Talent Leaders tell us what they're working on This Week in Talent
- Simon Hedt
At a time when tech is advancing rapidly, it’s tempting to keep adding. But the most future-ready teams I know are doing the opposite. They’re auditing. They’re simplifying. They’re choosing tools that align with their process, not contorting their process to fit a platform. They understand that great recruitment isn’t about toolkits. It’s about clarity of thought. About process discipline. About being intentional at every stage
- Simon Hedt
The single most important thing we can do to improve hiring decisions is to standardise the interview process. Not just in structure, but in mindset. It’s about treating interviews not as informal chats or instinct-driven conversations, but as designed, repeatable systems. Because when we don’t, we introduce noise. And noise is the enemy of good judgement.
- Simon Hedt
Right now, there is a lot of change in recruitment. New tools are arriving fast. AI is already part of our world. But I believe one thing stays true. Great recruitment still comes down to people. It comes down to how we listen, how we ask, how we plan and how we show up.
- Brad Kent
When people ask me why I love my job, the answer is simple and not surprising: Impact. The impact we have on people’s lives, on businesses, on communities and on ourselves. In the world of HR, few roles offer the unique blend of strategy, creativity, and human connection that Talent Acquisition does.
- Brad Kent
To unlock the full potential of your TA team, it’s essential to create engaging, meaningful work that not only motivates but also empowers them to thrive. Here’s some ideas so you can transform your TA function into a strategic powerhouse.
- Brad Kent
It’s easy to get caught up in metrics like time-to-fill, sourcing strategies, and headcount targets. But at the heart of every recruitment process is a human being - someone making a decision that could change their life. That’s why the candidate experience isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s a business-critical part of Talent Acquisition, and one that can make or break your ability to attract top talent.
- Brad Kent
The expectations of a TA Advisor, Sourcing Specialist or Leader has shifted drastically in the last decade. Much has been written and said about this by many, but like the shift from Recruitment to Talent Acquisition, the shift from Talent Acquisition to a Talent Advisory function is real and happening quickly.
- Marrin-Boyd Andrews
Discover how talent teams can future-proof strategy by using structured prompts to decode industry trends and uncover actionable insight. This TWIT reveals a powerful prompt used to analyse shifting trends, align workforce planning, and shape business decisions - ideal for HR, TA, and strategy leaders ready to lead with foresight, not hindsight.
- Marrin-Boyd Andrews
Employer brand isn’t just what you say - it’s how candidates feel reading it. This TWIT shares a proven framework and prompt to create LinkedIn content that aligns with talent goals, builds credibility, and earns trust. Perfect for recruiters building their EVP voice with clarity and impact.
- Marrin-Boyd Andrews
Discover a powerful AI sourcing prompt used by top recruiters to build smarter, faster talent strategies. Learn how to streamline search, uncover hidden candidates, and create impactful outreach. Perfect for recruiters, sourcers, and TA pros ready to level up their talent sourcing game.
- Marrin-Boyd Andrews
Recruiters aren’t facing a skills gap - they’re battling a workflow gap. This TWIT explores how well-crafted AI prompts can create time, reduce friction, and elevate recruiter impact across platforms. Featuring a proven outreach prompt from ProPrompt, it’s your shortcut to better connections, faster workflows, and smarter sourcing - without losing the human touch.
- Carrie Harding
This Week in Talent - In high-pressure business environments, teams in TA, legal, risk, procurement, and finance often get unfairly branded as the “Party Poopers” - seen as blockers while others race ahead toward growth. But when done well, these functions aren’t the brakes - they’re the steering wheel. In this blog, Carrie Harding unpacks how strategic enablers shift the narrative by designing smarter systems, empowering teams, and aligning compliance with business outcomes. If you’re tired of being seen as the department of “no,” this one’s for you. Because playing by the rules shouldn’t mean slowing the game down - it should help you win it.
- Carrie Harding
This Week in Talent - Corporate Australia is made up of more than just employees. Temps, freelancers, contractors, consultants - we all play a part. But there’s still a lingering mindset that some contributions matter more than others, depending on employment status. This blog challenges that thinking. Because in a fast-changing world, value isn’t defined by employment status - it’s defined by impact. Whether you’re here for a project or the long haul, your work helps shape the organisation’s story. It’s time to drop the “us vs them” mentality and embrace a more inclusive way of working - where everyone belongs.
