This year the Talent Business Awards becomes a day and an evening: ten breakout sessions, an industry report launched live on stage, and the gala after it.

The line we have settled on: where the staffing and recruitment industry connects and celebrates. Agency owners, HR and hiring leaders, and the technology partners who sell to both, in one building for a day. That happens less often in Belgium than it should.

In this edition: what the Talent Business Forum & Gala looks like on 19 November, the sourcing agent that replaces the Boolean string with a plain description of the role, and three executive dinners between now and the end of October.

— Jeroen

On Thursday 19 November the Talent Business Awards becomes the Talent Business Forum & Gala: an afternoon of content, then the evening you already know. The afternoon is new, and it is the part worth clearing the diary for.

At 15:00 everyone sits down together for the live launch of the Talent Business Industry Report 2026, fresh research on where the industry is heading, unpacked on stage in a panel. Then ten breakout sessions across two rounds, five to choose from in each.

On the table: AI in the recruitment workflow, protecting margin through your tech stack, talent acquisition strategy, agency branding, valuation and consolidation in a founders-only room, AI screening, outcome-based service models, reactivating a dead candidate database, ATS optimisation, and what the next-generation agency model looks like. The brief to every speaker was the same: ideas you can use on Monday, not a pitch. More speakers announced shortly.

Then the evening: reception, gala dinner, the award show, after-party. New venue this year, the Steigenberger Icon Wiltcher’s on Avenue Louise. One ticket covers both halves.

Boolean takes years to get good at, and still leaves your recruiters scanning mountains of profiles. Collective.work rebuilt itself around Sherlock, an AI agent that takes a plain description of a role, works a database of 800 million profiles, and hands back the top 50 to 200 candidates. It plugs into more than 100 ATS platforms, so the list lands where your team already works.

For an agency the argument is reach and speed, not cost. A pool far larger than your own database and the licences you already pay for, and a first shortlist in the time it takes to write the brief. Your junior consultants get to search like your best sourcer on their first week.

And CEO Jean de Rauglaudre, who has every commercial reason to say otherwise, is blunt about the ceiling: “AI won’t replace the recruiters.” The sourcing gets automated. The trust still has to be earned by a person.

Ten seats each, for owners and executives of staffing and recruitment agencies. Off the record, peer level, no pitch — here’s how the last one in Antwerp went.

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