A recruitment leader's read on AI.
Short, sharp columns on what the week in artificial intelligence means for the people who hire, written from the desk of a firm that places the engineers everyone is arguing about. Two to three a week. No hype, no listicles.
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14 October 2026 · Column 083 · 1 min
Your interview notes just became legal documents
A judge has ordered OpenAI to hand Apple its interview materials for former Apple staff. The hiring process is now discoverable, and that reprices who you let run it.
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13 October 2026 · Column 082 · 2 min
The EU AI Act Just Created a Hiring Problem
Compliance deadlines are arriving for small and mid-sized companies, and the scarce hire is the person who can read both the regulation and the model.
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12 October 2026 · Column 081 · 2 min
Chatbot disclosure laws just created a new hiring brief
California and Europe are writing disclosure into law for conversational AI. The obligation does not land on legal. It lands on whoever owns the system.
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11 October 2026 · Column 080 · 2 min
Apple Just Paid for a Team, Not a Product
Apple's Huxe deal licenses the technology and hires the people who built it. The second half of that sentence is the part worth reading twice.
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10 October 2026 · Column 079 · 2 min
The EU just turned disclosure into an engineering job
Brussels is extending AI labelling rules from video to text. The hiring consequence is a premium on people who can prove where any output came from.
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9 October 2026 · Column 078 · 2 min
A safety hire who cannot escalate is just decoration
Three fired OpenAI researchers warn of a chilling effect on safety culture. The hiring read is about reporting lines, not mission statements.
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8 October 2026 · Column 077 · 1 min
Watermarked AI text puts a price on the human signature
OpenAI will watermark ChatGPT text in the EU under the AI Act. The hiring consequence is that provenance, not production, becomes the scarce skill.
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7 October 2026 · Column 076 · 2 min
The AI Act Just Created a Job Nobody Has Hired For
OpenAI is watermarking text in the EU for AI Act compliance. The hiring effect is bigger than the technical one: governance becomes a seat, not a document.
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6 October 2026 · Column 075 · 2 min
The expat job guide is really a shortage report
A DutchReview guide for expats arriving in 2026 is really a disclosure about employers. Why the ability to hire across borders is now the scarce asset.
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3 October 2026 · Column 074 · 2 min
Europe Is Paying Up for the People Who Keep the Racks Running
Data centre hiring is climbing across Europe and wages with it. The constraint on AI capacity is not land or chips. It is a thin layer of operational talent.
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2 October 2026 · Column 073 · 2 min
ElevenLabs just repriced its own engineers
ElevenLabs doubled its valuation to $22bn in a tender offer. The headline reads as a financing story. The real move is paying the people inside.
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1 October 2026 · Column 072 · 2 min
ElevenLabs lands in Brussels and your shortlist just shrank
ElevenLabs is opening in Brussels and tripling its Belgian team. The news is not civic. It is a repricing notice for every employer hiring AI talent in the Benelux.
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28 September 2026 · Column 071 · 2 min
Agentic AI rules are an engineering hire, not a legal one
Europe wants an operational framework for AI agents that act. The people who can build one are far scarcer than the people who can build the agent.
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27 September 2026 · Column 070 · 2 min
The EU Makes the Employer Own the AI Hiring Decision
European guidance puts GDPR and AI Act duties on the company doing the hiring, not the vendor. That quietly reprices who has to sign off on a shortlist.
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26 September 2026 · Column 069 · 2 min
The EU AI Act Will Be Enforced On Your Engineers
The EU AI Act phases in obligation by obligation, and the compliance calendar keeps being revised. What that repricing means for who you hire next.
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25 September 2026 · Column 068 · 2 min
The Hiring Slowdown Arrived Before The Adoption Did
Goldman Sachs finds only four countries past 20% AI adoption while tech hiring slows. Most headcount plans are priced on promised AI, not deployed AI.
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24 September 2026 · Column 067 · 2 min
Recruitment Agencies Just Got Priced On Judgment
A $21M Series A to bring agentic AI to recruitment agencies. The repricing it signals is not about fewer recruiters, but about which ones remain worth paying for.
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23 September 2026 · Column 063 · 1 min
Hiring Software Gets Funded, Hiring Judgment Gets Scarcer
Spott raised $21 million for recruitment software. The capital keeps flowing to finding candidates, while the real bottleneck has quietly moved to deciding on them.
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22 September 2026 · Column 066 · 2 min
The model builders are buying the application layer
Mistral paid €12.7m for an adtech startup. The premium in AI hiring is shifting from model expertise toward people who know where to point it.
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21 September 2026 · Column 065 · 1 min
OpenAI wants a rulebook, and that changes who you hire
OpenAI is asking Washington to write global AI standards. The hiring consequence is a shortage of people who can prove what a model actually does.
