The role of talent acquisition is changing fast. AI and automation are transforming what’s possible, while CFOs and CEOs are demanding a different kind of conversation. They want to understand the value talent acquisition creates for the business and how it delivers returns that directly tie to strategic goals. The old transactional language of efficiency no longer cuts it. TA leaders who can connect what they do to business impact are the ones building a successful case for investment. The problem is, with vendor capabilities increasingly overlapping, knowing where to put that investment has never been harder.
So what does it take to reposition talent acquisition as a truly strategic function?
My guest this week is Jason Cerrato, SVP of Global Talent at Amentum. In our conversation, he shares how the TA conversation has evolved, why business acumen matters more than ever, and how to cut through the technology noise to make the right investment decisions.
In the interview, we discuss:
• How the TA conversation has changed
• Telling a story of impact, not efficiency
• Speaking the language of the CFO
• The new criteria for tech investment
• Moving from a cost centre to a strategic function
• Changing the way organizations think about talent.
• Balancing AI with human connection
• Navigating similarity and sameness in tech products
• Choosing the right fit, not just the best tool
• The future of talent acquisition
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00:00
Matt Alder
Talent Acquisition used to be a process conversation. Now CFOs and CEOs want to hear about business value, strategic returns and measurable impact. With technology transforming what’s possible and vendor capabilities increasingly overlapping, how should TA leaders navigate this new reality? Keep listening to find out. Support for this podcast comes from Workable. Workable is known for its award winning applicant tracking and HR platform. Used by more than 30,000 companies worldwide to hire and manage talent more efficiently, they’ve recently rolled out two major product updates. First, they’ve completely rebuilt their reporting suite from the ground up. Workable now delivers enterprise ready data and reporting, giving teams the ability to create custom dashboards, tables, charts and pivot views using any hiring or HR data in a system. It makes it much easier to track hiring performance, workforce trends and ROI without juggling spreadsheets or external BI tools.
01:08
Matt Alder
They’ve also introduced something really interesting called Workable Agent, a new AI recruiting teammate built directly into the ats. I actually had the chance to see this in action at a recent event and it’s pretty impressive. You start by having a conversation about the role and the agent drafts the job brief, searches through a database of more than 400 million candidate profiles, engages candidates, screens them against your requirements, and delivers a shortlist of qualified interview ready candidates. It essentially gives your team full recruiting agency level capabilities directly inside your ats. If you’re looking to optimize your recruiting and HR processes and improve your ROI along the way, I definitely recommend checking out Workable. You can learn more at workable.com or by visiting their LinkedIn page.
02:20
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 778 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. The role of talent acquisition is changing fast. AI and automation are transforming what’s possible, while CFOs and CEOs are demanding a different kind of conversation. They want to understand the value talent acquisition creates for the business and how it delivers returns that tie directly to strategic goals. The old transactional language of efficiency no longer cuts it. TA leaders who can connect what they do to business impact are the ones who are building successful cases for investment. The problem is, with vendor capabilities increasingly overlapping in technology, knowing where to put that investment has never been harder. So what does it take to reposition Talent acquisition as a truly strategic function? My guest this week is Jason Cerrato, SVP of Global Talent at Amentum.
03:21
Matt Alder
In our conversation, he shares how the TA conversation has evolved why business acumen matters more than ever, and how to cut through the technology noise to make the right investment decisions. Hi Jason, and welcome back to the podcast.
03:37
Jason Cerrato
Matt, it’s great to be back. I think this is my second or third time chatting with you and it’s always a pleasure to.
03:42
Matt Alder
Have you on the show. For people who may not have caught those previous episod, could you introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do now?
03:51
Jason Cerrato
Sure, yeah. Happy to reintroduce myself and it is important because I do have a few updates. Jason Cerrato I’m the Senior Vice President of Global talent for an organization called Amentum, and it’s a role that I’ve been in now for a little over six months. So for anyone who has heard previous episodes in the past, I’ve been in this industry in a couple different capacities. Formerly was with a vendor in a product marketing and type of evangelist role. Prior to that was also a Gartner analyst covering the industry, writing research, working on a couple market guides and magic quadrants. And then almost a decade ago, probably about eight years ago, was a previous HR executive as well, leading talent acquisition in the past.
