Solution: Talent Advisory

5 Signs Your Recruitment Strategy Needs Modular RPO 

Posted on by akessler

Many organizations mistakenly believe Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions are only for large enterprises with ongoing, high-volume hiring needs. While full-scale RPO might seem out of reach for some organizations, a modular RPO approach offers the flexibility to address specific recruitment challenges without overhauling your entire talent acquisition infrastructure. 

Modular RPO can deliver value to organizations of any size, including small- to medium-sized enterprises or those with short-term or specialized hiring requirements. Here are five key indicators that your current recruitment strategy might benefit from a modular RPO solution. 

1. Your Internal Team Is Struggling to Keep Up with Demand  

When your organization faces sudden spikes in hiring demand—whether for seasonal recruitment, rapid expansion, or project launches—your internal team can quickly become overwhelmed. These periods of increased volume often require you to scale up recruitment efforts quickly without the luxury of permanently increasing your internal headcount. 

Maintaining quality while meeting aggressive timelines becomes nearly impossible with existing resources. Your team may resort to rushed screening processes, extended working hours, or compromised candidate experiences, all of which can lead to poor hiring decisions and damage to your employer brand. 

Modular RPO provides the surge capacity you need during these peak periods. Specialized teams can quickly ramp up to handle the increased volume or hiring for a new project while maintaining consistent quality standards. Once the hiring surge or project is complete, you can scale back the support without the ongoing costs and complications of permanent staff additions. 

This approach is particularly valuable for organizations with predictable seasonal patterns, such as retail companies preparing for holiday seasons, or those opening new facilities that require rapid team building. 

2. You’re Managing Specialized Skill Requirements with Different Candidate Experiences 

When you need to hire for roles requiring niche expertise or hard-to-find skills, your internal team may lack the specialized knowledge, professional networks or sourcing strategies needed to identify and attract the right candidates. The talent pool may be limited, candidates may be passive and not actively job searching, or the role may require specific credentials that are difficult to assess without industry expertise. 

Different specialized roles also demand vastly different candidate experiences. A software engineer’s journey differs significantly from a marketing manager’s or a specialized researcher’s expectations. Each requires tailored communication, specific assessment methods, and industry-appropriate processes that your recruitment team may struggle to deliver consistently. 

Case Study: Infrastructure Company Ecologist Role 

An infrastructure company struggled to fill a newly created ecologist role due to low brand recognition in the environmental sector and poor response to the job ads. The company’s internal recruitment team lacked the specialized knowledge and networks needed to proactively approach environmental professionals. 

PeopleScout’s Talent Sourcing solution provided specialized headhunting, screening, and shortlisting services, allowing the client to retain their usual interview and offer management processes. We led a targeted search across industry governing bodies, environmental societies and networking groups, reviewing over 700 profiles. We proactively reached out to passive candidates to inform them of the role and gauge their interest, dispelling misperceptions about the transport industry at the same time. 

The result was a shortlist of two qualified candidates, resulting in a successful hire within 11 weeks—a significant improvement over the client’s previous unsuccessful attempts. 

👉 Read the full case study. 

3. You Need to Scale Rapidly in New Markets or Unfamiliar Territory 

When entering new markets, launching new product lines, or expanding into unfamiliar territories, your organization faces unique recruitment challenges that require rapid scaling capabilities. You may lack local market knowledge, employer brand recognition, or understanding of regional compensation and cultural expectations, all while needing to build teams quickly to capitalize on new opportunities. 

Modular RPO solutions, like PeopleScout’s Talent Mapping or Organizational Culture & EVP Diagnostic, can support recruiting in new geographic markets by helping you understanding local talent pools, competition, regulatory requirements, and how to adapt your employer brand for cultural nuances. Without this expertise, you risk extended time-to-fill, higher costs, and poor candidate experiences that can damage your reputation in the new market before you’ve even established yourself. 

Case Study: Consumer Goods Brand Transition 

A consumer goods brand splitting into two companies needed to optimize their talent acquisition strategy to support the transition and future growth. The challenge involved not just managing the launch of the two companies but also improving their ability to compete for talent in competitive rural markets. 

PeopleScout’s Talent Diagnostic solution team assessed their entire talent lifecycle, including conducting over 20 stakeholder interviews. The diagnostic focused on improving access to high-quality candidates in competitive rural markets, and provided recommendations for process streamlining and technology optimization to create consistent candidate experiences and diverse talent pools. 

The client praised the expertise, partnership and flexibility during this critical transition period. Based on the diagnostic recommendations, they engaged PeopleScout for a full-cycle RPO implementation, demonstrating how modular solutions can evolve into broader partnerships when they deliver value. 

👉 Read the full case study. 

4. Time-to-Fill Metrics Are Consistently Missing the Mark 

If your average time-to-fill has stretched beyond industry benchmarks and continues to climb, it’s often a symptom of deeper resource constraints. Your internal recruitment team may be overwhelmed with current demands, but a full RPO solution seems excessive or costly for your organization’s size or hiring volume. This is a common scenario where modular RPO provides the perfect middle ground when adding permanent headcount may not be possible. 

Modular RPO allows you to augment your internal team’s capacity in specific areas where you’re experiencing the greatest strain. From initial candidate sourcing to onboarding, you can add specialized support without the commitment and cost of full-service RPO.  

This approach is particularly valuable for mid-sized organizations that have outgrown basic recruitment methods but aren’t ready for enterprise-level solutions. It provides access to advanced recruitment technologies, methodologies, and expertise that would be cost-prohibitive to develop internally. 

5. When Drop Offs and Early Turnover Has Increased  

If you’re experiencing high drop-off rates during the hiring process and increased early turnover among new hires, it’s a clear sign that specific parts of your recruitment process are consistently underperforming or creating bottlenecks. High drop-off rates may stem from poor candidate communication, lengthy or confusing application processes or misaligned expectations. Early turnover often results from inadequate candidate assessment methods, poor cultural fit evaluation or lack of communication to keep new hires warm before their start date.  

Leading modular RPO providers can conduct process diagnostics or EVP diagnostics to identify specific areas where candidates are dropping out and implement targeted solutions. Some providers also offer technology diagnostics which can identify areas to improve your recruitment tech stack to find efficiencies. 

By addressing these process gaps, you can improve overall recruitment efficiency and effectiveness without disrupting the parts of your process that are working well. This surgical approach often delivers better ROI than attempting to fix everything at once. 

Are You Ready for Modular RPO? 

Modular RPO isn’t about replacing your internal recruitment function—it’s about strategically augmenting it to address specific challenges and gaps. The beauty of modular RPO lies in its flexibility and scalability. So, how do you know if you’re ready for a modular RPO solution? 

Signs You’re Ready for Modular RPO 

  • You’re looking to scale recruitment efforts without increasing permanent talent acquisition headcount
  • Your recruitment process is underperforming, and you need a targeted and/or short-term solution 
  • You need specialized expertise for specific roles or markets 
  • You want to maintain control over certain aspects of hiring while improving others 
  • You want to test RPO services before committing to a full solution 

The goal is to create a hybrid approach that combines the strengths of your internal team with specialized external expertise. By partnering with modular RPO providers for specific challenges, you maintain control over your overall hiring strategy while accessing the tools, technologies, and expertise needed to compete effectively in today’s talent market. 