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20 September 2026 · Column 064 · 2 min
Amazon Is Closing The Factory That Taught The Machines
Mechanical Turk shuts down on September 30. The human judgment it collected did not stop being valuable. It stopped being something you could buy by the task.
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19 September 2026 · Column 062 · 2 min
The Jobs Pessimism Is a Hiring Signal, Not a Mood
Pew finds the public deeply pessimistic about AI and jobs. Most hiring leaders read that as noise. It is closer to a forecast of who will say yes to you.
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18 September 2026 · Column 061 · 2 min
Pessimism About AI Is Now a Hiring Constraint
A global survey finds more people expect AI to destroy jobs than to create growth. That belief, not the technology, is quietly shaping who applies.
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17 September 2026 · Column 060 · 2 min
The Dutch market did not get the cooling memo
The Netherlands holds the EU's highest vacancy rate while the bloc's average falls. Benchmark to the market you hire in, not the headline.
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16 September 2026 · Column 055 · 2 min
AI budgets get approved faster than they get staffed
Mercer argues the gap between AI investment and AI impact is a people problem. That gap is quietly repricing the hires who carry systems into live work.
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15 September 2026 · Column 059 · 2 min
A Voice Changer Ships to Every Pocket and Console
Voicemod is putting synthetic voice on phones and consoles. The talent question is who in your company owns identity when a voice stops proving anything.
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14 September 2026 · Column 058 · 2 min
Europe Is Hiring Its AI Rules Into Existence
The call for an independent EU digital enforcer is a hiring story before it is a legal one. Rules only bind when someone competent can read the system.
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13 September 2026 · Column 057 · 1 min
Nvidia Wants to Self-Regulate. Hire Accordingly.
Jensen Huang says AI safety can be engineered by each product maker. If that holds, safety stops being a compliance cost and becomes an engineering headcount line.
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12 September 2026 · Column 056 · 1 min
AEG bought local judgment it could not hire
AEG Presents took a stake in a Benelux promoter, and the real asset was never the events. It was the small group of people who know the market.
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11 September 2026 · Column 054 · 2 min
Regulation Is Quietly Rewriting the AI Hiring Job Spec
Europe made explainable hiring software a legal requirement first. The talent consequence is a premium on people who can account for a model, not just ship it.
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10 September 2026 · Column 053 · 2 min
Nobody Asked For A Focus Group Of Robots
AI startups now simulate customer panels to predict what people want. The market lesson is about which kind of judgment a company can safely rent out.
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9 September 2026 · Column 052 · 2 min
The deployment gap is now the hiring gap
Google Cloud's Accenture deal says the bottleneck in enterprise AI is deployment, not capability. What that repricing means for who you hire next.
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8 September 2026 · Column 051 · 1 min
The Belgian army is beating your AI team on hiring
Belgium's army opened its recruitment year with record applications. What it sells is not salary, and that should worry anyone hiring AI and data talent.
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7 September 2026 · Column 050 · 2 min
Developing talent is not the same as owning it
Two national teams competed for one player developed in Eindhoven, and the surprise ending says something uncomfortable about how companies hold on to the people they trained.
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6 September 2026 · Column 049 · 2 min
The River Cleaner Who Never Sent A CV
An unsolicited river-cleaning effort produced a job offer from the Netherlands. What that says about which hiring signals still carry information in 2026.
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5 September 2026 · Column 048 · 2 min
A restructuring is really a knowledge decision
Almost 350 jobs are at risk at D'Ieteren Automotive. No AI in that headline, which is exactly why it tells you how the talent market now works.
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4 September 2026 · Column 047 · 2 min
The macro data will not tell you when AI hits your team
Goldman Sachs is still asking whether AI is moving labour markets. Aggregate data is the wrong instrument for anyone making hiring decisions right now.
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3 September 2026 · Column 046 · 2 min
An AI agent will run your hiring bar, not fix it
Phenom is putting AI agents for hiring and retention on the conference floor this autumn. What they automate is coordination. The judgment is still yours to write.
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2 September 2026 · Column 045 · 2 min
The robot can make the ad. It cannot sign it.
A legal briefing on machine-made advertising says more about hiring than about marketing. When generation gets cheap, the scarce skill is being able to sign the output.
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1 September 2026 · Column 044 · 2 min
The candidates Brussels rejects are still available
Brussels employers still reject people over age or a headscarf. That is not only an injustice. It is a pricing error, and AI screening is about to scale it.
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31 August 2026 · Column 043 · 2 min
Biology is becoming engineering, and hiring follows
Vijay Pande left a four billion dollar biotech practice to bet smaller. The shift from discovery science to engineering reprices who you hire.
