Fuel, transportation, housing, and food costs go up, but wage growth is far behind. Is this episodic or is there something bigger going on? A NYT article explains that in San Francisco a combined salary of $370,000 is not enough to find a nice apartment. And this issue is national. For 2026 YTD gas prices are up by 24%, energy by 27%, airline fares by 26%, and fruits and vegetables by 5%. At the same time average private sector wages are up by 3.5%. This impacts workers, families, and retirees. “Unretirement” is a new trend. AARP found that 7% of retirees are unretiring, and 12% of seniors have returned to work in 2026. Why are retirees going back to work? They cannot afford the costs of healthcare, food, and energy. Given that we advise companies on leadership and HR, I decided to dig in. So as a micro-economist (we talk...

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Today Eightfold launched its AI Candidate Agent, so I wanted to explain how the multi-agent world of HR 2030 is coming together. In this podcast I explain what Eightfold is up to and how multi-agent AI systems are now starting to sweep across talent acquisition, particularly in high-volume recruiting. And it’s more complex, interesting, and valuable than you may think. This article explains the market and business case in more detail, and we encourage you to read about HR 2030 to see where this exciting world is going. Additional Information The Talent Acquisition Revolution: How AI is Transforming Recruiting Interview with Ashutosh Garg, Co-Founder & CEO of Eightfold.ai and Viven.ai HR 2030, The Josh Bersin Institute, And Galileo

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Today Eightfold introduced its AI powered Candidate Agent, which fits together with its AI Interview agent. Not only is this an important announcement for Eightfold as it goes after the red-hot high volume hiring market, it’s emblematic of the whole new Multi-Agent AI solutions coming in the world of HR 2030. (I explain more in this podcast.) Let me explain. The AI Candidate Agent is designed to handle job candidate inquiries and candidate questions about a job, the company, or topics like pay, hours, required credentials, flexibility, benefits, and more. This agent, similar to agents available from Paradox, Maki, Smartrecruiters, and others, speeds and simplifies the candidate inquiry process, building a strong and positive relationship between employer and job seeker. As I explain in the podcast, chatbots for job candidates have been around for a decade but now, with advanced AI, they can interact directly and in depth with a...

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All organizations, whether they are profit-seeking companies, non-profits, or governments, have politics. And the issues of how we make decisions, the role of top-down vs. bottoms-up governance, and how we empower people to speak up… these are existential topics in any group of people. As the USA celebrates its 250 year anniversary and we read so many articles about our history, I wanted to reflect on what our political history teaches us about business leadership, governance, and employee empowerment. For those of you who study political science, I admire your craft and I think we have a lot to share. Additional Information The World Is Accelerating: What Has Changed About Leadership? Organization Design: The Real Secret To Growth The Big Reset Playbook: Organizational Culture & Performance    

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What if every talent process you ran was AI-enhanced — not to replace what you do, but to make decisions even smarter? That’s exactly how Matt Hoffman, Head of Talent and Partner at venture capital firm M13, operates. In this episode Matt explains how his team uses AI to help early-stage founders build a talent-first culture from day one – across recruiting, compensation, coaching, and beyond. The results are remarkable. Using tools like Findem for AI-powered sourcing, Matt’s team can pinpoint candidates who didn’t just work at the right company — they worked there at exactly the right stage of company growth. That’s a level of targeting precision that data accuracy and explainability make possible, and that simply wasn’t achievable before AI. But here is where Matt’s perspective gets truly compelling. AI is often framed as a speed tool, a way to do things faster and more efficiently. Matt pushes...

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This week Korn Ferry announced the $1.1 Billion acquisition of AMS, one of the leading providers of enterprise recruitment outsourcing. As I overview in this podcast, this deal demonstrates several things: First, the talent acquisition space has become enormously important and is rapidly changing with AI, demographic changes, and internal productivity initiatives. AMS has become a global leader in recruitment process outsourcing and TA advisory work, leading to the $1.1 Billion valuation. AMS’s product AMS One is one of the only tech platforms that integrates almost every recruiting technology into one operational view, enabling AMS and clients to monitor, tune, and optimize all areas of recruiting in one place. Second, Korn Ferry, as a leader in executive search and talent management services (including training offerings), sees enormous synergies and can add AMS’s revenue and $1.5 Billion backlog to their financial strength. While KF was not growing much, this gives the...

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