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We’ve all heard the saying, “age is just a number”, but for today’s workforce it carries new weight. For the first time, five generations are working side by side: the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z. With each generation bringing diverse experiences and varied preferences to the table, talent acquisition teams need to personalisepersonalize experiences to enhance engagement.

Let’s dive into how you can use AI-powered technology to engage multigenerational talent at scale effectively.

 

Unlocking the power of a multigenerational workforce

A multigenerational workforce brings a wealth of experience, perspectives, and skills. When organisationsorganizations create opportunities for employees of different generations to collaborate, they unlock innovation, drive engagement, and strengthen workplace culture. Encouraging knowledge sharing helps businesses retain critical expertise while fostering an environment where employees learn from one another.

SSE, a PageUp Clinch recruitment marketing client in Scotland, has embraced this by offering mentoring and reverse mentoring programs. These initiatives pair early-career employees with seasoned professionals, creating a two-way exchange of insights. This fosters collaboration, strengthens team dynamics, and enhances overall organisationalorganizational performance.

 

Understanding generational preferences

With such a diverse workforce, organisationsorganizations must ask: Are we effectively attracting, engaging, and retaining talent across all age groups?

Different generations have distinct communication styles, motivations, and approaches to work. Gen Z, for example, values career growth and purpose-driven work, while Baby Boomers may prioritiseprioritize stability and benefits. Millennials often seek flexibility, and Gen X looks for leadership opportunities. Understanding these differences helps organisationsorganizations craft better candidate experiences.

Managing these nuances manually is no longer practical. Success requires technology that aligns with the values and expectations of each group, delivering automation and personalisationpersonalization at scale.

 

Using AI to engage talent across generations

Recruiters and talent teams are increasingly turning to AI to manage the complexities of engaging a multigenerational workforce. AI-driven tools streamline hiring processes, reduce administrative burdens, and enhance personalisationpersonalization at scale. These solutions help teams connect with candidates more effectively while ensuring a seamless, engaging experience for jobseekers.

Clinch’s AI Chatbot Assistant provides an always-on engagement channel that boosts efficiency by handling repetitive tasks. Candidates can join talent networks, search for roles, and get instant answers to common questions. The chatbot also integrates with content management systems to share employee-generated content, offering insights from the people candidates trust most – your employees.

For digital-native candidates, especially Gen Z, real-time engagement is an expectation. AI-powered tools personalisepersonalize the candidate experience, offering tailored job recommendations and content that keeps candidates engaged.

 

Meeting candidates where they are

Beyond sharing content on your career site, consider how you connect with different generations on social media. Facebook appeals to mid-to-late-career professionals, while TikTok and Instagram attract younger talent. AI-powered content assistants can help tailor messaging to resonate across platforms.

Effective multigenerational hiring starts with understanding your audience and meeting them on their terms. AI and automation enable this at scale, helping you build a diverse, empowered workforce.

 

Balancing AI and human-first recruiting

Alongside AI’s efficiency, the human element remains essential in recruitment. Decision-making should always stay in human hands. While AI can screen candidates and identify strong matches, hiring managers and recruiters must evaluate authenticity and fit. Personal interactions provide candidates with insight into company culture and career growth opportunities.

Research from Gallup shows that beyond salary, candidates accept job offers based on factors like company culture, career development, and personal connections. Interviews with hiring managers and key stakeholders are the most impactful part of the hiring process. 

Candidates who experience meaningful personal interactions are 3.2 times more likely to feel connected to company culture and three times as likely to be highly satisfied with their work. OrganisationsOrganizations that meet or exceed candidate expectations throughout the hiring process maintain a stronger talent pipeline and improve retention.

OrganisationsOrganizations that use AI strategically free up time for meaningful candidate interactions. This balance ensures AI enhances, rather than replaces, the recruiter’s role in building strong connections and guiding candidates through critical hiring decisions.

 

PageUp’s AI-powered talent acquisition platform enables human-first recruiting while optimisingoptimizing hiring processes. Book a demo to see it in action.