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30 August 2026 · Column 042 · 2 min
Haas Is Hiring Drivers It Does Not Need Yet
Haas ran Ferrari-linked drivers at Portimão for a seat that is not open. The talent-market lesson for anyone hiring AI and data people in 2026.
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29 August 2026 · Column 041 · 2 min
A jobs portal cannot close a skills gap
South Africa's ICT association launched a portal to close its tech jobs gap. Access to candidates was never the bottleneck. The judgment to convert them is.
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28 August 2026 · Column 040 · 2 min
The Dutch chip boom is repricing every technical hire
Dutch chipmaking turnover hit 46 billion euros while jobs nearly doubled. The real story is not semiconductors. It is what the cluster now does to the price of engineers.
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27 August 2026 · Column 039 · 2 min
A protected job is a job the market stopped defending
Bill Gates wants certain jobs reserved for humans and AI tokens taxed. The proposal quietly tells you which work the market has already stopped defending.
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26 August 2026 · Column 038 · 1 min
The AI talent gap is closing and your salary bands have not noticed
The US still leads on AI talent, but the gap is closing. What that means for European hiring plans built on the assumption that the best people are always elsewhere.
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25 August 2026 · Column 037 · 1 min
Headcount is the weakest number in your hiring plan
A national jobs count says nothing about capability. Why headcount is the weakest number in a hiring plan, and the one question that should replace it.
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24 August 2026 · Column 036 · 2 min
Your Agents Cannot Use What You Never Named Properly
A new arXiv paper on skill routing in agent harnesses says something blunt about hiring: the ability to describe a capability precisely is now infrastructure.
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23 August 2026 · Column 035 · 2 min
Nvidia Is Financing the Demand for Its Own Chips
Nvidia's investment in data center developer Cloverleaf closes a loop between spending and revenue. What that circularity means for how you hire against the AI buildout.
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22 August 2026 · Column 034 · 1 min
The recruiter rebound is telling you the market got harder
UK recruiters rebounded while European hiring stayed weak. That split is not a contradiction. It is what a market looks like when scarcity replaces volume.
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21 August 2026 · Column 033 · 2 min
AI Is Quietly Closing The Door On Junior Talent
Goldman Sachs finds AI hitting entry-level jobs hardest. The seniors your systems will depend on in five years have to come from somewhere.
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20 August 2026 · Column 032 · 2 min
Goldman asked where AI squeezes labour, not how much
Goldman's study asks where AI is squeezing labour markets, not how much. The uneven answer is the part most hiring plans still fail to price correctly.
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19 August 2026 · Column 031 · 2 min
Agentic AI Turns Judgment Into an Execution Boundary
A new runtime governance paper marks the shift from AI that writes text to AI that takes actions, and it changes which engineers a company cannot afford to lose.
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18 August 2026 · Column 030 · 2 min
When a Startup Dies, Its Team Becomes the Asset
Relay shut down and its staff went to Google's Chrome team. The acqui-hire is quietly becoming the default way applied AI capability changes hands.
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17 August 2026 · Column 029 · 1 min
Europe just made provenance a hiring problem
Europe's new AI transparency rules land on the org chart, not on the model. Why the next scarce hire is the person who can prove where an output came from.
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16 August 2026 · Column 028 · 2 min
When investors start doing the recruiting
Investors are stepping into hiring at the companies they back. That is not a portfolio perk. It is capital telling you where the real bottleneck now sits.
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15 August 2026 · Column 027 · 2 min
A layoff aimed at AI is really a hiring plan
Atlassian is cutting 1,600 jobs while shifting focus to AI. The reduction is the visible half of the announcement. The rebuild is the half that matters for hiring.
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14 August 2026 · Column 026 · 1 min
The Jobs Number Is the Easy Part
Daikin is putting US$270.2 million and 8,000 jobs into Tijuana. The capital clears in a day. The senior talent that makes the ramp work does not.
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13 August 2026 · Column 025 · 1 min
The Dutch cabinet just repriced senior talent
The Netherlands published a national talent strategy for high tech. Read closely, it is the largest buyer in the market admitting where the real scarcity sits.
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12 August 2026 · Column 024 · 1 min
The Split In The Job Numbers Is The Signal
AI reports say jobs are vanishing and multiplying at once. The contradiction is not noise, it is the shape of the change, and it decides your next hire.
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11 August 2026 · Column 023 · 1 min
The Hiring Freeze And The AI Scramble Are One Budget
GenAI job postings top the charts in India and the US even as tech hiring cools. That is not two markets. It is one market quietly repricing senior talent.
