Talent Acquisition

From recruiting astronauts who can spend months together in isolation to assembling teams capable of landing on the Moon, exploring Mars and solving problems no one has encountered before, NASA has spent decades answering questions that every organization is now beginning to face.

The future of talent isn't simply about hiring faster. It's about identifying potential before it is visible, building teams that thrive under pressure, preparing for jobs that don't yet exist and ensuring people and AI work together when the stakes are highest. After all, if little green men did appear tomorrow, your hiring process probably isn't ready for them.

Join former NASA Associate Administrator Robert Gibbs as he explores what every business can learn from one of the world's most mission-critical organizations.

In this session, you'll discover:

• What 'mission critical thinking' looks like and how leaders can apply it to building future-ready organizations on Earth
• Why hiring for curiosity, adaptability and judgment increasingly matters more than hiring for experience alone
• How NASA identifies talent for missions that may not launch for another decade and what this teaches us about Strategic Workforce Planning
• Where AI agents can transform sourcing, workforce planning and talent decisions and where human judgment must remain firmly in control
• What recruiting astronauts reveals about resilience, collaboration, trust and leadership under extreme pressure
• How to build teams capable of solving problems that have never existed before in an age where AI is changing every role
• Why the organizations that thrive won't simply automate recruitment, but will redesign how humans and AI make better decisions together

HR leaders are under growing pressure to deliver strategic value while continuing to manage the operational work that keeps organizations running. As expectations increase, the opportunity is not simply to automate individual tasks, but to redesign how HR operates freeing teams to focus on the decisions that have the greatest impact on people and business performance.

Explore how leading organizations are using AI to simplify the employee lifecycle, reduce administrative burden and enable HR to become a more strategic partner across the business.

The decisions you need to make

How do we reduce operational complexity while increasing HR's strategic contribution?

The decisions your team needs to make

Which HR activities can be automated through AI, and where does human expertise deliver the greatest value?

The decisions your organization needs to make

How do we build an HR operating model that combines intelligent automation with trusted people data to improve employee and business outcomes?

You'll also see how Personio supports the full employee lifecycle through AI-powered recruiting, payroll, pay fairness and self-service, helping HR teams automate routine work while empowering managers and employees to do more independently.

Application volumes are rising, but hiring confidence isn't. As AI transforms recruitment, traditional indicators of candidate fit are becoming less reliable, leaving talent acquisition teams with more applications to review but less certainty about who to progress.

Explore how leading organizations are rethinking hiring for the AI era, using agentic AI to reduce screening complexity, improve decision-making and enable recruiters to focus on the moments where human judgment has the greatest impact.

The decisions you need to make

How do we identify genuine candidate potential when the CV is no longer a reliable indicator of fit?

The decisions your team needs to make

Where should AI support screening and shortlisting, and where does human expertise deliver the greatest value?

The decisions your organization needs to make

How do we build a hiring strategy that improves quality, reduces inefficiency and balances automation with better recruitment outcomes?

Every company will have access to the same AI models, platforms and tools. The real differentiator will be how quickly organizations can develop people, build new capabilities and continuously adapt as work evolves and the organizations that get this right will be the ones that never lose sight of what makes work human.

The organizations pulling ahead are shifting their investment from simply deploying technology to creating cultures where learning, mobility and human potential accelerate faster than the pace of technological change. This is where the next generation of talent strategy will be won.

Discussion themes:

• Why learning agility is becoming a greater competitive advantage than technical expertise
• Moving beyond hiring skills to building organizations that continuously create new capability
• How AI should strengthen human judgment, creativity and employee experience rather than simply automating work
• Why internal mobility, leadership and manager capability will matter more than even in a human-AI driven enterprise
• The new role of HR in leading the business to adapt faster than technology changes and in doing so, driving positive change well beyond the organization
• What tomorrow's talent strategy looks like when the pace of change becomes the only constant