The last eighteen months rewrote the job. Finance is targeting HR budgets harder than any other function, boards want proof that AI spending produced something, and average CHRO tenure keeps getting shorter. Our panelists are making real decisions under that pressure. They will get into what they are protecting, what they are cutting, and how they are answering the questions coming at them from the board and the rest of the C-suite.

Most organizations have now spent two budget cycles on AI and still cannot say what they got for it. Employees report saving real time; almost nobody has decided what that time is for. Panelists get specific about measurement: what they track, what they stopped tracking, where gains showed up in the numbers, and how they close the distance between what the board expects and what the function can honestly prove.

Application volume is up, traditional screening signals are degraded, and both sides of the table are using the same tools. Panelists will work through what still predicts performance, how they are rebuilding assessment and interviewing to hold up under scrutiny, and what happens to quality of hire when the resume stops telling you anything useful. Expect candor about the approaches that were tried, did not hold up, and have since been dropped without announcement.