Talent acquisition is sitting in a strange place right now. AI is in every conversation, but the work of actually hiring people is getting harder rather than easier. Application volumes are swinging in unpredictable ways, the workforce itself is changing shape, and the reality on the ground is some distance from the hype.
So what is actually going on in European talent acquisition right now?
In this episode, recorded at HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam, I’m joined by two guests who have spent decades watching this industry evolve.
Wolfgang Brickwedde from the Institute for Competitive Recruiting shares what his research is telling him about the market employers are navigating and where vendors are still getting it wrong.
Mervyn Dinnen then joins me to talk about the reality behind the AI hype and how the multigenerational workforce is reshaping the world of work.
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00:00
Matt Alder
I had some great conversations at the recent HR Tech Europe conference and this episode is the first of two featuring the shorter interviews I recorded there. Keep listening for insights on the strange new reality of the talent market, the gap between AI hype and what’s actually working, and how a five generation workforce is changing the rules for everyone.
00:23
Matt Alder
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01:24
Matt Alder
CoderPad helps you see candidates in action, not just on paper. Meta scaled to 16,000 interviews. Using it, Yahoo cut recruiter screening time by over 50%. MNTN is onboarding new hires in days instead of weeks this April. If you’re still banning AI interviews, you’re not just behind, you’re screening out your best Future hires. Visit CoderPad.io/podcast to talk to the team that’s CoderPad.io/podcast.
02:21
Matt Alder
Hi there. Welcome to episode 792 of Recruiting Future with me, Matt Alder. Talent acquisition is sitting in a strange place right now. AI is in every conversation, but the work of actually hiring people is getting harder rather than easier. Application volumes are swinging in unprecedented ways. The workforce itself is changing shape, and the reality on the ground is some distance from the hype. So what’s actually going on in European Talent Acquisition right now? In this episode recorded at HR Tech Europe in Amsterdam, I’m joined by two guests who spent decades watching the industry evolve. Wolfgang Brickwedde from the Institute of Competitive Recruiting shares what his research is telling him about the market employers are navigating and where vendors are still getting it wrong.
03:10
Matt Alder
Friend of the show Mervyn Dinnen then joins me to talk about the reality behind the AI hype and how the multi generational workforce is reshaping the world of work. Hi Wolfgang and welcome to the podcast.
03:22
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Thanks for having me.
03:22
Matt Alder
A pleasure to be talking to you. Can you just introduce yourself and tell everyone what you do?
03:27
Wolfgang Brickwedde
I usually help companies to recruit better. I used to run Philips Recruiting and SAP recruiting on a mere level and since like more than 10 years with the Institute for Competitive Recruiting, I like to improve the recruitment industry in the DACH area and seeing that even in the Netherlands. But in the US it’s like five to 10 years ahead to the recruitment function and so I tried to close the gap. That’s my mission.
03:52
Matt Alder
Just before we started recording, were talking about the long time we’ve both spent working in this industry and how it never gets boring. And this is obviously a time of significant sort of technological driven change or particular potential change. What are you seeing at the moment? What’s actually kind of happening out there? How is technology affecting or changing recruiting at the moment?
04:14
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Yeah, of course it’s AI. What can I tell everything. Something else. I think the skills based hiring used to be more hype issue, but I haven’t heard it that much anymore. Or maybe it’s included in the AI function, but it’s maybe a little bit kickback or something. But anyway it’s. If I look into, I do a lot of research in the dark area, look into my data of a couple of thousand 100 companies, then even AI and skill based recruiting is on number 6 or 15 or something. So it’s pretty much low, a lot lower than the hype that we see. And it’s the normal things like how to get people and employer branding is still number one and number two and so that the hype things are going up and down.
05:12
Wolfgang Brickwedde
But of course the AI act, the AI stuff is that much increasing last year I haven’t seen any technology increase the last 15 years skyrocketing like this.
05:25
Matt Alder
Digging in on that, what are the.
05:27
Matt Alder
Biggest challenges that you think employers are facing? Kind of across Europe at the moment.
05:31
Wolfgang Brickwedde
It’s a paradox situation. I talked to some guys over here as well. It looks like it’s not only in the dark area. This thing is on the one side you have too many applications, the application tsunami and on the other hand you have too low numbers of applications. So you have scarcity and you have a surplus market in the same time. And that’s pretty new I think. And even how it’s about you, I don’t know. But 30 years I haven’t Seen this mixed. Usually it was either a surplus or a scarcity market but currently it’s both and it’s both sometimes in the same company.
