2025 Hiring Insights Report
Section Six

Final thoughts & appendix

Final thoughts

In 2025, it’s clear that our current talent market demands greater agility, innovation, and a renewed focus on efficiency. The insights gathered here from over 500 talent leaders point to a clear path forward—one that prioritizes smarter processes, stronger candidate connections, and strategic use of technology to navigate complexity and achieve hiring goals.

Key lessons from this year’s findings include:

Efficiency is no
longer optional.


Talent teams must streamline hiring processes to do more with fewer resources, and this starts with automating manual tasks like interview scheduling and communication.

Retaining top talent starts with
better candidate experiences.


Organizations that personalize their processes and engage candidates meaningfully are better positioned to secure the best talent.

Technology and AI are critical
to scaling success.


AI-driven tools can amplify human potential, reduce time-to-hire, and empower teams to focus on strategic initiatives instead of administrative burdens.

Standardization and
simplicity matter.


Optimizing workflows and removing unnecessary complexity ensure hiring teams can stay nimble and deliver consistent, equitable results.

Where to focus in 2025

To meet the challenges ahead, we recommend focusing on three critical areas:

Double down on AI and automation.

Implement tools that eliminate time-consuming tasks and give your teams more bandwidth to build relationships and drive strategy.

Center the candidate experience.

Prioritize personalization and engagement to strengthen your employer brand and win top candidates.

Leverage insights to stay ahead.

Use data and AI to identify bottlenecks, measure performance, and continuously improve your processes.

By embracing these focus areas, talent acquisition leaders can lead their organizations with confidence into a new era of hiring—one that is more efficient, more human, and better equipped to meet the demands of tomorrow’s workforce.

Let’s step forward together and redefine what’s possible in 2025.

Appendix

Special thanks to our featured experts

Kobi Ampoma

Head of Talent Acquisition (NL), The HEINEKEN Company

Vanessa Burnaby

VP, Global Talent Acquisition, Twilio

Nikola Dimov

Global Head of Talent Acquisition, AkzoNobel

Rameen Fattahi

Director of Talent Acquisition, Rivian

Giacomo Gally

Head of Talent Acquisition, TomTom

Megan Hennessy

Former Global Senior Talent Leader, Meta

Hung Lee

Founder, Recruiting Brainfood

Glenn Lindley

Director of Talent Acquisition, HighLevel

Bastian Müller

Global Head of Talent Acquisition, OLX

Elaine Orler

Chief Strategy and Product Officer, Match2

Frank Peeters

Manager Talent Acquisition Europe, Lucid Motors

Anastasia Pshegodskaya

Director, Talent Acquisition, Remote

Manjuri Sinha

VP HR/Global Head of GTM Org Success & People Partners, Miro

Carissa Spencer

Global TA Enablement & Operations Lead, Canva

Thomas Waldman

Global Head of Talent Acquisition & Contingent Workforce, Action

Jennifer Walker

Global Recruiting Coordination Manager, Hubspot​

Survey demographics/firmographics

  • 514 leaders based in the U.S.
  • Employment Status: 100% employed full-time
  • Job Level: Director and above
  • Job Function: Human Resources/Recruiting/Talent Acquisition
  • Sectors: Technology, Financial Services, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Retail (100+ respondents per sector)
  • Company Size: 1,000 or more employees (1,000-3,000: 287, 3,001-5,000:117, 5,001-10,000: 91, 10,000+: 19)

Survey methodology

This report was developed with scientific rigor in partnership with Qualtrics. We began by identifying the population of interest. Qualtrics distributed the anonymous survey to HR leaders, from Directors to C-suite executives. We had 1,582 respondents attempt to take the survey. 59 respondents were terminated either by the security check (either registered as a duplicate or a bot), or for belonging to a category filled, deeming them as an “over quota respondent.” 976 respondents were terminated via pre-screening, and 30 respondents were removed by the data scrubs. In this case, 514 completed the survey.

We developed the survey questions according to best practices in survey research, ensuring they were clear, concise, and understandable to people with various backgrounds. Questions had response formats designed to balance the richness of data to be collected with the ease of responding. For questions with more than one possible answer, respondents were instructed to select all answers that apply, unless the question specifically asked the respondent to only choose one.

We selected the topics based on a set of research questions identified by subject matter experts as relevant to emerging trends in the hiring landscape amidst the current economic and hiring conditions. Together, these actions encouraged participant engagement and high-quality responses while collecting in-depth information about changes in the hiring landscape.

Endnotes

1 Understanding America’s Labor Shortage: The Most Impacted Industries (The U.S. Chamber of Commerce): https://www.uschamber.com/workforce/understanding-americas-labor-shortage-the-most-impacted-industries

2 CNBC | SurveyMonkey Workforce Happiness Index: https://www.surveymonkey.com/curiosity/cnbc-workforce-survey-april-2021/

3 Health Resources and Services Administration | Health Workforce Projections: https://bhw.hrsa.gov/data-research/projecting-health-workforce-supply-demand

4 CBRE | Demand for Specialized Tech Talent in Artificial Intelligence Surges Across North America: https://www.cbre.com/press-releases/demand-for-specialized-tech-talent-in-artificial-intelligence-surges-across-north-america

About GoodTime

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