AI isn’t just a technology revolution—it’s a people and talent revolution. AI could transform businesses at every level, but many HR and TA teams are still on the sidelines. The reality is that AI adoption, workforce transformation, and enterprise strategy aren’t just IT or executive priorities—they’re fundamentally people challenges. So, how are CPOs and CHROs currently thinking, and what should they do to shape the future? Keep listening to find out.
AI is already reshaping how businesses operate, creating new opportunities and new risks. However, many HR & TA leaders are still treating AI as an operational tool rather than what it truly is: a strategic driver of workforce transformation. AI is redefining jobs, skills, and ways of working at an unprecedented pace, and organizations that fail to integrate HR into their AI strategy risk falling behind.
At the same time, the talent market remains unpredictable, employee movement is slowing, and retention is more critical than ever. While some companies are racing to adapt, others are taking a wait-and-see approach. But as we’ve seen before, hesitation in times of change comes with consequences.
HR and talent leaders have a rare opportunity to step up not just to improve hiring but also to influence enterprise-wide strategy.
My guest this week is Laura Coccaro, Chief People Officer at iCIMS. With access to one of the world’s most comprehensive hiring data sets, Laura has a unique perspective on the intersection of AI, talent, and business strategy. In our conversation, we discuss why HR must take ownership of AI’s impact on the workforce, how businesses can future-proof their talent strategies, and what talent leaders need to do now to stay ahead of the curve.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How CPOs are thinking about 2025
• Managing risk around talent availability, attrition, and retention
• Balancing technology and humans to optimize the employee and candidate experience
• HR’s role in enterprise AI strategy
• Why AI equals people transformation
• How skills are shifting
• Thinking differently about how the work gets done
• How much will things change in the next 18 to 24 months?
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify.
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
AI isn’t just a technology revolution, it’s a people and talent revolution. AI could transform businesses at every level, but many HR and TA teams are still on the sidelines. The reality is AI adoption, workforce transformation and enterprise strategy aren’t just IT or executive priorities. They’re fundamentally people challenges. So how are CPOs and CHROs currently thinking and what should they do to shape the future? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast is provided by iCIMS. Isims is the hiring platform that you’ll never outgrow. I’ve got to tell you, some of their customers have some really cool stories about how they’re hiring. And businesses have changed with iCIMS. Like Eagle View, a tech company that saved $2 million on their recruitment, marketing and now hires twice as fast. There’s Benefit Cosmetics, a popular brand that saves 20 minutes per candidate during their screening process. And of course Kingfisher, the home improvement company that will be very familiar to European listeners. Kingfisher increased their job offer acceptance rate threefold. These are just a few examples. For the last 25 years, iCIMS has helped thousands of the world’s largest and fastest growing brands hire the talent they need, often in challenging and competitive markets. Names like Microsoft, PetSmart, Children’s National Hospital, Greyhound Lines, and the Cheesecake Factory. iCIMS comprehensive hiring platform helps enterprise organizations hire by employing AI where and how you need it. To learn more, visit icims.com that’s icims.com. Hi there. Welcome to episode 683 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. AI is already reshaping how businesses operate, creating both new opportunities and new risks. However, many HR and TA leaders are still treating AI as an operational tool rather than what it really is. A strategic driver of workforce transformation, AI has the potential to redefine jobs, skills and ways of working at an unprecedented pace. And organizations that fail to integrate HR into their AI strategy risk falling behind. At the same time, the talent market remains unpredictable, employee movement is slowing, and retention is more critical than ever. While some companies are racing to adapt, others are taking a wait and see approach. But. But as we’ve seen before, hesitation in times of change comes with consequences. HR and talent leaders have a rare opportunity to step up not just to improve hiring, but also to influence enterprise wide strategy. My guest this week is Laura Kokaro, Chief People Officer at iCIMS. With access to one of the world’s most comprehensive hiring data sets. Laura has a unique perspective on the intersection of AI talent and business strategy. In our conversation, we discuss why HR must take ownership of AI’s impact on the workforce, how businesses can future proof their talent strategies, and what talent leaders need to do now to stay ahead of the curve. Hi, Laura and welcome to the podcast.
Laura Coccaro [00:03:44]:
Hi Matt. Thanks so much for having me.
Matt Alder [00:03:46]:
It’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
Laura Coccaro [00:03:53]:
Absolutely. So my name is Laura Coccaro. I’m the Chief People Officer at iCIMS. Here at iCIMS, we are a leading provider of talent acquisition technology and we enable thousands of enterprises worldwide to hire great people. And the way that we think about our platform is that we’re a hiring platform that organizations will never outgrow.
Matt Alder [00:04:15]:
You’re a Chief People Officer. It’s only February and 2025 is already proving to be an extremely disruptive year with a huge amount of things going on. How are Chief People officers thinking about 2025 at the moment? What’s on your radar? What’s on your agenda? What are the biggest issues from your perspective?
