Every time that we wrap an ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit, I walk away energized. These events are a lot of work for our small team, but they’re worth every ounce of effort. When we get together, I’m reminded that there’s nothing else in the world quite like our community of talent acquisition professionals who genuinely care about learning, sharing, and pushing our field forward.

Since COVID, we’ve been rebuilding our community from the ground up, and every time we’re all in the same room, the energy is electric. There’s a sense of shared purpose that reminds me why we do this.

Yes, we make sure there’s time at every Summit to experiment with the latest recruiting technology, but that’s not the heart of the event. What makes RIS special has always been learning directly from recruiting leaders — not watching another round of content marketing dressed up as a conference session.

Last week’s talk by Riana Maus, SVP/Director of Talent Inclusion, Diversity & Acquisition at UMB Bank, was a perfect example. Her presentation was smart, insightful, and grounded in the realities of leading a TA team through rapid change and uncertainty.

Riana didn’t come with hype or jargon. She came with a roadmap — a practical approach for a TA team to adopt AI responsibly inside a highly regulated organization. She talked about how to balance innovation with compliance, how to build trust with business leaders, and how to ensure that technology makes recruiting more human, not less.

It’s exactly the kind of perspective that makes the Summit so valuable: direct from practitioners who are solving real problems inside real organizations, right now.

I’ve uploaded the full video of Riana’s presentation to YouTube, and I can’t recommend it enough. Take the time to watch it. It’s one of those talks that sticks with you long after the conference ends.

Want to stay in the loop on future sessions, speakers, and registration updates for the next ERE Recruiting Innovation Summit? Sign up here for Summit updates.

— David

P.S. If you found this newsletter valuable, chances are your colleagues will too. Feel free to forward it along—and if it landed in your inbox by way of a friend, you can subscribe here to get the next one directly.

Sponsored Content

Grow Globally with Confidence

Thinking about hiring outside the U.S.? Learn how an Employer of Record (EOR) streamlines global hiring, payroll, and compliance—so your team can focus on growth. Justwork’s free eBook breaks down the essentials, from entity-free hiring to reducing risk and admin lift. Whether you’re making your first international hire or scaling your team abroad, get practical steps to move forward with clarity.

Featured Story

Pour One Out: AI and the Death of the Candidate Experience

AI is eroding candidate experience by replacing human connection with high-volume automation, algorithmic screening, and canned chatbot interactions that leave applicants ghosted and disengaged. Talent leaders have overcorrected toward black-box efficiency and “AI alignment,” reducing people to data points and sidelining the human judgment that once defined great recruiting. Matt’s call to action is to reclaim humanity in hiring and resist treating process optimization as the sole measure of success. (ERE)

Webinars

Making Sense of Talent Metrics for Smarter Hiring

November 12, 2025 | 11:00 AM EDT | 1 Hour

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the “metrics maze” of modern recruiting, you’re not alone. The pressure is coming from every direction: burned-out teams, pipelines filled with AI-generated resumes, and constant demands to prove the ROI of your tech stack. Mastering recruiting analytics today means moving beyond surface-level activity to uncover meaningful insights. This session will help you refocus on the data that actually moves the needle and build a more efficient, human-centered hiring process. (ERE)

Tech Demo Tuesday: Discover the Hottest Tools in Recruiting

November 18, 2025 | 2:00 PM EDT | 1 Hour

Join us for Tech Demo Tuesday, where three of the industry’s leading recruiting technology companies — Gem, Oleeo, and Dice — will unveil their latest innovations built to transform how you attract, engage, and hire talent. In this live session, you’ll see each platform in action as they demo tools designed to make recruiting faster, smarter, and more effective. This is your front-row seat to the newest breakthroughs shaping the future of recruiting tech. (ERE)

The State of Candidate Experience 2025

November 19, 2025 | 2:00 PM EDT | 1 Hour

The latest CandE Benchmark Research shows that it’s one of the worst candidate markets in recent memory. Candidate resentment – the percentage of candidates who told us they wouldn’t engage a business and brand again due to a poor candidate experience – has never been higher globally. However, there are employers that delivered and sustained a quality candidate experience this year, from pre-application to onboarding. In this Webinar, Kevin will share the latest insights from the 2025 CandE data. (ERE)

AI in Hiring: Exposing the Risks, Defining the Rules, and Doing It Right

November 20, 2025 | 2:00 PM EDT | 1 Hour

AI is reshaping the way organizations attract, assess, and hire talent — but not without controversy. While some fear it opens the door to bias, cheating, or opaque decision-making, the best teams are proving that when used ethically, AI can enhance fairness, speed, and candidate experience. You’ll hear truth-telling about the real risks of AI misuse — from unchecked automation to data privacy concerns — alongside expert guidance on how to embrace AI responsibly. (ERE)

From Research to Results: Inside Recruiter Nation 2025

December 3, 2025 | 12:00 PM EDT | 1 Hour

Join us as we unpack what more than 1,200 talent-acquisition professionals revealed about today’s recruiting realities — and how you can turn those insights into a winning strategy for 2026.

We’ll share the data behind today’s candidate-supply challenges, tech-stack shake-ups, the rise of skills-first hiring, AI-adoption hurdles, and more. Whether you’re a TA leader or practitioner, this session is your chance to move beyond the headlines and get actionable findings to sharpen your hiring game. (ERE)