INVNT AND LINKEDIN TURN AI HIRING INTO HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE WITH SYDNEY ‘AI SKILLS SPRINT’

INVNT and LinkedIn hosted a four-day AI Skills Sprint in Sydney, bringing together over 270 recruiters to explore AI-powered hiring. The immersive activation showcased LinkedIn’s Hiring Assistant, blending gamified challenges with practical learning to help talent professionals build AI fluency while retaining a human-centric approach to recruitment.

In a move to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence curiosity and practical adoption, INVNT and LinkedIn collaborated on an immersive four-day ‘AI Skills Sprint’ in Sydney, designed to transform how recruiters engage with emerging hiring technologies.

Hosted at LinkedIn’s Sydney office in March, the activation brought together more than 270 talent acquisition leaders and recruiters, offering a hands-on introduction to LinkedIn’s first AI agent for recruiters, Hiring Assistant. The initiative was crafted to move participants beyond passive product awareness, enabling them to build real-world capability through direct interaction with AI-driven tools.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving skills landscape—where 38% of job skills have already changed globally since 2016, with projections rising to 70% by 2030—the programme focused on equipping recruiters with both AI fluency and essential human-centric competencies. The aim was clear: to ensure professionals remain strategic, empathetic partners in a labour market increasingly shaped by automation.

The Sydney office was transformed into a dynamic, multi-zone environment, blending physical and digital elements into a cohesive, gamified experience. Teams competed in challenges that simulated real hiring scenarios, using LinkedIn Hiring Assistant and other AI-powered tools to solve problems collaboratively. This approach intentionally fused learning with product immersion, engaging both decision-makers and day-to-day users within recruitment teams.

The activation delivered strong engagement outcomes, with over 250 participants completing hundreds of challenges. The event also generated significant digital traction, achieving a reach of 8,336 and 27,672 impressions through on-site LinkedIn content.

Laura Roberts, Managing Director APAC at INVNT, highlighted the importance of experiential learning in demonstrating AI’s value. She noted that by turning the product into a live challenge, participants could directly experience how AI reduces administrative tasks, allowing recruiters to focus more on the human aspects of hiring.

Participants navigated six interactive zones throughout the Sprint. These included a personalised digital module quantifying time savings from AI adoption, a large-scale ‘Guess Who’-style game addressing responsible AI myths, and live demonstrations of the Hiring Assistant. A prompt-engineering challenge—reflecting one of Australia’s fastest-growing skills—encouraged participants to refine their interaction with AI tools, while collaborative exercises emphasised candidate-first communication.

The programme culminated in teams developing 30-, 60-, and 90-day AI adoption strategies, followed by public commitments shared on LinkedIn, reinforcing accountability and long-term behavioural change.

Teena Wooldridge, APAC Senior Director of Marketing at LinkedIn, described the initiative as a response to the accelerating pace of change in the recruitment landscape. She emphasised that the goal was not merely to raise awareness of AI’s impact, but to ensure the talent community is equipped to lead in a fundamentally transformed environment.

As organisations globally grapple with the implications of AI, the AI Skills Sprint stands out as a model for experiential upskilling—demonstrating that the future of recruitment lies not just in technology adoption, but in the seamless integration of human insight and machine intelligence.