Laura Coccaro [00:04:34]:
Yeah, absolutely, you’re right. 2025 is coming in fast and furious. I think it’s going to be an exciting year and certainly for my chro and Chief People officer colleagues, it’s going to be no exception. There is a lot on my mind and I know on the minds of my peers, but I think, you know, what I’m watching very, very closely right now is the broader talent market and the talent availability that we are up against. And also just really watching closely how we need to be thinking about AI in the context of not just how we enable ourselves as HR functions, but also, you know, enterprise wide. What it’s going to have impact on our broader businesses.
Matt Alder [00:05:13]:
So let’s dig into to both of those. So starting with the talent markets, talent availability, what’s the current market like? What’s happening? What are the, what are the trend?
Laura Coccaro [00:05:23]:
You know, it’s so interesting, the jury is still out for sure on what the market is going to do overall in 2025. You know, one of the things that we are really fortunate to have at ICIMS is a robust data set. So our platform processes hundreds of millions of applications and, you know, over 5 million hires globally last year. And so what that gives us is a really rich data set to understand some of where we’re seeing the market move. And you know, one of the things that we’re seeing is that it was a really quiet couple of months. It seems that both employers and candidates are starting to poke their heads up and see what’s happening. After a couple of really quiet months of hunkering down, we’re seeing job openings spike. We saw an upward trend of 35% in January. More openings come out, and we’re also seeing a lot of application volumes up. But one of the things that we’re not sure about is what that’s actually going to do to translate into hires. Hires were actually down in January, and so there’s this interesting sort of view of, okay, the market is ramping. We think that people are coming out, but we’re not seeing hiring volume. And one of the things that we’re watching very, very closely right now is the fact that it’s possible that some people are going to be staying where they are. You know, we did a recent survey. Six out of 10 people said that they don’t plan to look for a job in 2025. So it’s this interesting crossroads to say, okay, if even if hiring seems to be. Or applications seem to be up and opening seem to be up, is there going to be a match? You know, are hires actually going to start to happen in 2025? You know, with some. With some momentum. So jury still out
Matt Alder [00:07:15]:
And how does that kind of translate into risk for the organization around traction, attrition and retention?
Laura Coccaro [00:07:21]:
Yeah, it’s. It’s really. There’s a lot there. You know, when we think about some of the patterns that we’re seeing, it really ties to the fact that we’re going to have limited talent availability. And so there are a couple of things that happen, which is that our leaders and organizations are really looking to ensure that they’re holding on to the talent that they have. Right? Where they have key sales skill sets, where they have high performing or high potential individuals, they’re looking to ensure that they are retaining them, that they are fostering culture, cultures where people see the opportunity to grow, because that is, number one, they don’t want to lose the talent that they have. But at the same time, they’re trying to balance, especially on the talent acquisition side, where do we think the need is going to be so that while we’re in this bit of uncertainty, we could be proactively, you know, talent pooling and figuring out where we can go as needed, but nobody has the crystal ball to know exactly what that’s going to be. And so, you know, we do run the risk that the market is going to pick up either by people deciding that they are going to make a move, we’re going to, you know, there’s, there’s the risk that we’re going to see attrition start to shake out and then we’re not going to be ready to go out and get the skill sets that are really critical. So it’s a tough balance that everyone’s trying to strike right now.
Matt Alder [00:08:44]:
So let’s talk about AI and I suppose let’s start zoomed right in and kind of pull back. So AI perspective, what impact is that having on HR operations or you seeing it could have on HR operations in 2025?
Laura Coccaro [00:08:58]:
It absolutely will. It can. It is having impact on hr. We’re seeing HR leaders and teams looking to adapt very, very quickly to drive both a candidate and an employee experience and be thinking about how this ties into sort of a broader enterprise strategy. And so, you know, when we think about how it sits in our own houses as HR practitioners, this is about finding the opportunities to create efficiencies, to streamline, leverage technology to do the work that is repeatable where we want to, to ensure that we are thinking through process and really focusing our recruitment teams and TA practitioners on the work that is going to really move the needle in terms of candidate experience, hiring manager experience, and leverage technology to get the other stuff done.
Matt Alder [00:09:51]:
I suppose from an experience point of view, in general, employee experience, candidate experience, what’s the balance between technology and humans in all of this? How can technology improve the employee experience?
Laura Coccaro [00:10:03]:
Yeah, you know, this is the balance that everyone is trying to strike right now, which is there is absolutely room for having the right AI to drive an employee experience, a candidate experience. We’re seeing this happen, you know, here at iCIMS, not just in house in the way that we’re using it, but with our customers using our technology. So what we’re seeing is that it allows for our recruiters, our employees who are involved in the recruitment experience, to spend less time on manual task and more time on the tasks that are going to deliver the value to the business. So things like, you know, spending less time creating and editing things like candidate emails, job descriptions, interview guides, Jenny is helping with all of that. It also, you know, there’s power in the ability of AI to be matching candidates to roles based on skillset matching and it allows to have better hires, you know, really streamlined application process, really streamlined candidate experience, and really ensures then that our recruiters and those involved in the hiring process are really driving toward the best outcome with efficiency and getting through Some of what you might view as sort of the more repeatable or administrative tasks. And what that can translate into is a better, more streamlined process for our candidates as well. So there’s a lot of power there. When you think about, particularly in this environment, how critical candidate experience is. If you can find the right balance and streamline the process for your candidates and have the right sort of human touch points along the way. Very, very powerful at, you know, figuring out how to scale in this environment too.
