In this episode, recorded at Dreamforce 2026, Denis Machuel, CEO of The Adecco Group, joins Kyle to discuss how AI agents are changing recruitment, workforce strategy, and the day-to-day work of recruiters. Denis explains how Adecco is moving from isolated AI pilots to scaled deployment across its business, with a focus on keeping people at the center of the transformation.
They discuss Ada, Adecco's recruitment agent in the UK, why roughly half of its candidate conversations initially happened outside working hours, and how agents can take over repetitive outreach and first-level screening so recruiters can spend more time on higher-value human conversations.
Denis also breaks down Adecco's work with Salesforce, the rollout of Agentforce Coworker to 27,000 sales professionals and recruiters, the importance of responsible AI and secure data, and why the next challenge is orchestrating multiple agents while bringing humans into the process at the moments where they add the most value.
Key Topics Covered
How AI is changing recruitment at The Adecco Group
Why Adecco moved from broad AI pilots to scaling agents in core workflows
How Ada supports candidate outreach and first-level screening
Why recruiters can spend more time on higher-value human conversations
Adecco's rollout of Agentforce Coworker
Responsible AI, guardrails and secure candidate data
How AI can make recruitment more proactive for candidates and clients
Why agent orchestration and human-in-the-loop design matter
Episode Timestamps
00:00 - Denis' background in computer science and AI
01:50 - The scale of Adecco and the future of work
03:33 - How Ada, Adecco's recruitment agent, works
05:22 - Scaling AI agents across languages and geographies
06:19 - Adecco's partnership with Salesforce and Agentforce
09:05 - Moving from individual AI use to enterprise deployment
10:54 - How a recruiter's workflow is changing with AI agents
13:34 - From reactive recruitment to proactive career support
15:18 - How Adecco measures the success of a hire
16:53 - AI adoption in Europe versus the US
19:15 - Regulation, responsibility and human-centric AI
20:12 - What drives Denis as CEO of The Adecco Group
22:02 - Why agent orchestration is the next big challenge
Where to find Denis:
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/denismachuel/
The Adecco Group - https://www.adeccogroup.com/
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