You can start with a focused pilot program targeting your most pressing recruitment challenge. As you see results and build confidence in the partnership, you can expand the scope to address additional needs or role types. 

In an environment where the right hire can make or break business initiatives, organizations that strategically leverage modular RPO gain a significant competitive advantage. If any of these signs resonate with your current situation, it may be time to explore how modular RPO can transform your recruitment outcomes. 

ED&I at Crossroads? What UK Trends Are Telling Us

Posted on by akessler

In recent months, there’s been a big shift in how organisations globally approach equality, diversity and inclusion (referred to as ED&I in the UK and DEI in other markets). It’s a complicated and fast-moving situation with regulatory changes in certain markets creating operational challenges for employers.

Companies are navigating circumstances where their ED&I initiatives may be restricted in one country but required by law in others where they operate, such as under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This creates complex decisions around employer brand, company culture and employee experience across different markets.

In this article, we’ll dive into what the data says and what this could mean for recruitment and retention in the UK.

The Shift

After years of commitment and programme expansion, businesses have begun shifting their approach to ED&I. Economic pressures, regulatory changes and demands for clearer ROI are leading many to de-prioritise or repackage ED&I initiatives. Many firms are integrating ED&I into environment, social and governance (ESG) agendas rather than eliminating it altogether.

What the Data Says:

Despite this apparent retreat, research shows that diverse companies enjoy 2.5 times higher cash flow per employee and 35% higher productivity, suggesting that stepping back from ED&I could be economically counterproductive.

UK-Specific Considerations

The challenge is particularly acute in the UK, where ED&I has historically encompassed a broader spectrum of diversity characteristics—including social mobility and cognitive diversity—that are uniquely important to British businesses and society.

Social Mobility

Research by KPMG found that social class is the biggest barrier to career progression, compared to any other diversity characteristic. Yet, 52% of UK CEOs come from professional backgrounds (their parent(s) occupation)—a figure that rises to 89% in financial services.

The UK has lower levels of social mobility than many other developed nations, with parental income being a stronger predictor of life outcomes. The recognition of this challenge in the UK is evident in initiatives like the Social Mobility Employer Index, which measures how employers recruit, retain and progress employees from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Cognitive Diversity

The concept of cognitive diversity—encompassing different thinking styles, educational backgrounds, career paths and generational perspectives—offers a more nuanced approach to building truly inclusive workplaces. This includes:

  • Different analytical and creative problem-solving approaches
  • Varied educational and career trajectories
  • Diverse life experiences and cultural perspectives
  • Generational differences in work styles and values
  • Neurodiversity and different ways of processing information

Global Trends Influencing UK ED&I Programmes

Changing attitudes in other markets means some multinational companies have adapted their global strategies. For others, the approach has been mixed, with some organisations maintaining different policies across different regions.

Global companies such as Deloitte, Citigroup, Aldi, and Disney have taken varied approaches across their global operations, with some maintaining stronger commitments in their UK operations. While British brands Natwest, Co-op, Aviva and Channel 5 have all chosen to maintain ED&I targets and commitments.

However, there are some companies for which changing market conditions have led to a rollback or change in ED&I policies. Major British brands such as Vodafone, Sainsbury’s, BT, HSBC, Ocado and Rolls Royce have all shifted their corporate messaging on ED&I.

Notably, 71% of UK business leaders do not plan to alter their organisation’s approach to ED&I in response to the scaling back of programmes in other countries, suggesting the UK market may be following a different trajectory.

The Impact on Recruitment & Retention

The data suggests potential consequences for talent management. A recent UK employee survey revealed that three in five (59%) workers would contemplate resigning if their employer rolled back its ED&I commitments, with younger generations showing stronger reactions—68% of Gen Z and 64% of millennials indicating they would consider quitting. Additionally, nearly half (45%) of respondents said they wanted their employers to go further with ED&I policies, while only 3% called for scaling back.

These findings indicate a disconnect between employee expectations and some organisational responses. For employers, walking back on ED&I may offer short-term risk management, but the workforce data suggests this could threaten long-term employer brand reputation, recruitment and retention. The survey results indicate that ED&I represents a business consideration for accessing UK talent.

Even for companies where ED&I strategy has remained the same in the UK but changed in other markets, the mixed messages create complexity for employees and candidates across different regions. UK business leaders will need to be loud and clear if they want their commitment to ED&I to be evident.

Conclusion

The current situation represents a crossroads for ED&I approaches. Companies are choosing between different strategies: some are retreating from explicit ED&I programmes, while others are evolving their approaches to build more sustainable inclusion practices.

For UK businesses, this evolution occurs within a context that includes the country’s specific legal framework (the Equality Act 2010), its focus on social mobility, and recognition that diversity encompasses not just visible characteristics, but cognitive approaches, backgrounds and perspectives.

The data suggests that organisations are weighing short-term risk management against long-term business considerations, particularly around talent acquisition and retention in an increasingly values-driven employment market.

Posted in D&I

How an Art Heist Transformed Financial Services Recruitment

Posted on by akessler
How an Art Heist Transformed Financial Services Recruitment

PeopleScout Assessment

How an Art Heist Transformed Financial Services Recruitment

PeopleScout’s assessment and creative teams helped a leading financial services company transform their entry-level recruitment process from a typical interview to an innovative, immersive experience, creating an assessment centre unlike any candidate had encountered before.

86 % assessment centre pass rate (up from 41%)
98 % offer acceptance rate (up from 73%)
98 % candidate satisfaction scores after the assessment

Situation 

A leading financial services provider, specialising in pensions, investments and insurance, was facing recruitment challenges. They needed to fill contact centre roles—mainly phone-based positions handling customer inquiries—but their process needed a revamp.

The numbers tell the story: In 2023, the company processed approximately 7,000 applications to fill 250 entry-level positions. That’s a mountain of CVs and a serious administrative burden. Their approach was pretty standard—online application, a telephone interview followed by  a face-to-face competency interview. They’d assess just 12 to 14 candidates per day, running two interviews simultaneously, seven times a day.

In addition to the scale of the effort, hiring managers kept gravitating toward candidates who already had contact centre or financial services experience. The client’s talent acquisition team spotted this bias and realised they were probably missing out on brilliant people who hadn’t worked in these specific areas before. These candidates might have exactly what it takes to excel—they just didn’t tick the “industry experience” box.

So, they decided it was time for a complete recruitment makeover.

Solution 

We stepped in to flip the client’s assessment approach on its head, creating something that was fair, inclusive, and—dare we say it—actually fun.

Our psychologists teamed up with our creative team to figure out how to support evidence-based hiring decisions while giving candidates an experience they’d never forget. What emerged was a multi-stage, immersive assessment that aligned with the client’s goals and gave everyone a fair shot.

Assessment Framework Development

Our psychologists rolled up their sleeves and did a deep-dive job analysis, systematically reviewing multiple information sources to define the capabilities, experience, skills, abilities and behaviours that make someone successful in these contact centre roles. They talked to hiring managers, incumbents and recruiters to understand what “good” really looks like—not just on paper, but in practice—securing stakeholder buy-in and support throughout the process.

