I recently ran a poll on LinkedIn asking people how far ahead they felt they could accurately predict the future of talent acquisition. Only 22% of respondents felt confident about predicting more than a year out, while 48% said they believed we couldn’t see beyond the next six months!
Considering everything that has happened in the last four years, it isn’t surprising that people feel uncertain about the future. In the last 48 months, we have seen unprecedented cycles of hiring booms and layoffs, labor shortages, and extreme economic and geopolitical uncertainty.
At the same time, we are experiencing quantum breakthroughs in AI technology, which is still only just getting started. We are currently hardly talking about the potential for emerging “AI agents” to revolutionize the capability of TA technology, but we could be experiencing it in just a few months. Autonomous AI Swarms and Task Orchestration are just two concepts we will very quickly need to get our heads around as things develop at high speed.
Disruption is now the new normal, and talent acquisition is at a pivotal crossroads where it must reinvent itself.
My go-to mantra about the future comes from pioneering computer scientist Alan Car, who said, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Yes, the future is uncertain, but this is precisely when we need the confidence and foresight to reinvent what we do and take talent acquisition to the next level.
The potential to harness technology and skills-based thinking to make talent acquisition truly strategic and drive exponentially better outcomes for employers and job seekers is vast. However, there is a serious threat that unless talent acquisition takes control of its own destiny and proves its worth, it could end up in the pile of transaction business activities companies will seek to automate in their quest for efficiency.
The good news is that you can predict the future by looking at the correct data, using a proper methodology, and, most importantly, proactively seeking to shape it. I passionately believe that in talent acquisition, we need practical tools to help us deconstruct the forces driving change, identify the trends that matter, and work towards a vision of the future we have helped shape.
I’ve been writing, speaking, and podcasting about the future of talent acquisition for almost 15 years now, and I’ve become increasingly convinced that TA needs to learn from adjacent areas and harness some of the research and planning techniques that create strategic foresight to influence the future proactively.
So, I’ve built a course called “Trend Spotting.”
It’s an on-demand digital course that examines the forces driving change and analyzes the emerging trends in talent acquisition. It also teaches a simple but robust model to help you understand, plan for, influence, and invent the future.
I think it is much needed in talent acquisition right now; I hope you’ll agree.
You can find out more and enroll in Trend Spotting here.