The talent market is full of contradictions right now. There are many people looking for jobs, but for many organisations, finding the right talent remains difficult. Caution dominates on both sides, with candidates asking harder questions about stability and culture while businesses are slowing down decision-making around headcount. AI is promising to transform recruiting, but most organizations are still working out where it fits.
Through all of this, talent acquisition is clearly evolving. The best teams are thinking about workforce planning, internal mobility, and skills rather than just filling requisitions. However, many of them are still measuring themselves on time-to-hire and cost-per-hire, metrics which capture efficiency but say nothing about real business impact.
So what comes next for TA, and how should teams measure what actually matters?
My guest this week is Bharat Siyani, VP of People and Culture at Elmo Software. In our conversation, he explains what a broader set of success metrics looks like, where AI genuinely helps versus where humans must lead, and how he sees TA’s role changing over the next few years.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The contradictions in today’s talent market
• Finding the signal in the noise
• The importance of understanding nuance in recruiting
• What should AI do and what should humans do?
• How should organizations measure the impact of TA?
• Efficiency metrics versus value metrics
• Assessing tech talent at a time of high layoffs
• Skills and outcomes versus job titles
• TA’s role in shaping the workforce
• What does the future of the TA team look like?
Follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts.
Follow this podcast on Spotify.
00:00
Matt Alder
Talent acquisition is evolving fast, but the way most teams measure success hasn’t changed in years. If the future looks different, shouldn’t the metrics look different too? Keep listening to find out more.
00:15
Matt Alder
Support for this podcast comes from smart recruiters. Are you looking to supercharge your hiring? Meet Winston Smart Recruiter’s AI powered companion. I’ve had a demo of Winston. The capabilities are extremely powerful and it’s been crafted to elevate hiring to a whole new level. This AI sidekick goes beyond the usual assistant, handling all the time consuming admin work, so you can focus on connecting with top talent and making better hiring decisions. From screening candidates to scheduling interviews, Winston manages it all with AI precision, keeping the hiring process fast, smart and effective. Head over to smartrecruiters.com and see how Winston can deliver superhuman results.
01:20
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 766 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. The talent market is full of contradictions at the moment, there are many people looking for jobs, but for many organisations, finding the right talent remains difficult. Caution dominates on both sides, with candidates asking harder questions about stability and culture, while businesses are slowing down decision making around headcount. At the same time, AI is promising to transform recruiting, but most organizations are still working out where it fits through all of this. Talent acquisition is clearly evolving. The best teams are thinking about workforce planning, internal mobility and skills rather than just filling recs. However, many of them are still measuring themselves on time to hire and cost per hire metrics which capture efficiency but say nothing about their real business impact.
02:21
Matt Alder
So what comes next for ta and how should teams measure what actually matters? My guest this week is Bharat Siyani VP of People and Culture at Elmo Software. In our conversation, he explains what a broader set of success metrics looks like, where AI genuinely helps versus where humans should be leading, and how he sees TA’s role changing over the next few years.
02:47
Matt Alder
Hi, Bharat and welcome to the podcast.
02:50
Bharat Siyani
Hi Matt. Nice, nice to meet you.
02:52
Matt Alder
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Please, could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
02:58
Bharat Siyani
Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m Bharat Siyani the VP of People and Culture for the UK business within Elmo Software, which includes Breathe and Rotageek. Essentially, in practice, that means I’m responsible for the full people agenda across multiple entities. Everything from talent acquisition, performance complex, er, to benefits and culture. A lot of my work at the Moment is about joining things up. So harmonizing the policies, the benefits, implementing a common HRIS system, which will be our own system, make sure our people experience feels coherent, even though we operate across different brands and locations. And I tend to get involved in things that are super complex or messy, so any high risk, er, cases or changes. But then try and make sure I balance legal risk with commercial reality and what feels culturally right.
03:50
Matt Alder
The market, as ever, is very interesting at the moment. Well, what are the kind of big challenges that you’re currently seeing?