From the research an assessment framework was created which guided the design of all the assessments. This research-driven approach meant the assessment process was built on best practice methodology while actually measuring what mattered for job performance. Our goal was to achieve:

  • A standardised assessment process ensures all candidates have the same experience, enhancing equality, diversity, and inclusion (ED&I) and increasing fairness
  • Objective assessment of candidates, focusing on evidence-based criteria that are relevant to job performance
  • Concrete, evidence-based rationale for hiring decisions, ensuring fair, accurate and defensible outcomes

Three-Stage Assessment Process

Our psychologists designed a multi-method assessment process to offer candidates multiple opportunities to shine. By mixing different types of assessments, we could accommodate different strengths and preferences while reducing bias—accommodating neurominority candidates and accounting for different preferences for showcasing abilities.

The three-stage process cleverly blended automated scoring with human insight, cutting down on bias while saving assessors’ time.

Stage 1: Telephone Screen

The client wanted to keep their phone interview—it was working well for them. So, our psychologists took what they had and made it better, creating standardised questions and scoring while keeping the motivational elements and assessing behaviours from the assessment framework.

Stage 2: Online Assessment

Here’s where we got bold: we ditched the CVs entirely. To reduce the likelihood of decisions being based on work history, we developed a gamified online assessment that tested the core behaviours we’d identified as crucial for success.

Working with the client’s test publisher, our psychologists advised on aligning their gamified assessment to the assessment framework, creating an automated sift stage ahead of the assessment centre which boosted pipeline efficiency. The highest scorers moved forward, regardless of their background—saving time and boosting objectivity.

Stage 3: Immersive Assessment Centre

Candidates were expecting a standard, corporate assessment process. But, with the assessment centre invitation they received a video that parachuted them into an alternative world where—for one day only—they became part of a fictional organisation, an underground resistance movement tasked with stopping ruthless art thieves from pulling off the art heist of the century.

Within this world, candidates did an interview, a mock customer conversation exercise to understand customer-facing roles, and a group exercise with clues and problem-solving tasks.

We dressed the assessment room and utilised themed props—ticket stubs, Instagram posts, umbrellas, and even a Magic 8 ball—creating an assessment experience unlike any they had encountered before.

The candidates worked together to solve puzzles and piece together clues. The high-energy, creative challenges included finding criminal targets, cracking cryptic codes, locating target artwork and galleries, and responding to the intel of a double agent. All of it was woven into a cinematic experience delivered by professional actors.

The whole assessment centre was anchored in science and a robust assessment framework—all within just two hours.

By creating this fantasy world full of brain-teasing challenges and tasks, candidates had such a good time they relaxed and brought their true selves to the event. As a result, the in-room assessors could then use the scoring guides to easily identify the core attributes the client was looking for in its recruits.

“The highlight was seeing them laughing and interacting as a team during the group assessment. It was almost like they forgot they were interviewing for a job.”

Talent Acquisition Leader

To ensure the success of the assessment centre, we provided comprehensive training and clear assessment guides for managers, assessors, and facilitators, ensuring they understood assessment best practices and had a detailed briefing of the exercises themselves.

Results 

In the first four months of assessment centres, we achieved:

  • 0% “no show” rate (down from 25%)
  • 86% assessment centre pass rate (up from 41%)
  • 98% offer acceptance rate (up from 73%)
  • 60% attrition, now at the lowest rate since the pandemic
  • 37 days in recruiter time saved since removing CVs from the pre-assessment centre stage
  • 98% candidate satisfaction rate at the end of the assessment centre
  • 92% new joiner satisfaction rate

Importantly, candidates who received offers came from a variety of backgrounds, including nail technicians, chefs, employees from a world-famous golf course and a football club, and former retirees returning to work.

Candidate Feedback:

“The best interview experience I’ve had.”

“I forgot I was being assessed.”

“I have never had an interview experience with this much human touch.”

“The best one I have done. The others were old school and formulaic.”

“The playfulness was different level.”

“It’s nice to be tested on ‘you’ rather than experiences you may have been fortunate or unfortunate to have gone through.”

“I’ve been bragging about how much fun it was.”

Client Feedback:

“Our new immersive assessment process sees us shift immediately from an old-fashioned, competency-based interview to a modern selection process focused on behaviours, underpinned by robust occupational science. We’ll jump from lagging behind our peers, to a market leading proposition that will ultimately see us making better informed hiring choices. Results so far have been really encouraging, and it’s been great to see such positive initial feedback from our managers and candidates.” – Talent Acquisition Leader

“It was a new refreshing way to carry out recruitment, and one I think will bring in the right people. I enjoyed the interview section as I felt like the questions were much more suited to what we are looking for. I also felt the role plays were great as it gave us a real insight into the candidates’ customer service skills. Overall, I felt it was a big success and look forward to doing the next recruitment day.” – Hiring Manager

“The role play gave an insight into the candidates’ behaviours which is the most important thing. The group exercise really allowed people to immerse themselves into the exercise, and I feel we saw their true colours.” – Hiring Manager

At a Glance

  • COMPANY
    Financial service company
  • INDUSTRY
    Banking & Financial Services
  • PEOPLESCOUT SOLUTIONS
    Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Talent Advisory
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Is Skills-Based Hiring Really the Next Big Thing?

Posted on by akessler

In the recruitment space, skills-based hiring is on the tip of talent acquisition leaders’ tongues. Is it worthy of all the ink spilled or just the flavour of the month?

The internet is buzzing with headlines framing skills-based hiring as a revolutionary step forward—a clean break from “outdated” methods like focusing on academic qualifications. But as usual, we want to take a more critical look.

Let’s step away from the hype to examine the real pros and cons of skills-based hiring. More importantly, let’s figure out how skills-based hiring can work for you.

Skills-Based Hiring: Is it Really New?

There are three common myths being perpetuated by many of the articles about skills-based hiring:

Myth 1: Educational qualifications have been the main barrier to good hiring decisions.

The argument goes that recruiting teams rely too heavily on degrees and don’t think enough about skills—and if they just focused on skills instead, all their hiring issues would be solved.

This misrepresents how most employers actually make hiring decisions. While education requirements do exist in job descriptions, they’re rarely the primary factor in final hiring choices. Most recruiters already consider multiple factors including experience, cultural fit and demonstrated abilities. Skills-based hiring has its positives and certainly feels more inclusive than rigid degree requirements, but it’s not the revolutionary shift from degree-obsessed hiring that many articles suggest.

Myth 2: Everyone talking about skills is talking about the same thing.

One reason the history of skills-based hiring is hard to track is the absence of a clear, consistent definition of what constitutes a “skill.” In the context of skills-based hiring, a skill could be a competency, strength or motivation—anything that enables a person to do the job well. That landscape is far more nuanced and complex than most articles let on.

The reality is that defining skills is a lengthy process and requires careful consideration of context. But most writers on this subject don’t bother to grapple with this complexity. Instead, they gloss over any real explanation of what skills are, feeding the perception that skills are so simple and universally understood that we don’t need definitions. This creates the illusion that organizations should be able to easily incorporate skills-based approaches without doing the hard work of actually defining what they mean by “skills” in their specific context.