Recruitment events have become a powerhouse for talent acquisition. Whether you’re hosting an event, attending a career fair, or holding sessions online, events give you direct access to talent in a way job postings can’t. Walk away with new relationships and gain top-notch additions to your talent pool. 

With today’s hiring dominated by digital applications and rising applicant volumes, events cut through the noise and offer a rare opportunity for authentic connection. They bring back the human touch – something increasingly valued in a digital world.

Let’s break down why recruitment events should be part of your hiring strategy and how you can make the most of them. 

 

Why events belong in your recruitment strategy 

1. Connect with passive, hard to reach talent

Attracting passive talent (candidates who aren’t actively looking for a job but could be open to the right opportunity) is key to successful recruitment in a competitive talent market. Recruitment events let you connect with these individuals in a more personal way. Instead of posting a job and waiting for applicants, you can engage with talent directly, build rapport, and position your organisationorganization as an employer of choice.

Events are especially powerful for building trust and awareness with niche communities, specialist occupations, early career talent, or underrepresented groups who may not engage through job boards alone.

 

2. Easily capture candidate information

Talent pipelines are the most efficient way to hire and are 18 times more effective than job boards. Events provide a low-friction environment to collect valuable candidate information, in person or online. You can gather resumes, contact details, and information like candidate preferences at scale. Capturing meaningful insights in real time, creating not just a contact list but a qualified talent community. With the right tools, this will enable greaterpersonalisationpersonalization and candidate engagement down the track.

 

3. Showcase your employer brand

Recruitment events are not just about filling roles; they are an opportunity to showcase your employer brand. They give candidates a real feel for your company’s culture, values, and what it’s like to work with you. Demonstrate your commitment to diversity, work-life balance, and career development to help set you apart in a competitive job market.

When candidates meet your people face to face (or even via a webinar) they’re more likely to remember you. It’s a chance to create an emotional connection that job ads can’t replicate.

 

4. Deliver high ROI in a competitive market

While recruitment events require investment, they often deliver stronger long-term ROI than paid job ads. You leave with a rich pipeline of warm candidates, plus the added value of brand exposure and relationship-building. When supported by automation and follow-up workflows, events can continue delivering value well beyond the day they happen.

 

What to consider when planning your recruitment event

Event format that matches your hiring goals

Not all events are created equal – and that’s a good thing. Different formats align with different recruitment goals and who you’re trying to reach. Understanding the purpose behind each event type helps you build a more targeted and effective strategy:

• Campus recruiting events: Ideal for attracting early career talent and interns.

• Virtual webinars: Expand your reach to remote, national, or global candidates without geographic barriers.

• Niche meetups and conferences: Great for hiring specialist roles in tech, finance, healthcare, and other competitive fields.

• Diversity-focused events: Build connections with underrepresented groups by partnering with community networks.

• Internal talent showcases: Open up opportunities for internal mobility and employee referrals.

• Live chat hiring events: Perfect for high-volume roles. These real-time, text-based events allow recruiters to connect instantly with multiple candidates, answer common questions, pre-screen interest, and direct talent to apply.

Selecting your event format that aligns with your hiring goals will ensure you  can reach and engage the right talent that meets your needs.

 

Set your team up for success: Prep for event impact

The best recruitment events start well before anyone walks through the door. Internal readiness is key to delivering a seamless, high-impact experience.

• Brief your team: Make sure recruiters and hiring managers are aligned on messaging, event goals, and what success looks like.

• Equip your people: Provide key talking points, highlight priority roles, and give them real-time access to your CRM or lead capture tools.

• Align follow-up plans: Who’s responsible for follow-up? What’s the timeline? When this is planned ahead of time, post-event engagement is faster and more personalisedpersonalized.

Strong internal alignment ensures that every candidate conversation is consistent, valuable, and memorable.

 

Designing an event experience candidates remember

First impressions count. Whether your event is in person or virtual, candidate experience should be front and center.

• Make it easy to engage: Use pre-event email reminders, mobile check-in, and QR codes to streamline access.

• Create two-way conversations: Let candidates meet hiring managers, ask questions, or see behind-the-scenes culture videos.

• Close the loop: Follow up after the event with personalisedpersonalized messages and relevant next steps – whether it’s joining your talent community or applying for a role.