- Carrie Harding
From recruitment to culture transformation, my career journey wasn’t linear - but it was intentional. Every pivot taught me something new. This post is for anyone who's ever felt off-track but kept showing up. Spoiler: the real magic happens when plans fall apart and you decide to build something better.
- Carrie Harding
If you look at a Venn diagram of the needs and drivers of Talent Leaders, Procurement Leaders, and Employee Relations, the overlap is surprisingly small, yet their alignment is critical to managing a successful contingent workforce. Talent focuses on speed and delivery, candidate experience, and securing the right skills. Procurement is driven by cost control, risk mitigation, and contract compliance. Employee Relations ensures adherence to labor laws, fair treatment, and risk management. Each function has its own priorities, but without collaboration, you risk inefficiencies, compliance issues, and missed opportunities. Carrie shares how a new approach achieved more with aligned goals and shared understanding.
- Gary Park
In the final TWIT for March, Gary invites you to join the journey of transformation and personal development for career success. It’s time to have an honest conversation with ourselves - as Talent Leaders we need to evolve, or we might just go extinct (or not be as relevant - the less dramatic option!). We must never take for granted the role we as talent professionals all play in changing people’s lives and making their dreams a reality. AI has a place, but so does the right dose of human touch…now that’s the real magic!
- Gary Park
In this week’s contribution, I’d like to share with you the vulnerable version of Gary. My hope is that for those who read this walk away inspired, educated, mindful and empowered to be vulnerable. Most importantly, I would want you to know that it’s OK to be selfish by mastering self-care before you provide care for others. In my own personal experience, one of life’s most valuable lessons has been the prioritisation of one’s health and wellbeing.
- Gary Park
Gary reminds us that as Talent Leaders, we all play a crucial role in supporting Emerging Talent in choosing the right track! Of course, we hope they choose us as they strive to thrive. Gary shares with us why a holistic Early Career Strategy is essential and many other lessons he has learned along the way.
- Gary Park
Great onboarding isn’t just a checklist, it’s an experience that sets the tone for success. Gary Park explores how to design an engaging, human-centred onboarding process that fosters connection, confidence, and culture from Day 1. Discover practical tips, best practices, and real-world insights to create moments that matter for your new hires. Read on and get in (loco)motion for a great onbording process!
- Athanasia Corso
Athanasia explores the delicate equilibrium between service and expertise in Talent Acquisition. She highlights the importance of trust, transparency, and continuous improvement in building credibility and influence. Discover how professionals can position themselves as both trusted advisors and service providers to drive success and shape better outcomes. Read on...
- Athanasia Corso
Want to attract, grow, and keep top talent? Internal talent mapping is the secret weapon you’re probably not using enough. It uncovers skills gaps, fuels career growth, and turns high performers into future leaders - while keeping your best people engaged. Ready to make talent mapping your ultimate game-changer? Let’s dive in!
- Athanasia Corso
Position Descriptions (PDs) are often outdated, uninspiring, and forgotten - but they don’t have to be. Athanasia explores how to breathe new life into PDs, turning them into dynamic, strategic tools that drive performance, career growth, and organisational success. Learn how to simplify, standardise, and transform PDs into something truly impactful.
- Athanasia Corso
Discover key strategies to shake off the holiday haze, boost collaboration, and set yourself up for success. From fostering teamwork to managing energy wisely, this guide will help you maximize your potential and make this year count. Read more now.
- Jody Smith
The One Thing That Separates Great Recruiters From the Rest - And You Might Be Ignoring It. As Jody wraps up this Summer Series, she shares practical ways to make learning a habit, from setting aside realistic time each week to tracking progress and getting involved in mentorship. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your skills, expand your network, or just stay ahead in 2025, these strategies will help.
- Jody Smith
Doing more with less in talent, and the need to continue to rally behind our LGBTQIA+ friends, family and colleagues (despite companies winding back their DEI programs). It's a goodie. Read on.