Myth 3: Skills-based hiring and talent management is a new idea, and the bandwagon is leaving the station.

Headlines will have you believe that skills-based hiring is “the next big thing” and a silver bullet that will solve all your workforce woes. However, this doesn’t really reflect most hiring processes.

Even if you’re not actively thinking about skills-based hiring, it’s likely that it is embedded—at least partly—into your hiring process already. Today, recruiters rarely just think in terms of hiring somebody because their qualifications line up to the “essential” section of the job description.

So, skills-based hiring isn’t a new idea. The term might be, but not the practice.

These myths lead us to feel that the noise around skills-based hiring is misleading. It suggests that skills-based hiring is driving the recruitment industry right now, when in reality, very few are moving forward with it in an overt, intentional way.

Getting Started with Skills-Based Hiring When Time and Budgets Aren’t Huge

If you do want to embrace skills-based hiring, here are some practical steps:

1. Start with an Audit

If you’re keen to implement skills-based hiring, first of all, feel reassured that it’s likely already part of your approach, even if you don’t call it that. Start by establishing where you are along the skills-based continuum.

Diagnostics come into their own here. Assess your hiring processes in a structured way, identifying gaps, strengths and opportunities for improvement. It can be beneficial to bring in an external partner like the PeopleScout Assessment Design team, to provide robust, evidence-based, unbiased feedback to maximise impact.

2. Defining Your Skills

Then it comes down to defining skills—for now and the future. These can’t be vague; they need to be carefully defined so that they can be accurately applied. You’ll build these from research, both internally and by looking externally. If you want to have an organisation-wide approach, you’ll need to consider skills relevant for leadership and entry level roles and across departments. Engage your department heads and hiring managers to map these.

3. Look at Your Non-Skills Criteria

You don’t have to remove looking at academic qualifications from your hiring process entirely. However, if there are instances where you’re using an academic qualification as a stand-in for a skill—say, a humanities degree as a signifier of good written communication skills—you can probably move away from it and start focusing more explicitly on the skill itself.

Skills-based hiring can open doors for many candidates—and expand your talent pool. Perhaps your ideal candidate did not go to university, but their written communication skills are more than adequate for the role.

4. Kick Off a Pilot

Even without a big budget to fund an overhaul of your recruitment processes, it’s still possible to make a start. To make it manageable, begin with a small, pilot process. Your audit can help you identify the best starting point—perhaps it’s a particular department or role type.

Once you’ve started, you’ll want to closely monitor it to ensure that the benefits are genuine. Try not to feel pressured into investing too much time, money and resources into skills-based hiring because it is a hot topic. Make changes bit by bit, turn to evidence, and stay reflective.

The Bottom Line

Don’t get overcome by buzzwords. In all likelihood, skills-based hiring has been a part of your process for a while now. If you want to concentrate more on skills-based hiring, start small, remain sceptical of the hype, get external insight, be evidence-based and keep evolving your approach.

[Webinar] Smart Hiring in the AI Age: What UK Candidates Are Really Doing in 2025

Posted on by akessler

[Webinar] Smart Hiring in the AI Age: What UK Candidates Are Really Doing in 2025

Discover How Gen AI Usage Amongst Job Seekers is Really Impacting UK Recruitment in 2025

Ready to separate AI hype from reality in your hiring process? Join us on Thursday, 17 July at 11am BST for an eye-opening webinar based on our recent YouGov research that reveals what’s actually happening when candidates use generative AI (Gen AI).

In this webinar, PeopleScout’s Head of Assessment Design, Amanda Callen, and Talent Solutions Director, James Chorley, are back to explore the latest developments in Gen AI usage amongst job seekers. While your competitors panic with blanket AI bans or stick their heads in the sand, you’ll gain the strategic advantage of data-driven decision making.

In this webinar, we’ll cover:

  • Real Data, Real Insights: Amanda and James will walk you through our exclusive UK research findings, including the surprising truth about Gen AI adoption rates among job seekers
  • Assessment Vulnerability: Identify which parts of your recruitment funnel are most at risk—and which concerns might be overblown
  • Candidate Psychology Revealed: Understand the unexpected attitudes candidates have toward AI disclosure and what this means for your process
  • Future-Proof Strategies: Learn practical, tested approaches to maintain assessment integrity while embracing technological innovation

Register now and receive access to our full research report.

What is Programmatic Recruitment Advertising?

Posted on by akessler

As the demand for candidate quality intensifies, talent acquisition leaders are constantly seeking new ways to reach qualified candidates more efficiently. Enter programmatic recruitment advertising—a technology-driven approach that’s revolutionizing how companies connect with potential employees.

What is Programmatic Advertising?

Programmatic advertising is the automated buying and selling of digital advertising space using artificial intelligence and real-time bidding. Instead of manually negotiating ad placements with individual websites or platforms, programmatic technology uses algorithms to purchase the most relevant placements in milliseconds, targeting specific audiences based on detailed data profiles.

These programs simultaneously monitor thousands of websites, analyze user behavior, and place job advertisements in front of the right candidates at the optimal moment.

How Programmatic Advertising for Recruitment Works

The process begins when a candidate visits a website or uses an app. In that instant, information about the user (their location, browsing history, professional interests and demographic data) is sent to an advertising exchange. Your recruitment campaign, which you’ve created with specific targeting parameters, competes in an automated auction against other advertisers. If your bid wins, your job advertisement appears to that candidate—all within the time it takes for the webpage to load.

This real-time decision-making process ensures your recruitment ads reach candidates who match your ideal profile. For instance, when recruiting software engineers, programmatic recruitment advertising can target individuals who visit coding forums, read technology blogs, or engage with programming content, even if they’re not actively job searching.

The Components of Effective Recruitment Advertising

Optimizing your recruitment advertising program involves using technology, strategy, AI and data to ensure you get qualified candidates for all your open jobs. Here are the key components of effective programmatic job advertising:

Programmatic Software: You need software that automates job ad buying tasks, which cannot be done manually due to the speed required in real-time bidding marketplaces. This technology manages thousands of bidding decisions per second across multiple job boards and websites, ensuring your advertisements reach the right candidates at the optimal price point.

Rules and Strategy: You create rules for the programmatic advertising software to instruct it on how you want your budget spent and the recruitment outcomes you desire. These might include audience targeting parameters, budget guidelines and performance thresholds that trigger automatic adjustments to your campaigns.

Artificial Intelligence (AI): AI optimizes job ad bids based on the volume and conversion rates that machine learning models predict. These algorithms continuously learn from campaign performance, automatically adjusting strategies to improve both cost efficiency and candidate quality.

Performance Tracking: Performance tracking keeps count of what is happening with your open jobs in terms of clicks, candidate applications, and ultimately, hires. This comprehensive monitoring extends beyond basic metrics to include candidate quality indicators and progression through your hiring funnel. This end-to-end visibility ensures the system continues optimizing your advertising plan with actual hires delivered as the ultimate goal.