06:09
Matt Alder
It is interesting and as you say I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it before.
06:13
Matt Alder
What do you think is driving it?
06:15
Matt Alder
What are kind of the forces behind that?
06:16
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Yeah, I’d say the economy of course and the demographical change. So there’s some economy it’s not strong enough to really support real needs in the market. Especially for. And if the economy is not good enough then you cut spendings and you cut spendings where you don’t have like right our eye right away. So meaning like marketing or. Or maybe HR even where you don’t see there’s a real money coming out of it that’s been cut in and so that’s why you have the high numbers. Even if we see this in Germany we have the number of vacancies went down by 50% or even more and the number of people who apply for it’s about the same. So you even easily have twice the number of applications besides any other issue that you might have.
07:19
Wolfgang Brickwedde
And on the other hand then you have demographic effects already. People with strong knowledge leaving the companies and need to be replaced. And then you have companies who have for those vacancies only five to six applications in half a year. But they still look for people and look for very good people. And that’s two way issue.
07:42
Matt Alder
Do you think part of that is.
07:43
Matt Alder
Also that the skills employers are looking for are changing?
07:47
Wolfgang Brickwedde
No, not really. You can have this but you have this. If you have new job profiles that arise but it’s not that many. It’s not like during the Internet time when you have all the web designer stuff and stuff for the AI it’s the prompt engineer is not that much of a hype job. Became. Didn’t became the hype job that we thought of. I was paid like $300,000 in the US sometime but it’s. It’s fast. The air is moving fast. The prompt engineering is not that needed anymore. So I wouldn’t say that depending on the different profiles it’s more than the economy and the demographic change.
08:26
Matt Alder
Looking out across the. Across the exhibition there are so many kind of vendors that here selling mainly selling something to do with. Something to do with AI Obviously I don’t think we’ve ever seen more technology in the recruiting space. Do you think that the. The software vendors are solving the right problems? Do you think that is kind of fit for Purpose? Are the employers that you’re talking to finding technology helping them or is it. Or is it just kind of more noise in a. In a difficult situation?
08:55
Wolfgang Brickwedde
No, I wouldn’t say so. It’s more like some vendors have very good solutions but haven’t addressed it to the pain points. If I looked into the voices and see what’s on the top and what kind of the claim is, then sometimes it’s something that I have to ask them, what are you really doing? So if they don’t address pain point and say to some of them saying, isn’t that something that addresses the pain point of tsunamis, of application tsunamis, couldn’t you then reduce the number of application Quite fast? Quite fast and very good. Yes. Yeah. Why don’t you put it on your sign? So why do I have to think about it and ask for what are you really doing? So the solutions is there. It’s not overselling, it’s not what they don’t think. That’s usually happens.
09:44
Wolfgang Brickwedde
If it’s a new company, then they more like CTO driven and they like to sell the product, not the pain points. Not addressing the pain points.
09:54
Matt Alder
Yeah.
09:54
Matt Alder
And I think the other thing as.
09:55
Matt Alder
Well is that very often people are picking a problem to solve, which is a problem for an employer, but it’s like number 20 on the employer’s list of things they need to fix. And as you say, actually the same solution can solve something much higher up the priority chain and get things moving quicker.
10:10
Wolfgang Brickwedde
But addressing the application tsunami is very high on the list. It’s pressing. That’s where you’re pressing. And then they should know it. And then if they have solutions for it, then why not advertise it that way?
10:26
Matt Alder
Things are changing, perhaps not as quickly.
10:29
Matt Alder
As the hype would have us believe,.
10:31
Matt Alder
But how do you think the role.
10:33
Matt Alder
Of TA is evolving?
10:36
Matt Alder
Are you seeing companies sort of change their approach or change what they do, or do you think that there might be sort of more change coming up?
10:43
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Yeah, it depends on the size of the company. We say the future is there. Not by everyone. Everybody, but the larger companies, they think those through a lot further and think of, okay, not how can we be more efficient, but how can we be more qualitative, improving the recruitment process? Because if it’s like this should be questioning if some stuff saying it’s every employee gets like 40% more effective, more efficient. Why is not the company getting 40% more efficient? There must be something wrong. Who is owning the new 50, 40% of the work. But on the other hand, the other company, the smarter companies looking at the recruitment process and think, okay, how can we re engineer the recruitment process using AI?