04:33
Jason Cerrato
So the way I describe it is I’ve been having the same conversation for over 25 years from three different sides of the table and it’s been a lot of fun. But here I am back in the practitioner seat leading a talent organization and to see it almost 10 years apart. Very similar conversation, but very different as well. And it’s definitely using everything I’ve learned in my career on a daily basis.
04:57
Matt Alder
Talk us through those differences. What, you know, what are the challenges? What’s changed since you last kind of sat in the practitioner’s seat?
05:05
Jason Cerrato
You know, I joke that I’ve had these opportunities where you say to yourself, wow, this is a once in a lifetime HR project. And I’ve had three of those now. You know, over a decade ago when I was in a similar role, were transitioning to the cloud and doing digital transformation and, you know, taking systems around the world and we thought that was a once in a lifetime project. Well now as a result of all that digital transformation work, fast forward, you know, I’m in the middle of HR transformation and reorgang and realigning with technology and these digital solutions, talking about how are we going to handle service delivery and how are we going to communicate through different channels and how are we going to initiate processes through a very blended workforce.
05:49
Jason Cerrato
You know, here at Amentum, we support a lot of government and military programs. And our workforce comes in all different shapes and sizes. You know, everything from rocket scientists supporting NASA to aircraft mechanics out in the field. So we’re talking about how are we leveraging technology in a variety of ways, around talent processes and candidate and employee experience, but then also around service delivery. What channels? What mechanisms? How are you actually getting to people in a way where they can use the tools and receive the messages? To answer your question, back when I was doing this before, almost every discussion was a process discussion.
06:25
Jason Cerrato
You know, I grew up in an organization that was very lean focused and Six Sigma focused and we would do value process mapping and you know, go in these big conference rooms full of post IT notes and map out the process. Now every single conversation is a technology conversation, right? What’s the tech stack? What are the layers? What are the channels? Where does this occur? Is it in the right place? In the tech stack layer? How does this fit into adoption? Are we dividing people’s attention too much? Where are we getting the data from? How does the data integrate with other systems? Similar conversations, much more nuanced, much more complex. And it requires a lot more of, you know, I’m going to use the same phrase, but it means something different systems thinking.
07:08
Matt Alder
Oh, absolutely. And so well placed to answer this next question because, you know, having been analyst, having worked for a vendor and you know, being back as a practitioner, as you say, technology kind of dominates at the moment. How do you, what criteria do you use to make investment decisions around technology? Kind of in the role that you’ve got. Because there’s just so much noise and so much possibility and so much disruption. How do you cut through all that?
07:36
Jason Cerrato
You’ve set up the question correctly. There’s tons of noise, there’s tons of possibility, lots of disruption, and also lots of similarity and sameness. When I was analyst and I was advising people in my chair, I saw what the market was doing and I used to talk about everyone’s kind of move to the middle where as everyone was fighting for market share and trying to respond to RFPs in a similar way, increasingly vendors were providing solutions that looked the same and would fill out an Excel spreadsheet RFP template the same. So it can get very confusing very quickly because if you don’t understand what you’re looking at and you don’t understand how something’s used, the words are the same, the workflow looks the same. And the other thing is, with just the ease of technology in the development of software.
08:22
Jason Cerrato
Today, a lot of vendors are making a lot of the same products, regardless of where they sit in the tech stack. So that’s another part of this conversation, is that it’s not just, you know, does someone have this functionality or does someone have this capability? It’s where does it sit and how does this get delivered, you know, to your audience and is it positioned correctly? So when you talk about what criteria are we using, we’re using things like adoption, right. Is this going to be used and is it going to be adopted and are we going to get the full value for the investment? Because then we’re talking about things like return and, you know, it’s, is this going to help us with cost savings? Is this going to help us with cost avoidance? Is this going to help us with revenue generation?
09:03
Jason Cerrato
But then the other thing is scale. Is this going to help us scale our team? Is this going to help us scale our reach? Is this going to help us scale our services? So, you know, I would say as recently as just, you know, a few years ago, four or five years ago, it was all about the technology and what could it do in the art of the possible. Now we’re really talking about outcomes and utility and usage. Because if everything’s available everywhere, you have to make the right investments in the right places to make sure you’re getting everything out of, you know, the limited funds we often have here in hr.
