Talent Acquisition Trends

Imagine you're the CFO of a global company and someone pitches you a recruitment automation solution that will do the work of 400 recruiters and save you $30M per year. What would you do? When I was at LinkedIn's Talent Connect in October, I attended a workshop with John Vlastelica in which he shared that a global company had decided to implement a recruiting automation solution that would allow them to save $30M in costs by eliminating 400 recruiter positions. They also reduced the time to hire from 11 days down to 3. He shared that another company had used recruitment automation software to hire 300,000 workers with minimal human involvement - people only came into the process after background checks had been performed. They also maintained candidate quality and candidate experience while increasing the speed of hire. These kinds of case studies should not surprise anyone, although it is sobering to anyone in talent acquisition - the rapid advancement of AI and automation in recruiting is both exciting and concerning. On the one hand, the potential for efficiency gains, cost savings, and improved candidate experience is huge and undeniable, as these examples demonstrate. On the other hand, we must also be mindful of the human impact - thousands of recruiters are seeing their roles transformed or eliminated. As talent acquisition professionals, it's important to be thinking about how to adapt and provide value in this changing landscape. Some key questions to consider: -How can we upskill and position ourselves to work alongside AI rather than be replaced by it? -What are the uniquely human elements of recruiting that AI can't replicate, and how do we double down on those? -How might our roles evolve to focus more on passive talent sourcing, talent intelligence/advisory, strategic workforce planning, employer branding, candidate engagement, and employee experience? For companies considering or implementing recruitment automation, I believe it should be a thoughtful, strategic decision - not just a blind cost-cutting measure. Here are some key considerations: -What is the optimal mix of human and automated touchpoints to balance efficiency and candidate experience? -How will the balance of AI and human involvement vary based on the labor market dynamics for each role? Roles with talent scarcity may require more human touch to attract and engage candidates, while high-volume roles with ample supply lend themselves to greater automation. -How will we redeploy or reskill displaced recruiters? -How do we maintain our employer brand and human touch with increased automation? The future of recruiting is undoubtedly both human and machine - but the mix is up to each company and may vary by role/department. I'm curious to hear your thoughts - have you been impacted by AI/automation? How are you and/or your company preparing for the intersection of AI/automation and recruiting? #AI #Recruiting #FutureOfWork

“Boomerang employees” - those who leave a company, then return – are becoming common. I regularly hear from #CSuite #ExecutiveCoaching clients that they are rehiring former leaders/employees, & studies show almost 1/3 of recent company hires are returning employees. There are many benefits for boomerang employees & their employers – & many challenges, too! ⚖️ How can you make these boomerang re-integrations smooth? Here are a few actionable tips to ensure your “boomerang experience” is positive: **DO'S** --- Why the Return? Employee: Be honest with yourself about why you want to come back. Make sure this job fits with your career goals and values. 🤔 Employer: Understand why the employee is returning. Make sure their role suits both their professional #goals & what the company needs now. 🏢 --- Why the Departure? Employee: Reflect on why you left. Find out how previous concerns have been addressed.🔑 Employer: Have an open conversation about why the employee left & be proactive about what’s been done to fix those challenges. 🛠️ ---Keep Old Friends & Make New Ones Employee: Reconnect with former colleagues but also set a goal to meet new team members. It’s easy to fall into a rut of working only with people you already know. 👥 Employer: Encourage the returning employee to reconnect with the team. Be proactive about helping them meet new colleagues. 🤝 --- Get Crystal Clear Employee: Ask about changes in company #policies, #procedures, and #culture since your departure. Make sure you thoroughly understand your new role & responsibilities. 🔍 Employer: Clearly explain any changes that have taken place. Make sure the employee understands your expectations for the new job. 📋 **DON'TS** ---Assume Everything is the Same Employee: Change is inevitable--don’t expect the company to be the same as when you left. Be open to new policies, procedures, team dynamics, and culture. 🌐 Employer: Don’t assume the employee’s return will be seamless without their understanding of new company and team dynamics. 🧩 ---Hold on to Past Grievances Employee: Avoid bringing up old issues unless they’re directly relevant. Focus on the future & how you can contribute positively. 🚀 Employer: Make sure any past issues are addressed, then focus on moving forward. 🔄 ---Be Complacent Employee: Your previous tenure doesn't guarantee you immediate success. You still need to prove yourself & demonstrate value to the team. 💪 Employer: Don’t expect the returning employee to immediately perform at their previous level. Offer time & support to reacclimate. ⏳ ---Rely on “This is How We Did it at ABC Company” Employee: Avoid constantly referencing your previous workplace. Be open to new approaches & feedback. 🌟 Employer: Encourage the employee to share new ideas without comparing too often to past experiences. 💡 I’d love to hear what you think, too. Please share in the comments your own experience with “boomeranging”! Thinkers50 Global Gurus 100 Coaches Agency