03:58
Bharat Siyani
So, as it relates to talent specifically, there’s a couple of things that come to mind. So one, high supply, but not always the right fit. So on paper there are a lot of candidates in the market after waves of layoffs, especially post Covid. But when you get into the details, specific skills, domain knowledge, vertical expertise, genuine adaptability. Matching is still hard, so volume doesn’t always automatically equal fit. And then there’s a lot of caution on both sides. So candidates are more cautious about moving. After a few disruptive years, they’re asking harder questions about stability, leadership, how decisions are made. At the same time, business is a lot more conservative with headcount, which can slow down decision making and frustrate everybody in the process. Thirdly, I would say expectations around flexibility and purpose. Flexibility is now table stakes for many candidates, myself included.
04:51
Bharat Siyani
But everyone defines it differently. People are also a lot more tuned into the why of an organization, its purpose, its culture, the leadership behavior, not just the job description. And then probably finally, I would say signal versus noise. So for certain roles you can be flooded with applications, but relatively few have taken the time to understand the role, the product or the problem you’re trying to solve. And the challenge for talent teams is creating a process that surfaces a real signal without burning out the recruiters and hiring managers.
05:20
Matt Alder
Let’s sort of dive into that a little bit. So start, I suppose, start with the technology side of that. Now, every single episode of this podcast, we sort of talk about AI, and there are obviously clearly things that it can do to make recruiting faster and more efficient. What’s your perspective on what’s going on with tech and AI in particular at the moment? What should it be doing? What should humans be doing? How do you think it best fits?
05:46
Bharat Siyani
Yeah, that’s a great question. So for me, technology, including AI, should really clear the Runway, not fly the plane. So take the admin, the friction out of the process. Scheduling, basic screening, extracting and matching skills and drafting comms help us see patterns with the otherwise miss. So, for example, Insights on which channels are bringing the diverse high performing hires or where candidates are dropping out of the funnel enable consistency. So structured question banks, interview guides a fairer shortlisting where humans are often inconsistent. And then there’s the other side of the coin where I think humans should still own this essentially which is the judgment.
06:25
Bharat Siyani
So understanding the story behind the cv, I mentioned earlier on that there’s a lot of people who’ve been laid off and so make sure that the nuances of a career break or why someone took a sideways move, that’s making sense to us and that’s human work. I don’t think AI can replace that. The connection and trust. So candidates remember how they were treated, not how cleverly we phrased their CV or passed it. And then the human conversation. So honest expectation setting, feedback, answering the what it’s really like questions and where you build or lose your employer brand. And then the last one for me I think is ethics and fairness. So AI will learn from whatever data we feed it. And there’s the analogy of garbage in, garbage out, including historical bias.
07:10
Bharat Siyani
Humans have to set the guardrails, test for unintended consequences and then decide what good looks like. So I don’t think AI should be making hiring decisions, but it should give hiring managers and recruiters and leaders more time and headspace to make better decisions.
07:25
Matt Alder
Just following on from that really quickly, do you see it? Are you seeing already that recruiters are able to have more of those kind of human conversations? I suppose going back to what you were saying earlier about the volumes that are coming through, do you think that AI is enabling, is helping with that issue?
07:41
Bharat Siyani
I think sometimes it doesn’t. I think there’s parts of it where we’ve seen a lot of emerging tools enable people. But again, I think we’re all experiencing this for the first time. So a lot of businesses are waiting to see what competitors are doing, to see what everybody else is doing, and then following rather than setting the benchmark and the standard.
08:01
Matt Alder
I know that you kind of written about this on LinkedIn that you feel that some of the traditional metrics that TA in particular is kind of measured on or reports in terms to hire, cost per hire aren’t really quite fit for purpose or capturing everything that’s going on. How do you think organizations should be measuring the impact that their talent teams are delivering to their business?
