How Automation Is Changing The Talent Game with Stuart Potter

In a tight labour market, employers can’t afford slow, unclear hiring - yet moving fast without fairness creates risk, bias, and damage to your employer brand.

In this episode of the HRchat Podcast, Bill Banham welcomes Stuart Potter, Senior Lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University and contributor to digital skills initiatives supporting SMEs, to explore the real-world use of AI, automation, and employer branding in modern hiring.

Ahead of the Peterborough AI Summit at ARU, Stuart shares where AI can genuinely add value in HR and recruiting - such as screening support, scheduling, assessments, and candidate communication - and where human judgement must remain in charge. Stuart also shares simple, practical guardrails for ethical AI: disclose AI use, keep people as final decision-makers, and audit outcomes for bias.

We also discuss how automation is reshaping early career pathways, what graduates need to prove now that entry-level “busywork” is disappearing, and how employers can attract emerging talent by showcasing mentorship, growth, and meaningful work.

If you want a smarter, fairer hiring strategy that strengthens trust and improves conversion, this episode delivers a step-by-step blueprint—including a 90-day employer branding action plan you can start immediately.

Chapters

• 0:00 Rapid Intro And Guest Setup
• 1:36 Why The AI Summit Matters
• 3:36 BOOST Program Overview
• 6:10 Tools That Power SME Growth
• 6:43 Employer Branding In A Tight Market
• 10:00 AI Shifts The Early Career Path
• 14:51 90-Day Employer Branding Playbook
• 17:08 Guardrails For Ethical AI Hiring
• 18:44 How To Connect And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_03: 0:02

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts, and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.

SPEAKER_01: 0:25

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello, listeners. This is your host today, Bill Bannham. And in this episode, we're going to discuss the maturing of employer branding and how marketing and AI can be used ethically to help support it. My guest on the show this time is the awesome Stuart Potter, senior lecturer over at Anglia Ruskin University in Peterborough. Just uh full disclosure here, Stuart and I were chatting for a little while about uh a webinar we're doing together next week as we record this, uh, which has left us now with about 15 minutes to record an episode before before we got to jump. So um it's gonna be a rapid fire episode today. Stuart, how are you doing? Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08

I'm good. Thanks, Bill. Thanks for thanks for uh lovely quick intro there. As you mentioned, we're up against it with the time now, so I'll do my best to give you as efficient responses as I possibly can. I'll go back to my sales roots and try and talk as fast as possible.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Okay, we're gonna do some rapid fire stuff. I'm gonna challenge you to answer some of these questions in 60 seconds or less or something like that, and we'll have a bit of fun and cover a bunch of things. Uh, just to start with, Stuart, you have been uh instrumental. Thank you very much in helping to organize the uh second AI summit in uh in Peterborough at back at uh ARU. This time it's at the new Living Lab, uh, which looks like an amazing building. So we're super excited for that. It's happening uh February 4th. We've got a really cool lineup uh of keynotes, and we're doing a couple of panels. One of the panels I'll be moderating, and that's on uh surprise, surprise, AI and the workplace, uh AI automation and its impact on the world of work. The other panel will be moderated by your colleague, Tom Williamson, uh, and that's going to be looking at AI and its impacts on education and society as well, to an extent. Um, beyond what I've just said, what have you got to add? Why should people come along to this AI summit?

SPEAKER_02: 2:21

I suppose the AI is obviously still the very newsworthy centre of attention when it comes to things like operational effectiveness. I think the useful thing about the AI summit is a chance to for business leaders to reflect on the impact that AI can have in a range of different business sectors, really. Um AI is such a current topic, and the chance just for business leaders to sit and understand exactly where it might be able to slot in and what kind of impacts it might have can sometimes add an event like this can add a bit of clarity to strategic thinking. Sometimes as strategic leaders, we we know we we know we want something, but we don't necessarily know why or how. And hopefully this meeting, this this kind of event can help to provide some of that clarity.

