SHRM Talent 2026

SHRM Talent 2026

Welcome to the official limited podcast series from SHRM Talent 2026, recorded live at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas. In collaboration with SHRM, WRKdefined created this 33-episode series, which captures real conversations shaping the future of hiring, recruiting, talent acquisition, HR technology, leadership, workforce planning, candidate experience, AI at work, and the evolving world of work. Across the series, WRKdefined sat down with HR practitioners, talent leaders, consultants, analysts, creators, founders, and technology providers to explore what’s actually happening inside modern HR and recruiting teams. No corporate theater. No overproduced sound bites. Just smart people sharing practical ideas, lessons learned, industry trends, and honest perspectives from one of the largest HR and talent events in the world. SHRM Talent brings together thousands of HR and talent acquisition professionals focused on recruiting strategy, employee experience, workforce transformation, leadership development, hiring technology, and the future of work. This limited series extends those conversations beyond the conference walls and into the hands of HR professionals everywhere. Whether you work in HR, recruiting, talent acquisition, people operations, HR tech, staffing, leadership, learning and development, or workforce strategy, these conversations were built for you. 28 episodes. One conference. Real conversations that matter. Recorded and produced by WRKdefined in collaboration with SHRM.

Episodes

AI Is Making Hiring Easier. So Why Is Everyone More Frustrated?

June 14, 2026 • 12 mins
Applying for a job has never been easier. Finding the right candidate has never felt harder. Tina Robinson argues that recruiters and candidates are trapped in an AI arms race where both sides keep adding technology and nobody seems happier with the outcome. The real challenge isn't AI. It's figuring out how to stay human while using it. Talent management, recruiting, AI adoption, leadership development, authenticity, future of wo...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Recruiting Fraud Is Exploding. Most Companies Aren’t Ready for It

June 14, 2026 • 7 mins
Hiring has always involved a little deception. AI turned it into a completely different game. Philippe Beucher argues that recruiters now face a challenge they’ve never seen before: candidates using AI to optimize every part of the hiring process while companies race to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. The future of recruiting may depend on one question: can you still identify genuine talent in a world of p...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Corporate Training Is Still Teaching People the Wrong Way

June 14, 2026 • 9 mins
Most workplace learning is built around convenience, not science. Three-hour presentations. Endless slides. Mandatory training sessions nobody remembers. Marcy Baughman explains why education research has known for decades that these methods don't work and why companies keep using them anyway. The future of learning looks a lot more like practice than presentation. Learning science, workforce development, experiential learning, AI...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

The Best Recruiters Don’t Fill Jobs. They Solve Business Problems

June 14, 2026 • 8 mins
The best recruiting teams don’t fill jobs faster. They help businesses make better decisions. Paul Norman explains why too many recruiters are still measured by recruiting metrics while business leaders care about entirely different outcomes. That disconnect is costing companies more than they realize. Talent acquisition, business alignment, workforce planning, AI adoption, talent management, recruiting strategy. This conver...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Recruiters Don’t Have an Applicant Problem Anymore. They Have a Trust Problem

June 14, 2026 • 7 mins
The recruiting funnel is overflowing, but confidence is disappearing. Mike Peditto explains why recruiters are battling fraud candidates, AI-generated applications, and record inbound volume while trying to figure out who’s actually qualified and who’s just good at gaming the process. The best recruiters aren’t screening people out. They’re finding better ways to screen people in. Recruiting, AI adoption, c...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Recruiting Has an Alignment Problem Nobody Wants to Admit

June 14, 2026 • 9 mins
Companies say there’s a talent shortage while millions of people are looking for work. Jim Stroud breaks down the disconnect sitting underneath modern hiring and why recruiting teams are struggling to match the right people to the right opportunities even with more technology than ever. Everybody’s obsessing over AI. Jim thinks the bigger workforce crisis is already here. Recruiting, AI adoption, aging workforce, skill...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Your Employees Have More Brand Power Than Your Marketing Team

June 14, 2026 • 10 mins
Most companies are still treating branding like a billboard problem while their employees are becoming media channels overnight. Roy Abdo explains why polished corporate messaging is losing to authentic storytelling and why executives who stay silent are getting outperformed by people with less expertise but more visibility. The real shift is simple: people trust people more than brands. Executive branding, storytelling, LinkedIn ...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

AI Made Applying Easier. Recruiting Got Harder

June 14, 2026 • 4 mins
AI was supposed to fix recruiting. Instead, it made every resume look the same. That’s the mess recruiters are dealing with right now. More automation. More applications. More noise. And somehow less signal. The old recruiting playbook is breaking fast. In this episode, Robb Lifferth explains why AI is flooding recruiting with bad data, why job boards are losing value, and why recruiters now have to rethink how they source ...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Your Employees Are Telling You Why They Stay. Are You Listening?

June 14, 2026 • 18 mins
Most leaders spend more time asking why employees leave than why they stay. Njsane Courtney argues that’s backwards. The answers companies need are already sitting inside the organization. They just aren’t asking the right questions often enough. Retention isn’t a compensation problem as often as leaders think. Talent management, employee retention, AI adoption, leadership, recruiting, stay interviews. This conve...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Your One-on-Ones Are Failing Because You Keep Asking the Wrong Question

June 14, 2026 • 10 mins
“How’s it going?” might be the most expensive question managers ask. Joe Rotella argues that vague conversations create vague performance. Employees leave one-on-ones frustrated, managers leave without clarity, and nothing actually moves forward. The problem isn’t performance reviews. It’s everything that happens between them. Performance management, leadership, coaching, employee engagement, feedback...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Your Leadership Playbook Expired 20 Years Ago

