Lisa Scales is a commercially focused Talent Acquisition leader with a rare blend of strategic, technological, and business expertise across multiple sectors. Known for her entrepreneurial mindset and track record of building high-performing teams, she combines corporate leadership experience with the insight of having founded a successful recruitment technology business. Lisa excels at influencing senior stakeholders, driving transformation, and delivering measurable results in complex, fast-moving environments.
What’s a recent professional achievement of yours that you are proud of?
Delivering a TA Transformation programme across the whole business
What is your prediction for the future of the TA industry?
The future of Talent Acquisition will be defined by the intelligent use of AI — not as a replacement for recruiters, but as the ultimate accelerator of human capability. AI will transform every stage of the hiring lifecycle: from predictive workforce planning and hyper-personalised candidate engagement to automated shortlisting, bias detection, and real-time skills matching. Recruitment will shift from reactive hiring to proactive talent intelligence — with data-driven insights guiding strategic decisions on build, buy, or borrow talent. The true disruption lies in the redefinition of the recruiter’s role: less transactional and more consultative, blending human empathy with machine precision to create faster, fairer, and more impactful hiring experiences.
What projects are you planning on working on in 2026?
As I move into 2026, my remit expands beyond Talent Acquisition to encompass the wider Talent agenda — creating an exciting new chapter of opportunity and challenge. My focus will be on building a true Talent Factory at Royal Mail: a connected ecosystem where acquisition, development, and deployment work in complete harmony. By leveraging the natural, symbiotic relationship between TA and Talent, we’ll create a seamless pipeline — from first engagement through to future leadership — driven by data, powered by AI, and united by one shared purpose: ensuring the right people, with the right skills, are in the right place at the right time to deliver Royal Mail’s transformation and delivery of its growth plans against its 2030 strategy