SPEAKER_01: 3:13

And uh because we don't mind a shameless plug on the show, there will be a link in the show notes and in the associated article so you can register right now. Listeners, you'll be delighted to hear that it's absolutely free. And refreshments are provided. Uh, what what more do you need in terms of reasons to join us on Feb 4th? Uh, the next thing I want to highlight with you, and then we're going to get into a bunch of questions, Stuart, that kind of relate to it, is uh a really cool program that you've been leading now for a little while. You started it last year. Uh you're you're about to launch the the second year's incarnation. Um, you've kindly invited me to join uh the week one webinar, and that's Boost, which is uh business optimizing online skills training. Uh, tell us a bit about that program, who it's for, and what are some of the hoped for learning outcomes?

SPEAKER_02: 4:07

The program itself is designed to help uh mainly small and medium enterprises, but any business really, to um use digital and technical uh tools, so digital adoption, tech adoption, um and digital transformation to hopefully improve productivity and drive growth. That's really the focus. Um, so my particular background is in marketing and sales, and it's that sort of flavour that we're trying to help small and medium businesses to engage with. The the program itself is designed around a series of themes, all within the concepts of tech adoption, but looking at particular business functions each week, so things like operational management, time management, uh managing uh remote teams, which is obviously uh a big area of concern for a lot of businesses at the moment, through to things like uh digital marketing, social media, the uh management of HR, data analysis, quite a wide range of themes really, and all the while looking at how different tech tools can support that. The focus of the programme, really, as well, is on takeaways for business leaders, so practical tools, practical steps that can be taken. Um so hopefully each week we'll leave the webinars with a range of different tools and templates and next steps that businesses can adopt immediately those weeks. Um, it's been brought to us by funding from the uh Peterborough and Cambridgeshire Combined Authority, which is fantastic. So the focus obviously of the program is for businesses who operate within Cambridgeshire and Peterborough or businesses that serve this community, which is really, really which is really great. It's lovely to be able to sort of support the region.

SPEAKER_01: 6:05

We like those guys over at the combined authority. Uh, they are one of our partners for the AI Summit as well. So if any of you are listening, thanks very much, guys. Um, so yeah, listeners, if you want to get involved with that, um loads of great tools, pretty essential tools that you should be up to speed on will will be covered in this course, including Google Workspace, Slack, Notion, Trello, Google Calendar, Doodle, Zero Wave, uh, Canva. Uh I was in Canva earlier creating some promos for the AI Summit. Uh Buffer, HubSpot, Zoho, Trello, Shopify, WooCommerce, and a whole bunch more. So um be there or be a rectangle. Okay, uh, continuing through, let's now, let's now ask you a few questions if that's okay, which kind of relates to this theme and and your your expertise uh uh and what you teach over at ARU. Um starting with employer branding. Um, this is yeah, I've got a marketing background. Uh I'm a I I would often describe myself as a marketing person within the world of HR. Um and this is uh this this is an area that um particularly uh piques my interest. In your opinion, why does employer branding um well why why is it why is it a tricky time to get it right? So, for example, lots we're seeing lots of people being replaced uh by AI, by automation. A few years ago when I was recording these episodes for the pod, it was all about you know being being the outstanding um potential employer, um, being the being the employer of choice. The reality is now that employers aren't employing as many people, they're they're they're they're bringing in the automation and the AI. So what what how does that make the employee branding piece trickier? And what are some of the opportunities there?

SPEAKER_02: 7:49

Well, what's interesting is as you mentioned, there's a lot of automation going on. So, what we would often expect is for the labour market to be looser than it is, and actually, most businesses now are operating in quite a tight labour market where we're competing for the same skilled staff. And the simple matter is employer branding is quite a cost-effective way of creating a strategic competitive advantage to uh to penetrate those recruitment markets, really. Um a lot of the businesses I work with at the moment are mainly so obviously businesses are businesses, they're all going to be on either side of this fence. But businesses come to me and talk about how they are worried about losing staff to competitors because at the moment businesses are finding their new recruits often from existing competitors. Um, and on the flip side of that, obviously, a lot of the recruitment the businesses adopt is is looking at how to pull in those skilled staff from their competitors. And I think employer branding, it used to kind of be a bit of a um a slightly less strategic tool, slightly more operational, contained within HR. And now with the tight labour markets and you know a number of different statistics out there. I read a report recently that talks about 88% of recruits of recruits, you know, of job seekers, uh considering the branding of the employer, the employer branding, um, to be something that's well you know high up in their decision making. So I suppose at the moment the it's it's a tool that can really be used to penetrate the market in that way, um, especially as we start to uh compete um more heavily for skilled staff. Um AI at the moment, as mentioned in one of your recent podcasts on HR chat, they talked about how AI is often looked at replacing some of those early career stages. So, you know, in I think the the discussion was in the law sector, you know, some of those early, early roles are now being automated, same with things like auditing in accounting. So suddenly the recruitment, your your recruitment cycle is very different. So rather than bringing people in early career, you know, where they might not have such an idea of who the players are in the market, suddenly our recruitment cycles are gonna start later on in the career fields with more skilled staff, and we're gonna have to try and convince them that our us as an employer are the the right choice for them.