When candidates feel seen, heard, and valued, your brand stands out.

 

Measure what matters: Tracking event ROI and impact

To prove the value of your recruitment events (and improve them over time) you need to track what works.

Key metrics to measure:

• Number of attendees
• Qualified leads captured
• Conversion to application or hire
• Engagement with landing pages and follow-up emails
• Cost per lead or cost per hire

PageUp Clinch makes this easy by tying all activity back to your CRM. With real-time tracking and reporting, you can see what’s driving results and optimiseoptimize your strategy for the next event.

 

Power up your recruitment events with PageUp Clinch

Makes running standout recruitment events simple and scalable with Page Clinch recruitment marketing platform. From capturing candidate info to post-event follow-up, it’s built to drive results:

• Capture on the go: Use Clinch’s iOS or Web Kiosk to collect resumes and details instantly, right into your CRM.

• Smart segmentation: Automatically tag candidates by skills, role, or criteria to fuel targeted talent pipelines.

• Event landing pages: Launch branded, no-code pages to promote events, capture interest, and convert visitors.

• QR code integration: Let attendees scan and connect on the spot – boosting real-time engagement and traffic.

• Custom CTAs and forms: Create tailored forms that capture the data you actually need.

• Post-event nurture: Trigger automated, personalisedpersonalized follow-ups to keep candidates warm and moving forward.

 

Customer highlight: PagerDuty’s success at RenderATL

 

PagerDuty’s hiring team knocked it out of the park at RenderATL – powered by PageUp Clinch event capabilities. Their approach was seamless – designed to build relationships with top talent from the moment they walked through the door.

At the heart of their strategy was a dedicated landing page, featuring custom, targeted content that resonated with the event’s audience and showcased PagerDuty’s employer brand. But they didn’t stop there: to bridge the gap between in-person interactions and their online presence, they placed QR codes on their booth – and even on giveaway cookies! Making it fun and effortless for attendees to engage with PagerDuty, explore their tailored landing page with open roles, dive deeper into their culture and a CTA to join their talent community.

The team kept the conversation going with automated email blasts during the event, encouraging booth visitors to stay connected. Candidates were then placed into automated workflows, ensuring ongoing connection after the event.

This strategic combination of Clinch’s event features and automation tools helped PagerDuty engage both active and passive candidates. In short? Recruitment events (done right) can truly transform the hiring process.

 

Recruitment events are more than just opportunities to fill open positions – they’re a chance to grow your talent community, engage with passive candidates, and showcase your employer brand. In a time when digital outreach alone isn’t enough, events help you stand out and create meaningful moments of connection.

 

Transform your recruitment events into seamless, impactful experiences. Learn how PageUp Clinch can help you take yours to the next level. Request a demo today.

Skills-based hiring is on the rise, with a notable 11% increase in adoption last year. As organisationsorganizations face skills shortages, and the need to build diverse and agile workforces, hiring teams are exploring non-traditional recruitment methods in their quest for talent.

As the skills-based hiring approach remains unchartered territory for many organisationsorganizations, let’s break down what skills-based hiring is, its benefits, and how you can get started. 

 

What is skills-based hiring?

Skills-based hiring focuses on evaluating candidates based on their skills, capabilities, and potential rather than traditional criteria like education, qualifications, or work experience. This approach uses a skills ontology, a method for defining and measuring relationships between skills, jobs, and people. It creates a dynamic language that connects skills across various roles, industries, and subject areas.

 

The benefits of skills-based hiring

Increase talent pools

By looking beyond formal qualifications and job history, skills-based hiring uncovers a broader range of skilled professionals who might otherwise be overlooked. This method can expand your talent pipeline by more than nine times, increasing your chances of finding the perfect fit for your team.

 

Improve DEI

Focusing on skills rather than traditional qualifications levels the playing field for underrepresented groups who have followed alternative educational or career paths. An astounding 90% of employers using skills-based hiring have observed an increase in workplace diversity.

