Yesterday, I was delighted to host the Innovation Showcase Stage at IHR Live London. As the host, it was my privilege to guide both the audience and our esteemed panel of judges through a packed day of presentations, pitches, and groundbreaking insights from some of the leading innovative suppliers in TA. It was clear from the moment I stepped onto the stage that this would be no ordinary event. The buzz in the room was palpable, with an eager audience and a roster of companies ready to showcase just how AI is transforming the recruitment and HR landscape.

The Innovation Showcase at IHR Live wasn’t just an opportunity to hear from suppliers sharing insights and new technologies—it was a competition. This year was our biggest showcase. With the support of StackOne, 16 companies took to the stage to battle it out for the coveted gold, silver, and bronze awards, presenting their innovations designed to revolutionise recruitment processes. The competition was fierce, with each company offering a unique approach to tackling modern recruitment challenges.


One thing I noticed throughout the day was the engagement from our audience and panel of judges. While there was some concern from participants about whether the morning sessions would see fewer questions, I can confidently say that there was no such issue. Everybody actively engaged with each presentation, asking probing and relevant questions that challenged each company to delve deeper into the practicality and impact of their solutions.


By the end of the day, the judges had a difficult task ahead of them—choosing the best of the best from such a strong lineup of innovative companies. It was clear from the deliberations that no single company stood head and shoulders above the rest—each brought something unique to the table. Ultimately, what separated the winners was their ability to demonstrate clear business impact and scalability of their solutions.

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Read on to find out more about each of our 16 innovation showcases...


(And if you want to find out who the winners were, you'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of this article)

Video Production – Alchemy Films (Simon Partington)

    • Overview: Simon from Alchemy Films kicked off the event with an insightful session on the importance of video content in recruitment. They demonstrated how compelling, high-quality video production can not only showcase employer branding but also engage candidates in a more personal way. They shared examples of how video can bring a company’s culture, values, and the day-to-day work environment to life, making it easier for candidates to connect emotionally with potential employers.
    • Key Takeaway: Video storytelling is crucial for companies looking to make an impact and stand out from competitors. With today’s multimedia consumption habits, investing in professional video content can significantly improve engagement and conversion rates.


Candidate Experience – Meet & Engage (Nicola Sullivan)

    • Overview: Nicola discussed the increasingly important role of candidate experience in recruitment. Meet & Engage's solution provides personalised engagement through live chat, chatbots, and virtual events, allowing recruiters to engage candidates in real-time. Nicola emphasised that candidates today expect a seamless and engaging process when applying for jobs, and companies who invest in technology to make that happen will attract higher-quality talent.
    • Key Takeaway: Modern candidates expect real-time communication, and providing personalised engagement, like live chats, can help reduce application abandonment rates and build stronger relationships from the outset.


Early Careers Attraction – NSE Careers Boost (Alex Coulson)

    • Overview: Alex presented on the challenges that organisations face in attracting early-career talent, especially in industries that require niche skills or knowledge. The NSE Careers Boost platform provides a central hub for connecting student e-gaming talent with career resources and entry-level opportunities. By tailoring the candidate journey to the expectations of younger job seekers, NSE helps organisations improve their pipeline of early-career hires.
    • Key Takeaway: Companies must engage with early-career talent differently, offering tailored career development tools and content that resonate with their specific needs and aspirations.


AI Recruitment Screening – Yoono (Louise Donadieu & Stephen Dudley)

    • Overview: Louise and Stephen showcased Yoono's AI-powered screening tool, which is designed to assist recruiters in processing high volumes of applications. Their platform uses advanced machine learning algorithms to quickly and accurately screen candidates based on job requirements, ensuring that only qualified applicants are considered for the next stage of the hiring process. They also spoke about the importance of reducing unconscious bias in early screening.
    • Key Takeaway: AI screening tools like Yoono not only speed up the recruitment process but also help create a fairer system by focusing on objective qualifications rather than subjective judgments.