Key Benefits of Programmatic Advertising for Recruitment

  • Enhanced Targeting Precision: Programmatic job advertising allows you to target candidates based on their job titles, skills, education level, geographic location, salary expectations, and even their likelihood to change jobs. This proves particularly valuable for filling specialized roles where traditional job boards may not reach the right talent pools. Your recruitment budget is spent reaching genuinely qualified prospects rather than casting a wide, unfocused net.
  • Improved Cost Efficiency: By automating the ad buying process and optimizing bids in real-time, programmatic job advertising often delivers better results at lower costs than traditional advertising methods. You only pay for impressions that reach your target audience, eliminating waste on irrelevant views.
  • Efficient Cross-Platform Reach: Programmatic recruitment advertising can place your job postings across thousands of job boards and channels simultaneously—from professional networking sites and industry publications to mobile apps and social media platforms. This ensures you get comprehensive market coverage, but you only have to manage a relationship with one supplier, freeing you up to focus on building candidate relationships.
  • Real-Time Optimization: Unlike traditional advertising campaigns that require manual adjustments, programmatic systems continuously analyze performance data and automatically optimize your campaigns. If certain demographics or websites are producing better candidates, the system allocates more budget toward those high-performing segments.
  • Data-Driven Insights: These platforms provide detailed analytics about candidate behavior, showing which messages resonate, which channels produce the highest-quality applicants, and even what times of day generate the most engagement. This intelligence can inform strategies beyond just recruitment marketing.

Programmatic Advertising and Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

The combination of programmatic recruitment advertising with RPO services creates a powerful combination that can dramatically enhance your talent acquisition results. You can leverage the expertise and scale advantages of your RPO provider while harnessing the precision and efficiency of programmatic technology.

Why Add Programmatic Advertising to Your RPO Engagement

RPO providers bring deep recruitment expertise, established processes, and dedicated resources to your talent acquisition efforts. Adding programmatic advertising to this foundation amplifies these benefits by providing data-driven candidate sourcing at scale. Your RPO partner can execute sophisticated recruitment advertising strategies that would be challenging to manage internally, particularly for organizations without dedicated recruitment marketing specialists.

Your programmatic job ad campaigns feed qualified candidates directly into your RPO provider’s established candidate engagement processes. This creates a more efficient candidate pipeline with consistent quality control and faster time-to-hire outcomes.

How an RPO Partner Can Maximize Your Recruitment Advertising ROI

Experienced RPO providers bring several advantages to programmatic advertising management that can significantly improve your return on investment:

Specialized Expertise: RPO partners typically have dedicated recruitment marketing teams with deep knowledge of programmatic platforms, targeting strategies and optimization techniques. This specialization means your campaigns benefit from proven best practices and advanced strategies that internal teams might take years to develop.

Scale and Negotiating Power: Established RPO providers often manage advertising spend across multiple clients, giving them greater negotiating leverage with programmatic platforms and access to premium inventory at better rates. This collective buying power can reduce your cost-per-hire while improving ad placement quality.

Advanced Analytics and Reporting: RPO partners usually invest in sophisticated analytics tools and reporting capabilities that provide deeper insights into campaign performance. They can track candidates through the entire hiring funnel, from initial ad impression to final offer acceptance, enabling more precise ROI calculations and optimization decisions.

Cross-Client Learning: Your RPO partner can apply learnings from successful campaigns across their client base, adapting proven strategies to your specific industry and role requirements. This cross-pollination of insights accelerates campaign optimization and reduces the trial-and-error period typically associated with new advertising initiatives.

Integrated Technology Stack: Many RPO providers have integrated programmatic advertising platforms with their applicant tracking systems and candidate relationship management tools. This integration creates smoother data flow, better candidate experience, and more comprehensive performance tracking than standalone solutions.

Continuous Optimization: RPO partners can dedicate full-time resources to monitoring and optimizing your programmatic job ad campaigns, making real-time adjustments based on performance data. This level of attention is often difficult to maintain with internal teams juggling multiple responsibilities.

The strategic partnership between RPO services and programmatic recruitment advertising creates a competitive advantage that extends beyond simple cost savings. It enables more sophisticated talent market analysis, better candidate experience management, and ultimately, stronger hiring outcomes that support your organization’s growth objectives.

Programmatic Recruitment Advertising: A Winning Tactic

Programmatic advertising represents a fundamental shift toward data-driven, automated recruitment marketing. As AI becomes more sophisticated and candidate data becomes richer, these systems will become even more precise at identifying and engaging potential employees.

For talent acquisition leaders, embracing programmatic advertising isn’t just about keeping up with technology trends—it’s about gaining a competitive advantage in attracting top talent. Organizations that master these tools can reach qualified candidates more efficiently, reduce time-to-hire and ultimately build stronger teams.

How to Incorporate Employee Advocacy into Your Recruitment Marketing Strategy

Posted on by akessler

In the competition for talent, traditional recruitment marketing tactics are losing their edge. Job seekers have become increasingly skeptical of polished corporate messaging, with 92% of candidates trusting employee recommendations over traditional advertising, according to Nielson. The solution? Implementing employee advocacy in recruitment marketing creates compelling, trust-building campaigns that resonate with top talent.

Why Employee Advocacy Should Be Central to Your Recruitment Marketing

Employee advocacy transforms your recruitment marketing from corporate speak into authentic storytelling. A strong employee advocacy program doesn’t just amplify your employer brand—it lends it credibility. When your employees become brand ambassadors, they extend your recruitment marketing reach exponentially, tapping into their personal networks and professional communities with messages that carry genuine credibility.

When a software engineer shares their firsthand experience working on innovative projects, it carries far more weight than a corporate blog post touting “cutting-edge technology.” And in the competition for top talent, authenticity can be one of your biggest advantages.

Building Your Employee Advocacy Marketing Foundation

Audit Your Current Culture and Messaging

Before launching employee advocacy in recruitment, assess whether your workplace culture can authentically support the marketing messages you want to promote. Your advocacy marketing will only be as strong as the employee experience behind it.

Key culture elements that support effective advocacy marketing:

  • Clear mission and values that employees genuinely connect with
  • Recognition programs that create positive employee experiences worth sharing
  • Transparent leadership communication that builds trust
  • Inclusive practices that ensure diverse voices in your marketing
  • Work-life balance support that employees want to recommend to others

When employees believe in your mission and feel valued for their contributions, they’re more likely to become powerful advocates.

Identify Your Marketing Champions

Not everyone will raise their hand to be an advocate—and that’s okay. Focus instead on finding your “natural evangelists”—those already speaking positively about your organization in person and online.

High-impact advocate profiles:

  • Social Media Influencers: Employees with strong LinkedIn presence or industry following
  • Content Creators: Natural storytellers who can produce blog posts, videos or social content
  • Event Ambassadors: Charismatic representatives for career fairs, industry conferences and networking events
  • Referral Marketers: Well-connected employees who can tap personal networks
  • Thought Leaders: Subject matter experts who can build brand authority through industry insights

Develop Authentic Storytelling Campaigns

The best recruitment content doesn’t feel like recruitment at all—it simply tells the human stories behind the brand, offering candidates an authentic glimpse into life at your organization. Instead of vague claims about a “great culture,” show what your culture actually looks like. Share a day-in-the-life perspective of employees across different roles, illustrating how they spend their time, the challenges they tackle and the people they collaborate with. Dive into career journey narratives that highlight real growth—how someone started in an entry-level role and advanced to a leadership position, and what opportunities, mentorship or stretch projects helped them get there.