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9 August 2026 · Column 022 · 1 min
Fear moves European workers, money moves American ones
In the US higher pay drives the job hunt; in Europe it is fear of getting fired. Same restlessness, two very different markets to hire in.
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8 August 2026 · Column 021 · 1 min
AI in hiring does not remove judgment, it relocates it
USPS is exploring AI in hiring while promising no one will be replaced. The reassurance quietly reveals where the real value in recruiting is moving.
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7 August 2026 · Column 020 · 1 min
The UK Just Widened the Door for Senior Talent
The UK's expanded talent visa list is less about immigration policy and more about which companies get first access to scarce senior AI hires.
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6 August 2026 · Column 019 · 1 min
Compliance Is Becoming Europe's AI Talent Filter
As EU AI Act enforcement tightens, the scarce hire isn't the model builder. It's the person who can defend the model in front of a regulator.
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5 August 2026 · Column 018 · 1 min
The €114K Number Everyone Will Misread
New Western European data science salary data tells a story about scarcity, not generosity. Here is what hiring leaders should take from it.
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4 August 2026 · Column 017 · 1 min
The UK Job Market Is Splitting in Two
UK hiring is falling overall while demand for AI specialists hits record highs. What that split means for anyone building a technical team.
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3 August 2026 · Column 016 · 1 min
The Interview Is No Longer Proof of a Person
Eleven nations warn North Korean operatives are using real-time deepfakes to pass hiring interviews. What that means for how you verify who you hire.
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2 August 2026 · Column 015 · 1 min
Career Success Is Being Redefined, Not Removed
KPMG says AI is redefining career success. The real question for hiring leaders is who gets to define it inside their own walls.
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30 July 2026 · Column 014 · 1 min
UK AI Adoption Hits 35% Without the Layoffs
UK firms passed 35% AI adoption without the mass layoffs everyone predicted. What that means for how companies should actually be hiring.
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29 July 2026 · Column 013 · 1 min
Visionaries Bets Its Next Fund on Two People
A VC firm cut its investment team to two lead partners for its next fund. What that says about how firms are pricing conviction over headcount.
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28 July 2026 · Column 012 · 1 min
The Import Shortcut Always Costs the Pipeline
College soccer's foreign talent influx mirrors a hiring mistake I see in AI teams: buying finished talent while starving the pipeline that grows it.
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27 July 2026 · Column 011 · 1 min
Nothing's cuts show where efficiency drives really go
Nothing's reported 100-job cut is less about AI replacing people and more about where the company thinks leverage now sits.
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26 July 2026 · Column 010 · 1 min
Firing the Marketing Team Is Not the Strategy
A Hims cofounder cut his whole marketing team for AI and grew 20% a month. The lesson is not the layoff, it is who was left standing.
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25 July 2026 · Column 009 · 1 min
The Salary Rankings Are a Retention Warning
European startups topping salary tables are not flexing. They are telling you where senior AI talent will move next.
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24 July 2026 · Column 008 · 1 min
The EU Wants AI Screening It Cannot Yet Explain
The EU Commission is being grilled over plans to use AI in its own recruitment. The scrutiny is a preview of what every employer will face next.
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22 July 2026 · Column 007 · 1 min
A VC Reshuffles Its Team Before the Money Arrives
Visionaries' pre-fund investment team shake-up signals what backers now want from the people who pick the winners.
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20 July 2026 · Column 006 · 1 min
The AI Act's Hiring Rules Are Already Late
Brussels delays biometrics and hiring rules to 2027, but the companies that wait until the deadline to build compliance judgment will pay for it twice.
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17 July 2026 · Column 005 · 1 min
New York's Moratorium Is a Talent Signal Too
A proposed New York AI data center moratorium is a warning about where infrastructure investment, and the jobs behind it, will actually land.
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15 July 2026 · Column 004 · 1 min
Europe's Scale-Ups Forget Who Governs the AI
Europe's AI scale-ups are raising capital and hiring builders fast, but governance hiring is lagging behind, and that gap will cost them.
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13 July 2026 · Column 003 · 1 min
TCS Is Hiring Its Way Into the AI Services Wars
TCS plans up to 8,900 AI deployment engineers and is hunting acquisitions. The signal: AI demand is creating a new hiring category, not shrinking headcount.
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11 July 2026 · Column 002 · 1 min
Automated Hiring Just Lost Its Legal Cover
EU regulators confirm automated hiring has breached GDPR Article 22 since 2018. What that means for who gets hired to fix it.
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10 July 2026 · Column 001 · 2 min
Ford just paid twice for the same lesson
Ford replaced veteran engineering judgment with AI tooling, watched quality slip, then rehired three hundred veterans to train the AI. The market is quietly repricing senior expertise, and most hiring plans haven't noticed yet.
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