Skills Assessments – HR Biscuit (Mari Milsom)

  • Overview: Mari introduced HR Biscuit, a skills assessment platform tailored for HR professionals seeking to evaluate candidates' job readiness. The tool offers a range of assessments that measure both hard and soft skills. Mari discussed the importance of accurately assessing candidate skills, particularly for roles where on-the-job success requires a mixture of technical expertise and emotional intelligence.
    • Key Takeaway: HR Biscuit makes it easier for HR professionals to objectively evaluate whether a candidate’s skills align with the job requirements, helping reduce time-to-hire and improve candidate quality.


  • Labour Marketing Analytics – Horsefly (Pawel Humanski)

    • Overview: Pawel presented Horsefly’s labour market analytics platform, which gives companies deep insights into the current talent market. Their solution helps employers understand where talent shortages exist, which skills are in demand, and how much competitors are paying. By using real-time data, recruiters can make more informed hiring decisions and adjust their recruitment strategies to attract top talent.
    • Key Takeaway: The future of recruitment is data-driven. Understanding market dynamics is key to shaping effective talent strategies and staying competitive in a changing labour landscape.


Third-party Recruitment Management Portal – Hiring Hub (Simon Swan)

    • Overview: Simon discussed how Hiring Hub’s platform helps businesses manage third-party recruitment agencies more effectively. Their tool centralises the relationship between employers and recruitment agencies, making it easier to manage job postings, candidate submissions, and agency performance. The session focused on how Hiring Hub helps ensure that businesses get the best results from their agency partnerships.
    • Key Takeaway: Companies that rely on recruitment agencies can improve both efficiency and results by using a management portal that centralises communication, accountability, and performance tracking.


Skills Assessments – Simucall (Marius Hopley)

    • Overview: Simucall, presented by Marius, offers an innovative approach to skills assessments by using interactive simulations. Candidates are placed in real-world scenarios to evaluate their responses and decision-making abilities, making it especially useful for roles requiring customer interaction or problem-solving. Marius emphasised the importance of real-world assessments over traditional written tests.
    • Key Takeaway: Simulation-based assessments provide a more accurate representation of how candidates will perform in the workplace, making them an invaluable tool for roles requiring on-the-spot decision-making and communication skills.


Candidate Experience – Vizzy (Jess Woodward-Jones)

    • Overview: Jess presented Vizzy as a platform that transforms the recruitment process by offering a more interactive and visually engaging candidate experience. Vizzy allows recruiters to gather more personalised insights from candidates by moving away from traditional CVs and introducing a more holistic candidate profile. This includes rich candidate profiles that capture personality, skills, and other relevant data points that go beyond text-based resumes. Vizzy is being used by companies to enhance personality-based hiring and to overcome the limitations of traditional CV screenings.
    • Key Takeaway: Vizzy introduces a refreshing alternative to CV-based recruitment by providing more dynamic and engaging candidate profiles. It offers a personalised experience for both the recruiter and the candidate and focuses on quality over quantity when building talent pools. This approach is particularly valuable in industries where personality and cultural fit are crucial, and it serves as an excellent complement to traditional hiring processes.


ATS Automation – Teamdash (Steve Smith)

  • Overview: Steve presented Teamdash, an ATS platform that automates recruitment tasks to reduce manual workload. The system’s AI can perform resume screening, handle candidate communications, and even schedule interviews, allowing recruiters to focus on higher-level tasks. Steve highlighted the time savings and efficiencies created by automation in high-volume recruitment environments.
  • Key Takeaway: Automating repetitive recruitment tasks can free up valuable time for HR teams, making it easier for them to focus on candidate engagement and strategic recruitment activities.


Conversational AI – Hubert (Greg Dunbar)

  • Overview: Greg showcased Hubert, a conversational AI platform that handles structured candidate interviews at scale. Hubert engages candidates through a structured Q&A format, collecting information and scoring candidates in real-time. It was designed to ensure that all candidates are treated fairly and assessed consistently, while also significantly reducing recruiter workloads.
  • Key Takeaway: Conversational AI like Hubert.AI can streamline the interview process for high-volume roles, ensuring fair, efficient, and consistent assessment of all candidates without requiring significant recruiter intervention.