SPEAKER_00: 10:33

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR Chat Podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazette.com. And now back to the show.

SPEAKER_01: 10:49

You you're having conversations all the time with um soon-to-be candidates, uh entry-level candidates, you know, the the students who are graduating looking to build a career. Um you just mentioned there that a lot of the efforts for recruiting will perhaps be on people who've got a few years' experience, got some of those skills in place already. What does that mean for those entry-level candidates? What does it mean for those students who are coming into the market? Um, how do they build up their skill sets? What attitude do they need to get ahead sooner? And going back to that branding piece, a few years ago it was all about um the power was in the candidate's hand to choose uh to choose a role they wanted to take, perhaps. Um can they afford to be a little bit less picky these days? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_02: 11:38

I would say, yeah, definitely. Um so there's kind of a few few points to unpick there, but definitely just looking at job roles as if they were leaving, there's a huge amount of competition. My particular faculty business, business and law. Um, we see 200,000 plus students across the UK graduating with degrees within these kind of faculty areas. Um, so it's a huge amount of competition. And traditionally, where they would have all gone into those graduate positions that that still are there, but the competition for those positions is probably a little bit more fierce than it than it even was three or four years ago. Um the attitude, I think that's the really that's the key, the the understanding of the marketplace. Again, having a sales and marketing background in things like career planning is really useful because ultimately it's about understanding the customer. So in this case, you are you're the supplier as a as a new recruit into the market, and your customer are the potential employer. So you've just got to understand what their needs are. So, for example, um at Anglia Ruskin, we we augment our degree programs with opportunities for things like taking on internship positions, doing consultancy projects, working with client businesses so that they can build a portfolio of skills. Um, discussed again in one of your I can't remember if it was a recent podcast on HR Chat or if it was a few months ago, but they talked about how a lot of these early careers um would now be in the form of uh freelance and uh kind of almost gig economy, gig work. Um, and I think that's again, students have got to be people who are looking at graduating or coming into those early career roles, whether they're from a degree or from early professional training, they now probably need to think rather than think about being employed, the focus is on being employable. So it's on understanding what the needs are, what skills you need, how can you start how can you make yourself stand out? Constant continuing professional development and reflection of your skill set. Um and it it's it's it's not gonna be it's gonna be different that the the the sector rather than be more difficult or more challenging, it's just gonna look different. I think that's that's the thing. AI and automation is sometimes seen as a little bit of a negative, but actually it might end up meaning that instead of having people going straight into administrative positions in HR or in sales or marketing, what we're gonna have is we're gonna have much more opportunity for decision making and creating uh innovative projects where we, you know, where the time and the skill and the capacity would have been taken up with uh more mundane tasks. Now we've got the opportunity to use that skills, use those insights for potentially quite exciting projects.

SPEAKER_01: 14:39

Excellent. We are almost already out of time. Uh I can't believe this. Uh let's let's leave our listeners with some practical takeaways before I then ask you um how folks can connect with you if that's okay. Um, in 60 seconds or less, Stuart, uh, what practical tips can you offer to help improve our approach to employee branding in the next 90 days? Go.

