IHR Live Manchester 2025 - Round Up

If you couldn’t make it to IHR Live Manchester this time, we have put together a full event recap blog, covering key takeaways from the sessions we visited. So sit back and get your IHR Live fix here.

We want to thank all who stopped by the Eploy stand to say hello to the Eploy team. If you missed us, fear not – we can point you to our latest features in Eploy’s ATS platform, just visit here.

We also gave away copies of our 80+ page UK Candidate Attraction Report. Again, if you didn’t grab a copy, you can download your copy of the UK Candidate Attraction Report 2025.

AI in Talent Acquisition

AI was a huge topic, covered over the various sessions throughout the day, as well as being the main focus of the panel discussion…

How to Use AI to Outpace, Outperform, Outlast

To begin, Dominic Joyce, Senior Talent Acquisition professional at Bauer Media and Founder of Maverick Otter, shared valuable insights into how Talent Acquisition professionals can leverage AI tools to stay ahead of the competition.

He also highlighted the top 5 tools to use:

1. AI Sourcing Assistants to automate candidate search and enhance profiles.
2. Screening and Matching Engines to summarise CVs and flag gaps.
3. Outreach GPT prompts, which help create personalised outreach messages.
4. Interview Assistants, to transcribe and analyse interviews.
5. Content Automation Tools turn job specs into engaging adverts.

…And an actionable and scalable plan for your own AI take-off:

1. Choose one tool or task to start using this week.
2. Start a shared prompt library for your team.
3. Audit 3-5 manual tasks that could be automated or enhanced.
4. Offer a ‘’TA 101’’ session to share learnings.
5. Position yourself as the AI-in-TA champion.

Dominic also shared some valuable tips on using AI tools, like ChatGPT, to spot the best candidates:

• Gather market intelligence and benchmarking before meeting with the hiring manager.
• Summarise the meeting transcription.
• Write an engaging job advert using meeting notes and description.
• Build an ideal candidate profile and review or rank CVs against it.
• Throughout the process, ensure the candidate details are removed from CVs when uploading and review the content shared on AI tools against GDPR regulations.

However, although AI can streamline many areas of recruitment, it’s important to ensure that it’s used correctly, as misuse of AI can kill trust. Here are the mistakes that will slow you down or sabotage your AI adoption:

• Over-automating the human touch.
• Blindly trusting the AI output.
• Failing to disclose the usage of Artificial Intelligence.
• Letting bias go unchecked.
• Not training your team to use the tools.

And while AI is incredibly powerful and becoming more so every day, it still can't replace human storytelling that resonates with candidates. It can't build authentic relationships, connection, or trust. It lacks the business insight specific to your organisation, it can't evaluate candidates beyond data points, and can't adapt when the unexpected occurs. So it’s safe to say, while AI does have a place in the recruitment process, the human touch is an irreplaceable part of it.

What does the panel think? The AI candidate tsunami has arrived. What now?

The panel insights, delivered by Alan Walker (Udder), Robert Newry (Arctic Shores), Siobhan Stericker (HMRC), Greg Dunbar (Hubert AI) and Shradha Sharma (Talk Talk). Here are some points shared by the speakers:

• The volume of applications has increased, partially due to the use of AI. Siobhan Stericker, Talent Acquisition AI lead at HMRC, shared that one of the roles at the organisation received about 840 applications, and when sifting through them, the Talent Acquisition team noticed a visible drop in the quality of applications, with some of them still having prompts from AI tools.
• HMRC’s candidates can now find ‘Good AI practice’ guides on the careers site. This is there to educate people on the correct use of AI - since it’s not going away, candidates can use this trusted source to educate themselves on the best practices of AI.
• AI is levelling the playing field, as candidates now have powerful AI tools at hand, similar to the Talent Acquisition teams.
• The panel speakers encourage TAs to stay vigilant, especially during online video interviews, due to the increasing use of ‘’deepfake’’ AI tools, which make it easy for another person to attend on behalf of the candidate and allow the candidates to easily access information during assessments. A TA Manager in the audience shared her experience with spotting her first case of AI being used in this way by a candidate.
• The panellists also shared three pieces of advice on AI usage with the candidates:

1. If the careers site has AI usage guidelines, make sure to review and use them.
2. AI is a great tool to edit your CV and Cover Letter, as it can spot spelling mistakes and help you polish it.
3. Don’t copy and paste directly from the tool; instead, use it to get feedback on your content and adjust it.

Neurosight: Building a neuro-inclusive hiring process

The session, delivered by Neurosight’s Jamie Betts, revealed that only 22% of adults with an autism diagnosis are employed (National Autistic Society). This raises the question: Is this statistic caused by unintentional bias, or is it more likely that the hiring process is full of barriers that place neurodivergent candidates at a disadvantage?