Hiring Platform – SeeMeHired (Chris Donnelly)

  • Overview: Chris introduced SeeMeHired, a comprehensive hiring platform that aims to make the recruitment process more transparent and efficient for both recruiters and candidates. The platform offers features like job posting management, candidate tracking, and analytics, helping businesses optimise every stage of the hiring process.
  • Key Takeaway: Transparency and efficiency are critical in modern hiring, and platforms like SeeMeHired provide the tools needed to make the recruitment process smoother for all parties involved.


Hiring Operations Platform – JobSync (Nikesh Patel)

  • Overview: Nikesh presented JobSync, a platform designed to eliminate the inefficiencies of applying through multiple ATS systems. By integrating directly with job boards like Indeed and LinkedIn, JobSync ensures that candidates can complete their application process without being redirected, improving completion rates and candidate satisfaction.
  • Key Takeaway: Streamlining the candidate application process by removing unnecessary barriers leads to higher completion rates and better candidate experience, ultimately reducing cost-per-hire.


AI-anonymised 1-way Interviews – airrecruit (Joe Watkins)

  • Overview: Joe presented airrecruit’s AI-anonymised 1-way interview platform, which focuses on reducing unconscious bias by removing visual and auditory cues from interviews. Candidates’ voices are altered to sound the same, and the AI evaluates responses based on content, ensuring a fair and objective selection process.
  • Key Takeaway: Bias-free recruitment is the future, and airrecruit offers a solution that allows companies to select the best talent based on merit without being influenced by irrelevant factors.


Customisable ATS – HARBOUR ATS (Alex Hens)

  • Overview: Alex introduced HARBOUR ATS, a highly customisable applicant tracking system designed to meet the specific needs of individual businesses. HARBOUR combines the flexibility of bespoke systems with the scalability of a multi-tenant solution, ensuring that each company can configure the ATS to suit their unique requirements.
  • Key Takeaway: Businesses often require more customisation than standard ATS systems provide, and HARBOUR ATS offers a solution that can grow and evolve alongside the specific needs of each organisation.


AI Video Interviewing – Vinter (Erdem Can)

  • Overview: Vinter’s AI-powered video interviewing tool leverages AI to assess candidate responses through video. Their platform uses facial recognition, sentiment analysis, and linguistic algorithms to analyse how candidates respond in interviews, providing a comprehensive assessment that goes beyond what traditional interviews can offer.
  • Key Takeaway: AI video interviewing is not just about convenience; it’s also about using advanced technology to ensure that candidates are thoroughly assessed in a way that is both efficient and unbiased.


The Innovation Showcase Stage at IHR Live 2024 offered a truly compelling display of cutting-edge solutions in recruitment and talent acquisition. As the host, I had the privilege of witnessing first-hand the vast potential these innovative suppliers bring to the table, with each company showcasing their ability to rethink and reshape traditional hiring processes. From AI-driven assessments to customisable ATS solutions and engaging candidate experiences, the event highlighted the immense creativity and problem-solving approach that today’s HR tech providers are offering to tackle the industry's biggest challenges.


What stood out most across all sessions was the shared desire to create more human-centric, efficient, and fair hiring processes. Whether it was through enhancing candidate experience, anonymising recruitment to reduce bias, or improving automation in screening, it was clear that recruitment technology is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, and the exhibitors at this event are leading that charge.


It was a delight to engage with such a diverse range of forward-thinking professionals, each offering unique perspectives on how we can move the industry forward. The showcase not only gave a platform for these companies to shine but also provided valuable insights and practical solutions that recruiters can start implementing to improve hiring efficiency and inclusivity in their own organisations.


Announcing the Winners

After a day full of innovation, fresh ideas, and impressive solutions, three companies emerged as the top contenders, showcasing the best of what the event had to offer. After the final keynote of the day, we took to the headline stage to announce the winners:


🥇Gold – NSE Careers Boost

🥈Silver – Hubert

🥉Bronze – Vizzy


The event showcased the true potential of these companies in shaping the future of recruitment, and I look forward to seeing how their innovations continue to impact the industry in the months and years ahead.


Congratulations to all the participants, and especially to our winners for their outstanding contributions!