You can also give candidates a peek behind the curtain with casual glimpses of team celebrations, brainstorming sessions or community involvement. These moments help humanize your brand and build a sense of connection. And don’t overlook stories of perseverance—featuring how employees overcame obstacles, contributed to meaningful projects, or reached major milestones can showcase your organization’s commitment to employee success.

Choose Marketing Channels That Maximize Reach

Bringing these stories to life requires a format mix that feels natural to your employees and engaging to your audience. Short, candid video testimonials are especially powerful on social media, allowing employees to speak directly to camera in their own words. Social media takeovers—where an employee shares their experiences throughout the day on Instagram or LinkedIn—can offer unfiltered insights while boosting visibility and reach.

Project-based content, such as showcasing a cross-functional team tackling a real business challenge, puts your values of collaboration and innovation on full display. And don’t forget professional development moments—whether attending a conference, completing a certification or leading a lunch-and-learn, these snapshots reinforce your investment in growth and learning.

4-Step Implementation Strategy for Employee Advocacy in Recruitment Marketing

1. Establish Your Advocacy Marketing Framework

Before launching your advocacy program, set a strong foundation with a structure that encourages participation while respecting employee comfort levels. Start by making participation voluntary—advocacy should be authentic, not obligatory. Provide employees with talking points, content ideas and technical support to help them share their experiences confidently, without scripting their voices. A streamlined approval process can ensure brand consistency while preserving the genuine perspectives that make advocacy so effective. Finally, consider offering optional training on social media best practices and personal branding to help employees feel prepared and empowered.

2. Incentivize and Recognize Recruitment Marketing Contributors

The most effective advocacy programs celebrate employee contributions in meaningful ways. Go beyond transactional rewards and focus on recognition that supports professional growth. Featuring advocates in company communications, leadership presentations or internal awards can reinforce how much you value their efforts. You may even consider advocacy contributions in performance reviews and career development discussions.

Provide flexible ways to participate—some employees may prefer creating social content, while others may shine as interview panelists, mentors or referral champions. The key is meeting advocates where they are and acknowledging their impact.

3. Amplify and Scale Your Marketing Reach

Once you’ve built your foundation, it’s time to expand your program’s visibility. Encourage employees to engage with and share company content on platforms like LinkedIn, where professional voices carry extra weight. Provide resources to help them optimize their profiles and position themselves as brand ambassadors.

Tie advocacy to your referral program for an added incentive, and consider organizing employee-led features to keep content fresh and engaging. The goal is to create a flywheel of content, visibility and engagement powered by real employee stories.

4. Measure Marketing ROI and Optimize

To ensure long-term success, regularly track how your advocacy efforts impact your recruitment marketing outcomes. Monitor social media metrics such as reach, engagement, hashtag usage and follower growth driven by employee content. On the recruitment side, assess application quality, referral success rates, time-to-hire improvements and cost savings.

Don’t stop at the numbers—gather employee feedback to understand what’s working, what could be improved and how they’d like to participate going forward. This feedback loop ensures your program stays authentic, relevant and aligned with both employee and business goals.

The Future of Employee Advocacy in Recruitment Marketing

With recruitment increasingly digital and candidates becoming more discerning, employee advocacy will become essential to recruitment marketing strategy differentiation. Organizations that successfully integrate authentic employee voices into their recruitment marketing don’t just fill positions—they build talent communities and bring your employer brand to life.

The most effective programs seamlessly blend employee authenticity with strategic marketing objectives, creating campaigns that feel genuine while driving measurable business results. When your employees become passionate brand ambassadors, they transform your recruitment marketing from promotion to inspiration, attracting candidates who don’t just want jobs—they want to join a mission.

In the age of AI and automation, human stories become your most powerful marketing differentiator. Employee advocacy in recruitment marketing ensures you remain both scalable and authentically human.

Talent Community Building: How to Create a Talent Pipeline Before You Need It

Posted on by akessler

Hiring success doesn’t start with a job posting—it starts with connection. While many organizations rely on reactive recruiting to fill open roles, leading employers are taking a longer view by cultivating talent communities: purpose-built networks of potential candidates who are already engaged, informed and aligned with your brand. Think of talent community building as relationship investing. Just as savvy investors build diversified portfolios long before they need returns, smart talent acquisition leaders cultivate relationships with potential candidates years before positions open. The result? Faster time-to-hire, higher-quality candidates, and significantly reduced recruiting costs.

What is a Talent Community?

Building a talent community is the strategic practice of creating and nurturing networks of potential candidates who have expressed interest in your organization, even when no specific roles are available. Unlike traditional recruiting, which often focuses on immediate hiring needs, talent communities are built for long-term workforce success and take time to cultivate by fostering authentic relationships that benefit candidates and employers.

When managed effectively, a talent community can serve as a powerful tool across several dimensions. It helps develop a ready talent pipeline of qualified candidates for future openings, amplifies your employer brand through ongoing engagement and provides valuable market intelligence by offering insight into talent expectations and shifting workforce trends. Perhaps most importantly, it can reduce overall hiring costs by decreasing reliance on external recruiting agencies and paid job advertising.

The Business Case for Proactive Talent Community Building

The advantage of creating talent pipelines isn’t just efficiency—it’s competitive positioning. When your dream candidate becomes available, you want to be the first call they make, not just another recruiter reaching out via LinkedIn.

Consider this scenario: A competitor announces layoffs in your industry. Organizations with established talent communities can immediately activate relationships with affected professionals, while reactive recruiters are still crafting generic outreach messages to strangers.

How to Build a Talent Community

Start with Strategic Talent Mapping

Before building your community, identify which roles and skill sets will be most critical to your future success. This isn’t about current openings—it’s about anticipating where your organization will need talent in the next few years. This future-focused approach helps employers stay ahead of emerging roles—especially those driven by digital transformation, evolving business models or shifting customer demands.

Key Questions for Talent Mapping:

  • Which roles are hardest to fill quickly?
  • What skills will become more valuable as your industry evolves?
  • Where do top performers in these roles typically work?
  • What career progression paths lead to your priority positions?

Define Your Community Value Proposition

Top candidates won’t join—and stay in—your talent community unless there’s a clear benefit or specific reason to engage. To build lasting engagement, you need to answer the candidate’s unspoken question: “What’s in it for me?” A compelling employer value proposition should offer tangible resources, exclusive perks and meaningful connections that make your community more than just a holding place for resumes. Consider offering:

Professional Development Resources

Provide value beyond job openings by supporting members’ career growth. Share timely industry insights and trend reports to help them stay ahead of the curve. Offer access to webinars and interactive workshops focused on upskilling and reskilling. Career coaching and mentorship programs add a personalized touch, while virtual or in-person networking events connect talent with peers and leaders in their field.