SPEAKER_02: 15:04

So I'd say um one of the main things to think about from a HR perspective, especially, is to sit down with your recruiting managers, heads of department, people who are on the ground seeing the trends, seeing the information, and trying to work out asking asking them to list every tool where AI might be able to support those processes. So things like screening, chat bots, whether that's um selection assessments, where we can automate communications. Um it's about trying to understand where AI can support the processes. And then what I would say one of my um one of the things from an employer branding point of view that will be really useful is within that group of people who are um, I suppose, champions or guardians of the process, is to agree a small set of guardrails and then make sure that you communicate them. So if you're going to use AI, make sure that you, you know, that it's never the sole decision maker. Make sure we all agreed on how we're going to use AI and how it's going to augment and support the process, but not necessarily lead the process. I think that's a really useful uh process, understanding the the applicant funnel where AI can be used, and just make sure that we all still understand where we agree with um the values, I suppose, of the organization and how we can still communicate those, but still automate where possible.

SPEAKER_01: 16:45

Uh just a very quick follow-up on that. Uh, in terms of those guard rails, do you think the reality is at the moment in in recording this episode early 2026, um, the expertise still isn't there amongst perhaps some of the leadership team in terms of understanding, you know, from a technical point of view, what's possible, what what should be watched out for, and so on?

SPEAKER_02: 17:07

Yeah, so it's it's things like thinking about with with with regards to HR, one of the issues that we're seeing uh in recruitment, in AI use in recruitment, is where some companies are blindly using AI, for example, for filtering and selection. Um, and what we sometimes see if we don't have appropriate guardrails or really, really structured um instructions for those AI is you start to see things like biases, um, you start to see um it starts to support its own patterns of thinking, and it doesn't necessarily allow for uh a slightly more nuanced way of looking at applicants. So, what we would suggest in terms of guardrails is using AI for things like process automation. But when it comes to things like decision making, still the human touch might be slower, but is often much more um valuable. And when it comes to things like um the cost per hire or time to hire, or you know, uh things like looking at the impact of appropriate recruitment cycles on things like uh retention within the first year, you will still see a lot more support for human decision making. And I think that's something we need to communicate to senior leaders is that although AI has its place, there is still value in human interaction with data, um, certainly with regards to things like recruitment cycles.

SPEAKER_01: 18:38

Okay, very good. And then just finally, in terms of connecting with you, um, listens if you're interested in the Boost uh program, that is aru.ac.uk forward slash study, forward slash professional dash and dash and uh shorts dash courses forward slash boost. If you didn't get that, I'm sure we'll add that somewhere as well. Um search for Peterborough AI Summit 2.0 to check that one out. Again, I'll put a link somewhere. Um, beyond that, Stuart, how can folks connect with you? Is that LinkedIn? Anything else that you want to share with them before we wrap up for today?

SPEAKER_02: 19:14

No, yeah, so um connecting through LinkedIn is absolutely great. Um, I'm always keen to um discuss with business leaders how the university and our students can support them. Coming back to that point about entering into the marketplace, we have some very uh keen students who are excellent uh learning starting to develop their consultancy skills. So we're always on the lookout for businesses who can act as case studies and clients for us if they've got any issues. So contacting me through LinkedIn, so it's just Stuart Potter at LinkedIn. It's the easiest way of contacting me and um and starting the discussion, really.

SPEAKER_01: 19:54

Brilliant. Well, that concludes our rapid fire HR chat today. Um Uh I just want to add firstly thanks to one of those being one of those people who listens to the pod. It sounds like you you're genuinely checking out lots of episodes and we we always appreciate the downloads. Thank you very much. Um and just um a a general thank you to you, to Tom Williamson and the team over at AIU for continuing to support uh the the the the growth of the AI summits that we're doing. Um it's a pleasure to work with you, it's a pleasure to work with Tom and the team. So thanks very much, and thanks for being my guest today.

SPEAKER_02: 20:25

That's no problem at all. Thanks again, Bell. If uh if your listeners want me to go through a bit more discussion of employer branding, I'd be more than happy to come back and chat too with a little bit more time.

SPEAKER_01: 20:36

There we go, listeners, to be continued. Um that just leaves me to say for today. Until next time, listeners, as always, happy working.

SPEAKER_03: 20:47

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette? And remember, for what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media, and visit hrgazette.com.