 

Create organisationalorganizational agility

Shifting from rigid job requirements to a skills-based framework allows for greater flexibility. Companies can quickly adapt to changing economic or market conditions by reallocating employees based on the skills needed. Skills-based organisationsorganizations are 57% more likely to anticipate and respond to change effectively.

 

Drive performance and innovation

Hiring based on skills accelerates the time to productivity. Skills are five times more predictive of job performance than education and twice as predictive as work experience. By assembling teams with diverse skill sets, you can foster an environment fit for innovation.

 

Enhance development and retention

As business needs evolve, so do the required skills. Understanding your team’s skills allows for targeted upskilling and reskilling. Providing ongoing development opportunities increases engagement and retention, with 56% of people leaders noting improved talent retention from skills-based hiring.

 

How to establish a skills-based approach

 

1. Set your goals

Start by defining why you want to adopt a skills-based approach. Whether it’s to diversify your talent pool or build a more agile workforce, having clear objectives will guide your process. For example “to access a more diverse talent pool” or “to build an agile workforce that can quickly adapt to future business needs”.

 

2. Build the foundation

One of the main challenges is defining a common language for skills. A skills taxonomy categorisescategorizes skills into groups and clusters, making it easier to identify and manage them across your organisationorganization.

 

3. Determine future needs

Align your talent strategy with your business goals. Identify the capabilities needed to meet future demands and the skills required to build those capabilities. This alignment helps you organiseorganize work around these skills, identify gaps, and refine your talent acquisition strategy.

 

4. Manage the transition

Changing established mindsets and practices is the biggest hurdle. Engage and educate your stakeholders on the benefits and methods of skills-based hiring. Equip recruiters and hiring managers with the tools and training they need to assess and evaluate skills effectively. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so identify the different types of tools to meet your requirements and find what works best for your organisationorganization‘s unique needs.

 

5. Start small and scale

Don’t try to overhaul everything at once. Start with a key talent segment or a specific business unit. Implement the approach, learn from the experience, and gradually expand.

 

Steps to running a skill-based hiring process

1. Engage stakeholders

As a recruiter, when commencing a hiring process the hiring manager is your greatest ally. Collaborate closely to define the essential skills of the position, leaving out those that can be easily taught on the job. Dive deep into the role’s daily tasks, challenges, and expectations by discussing them with managers, team members, or even department leads. This will provide valuable insight to prioritiseprioritize the most critical skills for the new hire.

 

2. Identify transferable skills

Switching the focus from specific qualifications or roles to skills can greatly expand your talent pool. A common, dynamic understanding of the connections between skills allows you to spot transferable skills from candidates, even if they haven’t worked in your industry before. Here’s how to do it:

• Review the job description: Thoroughly examine the job description and responsibilities to pinpoint the necessary skills.
• Analyse similar job listings: Research and cross-reference similar job postings to get a broader view of the common skills required. Consider adjacent roles to understand transferable skill sets.
• PrioritisePrioritize essential skills: Focus on the must-have skills and avoid an overly long list that might scare off potential candidates.
• Include soft skills: Think beyond technical and hard skills. Consider essential soft skills, which are increasingly important, especially in hybrid and remote roles.
• Keep the future in mind: Think about how the role might evolve and what skills will be important in the future, such as AI-related skills.

Once you’ve gathered this information, you’ll have a comprehensive list of skills required for the position.

 

3. Sourcing for skills

Now, it’s time to start your search and attract talent with the skills you’re looking for. Make sure to:

• Review the position description: Clearly outline the required skills, including technical and soft skills, and specify the level of proficiency needed. Clearly communicate the business impact of the role.
• Craft your job advertisementadvertizement: Focus on skills and capabilities, removing unnecessary qualifications that could deter good candidates. Use inclusive language to attract a diverse range of applicants.
• Consider both internal and external talent pools: Ask yourself if you can fill the position by upskilling current employees or if you need to hire externally. Use talent pooling to create a ready list of candidates whose skills are already known, making the hiring process quicker and more efficient.

 

4. Screening for skills

Recruitment technology plays a key role in supporting skills-based hiring. When screening resumes and candidate matching within your applicant tracking system (ATS), focus on skills rather than specific job titles or credentials. Be aware that candidates from other industries might use different terminology to describe their skills. A candidate’s resume might not perfectly match your search terms but could still be a great fit based on their skills. You’ll only know if you take the time to read the resume.

