2025 Talent Acquisition Leaders Priorities & Predictions

“The great resignation” gave way to “the great stay”—people are remaining in roles longer, hiring has been slow for many industries and organizations, and (per the International Labour Organization) unemployment rates in most industrialized countries are hovering in the low single digits (ILO, 2024). There are significantly fewer job opportunities now than there were in the past two years and organizations worldwide are also deluged with record-high volumes of applications.

With a slower hiring environment, 33% of i4cp’s Talent Acquisition Board members expect their 2025 budgets to decrease somewhat and 42% expect their budgets to remain the same—only 17% anticipate a slight increase.

Delivering on its top priorities with tighter resources and ensuring the function has the skills needed to execute will combine to challenge TA leaders. Compounding those challenges will be keeping pace with developments in AI while managing corresponding global compliance and regulatory concerns (e.g., data privacy, fair and equitable hiring practices, etc.).

Priorities

Further leveraging technology (including AI) to optimize talent acquisition—while automation (including AI) and enablement via technology has been part of TA for a while, the onset and evolution of generative AI is making considerable impact in creating greater efficiencies, delivering better quality candidates, and enhancing employer brand. This will not slow in 2025. The majority (58%) of the members of i4cp Talent Acquisition Board believe the use (or expanded use) of AI will be vital to their function’s ability to deliver on its objectives this coming year.

“It has been decades since we have seen truly transformational technology in Talent Acquisition, but AI is here with a vengeance!  TA leaders and teams must become AI literate while always keeping the human experience  at the center."
Dani Monaghan SVP, Global Talent Acquisition Expedia Group, Chair of i4cp's Talent Acquisition Board

Enhancing talent acquisition efficiency through process optimization—TA is under constant pressure to deliver high-level, consistent results globally. There is a lot of work to be done to build strategies related to models, processes, tools, and more. An artful balance must also be struck between high tech and high touch—while chatbots greatly improve application completion and keep candidates engaged, the human element is (and will remain) important to sealing the deal.

Elevating skills within the TA function—the broadening adoption of AI and other advanced technologies that offer more opportunities to personalize candidate experience will also require and reward TA teams that create authentic connections and build trusting relationships via soft skills such as collaboration, empathy, adaptability, and resilience. Influence and strategic consulting skills will also become more important as TA leaders are looked upon to help the business understand how (and when) relying on skills and capabilities from non-traditional resources and backgrounds makes more sense.

Improving internal talent mobility—strategic TA leaders are well-positioned to help leaders across their organizations understand the importance and urgency of leveraging transferrable skills, capabilities, and experiences driving greater internal talent mobility throughout and across the enterprise. Tight partnership with the talent function will be critical to this end.

Leveraging data to inform recruitment recommendations and decisions—by analyzing internal metrics such as source of hire, candidate quality, and turnover rates, as well as external market data, recruiters can refine their efforts, proactively plan workforce needs and strategies, and identify process logjams. Collaborating with their partners in People Analytics will lead to deeper insights that make recruitment more efficient and aligned with long-term objectives.

Talent Acquisition Leader Predictions

• The role of recruiters will evolve—so will the work—from chatbots to AI agents, greater utilization of AI will culminate in major components of conventional TA work being offloaded in the next few years. For example, AI agents, which can learn, reason, make decisions, and take actions to achieve specific goals, will take on most of today’s top-of-the-funnel and administrative work. This will enable recruiters to devote time to engagement with candidates and hiring managers and focus on internal mobility. This will presumably reduce TA team size in some organizations and accelerate the elevation of the TA function to strategic levels of advising and consulting, particularly in terms of internal/external workforce planning and talent management.
   
• Data analytics will become more refined—TA typically relies on data from applicant tracking systems (ATS), which provide limited insights because the data is specific to applicants who become candidates. Valuable information that isn’t included (and currently isn’t centralized) is all the work and touchpoints that take place before the ATS stage. TA professionals will increasingly expand beyond their ATS and CRMs to bring in other data from the tools and resources they use such as social media channels and online job matching and hiring platforms to help them understand which have the most impact and what works best for specific roles in what region, etc.
   
• Research will help refine global TA strategy—leveraging data that provides insight into various and often nuanced global issues such as cultural and socioeconomic conditions that drive what candidates look for in an employer in different regions of the world will be more widely implemented. For example, such insights can help organizations identify the features of their EVP that are appealing to software engineers in EMEA versus those in North America—informing how outreach is positioned to ensure they can grab the attention of passive candidates. This awareness can also aid TA in coaching hiring managers about what elements to weave into their conversations with candidates that are more likely to resonate.
   
• Hiring will become personalized in a variety of ways—offering candidates choice and flexibility in how they move through the hiring process will become standard practice in the coming years. For example, providing candidates agency in determining what they need to be successful in the hiring process may mean multiple options in how they are interviewed—some may feel more comfortable doing an initial interview via AI while others may believe they can put their best foot forward via a video interview. Personalization supports inclusion and sends a clear message that there is no expectation that everyone fits into a predetermined mold, which in turn is a powerful statement about the culture of the organization. An important element of attracting candidates via personalization is curating presence on the right platforms—day in the life videos on YouTube, TikTok, etc. attract the attention of Gen Z, for example, which has grown up in a customizable, personalized world.

To read the rest of the predictions from i4cp's other boards, download i4cp's 2025 Priorities & Predictions.