Exclusive Access

Make members feel like insiders. Give them early notification of new job opportunities before they go public. Share behind-the-scenes content that showcases your culture and work environment. Executive thought leadership pieces can offer inspiration and insight into your organization’s direction, while beta access to new products or services helps members feel like valued contributors to your brand.

Community Benefits

Create a sense of belonging and two-way engagement by offering opportunities for peer networking through dedicated groups or events, or by facilitating industry-specific forums where members can share ideas, ask questions and offer support. Job referral programs not only encourage participation but can help build advocacy among members. And for former employees, alumni networks provide a continued sense of connection and open the door for future re-engagement.

Drive Engagement with Relevant Content

The content you share plays a pivotal role in attracting and retaining engaged community members. This isn’t about job postings—it’s about becoming a trusted resource for industry insights and career development. Prioritize recruitment marketing content formats that offer real value and keep your audience coming back for more:

  • Industry Analysis: In-depth articles and reports that break down market trends, regulatory shifts, and innovations shaping the future of your industry.
  • Career Development Guides: Actionable resources such as resume tips, interview prep, and career pathing advice designed to help professionals grow and achieve their goals.
  • Employee Spotlights: Authentic, behind-the-scenes stories that showcase your people, culture, and day-to-day experiences—helping humanize your brand and build trust.
  • Skills Development Content: Curated tutorials, recommended certifications, and access to online courses or training modules that support upskilling and career advancement.
  • Thought Leadership: Executive insights that offer a forward-looking view on industry trends, innovation and business strategy—shared through articles, blog posts, videos, or podcast interviews to elevate your brand’s authority and inspire community members.

But even with compelling content, a community is only as strong as its reach. The next step is getting in front of the right audience.

Tap Into Existing Networks to Accelerate Growth

While building a thriving talent community may feel daunting, you don’t have to start from scratch. One of the most effective ways to scale quickly is by partnering with organizations that already have established relationships with your target talent. This is especially important when you consider that most job seekers are passive candidates. Professional associations, for example, offer ready-made audiences of engaged professionals—consider sponsoring their events or providing educational content tailored to their members. Forming relationships with universities and academic programs can also help build a future talent pipeline, while regular involvement in industry conferences—whether as a contributor or sponsor—positions your organization as an active and engaged thought leader. And don’t underestimate the power of online forums and professional communities. By participating authentically in those spaces, you can engage talent where they’re already spending time and build trust organically.

Your current employees can also play a pivotal role in community building. After all, they’re often the most credible ambassadors of your brand. Empower them with tools and systems that make it easy to extend invitations to qualified peers. Offer referral incentives that reward not only successful hires but also quality talent added to the community. Equip employees with ready-to-share content and social tools, and don’t forget the value of maintaining connections with alumni—who often remain advocates long after they’ve moved on. Alumni referrals typically have a 40% higher retention rate than other hires. Internal advocacy programs can help train and support employees to share your brand story in an authentic, consistent way—amplifying your reach and credibility at the same time.

Create Personalized Experiences at Scale

To keep members engaged over time, your talent community must feel personal—even when it’s built to scale. This requires sophisticated segmentation, tailored content delivery and cultural intelligence. By leveraging data and technology, organizations can meet members where they are.

Start by segmenting your community based on relevant criteria such as career level (from recent graduates to senior leaders), functional expertise, geographic location and engagement history. This allows you to tailor your recruitment marketing content and communication that speaks directly to each audience. For example, a mid-career software engineer in São Paulo should receive different resources than a marketing director in Toronto.

Delivering personalized communication is essential to building meaningful relationships at scale. This can include role-specific content recommendations, invitations to events based on location, and resources aligned with a candidate’s career stage. You can also connect members to interest-based discussion groups to spark peer-to-peer engagement around shared goals.

If your organization operates across borders, go a step further by considering cultural nuances. Adapt your messaging and content to align with local norms and languages. Share professional development resources that are regionally relevant, schedule events at times that work across time zones and ensure compliance with local regulations. Strategic partnerships with local organizations can further boost credibility and relevance, helping your global community feel both connected and localized.

Build Niche Communities Around In-Demand Skills

While broad-based communities help maintain a healthy talent pipeline, specialized sub-communities can be a powerful way to connect with hard-to-find talent. These focused groups foster deeper engagement by offering highly relevant content and peer interaction within a shared area of expertise.

For example, create technical skill groups for software developers, data scientists or cybersecurity professionals, where members can access tailored learning resources and discuss emerging tools and techniques. Similarly, creative professionals—like designers, content creators and marketers—will value inspiration, trend reports and portfolio-sharing opportunities.

Leadership development communities can support high-potential talent with mentoring, executive insights, and career pathing tools. And for highly regulated or industry-specific fields like healthcare or financial services, dedicated sub-groups offer a safe space to explore sector trends and compliance updates with peers who face similar challenges.

By curating these niche communities within your broader talent ecosystem, you demonstrate a deeper understanding of your audience’s needs—and position your brand as a true partner in their professional journey.

Leverage Technology to Power Your Talent Community

A successful talent community strategy is only as strong as the technology supporting it. To personalize engagement at scale, track interactions, and deliver consistent value, organizations need a comprehensive tech stack purpose-built for relationship-building—not just requisition-filling.

Traditional Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) are designed for transactions, not relationships. A robust candidate relationship management (CRM) system supports long-term relationship building with tools like:

  • Community Segmentation: Organize members by skills, interests, location, engagement level or career stage to deliver tailored experiences.
  • Automated Nurturing: Use behavioral data and preferences to trigger personalized email journeys, content delivery and event invites.
  • Engagement Tracking: Monitor candidate activity—such as content clicks, event attendance or survey responses—to identify top prospects and optimize outreach.
  • Integration Capabilities: Seamlessly connect with your ATS, recruitment marketing platforms and broader HR tech stack to ensure data continuity and efficiency.

Building a Smarter Talent Community Strategy for What’s Next

As AI and automation continue to reshape recruitment, the human element remains a critical differentiator. Talent communities offer a powerful combination of technology-enabled scale and meaningful, relationship-driven engagement—bridging the gap between digital efficiency and personal connection.

For many employers, bringing this vision to life requires the right partner—one with the expertise, strategy, and technology to scale personalized engagement effectively. Partnering with an RPO provider like PeopleScout brings both the expertise and infrastructure needed to build and manage high-performing talent communities. Our proprietary total talent technology suite, Affinix®, features AI-powered tools for segmentation, automation, content delivery and engagement tracking.

Organizations that invest in talent community strategies today are positioning themselves for long-term success. While others scramble to fill roles reactively, you’ll be building a pipeline of engaged, qualified talent—ready to step in at the right moment. The question isn’t whether to build a talent community, but whether you can afford not to.

Debunking Myths About Gen AI in Recruitment [Infographic]

Posted on by akessler

With all the buzz around ChatGPT, Gemini, and other generative AI tools, you might think every job seeker is leveraging these technologies to gain an edge. Headlines suggest AI has completely transformed the job application landscape, with candidates using it for everything from CV creation to interview preparation.