11:38
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Because what’s boring, what’s a waste of time, what’s not really creating value and addresses and work like this, rearrange the whole process and then distribute the roles again. So the role of recruiters will then change into more like an orchestra. Like dealing with all the, organizing all the AI agents once they work. We had last year already the year of the agents didn’t happen. Now I see some more. But still the adoption rate is pretty low and this will take some time. Regulation stuff or whatever, it holds backs. But it’s not all that. It has AI sign on. It is AI included. So that’s something else. But at least it’s a lot of promises and still needs to prove proof of the pudding. So to show the proof of the pudding, that’s something.
12:42
Wolfgang Brickwedde
And once it’s easier and has like a stamp of saying it’s compliant, then it’s easier to sell and it’s easier to use.
12:51
Matt Alder
Wolfgang, thank you very much for talking to me.
12:53
Wolfgang Brickwedde
Yeah, thanks for having me.
12:57
Matt Alder
Mervyn, Always good to see you. Welcome back to the show for the 50th time, probably.
13:03
Mervyn Dinnen
I’m not sure it’s that, but it’s approaching. This must be the seventh or eighth.
13:08
Matt Alder
Time I kind of look back and.
13:09
Matt Alder
You’ve not been on the show for ages actually.
13:10
Matt Alder
So you were due in appearance. But Here we are.
13:14
Matt Alder
HR Tech Europe, Amsterdam, second day. Been an interesting 48 hours listening to some of the things that’s been,.
13:21
Matt Alder
That have been going on, what’s being discussed?
13:23
Matt Alder
Obviously, you know, we both go to.
13:25
Matt Alder
A lot of, a lot of conferences.
13:28
Matt Alder
What do you kind of make of the conversation here? What sort of stood out for you? What’s been different from other things that you’ve heard in the last year or so?
13:35
Mervyn Dinnen
Well, a lot of people seem obsessed by this thing called AI. Yes, it seems to enter every conversation. It’s almost before we say, hello, my name is, it’s AI. No, I expected that. Obviously we have a number of vendors here who all have products, who all have ways to encourage you to use their AI. I think that what I’ve liked from some of the sessions I’ve been to is that we’re getting good balance. So I went to one earlier this morning and it was about kind of AI agents, you know, getting involved in the recruitment process. But it was quite interesting showing where things can go wrong, where things can be duplicated, but where the agents sometimes actually can almost correct things.
14:29
Mervyn Dinnen
So I think that’s, you know, the way we use it and the way we implement it is I think what is most important. And I know that there are a number of, I think, courses and workshops now available for HR people to actually kind of, you know, themselves learn all about it so they can oversee what they need to oversee and they can see the negatives and where it might be open to misuse and things.
14:57
Matt Alder
That whole AI readiness thing is such a big topic and it’s certainly something we’re going to be looking at closely on the podcast in the coming weeks and months. I wanted to just talk about something that I know is very much in the sphere of what you talk about at the moment. What’s kind of struck me is this has come up in a number of conversations. Now I was in the US a few weeks ago and it didn’t really come up in any conversation. So there’s an interesting difference and that’s basically aging populations.
15:26
Mervyn Dinnen
Yes.
15:26
Matt Alder
So there are obviously a number of countries in Europe that are acutely aware that they have an aging workforce. And this has come out a number of times when people have been talking about jobs being lost to AI and also people just being lay off, laid off randomly because of alleged AI cuts and companies using a lot of talent when talent is scarce. What’s your, what’s your sort of take on this sort of particular topic? The sort of demographics that we’re sort of seeing because it is the same in the US as well, but it doesn’t seem to be talked about quite as much as in some of the countries in Europe. Have I got that wrong?
16:02
Matt Alder
What’s your take?
16:03
Mervyn Dinnen
No, no, I think you’re right. I think, I mean I, as you know, write and speak a lot around kind of the five generation workforce and the fact that, you know, I suppose at the top end the traditional kind of model of retirement is very much doesn’t exist anymore. I mean there are some people and you know, I know personally of one or two people who’ve, you know, reached that age and they literally have stopped working or they’ve sold, you know, their share of their business and they’re just going to spend, you know, the next few years enjoying life. But there is a lot of evidence that people, you know, nowadays don’t want to just suddenly stop working when they reach their mid, mid, mid late sixties. They want to carry on they enjoy what’s happening.
