Tag: Hiring Insights

Editor’s note: The article below is an excerpt from GoodTime’s 2026 Hiring Insights Report. The entire report is available to view online for free here.

Introduction from Ahryun Moon

Hiring in 2026 is defined by both progress and pressure. While some teams are improving, the broader picture remains sobering: 90% of companies missed their hiring goals, and talent acquisition continues to operate under sustained structural strain. Nearly every organization now relies on AI, but this shift has introduced a new reality—fake or AI-generated candidates have emerged as the number one anticipated hiring threat for the year ahead.

At the same time, long-standing operational bottlenecks, especially scheduling, continue to slow hiring when speed matters most. The result is a market where authenticity, efficiency, and execution discipline are no longer differentiators; they are prerequisites.

Yet the teams that are outperforming the market tell a different story. They didn’t respond to pressure by simply adding headcount, or even by cutting it. Instead, they reorganized. Top-performing teams redesigned roles, workflows, and responsibilities around an AI-enabled reality, using automation to absorb operational load while elevating human judgment, coordination, and candidate connection.

These teams automate intentionally, standardize what should be repeatable, and leverage AI for insight—not just efficiency. In doing so, they protect the human touchpoints that define great hiring experiences, even as their processes become faster and more resilient.

I hope this year’s report inspires you to build toward that future—one where technology amplifies human connection rather than replaces it, and where hiring teams are structured to operate with confidence in an increasingly complex market.

Warm regards,

Ahryun Moon, CEO and Co-Founder, GoodTime

Key findings at a glance

• Fraudulent or AI-generated candidates have emerged as the #1 threat for 2026.
• 90% of companies missed their hiring goals, and 1 in 3 missed by a wide margin.
• 99.8% of TA teams use, pilot, or plan to use AI agents, making AI effectively mandatory.
• Scheduling remains the biggest operational tax on hiring (38% of recruiter time).
• 60% of organizations saw time-to-hire increase in 2025.
  • Only 1 in 9 companies succeeded in reducing time-to-hire.
• Top-performing TA teams operate fundamentally differently. They were:
  • 74% more likely to keep headcount flat while reorganizing roles
  • 58% more likely to use a centralized platform for texting candidates
  • 20% more likely to use AI agents for interview scheduling

Hiring goal attainment hits a five-year high but still signals a systemic struggle

At first glance, 2025 delivered a surprising headline: hiring goal attainment reached its highest point in five years. But a closer look reveals a more sobering truth. Performance remains dramatically below expectations, with most organizations continuing to fall short of their hiring targets.

More than a third of companies (34%) hit less than half of their hiring goals, and only a small fraction (10%) came close to achieving 90–100% of their targets. Most landed somewhere in the middle, filling between 50–74% of roles but still failing to meet organizational needs.

This paradox—the best year in five years, yet still deeply underperforming—reflects mounting competitive pressures, rising process complexity, and an increasing mismatch between talent acquisition teams’ capacity and the demands placed on them. For many organizations, hitting goals is no longer a matter of marginal improvement; it requires a structural transformation of how hiring operates.

“The headcount plan can often be a moving target. Criteria shift mid-search and teams are adjusting hiring priorities in response to changing business needs. When targets move often, it becomes almost impossible for TA teams to hit their goals. The quickest way to improve is early alignment between Executives, Finance, TA, and Hiring Managers, with clear priorities and expectations.”
-Shelby Wolpa, Founder, Shelby Wolpa Consulting

Top overall hiring challenges

This year’s data reveals a hiring environment defined not by a single dominant barrier, but by overlapping obstacles across skills, volume, technology, and candidate behavior.

The most widespread challenge was skills misalignment, cited by 28% of TA leaders. Even when candidate pipelines were strong, recruiters struggled to find applicants whose capabilities matched the expectations set on their résumés. This reflects a growing disconnect between what candidates present and what organizations need, a theme that resurfaces repeatedly throughout this year’s findings.

28% of organizations also reported a lack of qualified candidates, continuing a long-standing pain point for TA teams. Yet the data suggests this shortage is now being compounded by other dynamics, including shifting work models and compensation expectations.

Retention pressures persisted as well, with 27% of TA leaders citing retaining top talent as a major challenge. As skilled workers continue to command multiple offers and leverage competitive markets, companies face mounting pressure to deliver compelling experiences both before and after hire.

The emergence of fake or AI-assisted candidates, cited by 23% of leaders, marks one of the most notable new pressures. Although not the most common challenge this year, their rising prevalence signals an accelerating shift in candidate behavior and sets the stage for why fraudulent candidates become the top anticipated threat for the coming year.