Watch out for unconscious bias—don’t make decisions based on education, degrees, or past employers. Instead, focus on the skills and potential a candidate brings to the table. It is also important to bear in mind that in the age of generative AI, 45% of job seekers are using AI tools to enhance their resumes.

Some companies use skill assessments early in the process, especially in high-volume recruitment situations. These assessments, such as video interviews, chat functionality, AI skills matching, and job simulations, provide a consistent process for all candidates, reducing bias.

 

5. Selecting for skills

Finally, assess candidates’ capabilities through interviews, assessments, and tests. Competency-based interviews, which use behavioural and situational questions, are a great way to evaluate specific skills. For example, ask, “Describe a project where you had to use different leadership styles to reach your goal” or “Tell me about a time you needed to influence people with different priorities from yours.” These questions help you understand how candidates apply their skills in real situations.

Use various assessments, such as psychometric testing, job knowledge tests, and practical assignments, to evaluate candidates’ skills. These assessments help ensure that you’re selecting candidates who are not only capable for the role but also fit well within your organisationorganization.

The future of skills is rapidly evolving. By embedding a skills-based hiring approach within your organisationorganization, you can tap into a broader talent pool, foster a more inclusive workplace, and become more agile. Use these steps to get started, build on and adjust to meet your organisationorganization’s needs. And remember, ensuring you have stakeholders buy in and the technology to execute is crucial in effectively running a skills-based hiring process.

Learn more about how the PageUp Talent Acquisition Suite can support you on your skills-based hiring journey and request a demo today.

Long gone are the days of publishing a job ad in the newspaper. Today, we can’t imagine hiring without digital job boards, automated communications, or virtual interviewing. Technology continues transforming how we hire, with the latest and greatest talk of the town being Artificial Intelligence (AI). With AI adoption rapidly rising and the candidate experience at the top of mind, talent acquisition teams are navigating how to strike the right balance between using AI without losing the human touch.

Let’s dissect the most talked about topic in recruitment this year, uncovering how AI is adopted, what to be aware of, and its impact on the future role of talent acquisition.

 

How AI is used in recruitment

The most common areas in which HR functions use AI are recruitment, interviewing and hiring. In other words, Talent Acquisition. The types of AI utilisedutilized can be categorisedcategorized into two key areas: Foundational AI and Generative AI (Gen AI). Foundational AI works to streamline hiring processes by providing intelligent recommendations to speed up hiring decisions, while Gen AI leverages the power of machine learning to produce new text, images, or video in response to prompts. Both Foundational and Gen AI are immensely valuable for busy hiring teams, with nearly 9 in 10 using AI to save time or increase their efficiency, allowing HR to prioritiseprioritize tasks that need human intelligence.

Below are some key areas where recruitment teams are currently using AI throughout hiring processes:

• Candidate sourcing: AI intelligence can help with candidate rediscovery by surfacing silver medalists, skills matching and using data to predict and build talent pipelines to speed up sourcing.
• Candidate experience: Foundational AI can suggest job recommendations or blog posts to candidates on your careerscareer site, delivering a more personalisedpersonalized experience. Gen AI can quickly compose candidate communications for use in email or text quickly.
• Chatbots: To enhance candidate engagement, chatbots are used to provide real-time responses 24/7, application assistance, and preliminary assessments.
• Generating Content: Gen AI can be used as a starting point to help form copy for job advertisements or descriptions for a target audience and help remove bias from the language used.
• Interviews: AI tools can support interview scheduling, screening and management. Gen AI can craft interview questions or develop interview guides to streamline processes.
• SummarisingSummarizing or analysing resumes: AI can be used to summarisesummarize CVs or compare suitability to job descriptions to fast-track the screening process.

We are scratching the surface of how AI could evolve to support recruitment processes further. Staying on top of what AI recruitment technology and tools are at your disposal will keep your talent acquisition strategy ahead of the curve.