- Jody Smith
Effectively preparing for 2025 by performing a 2024 Talent Post Mortem. All the tools you need to effectively review last year’s performance and set yourself up for success.
- Tash Gawne
This Week in Talent: Tash Gawne wants you to discover the transformative benefits of competency-based development plans. Learn how Globird’s EVP rebrand empowers employees with clear career paths, actionable goals, and tailored feedback to drive growth and organisational success. Plus, explore tips on aligning employee development with business goals for a thriving workplace in 2025.
- Tash Gawne
This Week in Talent: Discover key HR predictions for 2025 in from Tash Gawne. From the 'skills quake' reshaping industries to the critical role of L&D in employee engagement, explore actionable strategies to future-proof your organisation. Don’t miss Part 1 of Tash's take on navigating rapid change and preparing for the year ahead.
- Tash Gawne
This Week in Talent: Explore insights on refining your Employee Value Proposition (EVP), building your personal brand, and lessons from Taylor Swift's Eras Tour with Tash. Learn strategies to align your EVP with innovation, connect with your audience, and uncover your unique strengths for personal and professional growth.
- Tash Gawne
This Week in Talent: We welcome Tash Gawne, CPO at Globird Energy as editor to TWIT. Dive into reflections on People and Culture, Globird's first hackathon, leadership tips, and planning for 2025. Read on!
- Adam Avci
This Week in Talent: Explore the week in talent with insights on navigating hiring challenges, fostering collaboration with managers, and the evolving role of talent facilitators. Plus, men's health in the workplace, and the countdown to Christmas!
- Adam Avci
This Week in Talent: with the end of the year approaching, talent acquisition teams face a flurry of activity, from pre-holiday hiring to defining metrics for success in 2025. Adam explores the challenges of balancing urgent hiring goals, refining candidate experience, and selecting 'hero metrics'—key indicators that truly reflect team impact.
- Adam Avci
This Week in Talent: future planning and graduate recruitment is top of the list for Adam this week, sharing his experience at MYOB's future makers academy and his top tips for making an assessment day work. Did he back a winner at the Cup? Pretty sure it was a roughie. Read on.
- Adam Avci
This Week In Talent: Adam Avci, Talent Lead at MYOB, joins us as the TWIT editor for November and he starts by sharing outcomes of a recent team offsite. He also talks about squiggly careers and the importance of internal mobility. Want to get squiggly? Read on.
- Jamie Holder
This Week in Talent: Jamie Holder rounds out her stint in the TWIT-seat by putting the focus firmly on you. Yes, Talent Leaders, we’re looking at you. Jamie highlights the need to make time in your week (schedule it) for reflection, learn to prioritise and delegate both for yourself and to empower your team to succeed. She reminds us of the importance of not taking on other people’s responsibilities and keeping an eye to the future. How can we do all this? Well, read on and find out.
- Jamie Holder
This Week in Talent: ATC2024 has come and gone, and Jamie Holder is wrapping things up for us while it's still fresh in our minds. From the rise of AI in recruitment to Kevin Wheeler’s provocative predictions, there’s plenty to dive into. Spoiler: AI isn’t here to replace you, but it will make you better—if you embrace it. Want to revolutionise your hiring process? Skills-based hiring, predictive analytics, and personalisation are where it’s at. Plus, some serious fangirling over Kevin. If you missed ATC2024, don’t worry—this recap will get you up to speed.
- Jamie Holder
This Week In Talent: Jamie talks all things leadership within the TA space, including talking career conversations, how (and when) to delegate and practical things that leaders can do to develop the confidence and skills in their team. Whether you’re new to leadership, a seasoned veteran or aspiring to lead one day – this TWIT is for you.
- Jamie Holder
Jamie kicks off her October editorial of This Week in Talent by declaring a theme: Career development in Talent Acquisition. Is your interest piqued? You know this TWIT has been written for you.
Jamie shares some practical tips for growth including making the shift towards talent advisory, some ideas for TA projects as well as some fabulous resources to get inspired.
Want to hear more from the 2024 ITAs Winner – Enterprise Talent of the Year? Read on.