June 14, 2026 • 14 mins
Too many leaders are managing a 2026 workforce with lessons they learned in 2006. Krishna Powell argues that the biggest leadership challenge today isn’t attracting talent. It’s understanding, developing, and deploying the talent you already have before it walks out the door. The workforce changed. Most leadership habits didn’t. Leadership, multigenerational teams, talent management, AI adoption, workforce develo...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

The Best Candidates Aren’t Always the Most Qualified on Paper

June 14, 2026 • 10 mins
Resumes have never been perfect. AI just made the problem harder to ignore. Philip Nash argues that companies are spending too much time chasing credentials and not enough time evaluating character, coachability, and the human skills that actually drive long-term success. The future of hiring may be less about what people know today and more about what they can become tomorrow. Talent management, recruiting, AI adoption, soft skil...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Time-to-Fill Is Broken. Nobody Knows What Great Recruiting Looks Like

June 10, 2026 • 21 mins
Most recruiting teams are hitting their metrics and still getting told they’re failing. Tim Sackett argues that’s because the metric everyone tracks most obsessively might be the one that matters least. Faster hiring doesn’t automatically mean better hiring. The future of recruiting isn’t speed. It’s trust, responsiveness, and human connection. Recruiting, candidate experience, AI adoption, workforce ...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

How Employees Leave Says More About Your Culture Than How They’re Hired

June 10, 2026 • 9 mins
Most companies spend years perfecting recruiting and almost no time thinking about offboarding. Sarah Rodehorst argues that’s a massive mistake. The way employees leave a company can strengthen your employer brand or quietly destroy it from the inside out. Culture isn’t measured during the good times. It’s revealed during the hard ones. Talent management, employer brand, employee experience, retention, offboardin...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Recruiting Doesn’t End When Someone Gets Hired

June 5, 2026 • 9 mins
Most companies obsess over attracting talent and spend far less time thinking about what happens next. Chad Sorenson argues that real talent management starts before someone joins and continues long after they leave. The companies that understand that are building stronger brands, stronger cultures, and stronger talent pipelines. AI is changing recruiting fast, but people still want to work for organizations that treat them well. ...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Everyone’s Talking About AI. Almost Nobody Knows What Adoption Actually Means

June 4, 2026 • 20 mins
Ask ten HR leaders about AI adoption and you’ll get ten different answers. Cole Napper argues that most AI conversations are broken because people are talking about completely different things. Personal AI tools. Vendor AI features. Enterprise AI systems. Same words. Different realities. The gap isn’t technology. It’s understanding. AI adoption, people analytics, workforce intelligence, recruiting, skills develop...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

AI Is Turning Recruiting Into a Trust Problem

June 4, 2026 • 9 mins
Every candidate suddenly sounds polished. Every resume looks optimized. Every interview answer feels rehearsed. Isela Conley breaks down what hiring leaders are quietly struggling with right now: figuring out who actually knows the job versus who just knows how to use AI better. Recruiting isn’t getting easier with AI. It’s getting noisier. Quality of hire, candidate experience, hiring managers, AI recruiting, talent o...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

HR Is Under More Scrutiny Than Ever. Are You Ready to Prove Your Decisions?

June 4, 2026 • 8 mins
The days of “trust us, we investigated it” are over. Jackie Schafer explains why HR teams are facing increasing pressure to document decisions, prove fairness, and back every conclusion with evidence. In a world of growing compliance scrutiny, good intentions are no longer enough. The future of HR may look a lot more like legal work than people expect. Employee relations, investigations, compliance, AI, workplace trust...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

You’re Hiring for Skills. The Best Companies Hire for Potential

June 4, 2026 • 14 mins
Most organizations are still measuring the wrong things. They hire for today’s job description while the role changes six months later. Art Jackson argues the companies winning the talent game aren’t looking for perfect resumes. They’re identifying the people who can adapt, learn, lead, and grow into what comes next. The problem isn’t talent. It’s what we choose to measure. Soft skills, workforce agil...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

HR Doesn’t Have an AI Problem. It Has a Trust Problem

June 1, 2026 • 9 mins
AI adoption isn’t failing because of technology. It’s failing because companies still don’t know what problem they’re solving. Every HR platform suddenly has “AI” slapped on the homepage. Meanwhile buyers are stuck asking the real questions: Is this secure? Is this ethical? And is my company data quietly training someone else’s model? In this episode, Amit Parmar breaks down why AI adopti...
Listen
Watch
Mark as Played

Popular Podcasts

    Hey Jonas!

    Hey Jonas!

    Hey Jonas! The official Jonas Brothers podcast. Hosted by Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas. It’s the Jonas Brothers you know... musicians, actors, and well, yes, brothers. Now, they’re sharing another side of themselves in the playful, intimate, and irreverent way only they can. Spend time with the Jonas Brothers here and stay a little bit longer for deep conversations like never before.

    Stuff You Should Know

    Stuff You Should Know

    If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.

    Dateline NBC

    Dateline NBC

    Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com

    Betrayal Weekly

    Betrayal Weekly

    Betrayal Weekly is back for a new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. If you would like to share your story, you can reach out to the Betrayal Team by emailing them at betrayalpod@gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at @betrayalpod and @glasspodcasts. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations, and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience, and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack.

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The Joe Rogan Experience

    The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Advertise With Us
Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

Explore

iHeart

Live Radio

Podcasts

Artist Radio

Exclusives

News

Features

Events

Contests

Photos

Information

About

Advertise

Blog

Brand Guidelines

Contest Guidelines

Subscription Offers

Jobs

Get the App

Automotive

Home

Wearables

© 2026 iHeartMedia, Inc.

  • Help
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • AdChoicesAd Choices