Over three years after her first appearance (Episode 18), Kim Bryan returns to the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast to discuss her evolution from leading a global TI team of 120 at its peak to launching AMS's Research Lab. In this wide-ranging conversation, Kim shares insights from analysing around 400,000 hiring records spanning just under 100 countries from 2020 to 2025 and reveals what's really driving offer declines (spoiler: it's not always about money).

What We Cover

AI & Employment - Examining Stanford's "Canaries in the Coal Mine" study and why the "AI is replacing entry-level workers" narrative might be correlation, not causation. The real impact on software development and customer support roles, and why businesses still don't understand where to apply AI effectively.

ONS Labour Force Survey Crisis - UK response rates dropped from under 50% in 2016 to around 20% now, whilst the US maintains 68%. Critical national decisions are being made on inadequate data due to funding and skills mismatches.

Evolution of TI at AMS - How talent intelligence moved from "add-on service" to embedded across all client work. The shift to self-service models, introduction of Insights and Intelligence Partners, and the ongoing data literacy challenge.

Offer Declines Research - Key findings: 15% increase in time-to-hire when offers are declined. Compensation wasn't the dominant reason—personal factors, hiring process issues, and flexibility matter more than expected. Sales roles showed highest volatility; project management roles surprisingly volatile due to change management demand. The critical finding: recruiter-candidate relationships matter more than process automation.

Education Revolution - Oxford research showing AI sector prioritises skills over formal education. Why universities haven't fundamentally changed since post-Industrial Revolution, and the return of apprenticeships and practical training.

Key Quote

"Despite all of the tech advances and all of the different strategies you can apply, the biggest difference that you can make to your process is still through your people. Post-offer engagement can be the difference between an offer being accepted and being declined."

Practical Tips for TA Leaders

1. Give Yourself Creative Space - Stop firefighting long enough to actually plan ahead

2. Invest in Your People - Find time to develop your team, not just extract from them

3. Find Something Outside Work - Your professional performance depends on your personal wellbeing

Coming from AMS Research Lab

• The Great Flattening (declining management layers)

• Skills mismatch: Are universities preparing students for tomorrow's jobs? (publishing soon)

• Stores to supply chains: How holiday hiring is changing

• EU Pay Transparency Directive analysis

• Industry deep dives and labour market overviews

• Comprehensive TA metrics benchmarking (2026)

About Kim Bryan

Kim Bryan is the Global Head of Research at AMS, where she leads their Research Lab think tank. She's been with AMS for nearly 10 years in this stint (and worked there previously too, making it nearly two decades total). She previously looked after talent intelligence for AMS and managed a global team of 120 at its peak. Her varied career spans insurance and a mix of numbers and people work, making her ideally suited to the intelligence and insights space.

Resources Mentioned

• AMS Research Lab Report: "Offer Declines and Dropouts"

• Stanford Digital Economy Lab: "Canaries in the Coal Mine: Six Facts About the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence"

• Beyond the Buzz Report on AI Skills

• Oxford Internet Institute & University of Oxford: Research on AI sector prioritising skills over formal education

• Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey

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Welcome to Episode 40 of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! In this episode, Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge, and Toby Culshaw welcome Jen Allen Jardine, the self-proclaimed "SWP supergeek" and founder of Beyond the Eightball consultancy, who's currently bringing her strategic workforce planning expertise to HS2 after seven years of asking the uncomfortable questions that organisations need to hear.

The episode opens with Toby analysing the results of the Talent Intelligence Collective's One and Done Challenge, revealing how AI-generated talent intelligence reports can produce dangerously convincing visualisations whilst harbouring significant data hallucinations. The discussion highlights how tech talent consistently skews results regardless of the actual prompt, and the critical importance of human expertise in validating AI outputs—with Patricia's inclusion of visa lead times demonstrating the nuanced thinking that distinguishes expert analysis from algorithmic suggestions.