Matt Alder [00:11:48]:
You mentioned there the, the, the enterprise AI strategy or how enterprises are shaping their AI strategy. And of course, AI isn’t something that’s just happening to talent acquisition and hr. It’s happening right across the business. It’s creating, you know, opportunities and also threats and obviously a very, very big issue for, for, for all businesses. What role are chros playing in that enterprise HR strategy?
Laura Coccaro [00:12:14]:
The way that I think about this for myself, for my chro colleagues, this is a tremendous opportunity. You know, when we think about everything that’s happening in the market right now around AI and how fast it is moving and the impact it will have on our workforce, this is a people transformation. This is not just technology at play. This is about how we’re going to figure out how we’re leveraging the right set of technology and our broader workforce needs and what that means in terms of skills availability, our need to think about what skill sets we have internally versus those that we need to go out and hire versus those that we can train and really drive, you know, material impact on what’s happening across our organizations. You know, one of the things that we know is that this is about driving not just, you know, okay, you can use this in your own house, but every piece of our business is considering new ways of adopting AI. And it’s so important that we think about communication, enablement, strong partnership with CEOs and CIOs across our business to not just be a part of this transformation, but actually lead from the front in terms of the material impact that I believe that it will have on organizations in relatively short order.
Matt Alder [00:13:33]:
One of those impacts is obviously around talent and also related to that, the kind of shift in skills that are needed and all those kind of things. What are the sort of implications for talent as a whole?
Laura Coccaro [00:13:45]:
I think it’s about finding the right blend, as I mentioned, between where are we going to leverage technology to create efficiencies and think differently about how the work gets done in our organizations, but also, and very importantly, what skill sets do we actually need to one, consume and leverage this technology. And then therefore, how are we going to meet that demand around skill sets? The market is moving so fast that you might be able to go out and hire some. But there is no question that this is going to require a balance and the need to think about how you can also enable and train your team that is currently sitting in your organization to be leveraging this technology. And that’s going to require a constant sort of recalibration around, you know, what the market has and what our businesses need.
Matt Alder [00:14:40]:
And what kind of skills are you seeing that are. That are in demand because of AI and organization?
Laura Coccaro [00:14:46]:
You know, it’s interesting, you know, across the board there is a consistent demand. Absolutely. For just people who have any expert expertise in building, you know, AI technology, you know, software engineers who have exposure to AI data scientists who are able to really dive in and understand some of the broader sort of data that surrounds all of this and how we think about that and platforms overall. And then on the other side of the house, it’s about just the aptitude and willingness to be working with these new technologies as they’re evolving. You know, this is something that we’re seeing more and more. You know, it’s even a discussion point when we think about our candidates leveraging AI in the process, is that how should we be thinking about that? Right. And my point of view on this is, is that we should, of course be expecting that our candidates out in the market are using AI responsibly, that they’re doing it credibly. But, you know, I don’t shy away from candidates who are using this as part of their application process, because the reality is that that showcases this. Showcases their ability to use this technology, which is something that we’re looking to harness and cultivate internally.
Matt Alder [00:16:05]:
A final question for you. How does this play out? What does the future look like for HR and ta? And I suppose I’d be most interested in your kind of views in how much change we’re going to see over the next 18 to 24 months.
Laura Coccaro [00:16:21]:
Yeah. If there’s one thing we know for sure in looking back at the past five years, is that we, no question our running sprint cycles as HR practitioners, that I would say even within 12 months, you know, the cycle continues to shorten in terms of our need to continue to adapt. And I don’t think that the next 18 to 24 months are any exception here. I think the way that I see this playing out is that those organizations that can figure out a way to harness the power of what is happening in terms of the market evolving one to leverage AI to streamline their process and really be able to focus on cultivating the right level of talent pools out in the market to drive an amazing candidate experience and foster getting the skill sets in the door. If you can get out ahead of that now, as we’re kind of waiting and see seeing what’s happening in the market in terms of is talent moving, will they be hiring? That’s all going to play out in the next, you know, six to nine months. And those that are quickly adopting technology, thinking differently about how the work gets done, thinking differently about the skill sets that they need, they will come out ahead because no question there will be a swing back and the market will pick up around hiring.
Matt Alder [00:17:41]:
Laura, thank you very much for talking to me.
Laura Coccaro [00:17:43]:
Matt, an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Matt Alder [00:17:46]:
My thanks to Laura. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. 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 on 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.