09:39
Matt Alder
Absolutely. And picking up on that last piece about limited funds, I mean, how do you position all of this in a way that resonates with CFOs, with people who look after budgets, with people who allocate, you know, those resources that you need? What’s the, what’s the kind of language? What’s the sort of approach that you take?
09:59
Jason Cerrato
It’s a great question. And, you know, I’ve never had so many conversations with finance before. In the past, you know, it was a lot of functional leaders talking about, again, talent processes and talent delivery. Today, it’s a lot of business discussions talking about revenue generation, cost savings, value capture, cost avoidance, risk avoidance. So, you know, getting that kind of financial terminology and business acumen and storyboarding every type of talent strategy is increasingly important. And I would say, you know, how. How are we talking about it in a way that a CFO would understand? We’re talking about how to avoid and sunken costs, how to maximize investments, how to stretch the value and capability of a budget. Especially when you’re talking about an organization the size of ours. You know, we have close to 50, 000 employees operating in over 70 countries on every continent.
10:52
Jason Cerrato
You know, how do we make sure we’re operating at scale, leveraging the size of our organization and maximizing our investments. So that way when someone like the CFO or the CEO has funding and we’re going to ask for it, just like every other function in the organization is asking for it, we can make sure that we’re positioning ourselves to show what they’re going to get for that investment, how we’re going to provide a return, what additional functionality this is bringing to the table, and then how this moves beyond just an activity. That’s HR for HR sake. You know, what are we truly delivering to the business? What are we delivering to the customer? What are we delivering to the employee? And how do all of those things create compounding returns?
11:42
Matt Alder
And once that happens, when you do that, how does that change the way the organization thinks about talent? Because, you know, a lot of organizations see it just as a, you know, as a cost center, as a process, as you said. How does it, how does the organization kind of reframe its thinking?
11:59
Jason Cerrato
You know, part of how the organization reframes. It reframes its thinking is how you as a leader position your messaging and how you measure the work you’re doing. I always talk about how working in talent acquisition, it’s always been an art and a science. And even as technology has advances and we have a tool for everything, before when we didn’t have good technology, we won with the impact of our people. Now when we have excellent technology, we’re going to use that technology to emphasize and maximize the impact of our people. I think the same thing goes with our investments and our funding and our budget and our metrics. So part of this is, are you telling a story that’s based on efficiency and automation and transactions, or are you telling a story that’s focused on impact and relevance. Right. And resonance and strategy? Right.
12:53
Jason Cerrato
So it’s not just faster, quicker, cheaper. Right. It’s right time, right place, right people, right strategy, right thinking. And the whole point of this is when you have tools that can give you answer, you know, at the snap of a finger, your role as a leader is to be able. Is to be able to take all that information and find the connective tissue and the insight between those answers, which you only get from sitting in the seat and collaborating with the business and knowing, you know, how you either make money for the organization or how you save money for the organization. Because, you know, like I said, I’ve been having this conversation for 25 years. When I first started in recruiting, that’s what I was told.
13:34
Jason Cerrato
Everything you’re going to do at some way, shape or form comes down to the fact that you’re making the organization money or you’re saving the organization money. And you know, today it’s a big part of how we’re framing that discussion influencing how we’re seen, how we’re invited and how we are collaborated with.
13:50
Matt Alder
And I think there’s some excellent advice in there for TA leaders listening and I, I want to kind of just get some more advice from you but circle back to earlier when were talking about technology. You know, as you say, everyone seems to be doing everything. Understanding where it all fits is, is kind of a big, confusing issue. You know, you have a background that really helps you sort of, you know, drill into this and get some clarity. What would your advice be for everyone else, you know, other TA leaders listening? How should they be thinking about, you know, technology, building tech stacks, you know, how do you cut through that noise?
