must be ready to make.
Matt Alder [00:15:33]:
Thank you so much for talking to me.
Dr. Swathi Palasamudram [00:15:34]:
Thank you Matt for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.
Matt Alder [00:15:40]:
Hi Nazim and welcome to the podcast.
Nazim Ünlü [00:15:42]:
Hello. Hi Matt.
Matt Alder [00:15:44]:
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.
Matt Alder [00:15:46]:
Please could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do.
Nazim Ünlü [00:15:50]:
My name is Nazim, I work for. No, it is global in the HR role where that I’m leading the R and D global accounts and supporting the HR transformation. And as well as that I had like 15 plus years of experience in the HR field which I did have work in the different part of the world and support in and out different part of the businesses. So that currently that I’m also like focusing on that how to even prepare the HR function for the future and the implications of the AI and technology and of course that which is critical as well that how that employee experience look like for the future.
Matt Alder [00:16:36]:
Of course you were talking on stage at the hiring success event about this and about the sort of the questions that people need to ask around TA and HR transformation. What do you think the the biggest challenges are when it comes to TA HR transformation?
Nazim Ünlü [00:16:53]:
At the moment when I started my HR career which was the roles were pretty HR generalist type of roles that you were doing and you were following the policies and procedures and the client groups also expect you to follow the procedures and do the administration thing. But now that currently how that whole function evolved it is in a very interesting place if I must say because the value proposition unique selling proposition is not super clear. There is a big impact and there is a big disruption already happened by the technology. In the meantime, if you think about all the business globally, how it’s also disrupting the technology it should also balance and adjust with the current situation. But however in the meantime HR colleagues are or TA colleagues which is in the same game having a super fear of that how to adapt to technology, how can get the support the technology turn to be a muscle or critical capability that they can use for. And it’s not easy honestly. When I met chat with several human resources professionals all around the world, everybody has these questions about that okay, what will the future look like? How can we prepare ourselves? Technology is here, but we even didn’t realize yet that how that our role is going to change. So it’s not easy in terms of like that especially when you are inside of the game and you know better than me about the state Condition AI met. I think there’s not like a super simple structure.
Matt Alder [00:18:44]:
Tell us more about what you think the potential that AI has for TA and hr.
Nazim Ünlü [00:18:50]:
My experience and even that my. Even that research and discussion as well with the whole tech providers. I think there is a huge big. First of all opportunity is in the hands of HR and the TA function. What is this? It is really that a clear administrative and data management perspective speed. And if you’re thinking about any HR department and HR departments are heavily in the under corporate functions or general administration where that workforce or any kind of headcount is always limited. Right. Because you’re not generating money and you don’t get enough any kind of resources. But now that within the power of the AI and technology we do have chance to even to get a support especially with repetitive tasks and administrative tasks that we are really spending a lot of time. So again the question is that for $1 million level so what will you do when you have extra time so that you will create a real business value? I think that that’s a good question that even that we need to. We must ask ourselves on TIHR function. But what I believe which is also close to my heart and I did speak several times in many different platforms as well. I like the democracy and which is an interesting part of the humanistic style as well. How can AI support the process of the human resources and that human resources can be more democratic and agaritas this is really that very critical where that we can I believe that to create the most significant value that nobody can replace. Because if you’re thinking about any TA process or any HR process. Let’s talk about the promotion or that applying any role in outside right there tons of bias is over there. Right. And the role of the TA leader is very critical that how can you really set the process super clean democratic and also accessible and inclusive for everybody. This is amazing role. But when it comes to reality as always somebody can intervene with the networking references somebody’s friends. So what you had the venue that you create as a solution or an end result is not really that sound super satisfactory for all parties. So what I believe the power of the usage of data AI technology with the right of course tools can make HR and TA function more human than ever. And what I believe which is we never discussed this the power of TA talent acquisition function going to be really increased with the power of the data heavily that the companies are focusing on the talent management. Which makes sense because the cost perspective. If you invest more in talent management and Promotion internally it increases the culture engagement and of course the new. You don’t need to have any kind of like extra cost for the head hunting or any kind of role finding. But what is missing the real market data and the value proposition of the real candidate can find a way even that they before joining the company which is again any strategic future part of UTA in my view gonna be expand by the power of data which is connect with the skills. Because if you think about the skills management we are discussing about the future skills but the skills are changing super rapid and very high in demand. So you never even that being sure that what skills needed during even that you start the one tell the acquisition process in three months. It’s changing as well with very very hard. So in this context how can you create a robust strong bridge between TA which is very good with the external focus can feed the internal talent management by hiring the right fit candidates which can be again you know this T shape profiles right. Which is like interesting discussion. So that the TA value creates a strong robust a good efficiency in the whole human resources function. I do believe that we’re going to be need to be focused more on the TA and hopefully that the TA leaders TA professionals has now more more strategic time for themselves. And they will. They are. They use their real power which is empathy, intuition and finding the right people for the right roles. I’m very optimistic and I’m very positive about that and I’m thinking about as well that how can we will be even more and more disruptive on the TA part so that it can change the value proposition. Unfortunately it is a bit like not the right value that even that on the companies so far.
Matt Alder [00:24:32]:
And that’s what I really loved about your presentation. It was that optimistic sense that actually AI gives the opportunity for TA to prove its value and to give it that visibility in the business and be really really successful at delivering that kind of critical talent strategy role. So yeah, no 100% it was great.
Matt Alder [00:24:51]:
To hear people talking like that. As a kind of a final question, there were.
Matt Alder [00:24:54]:
There were lots of sort of takeaways from. From your. From your presentation and the. In the interaction with the. With the audience. What would be your sort of top takeaways? What’s the best advice you can give to TA leaders right now of starting to go through what’s going to be a very disruptive transformational process?
Nazim Ünlü [00:25:13]:
For me really that the critical part is that learning continuously is pretty pretty critical for everybody. By the way, not only TA or HR or business the speed of the transformation because of the technology is really unstoppable. So you can’t have a chance to organize a slide deck and share with your clients that this is my change management strategy. You need to rapidly pivot in terms of like that what is needs to be which is automatically coming another discussion. I think Josh Person is saying this very clearly. HR TA needs to focus on that rather than the solutions. They need to focus on the problems to be solved in the business. Then they will be like a value proposition comes to be reality for the hr. So for that learning continuously and asking the right questions is very critical Data literacy I’m sharing this every time in hr we are a bit like shy and have a fear when it comes to data. And in this context with the data AI our role in TA and HR is really evolving. Like a thing about orchestrator collaborator who can read the right data insights and create actionable results for the business. So for this you need to not shy away to understand the HR analytics people analytics. So please try to learn this other part is that more being really embracing the change and of course that not forgetting about advocating for the people. Right. During my presentation I did ask questions which is one question was like that what aspects of your job do you believe that AI cannot replace? And that was a super clear moment that all the TA leaders they got this super clearly empathy, human touch, emotions. This is the real TA and HR capabilities really that the AI and tech cannot replace. So which means that we need to be more and more ever humanistic human oriented for being that even being the more creative. Yeah, these are like more takeaways. I’m again as we discussed, I’m very optimistic and I believe that if we have the right arguments in the right moment, technology will really support the whole tanhr function. Possibly.
Matt Alder [00:28:06]:
Nazim, thank you very much for talking to me.
Matt Alder [00:28:09]:
My thanks to Swathi and Nazim. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can search all the past episodes at recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter Recruiting Future Feast and get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
