Introduction
If you run a job board, a recruitment marketplace or the technology behind one, RecBuzz is where your peers compare notes once a year. In 2026 the conference came to Budapest, and Kini was there as a sponsor, with co-founders Fabian Scheib and Julia Komkowski in the room.
This throwback covers what RecBuzz is, what we did there and the ideas from the stage that stayed with us, starting with a topic that kept coming up for Fabian on day one: will AI destroy the labour market?
TL;DR
- RecBuzz 2026 took place on 15–16 April 2026 at the InterContinental Budapest. The AIM Group organises it and calls it the premier conference exclusively about recruitment marketplaces.
- Kini sponsored RecBuzz 2026 and is listed among the start-up sponsors on the RecBuzz website. Co-founders Fabian Scheib and Julia Komkowski attended.
- Fabian's day-one takeaway: AI will hit digital, structured, repetitive white-collar roles first, while blue-collar work could see a boom in demand, wages and competition for talent.
- On stage, Stepstone's Florin Ciontu spoke about building AI-enabled products at scale, and Bernhard Deussner said that growth is slowing and ad budgets are getting tighter.
- The AIM Group has published a highlights video and a photo gallery. RecBuzz 2027 is set for 13–14 April 2027 in Barcelona.
What is RecBuzz, and who goes?
RecBuzz is an annual conference run by the AIM Group, a business intelligence, consulting and events firm that covers recruitment marketplaces and classified advertising. The AIM Group has run RecBuzz since 2016 and describes it as "the world’s premier conference exclusively about recruitment marketplaces".
The 2026 edition took place on 15 and 16 April at the InterContinental Budapest, with a welcome reception for attendees on the evening before. The organiser's list of who should attend reads like a map of the recruiting data chain: general and niche job boards, job search engines and aggregators, applicant tracking systems, programmatic recruitment advertising, and recruitment listings and distribution.
Job boards and ATS platforms are two of the groups Kini connects. For us, that made RecBuzz a room full of people whose systems need to talk to each other.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Event | RecBuzz 2026 |
| Dates | 15–16 April 2026 |
| Venue | InterContinental Budapest, Hungary |
| Organiser | AIM Group |
| Kini's role | Sponsor, listed under "Start Ups" |
| From Kini | Fabian Scheib and Julia Komkowski, co-founders |
What did Kini do at RecBuzz 2026?
Kini joined RecBuzz 2026 as a sponsor. Fabian announced it on LinkedIn on 2 April, looking forward to "familiar faces, new conversations, and a few strong opinions on where recruiting is heading". It was also his first time in Budapest.
The RecBuzz sponsors page lists Kini in the "Start Ups" category. Our sponsor profile there opens with one line:
KINI is the connectivity layer for modern recruiting ecosystems.
Kini's sponsor profile, RecBuzz
A week before the event, Julia posted that she and Fabian were heading to RecBuzz 2026 and invited anyone attending to meet for a coffee.
Will AI destroy the labour market, or create new demand?
The AIM Group opened the conference on the morning of 15 April, and its principal Jonathan Turpin kicked off the content with global trends. By the end of that first day, one topic kept coming up for Fabian: AI and its impact on the labour market. He summed it up on LinkedIn the next morning.
His first point was about who feels the change first:
White-collar jobs will feel it first.
Fabian Scheib, Co-Founder of Kini, on LinkedIn
He named roles that are digital, structured and repetitive, such as sales, legal and even parts of management, as roles that still have huge automation potential.
His second point is the one he says is often overlooked. Blue-collar jobs "might not just be “safe” - they could actually see a boom." If AI drives economic growth, the bottleneck shifts to physical work. That means more demand, higher wages and stronger competition for talent.
His conclusion for anyone who works with employers: helping companies attract and hire blue-collar talent will become even more critical. He closed by thanking Jonathan Turpin for the keynote.
What else did speakers say about AI, growth and job boards?
The AIM Group shared short session recaps on its RecBuzz LinkedIn page. Three of them stood out for us.
AI inside a large job marketplace. Florin Ciontu of The Stepstone Group explained how Stepstone builds AI-enabled products at scale, what is already changing in matching, search and customer workflows, and how these shifts will redefine competition in 2026–27.
Product first, then new markets. Bernhard Deussner, founder and CEO of Blue Danube Advisors and a board member at Jobiqo, argued that marketplace operators must get the product right before they expand abroad. His view of the market:
Growth is slowing across the world. Ad budgets are getting tighter. It’s harder to grow top-line revenue.
Bernhard Deussner, Blue Danube Advisors, quoted by RecBuzz on LinkedIn
Candidate access as a commodity. Malcolm Myers argued that candidate access is no longer necessarily a strategic asset, since LinkedIn and its peers all source the same people.
The full AIM Group articles on the Myers and Deussner sessions are for subscribers only.
Why does a job-board conference matter for recruiting connectivity?
The talks pointed in one direction: tighter ad budgets, more AI in matching and search, and, in Fabian's reading, growing competition for blue-collar talent. All of that raises the stakes on a basic task. Jobs have to get from the employer's ATS onto the right channels quickly, and applications have to come back without getting lost on the way.
That flow is what Kini runs. Kini connects ATS platforms, job boards and recruiting agencies, and operates the ATS integrations as a service, including monitoring, retries, recovery and connector maintenance. Jobs go out of the ATS to the channels, applications come back into the ATS with a sync status on every record, and the ATS stays the system of record. We explain how this differs from a unified API in Managed Recruiting Connectivity, a category explained.
On the distribution side, Kini Shop sends job ads to 1,500+ boards, including Indeed, StepStone, Kleinanzeigen and the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. You can browse the systems Kini connects on the integrations page. For a concrete example of the channel side, read our guide to connecting Personio to StepStone, Indeed, LinkedIn and XING.
with your stack?
Where can you catch up on RecBuzz 2026, and what comes next?
The organiser has published material from Budapest:
- Highlights from RecBuzz 2026 in Budapest, the AIM Group's aftermovie on YouTube
- RecBuzz gallery with photos from both conference days
- RecBuzz on LinkedIn with session recaps
- RecBuzz sponsors with Kini's sponsor profile
RecBuzz 2027 will take place on 13–14 April 2027 at the Meliá Barcelona Sarrià, with details on the RecBuzz website.
Our next stop is closer to home: Kini is exhibiting at STAFFINGpro 2026 on 21 October 2026 at the RheinMain CongressCenter in Wiesbaden, stand C.08-C. If you would rather talk before then, book a meeting with us.
