There are many views and opinions on this. One thing is for sure the Talent Acquisition space has for many, experienced a suppressed market and sadly 2024 was a time where many talent professionals were made redundant. That said, post covid, the growth in this sector was unbelievable and not sustainable so last year forced a reset and or restructuring to rebalance the market.
I genuinely believe that TA leaders recognize the opportunity and importance of elevating TA in 2025 to ensure the TA’s role and reputation within the business by positioning TA as a “strategic partner” or “trusted advisor.”
The need to focus and build cross functional relationships is critical especially in the talent management and L&D areas. In parallel the function needs to work closely with operational management to encourage conversations around workforce planning and the performance of the business.
Within most organisations, HRD’s and CFO’s are monitoring headcount and costs for that reason, internal hiring remains a growing priority. This can be a challenge because many managers are reluctant to release their internal talent or encourage them to utilise their skill set across the business. However, there are many benefits when the company culture promotes employee experience and invests in individuals. Consequently, they are often perceived as a chosen employer.
AI will play a key role in deploying skills in a scalable and sustainable way, particularly as in-demand and job-specific skills are constantly changing. However, many businesses have not even “dipped their toe in the water” in order to maximise the impact of AI. This in turn creates a lot of pressure to cope with the rate of change and transformation to adopt technology and lean into AI. In addition, senior leaders need to be clear about how that will be used to identify skills and enhance the TA function. It’s time to critically assess your workflows and decide where AI can not only make things faster but fundamentally better.
As businesses utilise AI technology to improve efficiency, there are other considerations to be made. The Financial Times in 2024 suggested that almost 50% of candidates have used AI to embellish or outright falsify their resumes. The result? Recruiting teams are flooded with polished but unreliable applications. The primary challenge being, how do you validate an application?
My personal view is the recruitment boom of 2022, will not return, the TA function will change forever. We know there are fewer Recruiters operating and technology/AI is taking over basic tasks like sifting/screening and more emphasis is on hiring managers being proactively involved in the recruitment process including the identification of talent within their personal network or social media channels.
Putting this aside, whilst AI will undoubtedly transform the recruitment industry, it is unlikely to completely replace all human recruiters, but it will transform the recruiter job. Recruiters who embrace AI as a powerful tool rather than viewing it as a threat will be best positioned to thrive in this new landscape.
The conclusion is that AI-powered technology is meant to speed up time-consuming manual processes so recruiters can focus on more valuable initiatives; despite this AI is not meant to replace human Recruiters and we all have a responsibility to value the experience and skills of talent professionals at all levels and continue to invest in them, given they are a critical resource who can make change happen.