SeasideHR is a boutique talent acquisition advisory practice built on deep European enterprise experience — SAP SuccessFactors, SmartRecruiters, EU AI Act governance, works councils — and structured to deliver that expertise at the pace AI makes possible. Expert-quality outputs. Founder-reviewed at every step. No vendor relationships. No referral fees.
Most TA advisory is slow, expensive, and produced by junior staff. SeasideHR is structured around four principles that make the difference visible from the first engagement.
AI performs the diagnostic analysis, vendor scoring, governance frameworks, and first-draft reports. Michael Sieben reviews, validates, and signs off on every deliverable. The result is expert-quality output delivered at a pace traditional consulting cannot match.
SAP SuccessFactors. SmartRecruiters. EU AI Act. Works councils. GDPR. A decade inside complex European enterprise TA environments — including the combined SAP–SmartRecruiters ecosystem following the 2025 acquisition. That depth is rare in any independent advisor.
No vendor certifications. No referral fees. No commissions. No RPO conflicts. SeasideHR holds no financial relationship with any platform it evaluates or recommends. Every recommendation is shaped by your requirements — not a platform's sales quota.
No junior delegation. Michael Sieben scopes, leads, and delivers every engagement. You get the same strategic clarity and platform depth on day one as on day ninety — and a single point of accountability throughout.
Organisations deploying AI in talent acquisition face mounting regulatory obligations — from the EU AI Act's high-risk classification for hiring tools to GDPR, AIDA, and emerging US state-level disclosure laws. We apply European-grade governance discipline to build compliant, auditable TA functions anywhere.
Most TA functions are using AI in ways they have not fully documented — vendor-embedded features, default-on tools, post-go-live product updates. We map every active AI feature across your stack before governance can happen.
Read our analysis →Meaningful human oversight is not satisfied by a recruiter clicking approve on a ranked list they don't understand. We design processes where human judgment is genuinely in the loop — with the documentation to prove it.
Read our analysis →EU AI Act classifies hiring AI as high-risk. GDPR governs candidate data. Canada's AIDA is advancing. US states are enacting disclosure mandates. We bring EU-grade governance rigour to TA functions operating across jurisdictions.
Read our analysis →Written from the advisory side of the table: what breaks, what scales, and how to challenge platform, process, and AI decisions before they become expensive to unwind.
All insightsSAP completed its acquisition of SmartRecruiters on September 11, 2025. A practical read on the three-phase integration roadmap, what it means for SAP SuccessFactors customers, and how the competitive calculus has shifted.
An organisation replaces its ATS, spends six to twelve months in implementation, and ends up with the same problems as the old one. The cause is almost always the same: platform selection happened before operating model design.
When I describe SeasideHR as an AI-first firm, I get two reactions: enthusiasm and scepticism. Both are reasonable. Here is a direct account of what AI does, what I do, and why the accountability has to remain human.
Ten years in Germany, Netherlands, and Belgium meant AI governance in hiring was not a future concern — it was an operational reality. Four governance capabilities that transfer directly to Canadian TA functions.