The speaker shared that although most organisations do offer adjustments in the recruitment process, many candidates feel uncomfortable disclosing their neurodiverse needs.

Neurodivergent individuals bring many unique strengths and improve team performance:

1. Attention to detail, innovative problem solving, great focus and expertise.
2. The SAT Autism at Work program found that employees on the spectrum contributed to better team outcomes.
3. EY Neurodiversity Centre of Excellence reported that neurodiverse teams drive enhanced innovation.

Jamie Betts also shared some tips to build an evidence-based success framework: ‘’Success analysis is the systematic, data-led process of identifying the key drivers of high performance in your organisation. It is the foundation for the creation of a fair, effective end-to-end hiring process.’’

Here are the key steps he highlighted:

• High performer interviews and focus groups help identify how high performance is attained and sustained.
• Senior stakeholder engagement to secure buy-in and futureproofing your success framework.
• Job description and performance framework analysis.

Jamie also shared some valuable insights into supporting neurodivergent applicants at each stage of the hiring process… For the interview stage, he highlighted these key insights:

1. Educate your assessors about neurodiversity, use structured questions and scoring.
2. If the interview is held in person, consider lighting and noise. If it’s a video interview, consider offering a ‘camera-off’ interview option.
3. The hot debate: sharing questions in advance with all candidates may disadvantage neurodivergent candidates. (Further reading on Jamie Bett’s LinkedIn insight.)

Supporting neurodivergent applicants at the assessment centre stage:

1. Significant barriers include navigating group dynamics, networking activities, or unpredictable scenarios.
2. If in person, offer a quiet candidate breakout room, making it clear there’s no expectation to network.
3. Ensure the environment doesn’t have sensory overload triggers, such as poor lighting, noise, or room layouts.

Lastly, here are some ways organisations can support neurodivergent applicants in the post-final stage:

• Offer clear, constructive, and timely feedback, including areas for improvement and development.
• Post-offer, engage in a proactive dialogue related to in-role accommodations and support, offering a second opportunity to disclose neurodivergence, which can help the organisation to remove any further barriers in the workplace.
• For successful candidates, consider sharing the structure and timetable of their induction plan in advance, allowing them to mentally prepare.

Attracting Top Talent When Budgets Are Tight

Many data points, including the Google Trends reveal, that the search volume of terms such as ‘’redundancy’’ and ‘’recruitment freeze’’ have increased in the last 3 months. Changes in the economy, new laws on National Insurance, and other factors have led to uncertainty in the Talent Acquisition world.

With budgets not matching the expectations, how can Talent Acquisition teams continue to attract the best talent while sticking to their budget? As the speakers shared ‘’being smarter with your media investment doesn’t mean spending more money…’’ To help recruitment teams achieve exactly that, Danny Gartside and Liam Hodgeon used their session to share some actionable tips:

• Take the time to understand your audience better. 

‘’You think you know your audience, but when was the last time you reassessed the data…’’

Different audience members may have very different ways they research and apply for roles.  The speakers recommended TA professionals to really dig into the available data and ask yourself how old your target audience is, what their personas are, what channels do they use and how can you stand out to them? Using heatmaps can also help create more targeted advertising, saving costs in return. Use the power of data as guidance to lead your media strategy.

• Using Creative with Purpose.

The speakers shared - only 9% of the audience are currently actively looking for jobs, meaning complete reliance on job boards might not be enough to attract the best talent. Creative ads are a must if you want to stick out, especially in a landscape full of AI, your content must be people-centred.

An example of Evri’s case was shared, showcasing how defining an audience and tailoring the messaging helped the organisation achieve a 2.5x increase in click-through rates and reduce cost per hire by 65%. This was achieved by making the job adverts clear, that Evri is the perfect career move for those who are focusing on a passion and need to pay the bills in the meantime. Whether it’s live streaming, art, music or anything else, Evri will be there to help you pay the bills, yet offer the flexibility to focus on your actual dreams.

• Tips to get a better return from your media:

1. Set some time aside each week to analyse your career site’s GA4 data. This can reveal potential areas for improvement, which don’t have to be costly, yet can improve performance significantly.
2. Make sure your Google Tag Manager conversions are working correctly to gain visibility over how candidates are interacting with your careers site, as well as what candidates convert best. It can also revel important bottlenecks in the application journey.
3. If you’re working with a small budget, utilising the data you have can help you build a stronger business case for any tools or changes that you believe will make a difference.

Being smart with your media investment doesn’t mean spending more money.

A huge thank you to the team at In-House Recruitment for organising yet another great event, as well as the speakers and panellists who shared their thoughts and experiences with the attendees.

We hope you enjoyed this round-up and our take on the day.