08:25
Bharat Siyani
Yeah, so again, those metrics, I don’t want to sideline how important they are and I don’t want to Take any value. So time to hire and cost per hire matter. They certainly do. But the hygiene metrics, in my opinion, they tell you about the efficiency, not the impact. And so I’d take a broader dashboard across a couple of different lenses. So firstly, quality and longevity of hire retention after 12 to 24 months, especially for key roles, performance or contribution in that period, are they on top, middle or bottom of the distribution chart, how quickly they reach their full potential in the role. Then secondly, business outcomes.
09:05
Bharat Siyani
So the revenue generation roles, first time to the deal, the quota attainment, how they build the pipeline, rather than what the pipeline actually is for product and engineering, its contribution to key releases or features or initiatives and programs. And then for critical enabling roles, have we actually reduced bottlenecks or risk? And then I’d start thinking about the experience and reputation. So hiring manager satisfaction, that goes beyond did we fill the role to would you hire this person or this way again, candidate nps? I think that’s fundamentally important. I think a lot of businesses are doubling down on this metric, specifically including those that we didn’t hire. So do they still feel positive about the brand and the process? And I think in this generation, employer brand is absolutely everything. Strategic contributions.
09:50
Bharat Siyani
So internal mobility, how many roles are filled by people already in the business. And this is not a new innovative metric. And it’s been around as long as time has diversity and inclusion outcomes across the funnel, and then at the office stage which differentiate and differ greatly. And then to the extent which TA is shaping workforce planning, not just reacting to requisitions. So when you put all of those things together, you can have a much richer conversation with the business. Not just we filled 50 roles in as many days, but here’s how hiring decisions have changed the performance, the risk and capability over time.
10:24
Matt Alder
Now, obviously in your organization, that sounds like that’s something that you’re kind of really focusing on. I know that there are TA leaders listening who are kind of struggling to make their voices heard around some of these things. Have you got any kind of advice to them about how they can communicate that and get that kind of more holistic view on what they’re doing?
10:45
Bharat Siyani
I really do think it shapes around the data and the numbers don’t lie. And so making sure that you have a good quality data lead that shows you where you’re trending. And initially and from our own experience, weren’t trending well. And then we had to make small iterative changes and pivot our strategy. And then we found what works essentially. And we could tell the Story to our leaders in the boardrooms beyond the slide decks to say actually if you look at that metric, although the HR or the people team don’t own it’s the work that we’ve enabled that’s allowed that metric to actually change so dramatically.
11:20
Matt Alder
Earlier on you mentioned that there’s been huge amount of layoffs in the last few years, particularly in the tech sector and there are lots of very experienced candidates out in the market at the moment. How should recruiters and hiring managers be thinking differently about how they assess talent in this current environment?
11:37
Bharat Siyani
Yeah, so there’s been a lot of emergence of tools realistically on testing and so there’s again a number of vendors I could mention, but I think it’s tempting to think great, now we can raise the bar and ask for everything. I feel like that’s a big mistake. And a few shifts I’d actually encourage leaders to start thinking about. So looking past the job titles to actual skills and outcomes after layoffs, especially post Covid that I mentioned earlier, people often have slightly messy cvs, lateral moves, short distance consulting, fractional work and focus on what they actually delivered, who they worked with and how they navigated the ambiguity rather than a perfectly linear story which I don’t think exists as much as it did previously. Assess the adaptability, not just the experience.
12:24
Bharat Siyani
The question isn’t have they done this exact job so much as can they learn our context quickly and contribute to it. Use scenarios, case discussions, real problems from your business, rather generic competency based questions. Be explicit about what’s truly non negotiable in a rich market. Right now hiring managers can start creating wish lists and TA’s role is to push back and say what are the three things that this person absolutely must bring? And let’s focus on those rather than what we can’t actually enable and coach and develop those three things specifically. And lastly, it’s value failure stories properly. Many experienced candidates will have lived through restructures, pivots and failures and how they talk about those experiences, from accountability to learning how they handled others, can be far more predictive of another success story.