“AI and generalized economic precarity across the globe has created the perfect storm which has deluged traditional hiring funnels with job applications. Recruiters and hiring managers alike are both now aware of the challenge of separating signal from noise. ID verification, background checks, fraud detection and cybersecurity are now becoming much more important elements of a recruiter’s job.”
-Hung Lee, Founder, Recruiting Brainfood

How the hiring landscape changed this year

The most widely felt change in the hiring landscape this year was the surge in candidate demands, with 45% of TA leaders reporting an increase in required touchpoints. An equal share said recruitment team turnover disrupted their ability to maintain steady candidate flow, adding operational strain at a time when processes were already stretched.

Competition for talent also intensified: 44% said the landscape has become more competitive due to increased demand, while 39% reported that building meaningful relationships with candidates has become more important. Speed of engagement rose in priority as well, with 38% noting the growing importance of connecting with candidates quickly.

At the same time, shifts in available talent created mixed conditions across industries. 38% said the landscape feels less competitive due to greater talent availability, while 34% now need more candidates in the funnel to meet hiring goals.

Overall, hiring in the past year became higher touch, higher urgency, and more operationally demanding—challenging TA teams to do more with less in an increasingly dynamic talent market.

Time-to-hire continues to worsen for most teams

The time-to-hire crisis shows no signs of easing.

• 60% of companies reported that time-to-hire increased in 2025.
• Only 12% managed to reduce it, an elite minority.

This means nearly nine out of ten organizations are either slowing down or treading water.

The year-over-year persistence of this trend reveals a deeper issue: technology adoption alone is not enough to create speed. Without disciplined workflows, streamlined communications, and clearer ownership across the hiring process, new tools often reinforce existing complexity instead of reducing it.

Just as important is what they didn’t do. Faster teams were:

• 40% less likely to rely on sourcing bots
• 56% less likely to use chatbots for early candidate engagement

These leaders focused on structural process improvement rather than volume-driven shortcuts. They modernized the internal mechanics of hiring instead of adding more candidates to an already strained system.

Scheduling remains the top operational burden in hiring

​​Despite advancements in hiring technology, scheduling remains the single most time-consuming and disruptive part of the process.

Talent teams report spending 38% of their time scheduling interviews, making scheduling the highest operational burden measured. And the ripple effect of scheduling-related bottlenecks shapes nearly every stage of the hiring process.

The most-cited scheduling bottlenecks include:

• Scheduling delays (35%)
• Limited interviewer pool (35%)
• Cancellations/reschedules (32%)
• Hiring manager availability (31%)

These are not isolated inconveniences. They are systemic blockers that lengthen hiring timelines, frustrate candidates, and increase the likelihood of losing talent to faster-moving competitors. Each cancellation can trigger multi-day delays, and each delayed response can push a qualified candidate toward another offer.

“If recruiters are still spending over a third of their time on scheduling, we’re not just missing hiring goals — we’re misusing talent. AI should handle at least 75% of the operational work so TA can focus on what humans do best: building trust, challenging bias, and hiring diverse teams that move the business.”
-Kobi Ampoma, Head of Talent Acquisition (NL), The HEINEKEN Company

Automated scheduling strongly correlates with higher goal attainment

The data has already made one thing clear: interview scheduling is not a side task, but the ultimate bottleneck. But understanding the problem is only half the equation. The more important question is whether fixing it actually changes outcomes.

This year’s data shows that it does.

Companies using automated or AI-driven scheduling were 1.6x more likely to achieve near-perfect hiring goal attainment (13% hitting 90–100%, compared with 8% of non-users). This marks scheduling automation not just as a time-saver, but as a meaningful operational advantage tied directly to hiring outcomes.

The correlation makes intuitive sense: when coordination delays, back-and-forth rescheduling, and interviewer bottlenecks are reduced, TA teams regain bandwidth to nurture candidates and make timely decisions. In contrast, organizations still relying on manual scheduling are struggling under operational weight that compounds with every requisition.

Current scheduling benchmarks

Scheduling speed is one of the clearest operational signals behind time to hire. While time-to-hire captures the outcome, scheduling metrics reveal where momentum is gained or lost—often days before delays show up in aggregate hiring data.

The benchmarks below reflect the three most important scheduling metrics TA teams should monitor to keep hiring moving efficiently.

AI’s role evolves: from basic automation to decision intelligence

AI adoption in talent acquisition reached near-universal levels in 2025, but how teams use AI has changed dramatically.

The top AI use case this year was analytics and reporting, with 45% of teams leveraging AI to surface insights, track funnel health, and identify inefficiencies. Scheduling (36%) and resume screening (36%) remain widely used but no longer dominate the narrative.