This is the first time in my adult life that I have this many friends and colleagues who have been out of work for a year or more. Not between roles. Not casually looking. Actively searching. That’s not a blip. That’s a shift. People are reassessing what they can offer independently. Organizations are rethinking how they access talent. We’re seeing more fractional leaders. More project-based work. More independent consultant teams instead of full-time hires. Whether people planned for it or not, more of us are operating like entrepreneurs now — inside companies and outside of them. And that changes the skill set required to thrive. It’s not just about doing the work anymore. It’s about: ✅Navigating ambiguity ✅Making decisions without perfect information ✅Owning consequences ✅Managing your own capacity ✅Communicating your value clearly ✅Being adaptable without becoming chaotic ✅Being respectful without becoming a pushover Grit won’t be enough. Credentials won’t be enough. The advantage will belong to people who can think independently, communicate clearly, and adjust while the ground is moving. This is adaptive capacity. The organizations building for the future aren’t just hiring talent — they’re cultivating independent judgment, communication skills, and resilience as core capabilities. Because the workforce has changed. And it’s not changing back.

ME: They accepted another offer. CLIENT: I don't understand. We checked every box. ME: You did. CLIENT: We had six interviews. ME: You did. CLIENT: We had everyone meet them. ME: You did. CLIENT: We were being thorough. ME: From your perspective. From theirs, the experience looked very different. Six interviews felt like six weeks of uncertainty. Answering the same questions for different interviewers suggested no one had compared notes. Waiting days between each step made them wonder whether hiring was a priority or just another item on someone's to-do list. None of those things, by themselves, cost you the candidate. Together, they told a story about what it might be like to work for your organization. I've learned that candidates don't just evaluate the role, the compensation or the company. They pay close attention to how decisions are made, how people communicate and whether leaders seem aligned. Long before they accept an offer, they're already deciding what kind of experience they'll have as an employee. That's why candidate experience has become one of the biggest competitive advantages in hiring. The organizations consistently landing top talent aren't always the ones offering the highest salaries. More often, they're the ones that make people feel informed, respected and genuinely excited throughout the process. The interview process isn't just how you evaluate candidates. It's one of the clearest signals candidates have about how your company operates.

Most talent acquisition operating models split cleanly into two layers: delivery and enablement. But here is the honest truth that most leaders avoid saying aloud: we keep trying to force every single recruiter to be a consultative, data-fluent strategist while simultaneously expecting them to crush a massive requisition load. The reality is that strategy becomes a byproduct of whoever has spare bandwidth, meaning it rarely happens at all. When we looked at how Blair Bennett, SVP of Global TA at PepsiCo, manages a 500-person organization for a $90 billion enterprise, we found a completely different architecture. She introduced a dedicated, centralized Strategy pillar with its own headcount, formalizing a product management lifecycle for how talent acquisition actually builds capabilities and senses future market shifts. Instead of trying to upskill every recruiter into an all-knowing strategic advisor, this model compartmentalizes strategy into a specialized group that handles talent intelligence, portfolio ROI, and workforce scenario modeling. The recruiters in the execution layer are then armed with the exact upstream tools and insights they need, transforming intake meetings from frantic guessing games into strategy-informed conversations. In this week’s newsletter, I break down PepsiCo's formalized value chain and look closely at their Talent Foresights team, a group explicitly tasked with task decomposition and mapping what human recruiting looks like alongside AI agents. If your current strategy function is just a secondary title tacked onto a leader's overpacked schedule, your team is building for today's urgency rather than tomorrow's transformation. 👇 Read the full breakdown of this operating model by following the link below.

Just as with may of my industry peers, we are moving from how to optimize on an existing TA strategy to how do we rethink the entire purpose of our function.  We all know more than ever that it's not about filling roles fast-  it's about strengthening organizational capability.  Talent acquisition is moving faster than ever from a fulfillment function into a strategic talent engine. The metrics that matter are changing: organizations are moving away from time-to-fill and cost-per-hire and toward actual business outcomes. Josh Bersin's latest research emphasizing talent density is THE point. In practice, that's combining efficiency with effectiveness. It's precision workforce planning — sharing data and intelligence across HR, TA, and the business to understand where talent is best deployed, not just where there's an open req. It means moving beyond filling requisitions to optimizing the health and strategic value of the entire talent pool. Here's what that looks like operationally at ServiceNow: we're designing approaches to strategically move talent across the business to where it's most needed. Not defaulting to external hiring. Not settling for misalignment. Building organizational capability by placing the right people in roles where they can have the highest impact. ServiceNow University gives people the skills foundation. And talent density compounds when you're deploying those capabilities strategically at enterprise scale - solving transformation problems for 8,800+ customers, where the impact of strategic placement ripples company-wide. That's when talent becomes genuinely valuable. The organizations that emerge transformed won't be the ones who hired the fastest. They'll be the ones who optimized for talent density and who strengthened enterprise capability by moving talent with intention. #TalentStrategy #TalentAcquisition #WorkforceStrategy #LeadershipDevelopment #FutureOfWork #ServiceNow 