16:52
Mervyn Dinnen
They enjoy, I think, being part of this developing world of work. So we certainly in Europe see in a lot of industries this kind of five generation workforce and the more senior, should we say, more experienced part of the workforce are then able to help. Obviously the Gen Z and Alpha Gen learn, you know, I suppose learn the ropes, you know, bring them in. There is a bit of intergenerational difficulties, which is one of the things, as you know, I research, write and talk about a lot.
17:32
Mervyn Dinnen
But most of that is just, I think, a failure to understand the priorities of different generations on a personal level and needing to recognize that, you know, the kind of, I suppose for the boomers and Gen X still in the workforce, the way that their careers grew are not kind of open to people joining the workforce now or who have joined the workforce over the last four or five years. It’s a very different progression model.
18:03
Matt Alder
And is there a reckoning coming with all of this? Because, you know, at the same time people talking about talent shortages and just a lack of workers because of sort of demographics that are kind of baked in for decades essentially.
18:19
Matt Alder
But at the same time we’re still.
18:20
Matt Alder
Seeing, essentially seeing lots of ageism in the hiring process and layoffs and things like that. And that was something that’s particularly prevalent in the uk. So are we heading for a real issue where those two things collide? There’s not enough people, there’s ageism, but then you’ve got AI as well.
18:37
Matt Alder
It’s just, it seems like everything’s in.
18:39
Matt Alder
The mix at the moment.
18:40
Mervyn Dinnen
It is, which makes it a fascinating time for people like you and me who spend our time researching, writing, speaking about these things. I think it is, I think that there is definitely, I wouldn’t say a reckoning because that makes it sound a bit almost biblical, you know, plagues or something. No, no, there won’t be a reckoning, but I think that the we will. I mean, certainly in the UK we’re at a bit of a crossroads politically. I don’t, this isn’t a political podcast, so we won’t talk about that. But there is obviously a big difference between how older people vote and how younger people vote in terms of priorities. So, you know, there is a bit of a difference there. But I think that people who feel that they have something to contribute will continue working because they enjoy it.
19:37
Mervyn Dinnen
And I refer back to conversations I’ve had in the past on my own podcast about the multi generational workforce, about how there was A project to do with banking, and they couldn’t find enough people to actually fill it. So what they did was reach out to effectively retired bankers who had retired late 50s, early 60s with good pensions and with savings and stuff, but who actually missed the nip and tuck of work. And they managed to recruit, I think, about a dozen of them to do this project. And so they’ve now got this kind of team of experienced people who actually enjoy doing project work. So whether or not that limits opportunities for people to progress, possibly. But then again, there is, you know, a knowledge transfer available.
20:36
Matt Alder
Interesting times.
20:37
Matt Alder
And so, final question, from the conversations.
20:39
Matt Alder
You’ve had, the things that you’ve seen, what’s been the most surprising or interesting thing that you’ve. You’ve heard or seen in the last couple of days?
20:47
Mervyn Dinnen
I was at a session this morning and it was very much looking at the. Where agents, AI agents can go wrong. And that was quite interesting. Just some examples of where this still needs some kind of human oversight because the agents can go off certain directions which maybe are not kind of. Or maybe not legally compliant or. So that. That was interesting. I mean, I need to think a bit about that and maybe write it up. But so I think that, you know, as always, with a new technology, I mean, you and I go back to the early days of social media. There’s a huge rush of people jumping in, you know, sending a couple of tweets, although it’s. It’s X messages now, and thinking they were social media experts.
21:44
Mervyn Dinnen
And I’m guessing that we have a lot of AI experts who have listened to a few podcasts and read a few articles on LinkedIn or something and think they’re AI experts.
21:56
Matt Alder
I’m sure that’s the case, but I think we can see that things are starting to get more complicated. The rubber is hitting the road. These things have to deliver. Now, Mervyn, a pleasure to talk to you as ever.
22:08
Matt Alder
I’m sure you’ll be back on the show soon.
22:09
Matt Alder
I’ll get my agent to talk to your agent.
22:11
Mervyn Dinnen
Of course, of course.
22:14
Matt Alder
My thanks to Wolfgang and Mervyn. 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.