- Jody Smith
This Week In Talent: The final piece of the design thinking puzzle - the pitch to management. This week we include top tips to help you prepare for that meeting, including how to structure the story, slide deck, and the importance of curating the environment to ease the anxiety.
- Jody Smith
This Week In Talent: Why conducting user interviews and focus groups is key to understanding the talent and people problems you’re solving for. Why should you start with your Minimum Viable Product first, and not jump straight to all the version with all the bells and whistles? How can stakeholder interviews save you time, money, and effort? How can you set up the interviews so people feel comfortable to tell you what they’re REALLY thinking? Well, read on and you’ll find out …
- Jody Smith
This week in Talent: cleaning up a hot mess talent function, using a customer journey to convince the higher-ups to change an ugly user experience. Why creating personas was a game-changer in analysing a talent experience and more.
- Jody Smith
This Week in Talent: We welcome back Jody Smith to the editor seat, who brings us an intro to Human Centred Design (HCD) thinking, a bunch of design tools and resources you should bookmark, and Jody’s recommendation of which ATC Events session to attend if HCD is your jam.
- Petey Wang
This Week in Talent: Petey Wang joins us for a special edition in celebration of Wear it Purple Day. This edition not only spotlights the vibrant diversity within our community but also prompts a reflection on the visibility and recognition of LGBTQI+ accomplishments and milestones over the past year. Plus, it includes a great DEIB resource and much more.
- Derek Del Simone
This Week in Talent: Derek Del Simone signs off by looking to the future of talent, including how VR and AR might work in his profession.
- Derek Del Simone
This Week in Talent: Derek Del Simone discusses the importance of a killer career site, including considering consumer behaviour when job hunting. He shares great links relating to Customers Becoming Candidates, Consumer Behaviour, AI & trends for careers sites in 2024. Tips for Modern Career Sites in 2024, Engaging candidates through text Messages and Managing External contractor workforce.
- Derek Del Simone
This Week in Talent: Derek Del Simone talks sharing talent analytics with different stakeholders to drive informed decisions. He looks at how Data-driven talent Intelligence is revolutionising talent leadership as well as providing guides to Talent Acquisition Analytics and highlighting the importance of leveraging data for Talent Acquisition and organisational success to driving business performance.
- Derek Del Simone
This Week in Talent: We welcome Derek Del Simone to the seat as August TWIT editor.
Derek talks all things tech this week, as well as how to speak C-Suite, and the Real Housewives and questions from hell that are worth contemplating
- Naomi Paik
This Week in Talent: Naomi farewells us with a corporate chicken soup - thinking about how we can break down organisational silos and foster better collaboration internally.
Naomi's food for thought are all about slicing through the corporate jargon and superficial gestures and diving deep into the essence of true diversity. Plus, she's dishing out some mouthwatering insights from award-winning recruitment campaigns for us to devour and more!
- Naomi Paik
This week in Talent: Naomi shares her lessons learned in implementing a new applicant tracking system, a look at understanding fractional talent, and a think about alternative careers for recruiters. She looks at the ethics of AI, the 10 best recruitment videos and a look at ATC2024 2nd speaker drop.
- Naomi Paik
This week in talent: Naomi discusses the dangers of distraction and trying not to sweat the small stuff while in the job hunting scene – as hard as that can be. She reflects on the importance of listening in the TA space as well as encouragement for us all to ask for brutal honesty and respectful criticism.
- Naomi Paik
This Week in Talent: Senior Talent Advisor Naomi Paik from WA takes the wheel as TWIT editor for July and talks redundancy, bias, and rethinking. She gives us some unique insights into the Perth TA scene, including the 'Smerth effect'
- Gemma Saunders
This Week in Talent: Gemma Saunders signs off with a reminder that we are all workplace editors, the realities of a changing DEI space, a Gen-Z perspective on graduate recruitment, and more!
- Gemma Saunders
This Week in Talent: Gems reframes change in a positive way including the mass redundancies at Telstra, an interesting AI partnership, and the latest in-demand jobs list. She gives us a practical tool for inclusive questions to promote neuro inclusion and wellbeing and looks at a new challenge for farmers.
