The ultimate one-day exhibition for in-house recruiters.
YOONO landed at IHR Live Manchester 2025 on 15 May to take part in inspiring talks, exhibitions…and a few fun games, too.
Here, catch up on our reflections on the day with key takeaways and emerging industry trends, as well as an opportunity to download an exclusive white paper on AI in Recruitment, written by data law expert James Clark.
You might have missed out on the action at Victoria Warehouse, but don’t worry, we’ll catch you up!
IHR Live Manchester
A fantastic day was had by all visitors and YOONO team members at IHR, with inspiring exhibitions, informative talks and fun social events keeping everyone engaged and entertained.
Located in a historic and iconic former cotton mill, Victoria Warehouse, IHR kicked off with unmissable speaker content, workshops and networking opportunities.
Over the course of the day, the YOONO team were on-hand to answer questions, discuss the future of recruitment tech and invite visitors to test their reaction skills (with the well-deserved reward of Pick‘n’Mix!).
We also had the opportunity to hear James Clark, Chief Legal Officer at YOONO, share his insightful expertise surrounding AI and data law in recruitment, and we all went away feeling much more informed and capable of integrating AI into our hiring process.
Read on to discover our key takeaways from the day, including the latest recruitment trends, hot topics and burning questions.
Key themes at IHR Manchester: Bias and the future of AI in recruitment
At IHR we were lucky to hear from inspiring speakers and have many stimulating conversations with visitors on the day. The future of recruitment is looking exciting, with innovative technology causing a stir in the industry, but it’s also clear that recruiters have plenty of questions (and some reservations) about integrating new tech into the way they work.
Recruitment without bias
A key topic that repeatedly came up on the day was the importance of reducing, and ideally eliminating, bias from the recruitment process, and visitors were intrigued to know about how YOONO’s product offering could help them to reduce discrimination and bias when performing background research.
It’s clear that an AI background research tool has to be carefully selected by recruiters, in order for it to be compliant with bias-free hiring policies. Fortunately, this has been a major concern for YOONO, and the development team have invested significant time and engineering expertise into ensuring that the data sources processed by YOONO are of a high-quality and free of human (and computer-generated) bias.
“The future is here…and it’s really scary.”
This was quoted by a visitor to one of our YOONO team, and it really does sum up how many recruiters (and people generally) feel about the introduction of AI and other fast-moving tech developments into industry.
At YOONO, we are realists and we don’t expect everyone to think that AI is great (like we do!). However, we relish the challenge of showing recruiters how much AI can genuinely help in their everyday work, and how background research in particular can be made faster, more thorough and more compliant by integrating AI carefully into your workflow.
Much of the feedback we received on the day was overwhelmingly positive once people had trialled YOONO, seeing how easy it was to make a background search and generate a comprehensive report, complete with intelligent insights that would have been near-impossible to source through manual research. We spoke to leading talent acquisition experts from corporations like Warburtons, Microsoft and B&M, with G4S and Millennium Support believing that YOONO could be a ‘fantastic opportunity’ to ensure that candidates aligned with their organisations’ image and interests.
All in all, the consensus was that AI represents more exciting opportunities than drawbacks, and that lack of clarity about how AI actually works in recruitment tech is the main contributing factor to any wariness about the technology. The YOONO team were buzzing from the visitor conversations, and went away with plenty of food for thought about how to make YOONO even better!
Do YOONO if you’re legally compliant?
It’s one of those uncomfortable, confusing…but really important questions when it comes down to using AI in your recruitment process. YOONO’s in-house Chief Legal Officer, James Clark, presented a no-frills talk about the subject, which helped everyone to gain clarity about how to recruit ethically in the face of new technology.
To accompany the talk, James also kindly contributed a white paper going into further detail on the subject, which aside from being very useful, also helped many IHR visitors to no doubt gain Brownie points from their line managers after the event.
Described by one recipient as being completely ‘on point’, James’ white paper was extremely well-received by talk attendants, and everyone went away to wise up on the legalities of data privacy, GDPR and AI in recruitment.
Discover more about how YOONO can help you recruit the right fit
We had a fantastic time at IHR Live 2025, and we’re already looking forward to the next event! Here at YOONO, we love having the opportunity to connect with our customers and to really listen to how recruiters want to work now, and in the future.
We believe our smart background checks represent the future of candidate intelligence, bringing you more clarity, deeper insights and the essential data you need to feel confident that they are the right fit for an organisation. Start with a simple YOONO search…and see where it can take you!