14:29
Jason Cerrato
Sometimes in a sea of complexity, the simple answer is the right answer. And it all comes down to how well do you know your business, how well do you know how your business is going to receive this capability, going to utilize this tool, going to adopt this functionality. And it isn’t, just doesn’t make sense for you know, in a closed door room, in a laboratory, you know, on a whiteboard, it’s does this make sense in the real world, driving it out on the road where people have options and they can choose to follow the path that you’re building or go in it, go in another direction. So for example, back when I was analyst, people would try to, you know, have a shortcut conversation with me and say, what’s the best tool for this? What’s the best tool for that?
15:15
Jason Cerrato
Who’s the best at this? You know, who’s the best at that. It’s not a matter of who’s the best or what’s the best, it’s what’s the best fit for your organization. I’m not a avid horse race fan, but there’s a phrase in horse racing that there are certain horses for certain courses, right? And there are certain, just setups that blend themselves well to certain environments. I think that’s the thing you have to look at when you’re selecting tools to say in my organization the, where the way we’re structured the way we’re organized, based off of how we sit, based off of how we communicate, based off of how people plug into the organization. What functionality am I looking to add? Where does this functionality make the most sense to reside? What’s the channel in which people are going to interact with it the most?
16:01
Jason Cerrato
And then what’s the way that’s going to allow me as a leader to get the information I need at the 30,000 foot high view while still not impacting or hindering the ability for people to actually use the functionality and adopt it on the ground level? You know, I, I use the example every single vendor I’ve talked to in the last six months has built an AI interviewer, or every single vendor I’ve talked to now does automated scheduling. But the fact of the matter is where do they sit in your tech stack? Where do they interact with the audience that this is being built for? Right? Where does that data come from and integrate and get sent to? All of those decisions factor into what’s the right place, where this tool should reside, and who’s the right vendor for your organization.
16:49
Jason Cerrato
That’s just as important as who has the best functionality. Because at the end of the day, you could have the best functionality, but if it doesn’t sit in the right place and no one’s using it again, you have limited funds to invest. You’re not making the right investment.
17:03
Matt Alder
And a final question for you. What do you think the future looks like? How is TA going to evolve over the next sort of two or three years?
17:12
Jason Cerrato
This is the million dollar question. It’s interesting. About a year or so ago I started hearing these stories of these people that were almost going back to their roots. And because technology had advanced and were creating this scenario of a snake eating its own tail, they were going back to basic blocking and tackling and they were stopping having virtual events and automated applications and they were going back to meeting people in person and having everybody apply in a more manual way. And part of this was validating who you’re meeting with. Part of this was increasing candid commitment. Part of this was trying to avoid an AI written resume being evaluated by an AI interviewer getting plugged into an AI system. I think again, it’s always going to be this balance between art and science.
17:58
Jason Cerrato
We’re always going to be asked to do more with less and create capacity and increase scale. But at the same time, as businesses grow, as revenues grow, if you can have the same team able to do more work without it being more labor and an increased burden. You know, that’s where you get your efficiency story. But at the same time, you should be using that technology to emphasize your people. And at the end of the day, people always are going to want to work with people. They’re going to want to know who they’re going to be communicating with. They’re going to want to know what team am I joining.
18:32
Jason Cerrato
And the fact of the matter is, you know, as much as people have tried to automate the process and have everything be custom and bespoke and have it your way, on the flip side of that, you know, at the same time, people are saying they’re having trouble onboarding to the organization, they’re having trouble feeling connected to the organization. They’re feeling isolated and lonely. So as much as the pendulum swings one way to the other, I think the answer is always going to be somewhere in the balance. Because I was having this discussion a week or two ago and, you know, it sounds corny or cliche, but everything in moderation, right? And the magic is always in the mix.
19:09
Jason Cerrato
And I think, you know, for those that are in a similar role to me in this kind of talent acquisition, talent management, hr, technology leadership role, and for those that are on the vendor side trying to understand the needs of their customers, that’s ultimately where this is headed, is that how do we get the best of both worlds to maximize the capability of the technology, but to emphasize and kind of amplify the role of people in this process.
19:35
Matt Alder
Jason, thank you very much for talking to me.
19:37
Jason Cerrato
It’s always a pleasure, Matt. Look forward to the next time. I’m sure this won’t be the last.
19:41
Matt Alder
My thanks to Jason. 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.