13:18
Bharat Siyani
And so it’s less about being harsher and more about being clearer and more thoughtful in what you assess and how you do it.
13:24
Matt Alder
The other issue at the moment is that we’ve kind of got more different generations in the workforce than we’ve ever had. And I know that obviously lots gets written about generational stereotypes and things like that, but talking to people very much on the ground with this, that there are very different expectations in different generations about work. I mean, how does that affect the way as an organization that you think about attracting and also retaining talent?
13:51
Bharat Siyani
That’s again fantastic question, Matt. So I’m a bit weary of answering it and turning this into a Gen Z wants X and millennials want Y. But I think any generation, there’s a huge variety. That said, there are some themes that often map to life stage. So early career employees often look at growth, learning, clear progression, community and belonging. They care who they’re learning from. Flexibility, but also some structure and support. Later, career employees may focus more on autonomy and trust because they’ve got the experience, they know how to do the job, how work fits around their broader life responsibilities. Again, if they’ve got young children or kids or even carers that they that depend on them, stability and meaningful impact and being listened to. And then for organizations the implication is, you know, try and design for flexibility, not uniformity.
14:45
Bharat Siyani
So one rigid model rarely works, especially in this day and age. And so offer clear principles. Then give teams some choice in working patterns, benefits mix and how careers evolve. Invest in managers as translators. So a lot of tension shows up in the manager employee relationship. Managers need the skills to have an adult two way conversation about expectations, boundaries and trade offs with people at different stages of their career, which will probably differ from their stage of career. And then be honest about what you’re offering and what the deal is. So don’t market a hyper flexible, purpose driven experience if what you actually offer is a fairly traditional environment. It’s better to be clear, attract people who genuinely want what you have.
15:28
Bharat Siyani
And so a bit less of how do we please every generation and a bit more how do we create a coherent proposition with enough flex for different needs and managers who can make that real.
15:38
Matt Alder
As a final question is obviously a very dynamic time at the moment, for want of a better word. I mean, how do you see things evolving, particularly with TIE acquisition over the next sort of two to three years? Where are we going with all of this?
15:52
Bharat Siyani
Yeah, so there’s a couple of trajectories. So from requisition filling to work for shaping, and I mentioned it a little bit earlier on, TA will be pulled earlier into the conversations about strategies, skills and capacity. And the best teams operate as talent advisors, challenging hiring plans, suggesting internal moves and using data to shape the decisions. Much more skills based and much less job title based. So as AI and automation changes roles, organizations will shift from we need another X to we need these skills and outcomes. And TA will need better tools and frameworks to identify, validate, describe skills both externally and internally. Smaller, more leveraged teams again enabled by that big word AI.
16:38
Bharat Siyani
I don’t think TA disappears, but I do think you’ll see leaner teams using AI heavily for sourcing and screening and content, while humans spend a bit more time on complex assessments, stakeholder influence and candidate experience, and then closer integration with internal mobility and learning. So the wall between recruitment and development will keep shrinking. The question won’t just be who can we hire? But what’s the right mix of hiring, redeploying and upskilling to solve this problem? And then more focus on quality and ethics. So as tools become more powerful, regulators and candidates will rightly ask harder questions about the fairness, transparency and data use. And I think TA and people leaders will need to be as comfortable talking about ethics and governance as they are about sourcing channels.
17:23
Bharat Siyani
So overall, I think talent acquisition becomes more strategic, more data informed, more human at the points that really matter or it risks becoming automated away from transactional edges.
17:33
Matt Alder
I couldn’t agree with you more on that one. I think that’s such an important point and something that we all need to very much kind of bear in mind as we move forward.
17:42
Matt Alder
Bharat, thank you very much for talking to me.
17:45
Bharat Siyani
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, mate.
17:48
Matt Alder
My thanks to Bharat. You can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or wherever you listen to 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 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.