- Gemma Saunders
This Week In Talent: Gemma Saunders drops a few interview tips and upskilling outside the square
- Gemma Saunders
This Week In Talent: the legendary Gemma Saunders takes the chair and talks about letting go of the guilt from when things go off track and Pride Month related gems
- Katie Le Page
This week in Talent: Katie takes the reins for the final time and shares 5 top tips for connecting Talent to business outcomes, her 'deer in the headlights' moment, the use of metrics in building her promotion runsheet, and more!
- Katie Le Page
This week in Talent: Katie's advice for the next generation of TA - lean into change, the pros and cons of revealing questions before an interview, why we need to rethink employer brand, streamlining our TA processes, building a high performing team, and more!
- Katie Le Page
This Week in Talent: It's time for TA to address the issue of bad bosses when talking to hiring managers, prioritising annual leave based on seniority, 3 keys to building an agile and efficient recruiting function, the "Rage Applying" problem, 30% of hours currently worked could be automated by 2030, where Employer Branding is heading, and more!
This Week in Talent: How can we re-ignite our fascination in "the craft of TA"?, upcoming 'placement poverty' payments not enough, the future skills all Talent Teams need, does your DEI initiative promote assimilation over inclusion?, candidate relationship management, and more!
This week: why TA needs to focus on "the essence of the customer," Australia in the Top 5 most difficult countries to relocate to for work, more arguments for the 4-Day work week, 1 in 7 people admit to sexually harassing colleagues at work, how effective onboarding impacts retention, and more!
- Paul Martin
This week in talent: a look at the hows and they whys of Digital Talent Marketplaces, getting under the hood with Monash Talent, 10 Employer Brand lessons we can learn from Taylor Swift, the 2 women who want to job-share the MP role in the Victorian seat of Higgins, a look at how male and female hiring managers interview differently (and what that means for candidates), the recruitment AI being used by LinkedIn Top Companies, and more!
This week: the skills framework you need to implement to kick-start a skills-powered organisation, understanding the 'readiness dimensions' (i.e. the "where should we start?") when it comes to skills strategies, what the Space Race highlights about the shifting boundaries of TA, Atlassian's Head of Team Anywhere on the power of intentional in-person gatherings (rather than return to office mandates), how IBM uses AI to transform their HR strategies, the 2024 Qualtrics EX trends report, and more!
This Week we hand over the reins to TaPod for the final time. They discuss, MAFS, Spicegirls and real issues affecting the Talent Acquisition sector this week including a trip to Adelaide, WFH and hybrid work and much, much more!
This Week in Talent: Tapod have the reins! and they discuss DE&I initiatives sweeping the country, menopause in the workplace, the continual march of AI in TA, pressures on the labour market, Tik Tok for recruitment and much more!
This week in Talent: the benefits of time-blocking the "Planned Chaos" that inevitably pops up in any recruiter's day, pregnant women and new mothers reporting dismal working conditions, Bupa trials 9-day fortnight, aged care workers win 28.5% wage rise, Business NSW seeks new category of part-time worker, ATC2024 tix now on sale, and more!
- Ben George
This week in Talent: how to make part-time TA work for you, how to win the productivity prize, what does scrapping the traditional 9-5 working hours mean for women?, increasing disability employment to boost economy by billions, Hunger Games hits the Aussie jobs market, and more!
This week has been the biggest we’ve seen in terms of progress in gender equality in Australia. Not only is it International Women’s Day, but it’s the week when the Minister for Women, Katy Gallagher, will release Australia’s first-ever gender equality strategy. Not to mention the biggest news of the last week - the watershed moment where the WGEA lifted the veil on gender pay gaps from some of the country's biggest employers. And, yes, some of them were big!
This week in Talent: personal reflections on shifting to a part-time Talent role, the WGEA publishes gender pay gaps for 100+ companies, a potential "bye-bye" to the right to work from home, the employers with the biggest and smallest gender paygaps, Microsoft's New Future of Work report, how one Aussie work-site increased its female workforce x5, and more!
- Lucy Eldred, Adam Avci, Ashleigh Lyas
