Andrew Butt

AI, skills, and shifting candidate expectations are rewriting the rules of talent acquisition. Agentic AI and virtual recruiting assistants are moving from buzz to reality. Talent teams are under more pressure than ever to prove ROI, while candidates demand faster, more transparent experiences. So what should TA leaders prioritize now to stay ahead in 2026? Join our live panel webinar as industry experts share what 2025 taught us, how AI and automation are maturing in real-world recruitment, and the trends shaping the next era of hiring. We’ll unpack: - The biggest lessons from 2025 for TA teams - The rise of skills-first strategies and internal mobility - What changing candidate expectations mean for EVP and experience - Predictions for the biggest talent trends in 2026 and beyond If you’re refining your 2026 strategy, testing new tech, or rethinking how to deliver impact, this discussion will help guide your next move. Check out the speaker lineup and register now: https://lnkd.in/gWZt8-zN

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Most TA teams are doing the right things. They’re just being asked to do them at a scale their hiring systems were never designed to support. More applications. More roles. More pressure to move fast, without sacrificing fairness, quality, or trust. This is where the conversation needs to shift. Not toward more tools, but toward smarter, human-centered ways of supporting the work recruiters already do. Using AI to remove friction from early-stage hiring, so teams can: - respond sooner and more consistently, - apply structured, fair screening at scale, - and spend more time where human judgment actually matters. Because protecting candidate experience isn’t about working harder. It’s about designing hiring systems that can keep up with reality. Learn how we’re approaching responsible, human-centered hiring technology: https://lnkd.in/dhreMJMZ #CandidateExperience #TalentAcquisition #HiringInfrastructure #ResponsibleAI #RecruitmentTechnology #FutureOfWork #HumanCenteredAI #LevelUPHCS

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In today’s competitive hiring landscape, slow background checks create costly bottlenecks—delaying decisions, frustrating top candidates, and draining HR resources. PCG’s approach proves that speed and accuracy can coexist, delivering most screenings within 24 hours without compromising compliance. This rapid turnaround keeps candidates engaged and accelerates hiring, enabling teams to fill critical roles faster and focus on strategic priorities. For talent acquisition leaders, the takeaway is clear: optimizing screening speed is not just operational efficiency—it’s a strategic imperative to secure the best talent in time. How is your organization balancing speed with accuracy in background screening? #TalentAcquisition #HRStrategy #BackgroundChecks #HiringEfficiency #WorkforceExcellence

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📊 The Cost of Talent is Shifting: Key Benchmarks from the 2025 Recruiting Report The new SHRM 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking Report reveals a major divergence in hiring metrics, with costs soaring for executive roles while time-to-fill stabilizes. Here are the must-know insights for every talent acquisition professional: 1. Executive Hiring Costs Explode, Nonexecutive Costs Drop The cost-per-hire (CPH) gap is wider than ever, underscoring the resource intensity of top-tier talent acquisition: Executive CPH has reached a median of $10,625. This represents a staggering 113% increase since 2017 and a 21% rise since 2022. Nonexecutive CPH decreased to $1,200, a 27% decline since 2017. The Ratio: The cost of hiring an executive is now nearly 9 times that of a nonexecutive role. 2. Time-to-Fill Stabilizes, But Size Matters The hiring process is becoming more consistent across job levels, suggesting focused effort on speed: The median time-to-fill for both executive and nonexecutive positions is now about 44-45 days (a month and a half). This is a sharp drop for executive roles, which took 60 days in 2022. The Bottleneck: Extra-large organizations (5,000+ employees) report significantly longer time-to-fill periods (around 60-61 days for both). 3. The Internal Hiring Opportunity is Missed Recruitment remains overwhelmingly external, though larger firms are better at internal mobility: The overall median shows executive hiring is 100% external. Only 7% of nonexecutive positions are filled internally across all organizations. The Exception: Extra-large organizations are the exception, filling 50% of executive positions from within. 4. A "Quality of Hire" Blind Spot Despite 61% of recruiting executives citing a lack of qualified candidates as a top challenge, very few organizations actually measure whether their new hires deliver value: Only 20% of organizations use a quality-of-hire metric, a decline from previous years. 💡 Actionable Takeaway: Recruitment is expensive, especially at the executive level. Recruiting leaders need to justify these costs by integrating Quality of Hire metrics into their reporting and investing in internal development programs (upskilling, mentoring) to capitalize on the lower cost and higher potential retention of internal talent. How does your organization's CPH compare to these benchmarks? Share your thoughts below! 👇 #Recruiting #TalentAcquisition #HRMetrics #Benchmarking #FutureOfWork #SHRM #ExecutiveSearch

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Operational drag is holding talent acquisition back. Most teams can feel it, even if they haven’t named it yet. Over time, added tools, layered processes, and disconnected workflows have introduced friction across every stage of recruiting. This next phase is about removing friction, aligning workflows, and giving recruiters and hiring teams what they need to perform. Download the eBook to learn what’s driving the TA Rewrite: ✅ Why operational drag is limiting recruiting performance  ✅ How leading teams are simplifying their tech and workflows  ✅ What it takes to align people, process, and platforms  ✅ How workflow-driven systems enable scale and speed https://lnkd.in/eZcPZd8t

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✨ This Week in HR + Comp From AI transforming workflows to transparency laws lifting pay and DEI staying strong, HR is leading the charge in today’s workplace evolution. Links to full articles in comments

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Based on SHRM’s 2025 Recruiting Executives Benchmarking report, we pulled the key numbers worth tracking—and the ones worth sanity-checking inside your own hiring system. Here’s what the data points to: - High-volume hiring has become cheaper and more controllable - Managerial hiring has become noticeably more expensive—and riskier - Speed has mostly leveled out, but it’s often purchased with higher spend - The biggest blind spot remains quality of hire (because most teams still don’t define or measure it well) If your recruiting KPIs are only “fast” and “a lot,” you can absolutely get more efficient. But that doesn’t automatically mean you’re getting better.