The news segment examines Saudi Arabia's remarkable skills week initiative, where they've mapped 8,500 skills across just 12 priority sectors as part of Vision 2030—a masterclass in national-level strategic workforce planning that prioritises focused action over comprehensive cataloguing. The conversation explores Mercer's Talent Trends report revealing that only 47% of employees believe their managers understand their skills gaps, whilst job-hoppers receive 16.4% salary increases compared to 5.6% for loyal employees—sparking debate about whether internal talent marketplaces or salary structures are the real retention culprit.

Jen shares her unconventional journey from a working holiday visa in New Zealand to becoming one of the UK's leading SWP practitioners, including her experiences with airline scheduling complexities that cross the international date line and staffing hard-to-fill hospitals in rural Invercargill. Her definition of strategic workforce planning challenges conventional thinking: it's not about timeline horizons but about connecting every people intervention across the business to deliver organisational purpose sustainably and effectively.

The conversation explores why organisations struggle with true strategic planning, with Jen arguing that both public and private sectors fail by seeking false certainty in an uncertain future. She advocates for scenario planning that embraces radical uncertainty—planning for multiple tomorrows rather than trying to predict a single future, using external market intelligence combined with internal knowledge to build organisational agility through constant iteration rather than perfect predictions.

The episode concludes with Jen's three essential tips for SWP success: secure a "badass sponsor" (preferably the CEO) who can drive organisational change, use data to identify and challenge real pain points rather than assumed problems, and critically, start small despite pressure for comprehensive solutions. Her insight that managers often don't understand their teams' skills connects directly back to the Mercer findings, demonstrating how data maturity and decision-making courage are more important than perfect information.

Until next time, stay agile, stay evidence-based, and most importantly, stay intelligent!

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Welcome to Episode 39 of the Talent Intelligence Collective podcast! Alan Walker, Alison Ettridge, and Toby Culshaw are joined by Kumar Vaibhav, a seasoned TI professional who has built and led talent intelligence functions at Amazon, Walmart, Philips, and now Atlassian, bringing over 11 years of experience in transforming raw data into strategic workforce insights.

The episode begins with exciting news as Toby announces Lightcast's acquisition of Rhetoric, bringing 800 million profiles and 280 million company records to expand their people and company data capabilities. This strategic move represents a significant shift from aggregated TI data to actionable intelligence, bridging the gap between macro workforce planning and micro-level talent acquisition needs.

Drawing from his recent experience at RecFest, Toby explores how talent intelligence has become so embedded across HR functions that it no longer needs its own dedicated stage—TI is now the underlying foundation for everything from employer branding to skills intelligence. The conversation touches on the evolving landscape of AI implementation in recruiting, revealing that while efficiency gains are evident, true systematic automation remains limited.

Kumar shares his remarkable journey from founding a dramatics club at university to becoming a TI leader across some of the world's largest technology companies. His insights into building stakeholder rapport are particularly compelling—from his first project at Philips where he successfully convinced leadership to change their APAC headquarters location, to developing innovative approaches like using Power BI to analyse borough-level talent distribution in New York during the post-COVID workplace transformation.

The discussion delves into Kumar's unique perspective on building world-class TI functions from scratch, emphasising three critical elements: aligning with business strategy, demonstrating operational ROI alongside strategic value, and building credibility through transparency and stakeholder trust. His examples span from competitive intelligence in finance sourcing to innovative location strategies that consider both external market data and internal talent mobility patterns.

Kumar offers fascinating insights into the growing prominence of TI teams in India, explaining how the evolution from cost arbitrage to genuine skills development has created a thriving ecosystem of talent intelligence professionals. His candid revelations about working with Toby—including the memorable moment when Toby questioned whether TI truly adds value—provide both humour and profound insights into the self-reflection required in this evolving field.

The episode concludes with Kumar's excitement about joining Atlassian, where he's leveraging Confluence to build dynamic project repositories that double as internal databases, potentially revolutionising how TI knowledge is captured and accessed through AI-powered systems.

Until next time, stay curious, stay brilliant, and most importantly, stay intelligent!

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