 

Key considerations when using AI in recruitment

Without a doubt AI has many benefits that support busy and time-poor recruitment teams. But amidst the excitement of AI, there are things you need to keep in mind to help achieve the ultimate balance between efficiency and outcomes.

 

Maintaining decision making

One of the top considerations is maintaining the human touch and intelligence. Defining what you are and are not using AI for can guide this. Let AI do some of the heavy lifting whilst leaving humans to make the ultimate decisions. When looking at your sourcing strategy, ensure AI is used without impacting candidate privacy, bias and compliance issues. AI can surface potential candidates, but a person should decide who goes through the process. Identifying and training teams on where and how AI is used within your recruitment process with enable you to maintain the ultimate decision making.

 

Employer brand authenticity

When we look at employer branding, authenticity is one of the critical aspects candidates value the most when considering whether they want to work for an organisationorganization. Always ensure communications accurately reflect your brand voice. AI can help as a starting point to build content and generate ideas, but ensure you put your spin on the final result. Use AI to speed up manual processes that don’t require a high level of personalisationpersonalization, giving you time back to focus on elements of the candidate experience within the recruitment processes that value human interaction.

 

Ethical considerations

Instances of bias or unethical outcomes from algorithmic decision-making cast a shadow over the AI-powered recruitment landscape. Despite AI’s ability to reduce bias, if the models are trained on biased or incomplete data sets, they can unintentionally perpetuate inequality. Do your due diligence on what tools are to be embedded in your organisationorganization. Opting for solutions developed with a data-driven approach ensures confidence in the trustworthiness and reliability of any AI recruitment tools integrated into your operations.

Impact on employees

The uncertainty of job displacement has played on many employees’ minds, with concerns of potential losses in the workforce due to automation and AI. Many organisationsorganizations are opting for a blend of AI support and human intervention to address these concerns, aiming to amplify human capabilities rather than replace them. A recent report from the Tech Council of Australia (TCA) forecasted that AI could create 200,000 new jobs by 2030, driving workplace efficiencies and economic growth. Applying a human-centred approach to integrating AI in the workforce will ease concerns and equip employees on how to leverage the technology within their roles.

 

The role of AI in the future of talent acquisition

AI is empowering recruiters to do less ‘filling the funnel’ and more connecting with candidates to find a great match. As AI adoption increases, we will see advanced personalisationpersonalization across the candidate experience. Talent acquisition teams can create automated campaigns to communicate with candidates using historical and predictive data; these campaigns can be personalisedpersonalized and targeted based on the candidate’s past actions, preferences or recruitment stage, to help drive engagement at scale.

AI equips recruiters with invaluable insights and analytics, guiding informed choices based on comprehensive data analysis. Over time, this can elevate the role of talent acquisition within the organisationorganization to focus on more strategic initiatives. When looking at skills recruiters need in the future, a LinkedIn survey showed the top soft skills in the next five years include communication (77%), relationship building (72%), adaptability (63%), problem solving (62%) and critical thinking (61%). Developing more strategic abilities and being adaptable and receptive to learning new skills will make it easier to embrace AI-powered recruitment tools.

Due to the acceleration of AI technology, it is predicted that by 2030 the skills required for a role will change by 65%. A shift to skills-focused operating models is becoming increasingly popular in order to achieve greater agility within organisationsorganizations. The integration of AI technology and skills-based approaches will transform the TA landscape, enhancing abilities to forecast talent shortages, match talent with skills more effectively, and uncover new talent pool opportunities. If adopted, TA can better prepare organisationorganization for the future by becoming more adaptable to talent shifts, reducing bias in hiring processes and enhancing employee engagement across the board.

The future of recruitment is undoubtedly intertwined with the responsible integration of AI and the evolving regulatory landscape. Greater transparency will emerge as a cornerstone to ease concerns regarding AI ethics. AI promises a more efficient, personalisedpersonalized, and engaging recruitment environment. Striking the right balance between technological advancements, ethical considerations, and human-centric approaches will ensure long-term recruitment success. How will your team harness AI in the year ahead?

Learn more about how PageUp’s powerful AI capabilities can help you enhance recruiter productivity and deliver impactful candidate experiences.