The SAP job market is undergoing a transformation—one that will define the next decade. As we move forward, two undeniable trends emerge: 📌The retirement wave is here. A significant portion of experienced SAP professionals are exiting the workforce, leading to a steady decline in available talent. This isn’t a distant concern. It’s happening now, the candidate pool is getting tighter year after year. 📌Demand for SAP expertise is only growing. The shift to S/4 HANA, AI-driven ERP, and cloud-based solutions is accelerating, creating a long-term demand for highly skilled SAP professionals. Businesses need specialists who can lead, implement, and optimise these transformations. This convergence of a shrinking workforce and an increasing need for expertise presents a challenge but with challenge comes opportunities. What This Means for the Future of SAP Hiring The next 10 years will redefine how companies attract and retain SAP talent. Businesses will need to: ✅Adapt to a candidate-driven market – With fewer professionals available, top SAP candidates will have more options and higher expectations. Competitive salaries, flexible work arrangements, and career development opportunities will be crucial for retention. ✅Invest in upskilling and reskilling – Businesses that prioritise internal training and certification programs will gain a competitive edge in securing skilled SAP professionals for the long term. ✅Work with specialised SAP talent recruiters like JPS Resourcing – The traditional hiring approach will no longer be enough. Companies will need strategic talent sourcing partners who understand the SAP industry, predict shifts, and secure the right expertise ahead of the curve. Looking Ahead with Confidence Yes, the SAP talent market is tightening. Yes, hiring will become more competitive. Yes, companies will face new challenges in securing the right skills. But those who plan ahead, adapt, and take a proactive approach to talent strategy will thrive. The future of SAP is being shaped now. And those who prepare for it will lead it. Are you ready for what’s next? 📩 Let’s build the future of SAP hiring, together. #SAP #S4HANA #FutureOfWork #TalentShortage #CloudERP #DigitalTransformation

“Only successful candidates will be contacted.” That line says it all. You’d never treat your customers like that, so why is it acceptable for candidates? If your hiring process feels disjointed or – even worse – you’re not getting back to people, they won’t just walk away from the job. They’ll walk away from your brand. Candidate experience isn’t a box to tick. It’s one of the most powerful brand touchpoints you’ve got. Every message, every interview, every bit of communication tells people who you are – even if you never actually hire them. And yet so many businesses still treat candidates like they exist outside the brand. Your hiring process is an extension of your marketing. If it feels unorganised, unresponsive, or impersonal, it damages trust. If it feels thoughtful, consistent, and human, it builds it. Virgin Media discovered this the hard way. Their poor candidate experience wasn’t just costing them talent - it was costing them customers. When they analysed it, they realised rejected candidates were cancelling subscriptions, costing the business around £4.4 million a year. That’s not a recruitment issue. That’s a brand issue. If you want people to believe in your culture, start by showing it to them - not just telling them about it. Not sure if you’re nailing your candidate experience? (And don’t feel bad if not – 90% of companies I’ve worked have struggled with it.) Pop me a message. I’ll give you a free review of your hiring process, touchpoints, and comms, and share what I’ve seen work in successful brands like ASOS – and of course, what Virgin Media did to turn their experience from a £4.4m loss into a £7m profit.

Don’t say goodbye - say “see you soon.” 🔄 Boomerang employees - people who leave and then return - make up approx 30 % of all new hires in the US. 🤷♂️ Yet only 4 in 10 voluntary leavers felt their exit was handled well according to Gallup. 🪃 Miss the farewell, miss the boomerang. Bechtel, a 50 000+ employee company, shows the upside: alumni group, newsletters, and “Day-365 welcome-back” invite helped them rehire approx 1 of 4 from their alumni initiative. Over 1000 out of 4100 hires to show the figures. Off-boarding became a launchpad, not a drop-off. 🏆 Results? Faster onboarding, built-in cultural understanding, and a talent pipeline that markets itself. 🎯 Lesson: Design exits with the same care as entrances - future you will thank present you.