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There's a question every TA leader should be able to answer in under 60 seconds: Where is every active candidate right now and what needs to happen next? If the answer requires opening three tabs, checking two inboxes, and chasing a hiring manager, you don't have a visibility problem. You have a strategy problem dressed up as a process problem. End-to-end hiring visibility isn't about dashboards. It's about removing the fog between a role opening and a hire walking through the door. We've written the definitive guide to what it means, why it matters, and how organizations using it are closing roles faster, protecting their employer brand, and making decisions they can actually stand behind. Read it here 🔗https://lnkd.in/gdHbr-e9 #HiringVisibility #EndToEndHiring #TalentAcquisition #HiringStrategy #RecruitmentPipeline #HRTech #AIRecruiting #Recruiter #HRLeadership #EmployerBranding #TalentManagement #Oorwin #FutureOfWork #HR #Recruiting

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For HR teams, open enrollment is crunch time. Employees expect clarity. Compliance deadlines don’t budge. And one missing packet can snowball into chaos. That’s why preparation is everything. The most successful HR leaders treat open enrollment like game day—they build their playbook early, segment their employees, and automate the parts that usually drag them down. At LetterStream, we make sure mailings don’t become the bottleneck. Upload once, track internal progress, and know 95% of packets are in the mail the next business day. Whether you’re sending to 50 employees or 5,000, you get peace of mind—and employees get what they need to make smart decisions. Because the real win in open enrollment isn’t just hitting deadlines. It’s making sure your people have the right information on time, without burning out your team. Read more on our blog here: https://lnkd.in/gkW-MA4Y #HRSolutions #OpenEnrollment #MailManagement #PrintAndMail #EmployeeExperience

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Most recruiting stacks look modern on the surface, but fall apart under real-world volume. Too many tools, too many workflows, and too much manual judgment where structure is needed. AI doesn’t replace recruiters; it removes friction. The right tools make sourcing faster, interviews consistent, and decisions more objective. We’ve broken down the 9 AI tools that matter in 2025. Read it here: https://lnkd.in/daXkVuWv Swipe through for the top 5 picks. 👇

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Workforce transformation is front and center at SHRM Talent 2026. But one part of the talent lifecycle is still often overlooked: 👉 Offboarding How employees leave directly impacts employer brand, candidate perception, and your ability to hire top talent. At Onwards HR, we provide a workforce transformation platform that centralizes and streamlines offboarding. This helps organizations: 🔸 Deliver consistent, tech-enabled exit experiences 🔸 Strengthen employer brand and improve recruiting outcomes 🔸 Capture exit data to inform retention and workforce planning 🔸 Enable internal mobility and redeploy talent instead of losing it If you’re heading to SHRM Talent, let’s connect to talk about how a more structured, technology-driven approach to offboarding can strengthen your overall talent strategy. 📍 Booth 1107 | Dallas, TX 📅 April 19–22 Stop by our booth or schedule a 1:1 meeting. https://hubs.li/Q04b5c_20 #Talent2026 #SHRM #HRInnovation #FutureOfWork #WorkforceTransformation

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You don’t need more recruiters. You need fewer repetitive tasks. Hiring at scale often feels like chasing your own tail—calls, follow-ups, missed confirmations, and ghosting. That’s what Berri Connect fixes. Our AI-powered candidate engagement platform: ✅ Handles 10,000+ calls or chats/min ✅ Sends reminders, nudges, and follow-ups via WhatsApp, SMS, and more ✅ Brings show-up rates and recruiter productivity to new highs No more juggling calls or watching great candidates slip away. Let recruiters focus on what actually matters: Making the right hire. #BerriConnect #CandidateEngagement #RecruitmentOps

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The 3 hires that will make or break your TA team this year Most TA leaders hire for volume. The best ones hire for leverage. Most TA leaders build reactive teams - headcount chasing req count. The best talent acquisition leaders I know build for leverage. They hire fewer people, positioned more strategically. The 3 hires that actually move the needle: 1. A sourcing specialist (not just another recruiter) This person lives in LinkedIn Recruiter, boolean strings, and passive candidate pipelines. They exist so your full-cycle recruiters spend less time hunting and more time closing. One great sourcer can unlock the capacity of 2-3 recruiters. 2. A recruiting coordinator who's actually ops-minded Not just scheduling interviews. Someone who sees process gaps, owns the ATS hygiene, and is thinking about candidate experience at every stage. This hire protects your employer brand silently every single day. 3. A data person (or a recruiter who loves data) Metrics-blind TA teams fly in the dark. Time-to-fill, offer acceptance rate, source quality, interview-to-offer ratio - someone needs to own this and translate it into decisions. Not just dashboards. Decisions. What most TA leaders actually hire instead: another full-cycle recruiter to absorb req load. Which temporarily solves volume, but doesn't fix the structural issues that created the backlog in the first place. Build for leverage. Not just capacity. Which of these three is your team missing right now?

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Your company scaled. Your hiring goals changed.   Your TA tech? Still living in 2022.  Not with Lever. 🚫 It’s built for the company you are today AND the one you’ll grow into next. 🚀 Because a tech stack breakup every few years? That’s not scaling. That’s stalling. 🚩 👀 Join us to see why growing companies stick with Lever: https://lnkd.in/eagfQXmH #WhyLever #DemoDay #HRTech #TalentAcquisition #FutureOfWork

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