But how widespread is it? PeopleScout’s recent research reveals a more nuanced picture of how job seekers are actually incorporating AI into their search process. Our comprehensive study, The AI-Enabled Applicant: How Candidates Are Really Using Gen AI in Recruitment, offers surprising insights that challenge common assumptions about AI’s prevalence amongst UK job hunters.

The infographic below highlights key findings that talent acquisition professionals and hiring managers should consider when evaluating their recruitment strategies in today’s AI-influenced landscape.

These findings present a more balanced view of AI’s role in recruitment than many headlines suggest. While generative AI tools are certainly making an impact, they haven’t revolutionized job seeking to the extent many predicted. Less than 20% of recent job changers in the UK used AI at all, with adoption varying significantly by age and education level.

For talent acquisition leaders, this data suggests an opportunity to develop thoughtful policies around AI use. The lack of communication about AI expectations (with only 5% of job changers reporting employers mentioning AI) points to a need for greater transparency. Organizations might consider clarifying their stance on AI usage while recognizing that many candidates find these tools genuinely helpful in navigating the application process.

As AI technology continues to evolve, staying informed about actual usage patterns—rather than assuming widespread adoption—will help recruiters make more effective decisions about how to design fair, efficient hiring processes that account for the reality of candidates’ Gen AI use.

Want to learn more? Download PeopleScout’s full research report, The AI-Enabled Applicant: How Candidates Are Really Using Gen AI in Recruitment, for comprehensive insights and strategic recommendations.

Protecting Recruitment Integrity in the AI Era 

Posted on by akessler

Generative AI (Gen AI) is disrupting the job-seeking landscape, offering powerful tools that transform CVs, résumés, cover letters and interview preparation. Despite this technological shift, our research, The AI-Enabled Applicant: How Candidates Are Really Using Gen AI in Recruitment, indicates a surprising adoption gap—only one in five UK job seekers currently leverage these AI capabilities. Nevertheless, employers remain concerned about candidates potentially using AI to embellish or misrepresent their qualifications and experience. 

This article marks the third installment in our series examining the implications of our research findings on Gen AI’s role in recruitment. As these technologies continue to reshape hiring practices, organisations must evolve their approaches to preserve assessment integrity while efficiently identifying exceptional talent. Drawing from our research, we’ve developed several actionable strategies for navigating this new reality: 

Set Clear Expectations on AI Usage 

Be transparent about your stance on Gen AI usage throughout the application process. Rather than implementing blanket bans that may be impossible to enforce, consider: 

  • Providing specific guidelines on acceptable AI use (e.g., “Gen AI may be used to help with formatting and improving your CV but not in a way that falsely represents your skills or experience”) 
  • Explaining the rationale behind restrictions to encourage candidate adherence 
  • Including explicit statements in job descriptions and application platforms about AI usage policies and potential consequences for use of Gen AI to create inauthentic applications or assessments 

Clear communication and transparency about how you expect candidates to use (or not use) Gen AI not only helps encourage appropriate candidate application approaches but also demonstrates organisational integrity in an increasingly AI-influenced world. 

Resist Abandoning Proven Methods 

Despite vendors claiming to offer “ChatGPT-proof” and “bias free” online assessments, our assessment psychology experts say caution is warranted: 

  • There is currently limited evidence supporting the effectiveness of many new “AI-proof” assessment methods.
  • Hastily implemented solutions may introduce new biases or inefficiencies—doing more harm than good. 
  • Completely abandoning traditional methods could disrupt established recruitment pipelines. 

Instead, maintain a balanced approach. Focus on strengthening existing processes with strategic modifications that address specific vulnerabilities to Gen AI manipulation. Regularly evaluate and update your processes to respond to emerging AI capabilities. 

Make Application Questions Personal 

Generic questions are particularly vulnerable to AI-generated answers. Design questions that elicit unique, authentic responses, like:  

  • Asking candidates to draw from own unique experience 
  • Requesting concrete examples of how they’ve demonstrated particular skills or values 
  • Incorporating questions about personal motivation and alignment with organisational culture that require genuine self-reflection 

Questions that require candidates to draw from their unique backgrounds and perspectives are inherently more difficult for Gen AI to generate strong and credible answers. 

Develop Unique Questions 

Create bespoke evaluation components. Standard questions are easily accessible online and therefore vulnerable to Gen AI assistance. Instead: 

  • Develop application questions specific to your organisation’s values, challenges and opportunities 
  • Design scenario-based questions that relate directly to the unique aspects of the role 
  • Request detailed responses that demonstrate depth of understanding rather than surface-level knowledge 

Questions that are specific to your organisation and the role push candidates to think beyond any scripted answers. Not only does this reduce the effectiveness of Gen AI, but it’s also better at uncovering candidates’ genuine interest and cultural fit.  

Implement Verification Strategies 

Consider validating CV and application content by: 

  • Referencing and discussing application content during face-to-face interviews
  • Asking candidates to elaborate on or defend specific points from their CV or written applications 
  • Implementing a verification process for all candidates or for a sample 

Informing candidates in advance that verification will occur can itself serve as a deterrent to Gen AI misuse. 

Prioritise In-Person Interviews and Assessments 

Maximise the value of human interaction. While resource-intensive, in-person interviews and assessments remain among the most reliable methods for evaluating candidates in the Gen AI era: 

  • Design high-quality, job-related interview questions with clear evaluation criteria. 
  • Train interviewers to probe for authenticity and consistent understanding of claimed experiences. 
  • Incorporate practical demonstrations or simulations that require candidates to apply skills in real-time. 

The combination of well-designed questions and simulations, and skilled interviewers and assessors, creates an environment where assistance from Gen AI provides minimal advantage. 

Apply Caution with Detection Technologies 

Evaluate AI detection tools critically. While numerous AI detection solutions have emerged, their effectiveness remains questionable. Our assessment psychology experts warn: 

  • We see little to no evidence that they work effectively. 
  • Implementation can be costly and complex. 
  • There are potential fairness concerns, particularly for candidates from diverse backgrounds. 

If considering detection tools, thoroughly evaluate their accuracy and review potential biases. Ensure there is a robust defence case in place to protect against any legal claim made by someone rejected due to assumed detection of Gen AI use.  If the decision is made to use them, consider them as just one element of a comprehensive strategy, in line with new restrictions emerging from the new EU laws around Gen AI use, rather than a standalone solution. 

Conclusion 

By implementing these practical strategies, organisations can navigate the evolving landscape of AI in recruitment while maintaining the integrity of their selection processes. The goal is not to eliminate Gen AI usage from the recruitment process entirely, but rather to ensure that human capabilities and potential remain at the centre of hiring decisions. 

To help organisations make more informed decisions, PeopleScout’s Assessment Design & Delivery team offers a Gen AI Opportunity & Risk Assessment Audit. This comprehensive review of the recruitment process identifies both vulnerabilities and opportunities related to generative AI throughout the candidate journey. Our assessment psychologists give you evidence-based recommendations to help you focus resources on critical vulnerability points, protecting your selection accuracy and diversity outcomes. 

For more Gen AI insights, download the full The AI-Enabled Applicant: How Candidates Are Really Using Gen AI in Recruitment report. 

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