This signals a critical shift: AI is becoming the decision-making infrastructure behind hiring, not merely a way to automate repetitive tasks.

TA teams are increasingly relying on AI for:

• Diagnostic visibility into bottlenecks
• High-resolution quality-of-hire signals
• Resource allocation insights
• Predictive performance indicators

In other words, AI is expanding from “doing work” to “informing how work is done.”

“The goal isn’t just speed. It’s to free people to focus on what matters most. Our coordinators can now focus on the interactions that matter — guiding candidates, coaching hiring managers, and refining the experience instead of chasing calendars.”
-Tiffany Clark, Head of HR Strategy & Shared Services, S&P Global

How talent teams changedthis year

Talent teams underwent significant restructuring last year, driven by shifting hiring demands and evolving organizational priorities. More than half of companies (56%) grew their TA headcount, reflecting increased pressure to meet hiring goals and support more complex workflows. Another 24% kept headcount steady but reorganized roles, often redistributing responsibilities to adapt to new tools, expectations, or process requirements. Meanwhile, 19% reported reducing TA headcount, forcing smaller teams to manage the same or greater workload with fewer resources.

AI played an increasingly influential role in these changes. As AI automated scheduling, screening, and reporting tasks, many organizations reevaluated coordinator responsibilities, expanded recruiter support roles, or shifted bandwidth toward candidate experience and strategic partnership activities.

Collectively, these adjustments reflect a larger transition: TA teams are not simply shrinking or growing—they are transforming.

Roles are being redesigned to align with an AI-enabled hiring ecosystem where operational work is streamlined and human expertise is focused on higher-value decision-making and engagement.

Candidate communication trends: texting becomes central—and centralized

Texting has become a core part of candidate communication, but how teams manage it varies widely. 40% of organizations now use a centralized company platform or texting software, the most common approach and the one most associated with consistency and compliance.

Another 36% text candidates using company-issued phones, while 24% still rely on recruiters’ personal cell phones, introducing risks around tracking, data security, and uneven candidate experience. Notably, 0% of respondents say they avoid SMS or WhatsApp altogether, underscoring how essential mobile communication has become in the hiring process.

More layoffs than we’ve seen in four years

Layoffs surged sharply over the past 12 months, marking one of the most turbulent periods for talent teams in recent years. 75% of companies conducted layoffs in 2025, the highest level in the past four years, and a steep rise from 2024 and 2023. The scale of these reductions signals widespread organizational restructuring and heightened economic uncertainty.

The severity of layoffs also increased. While the majority of organizations kept reductions relatively limited, the distribution reveals escalating pressure across the workforce:

The end of the RTO debate: Office-first becomes the dominant reality

The pendulum has swung decisively. Here’s the current status of workforce distribution:

• 55% fully in office
• 42% mostly in office
• Only 3% mostly remote
• None were fully remote

Despite media narratives about remote stability, the data shows a nearly universal return to office-first operating models.

This shift adds complexity for TA teams who must now navigate redefined candidate expectations, changing geographic recruiting strategies, and evolving internal policies.

A year defined by pressure, and by clarity

2025 exposed deep operational friction across the hiring lifecycle, from scheduling bottlenecks to rising time-to-hire, increasing candidate misrepresentation, and mounting organizational expectations. Yet it also delivered clarity: the organizations making meaningful progress are those that have embraced AI-driven decision-making, standardized workflows, and disciplined process improvement.

The path forward is no longer ambiguous.

To succeed in 2026, talent acquisition must become more efficient, more insight-driven, and more resilient, all while safeguarding authenticity in a rapidly evolving talent landscape.

Editor’s note: The article below is an excerpt from GoodTime’s 2026 Hiring Insights Report. The entire report is available to view online for free here.

In a year when 90% of companies missed their hiring goals, a small cohort broke through the noise. These top-performing TA teams—the organizations that achieved 75% or more of their hiring goals—didn’t simply work harder. They operated differently. Their strategies, tools, and organizational environments show a level of operational maturity that stands in stark contrast to the broader hiring market.

Where many teams struggled with worsening time-to-hire, growing candidate demands, and rising workflow complexity, top performers built uncompromising systems around efficiency, automation, and quality. Their advantage was not incremental; it was structural.

“The best Talent teams aren’t ‘adding AI’ — they’re re-architecting how hiring works. Simply layering AI tools onto broken or inefficient processes won’t drive impact. The real opportunity lies in auditing the end-to-end hiring journey, starting with the problem to solve, and intentionally redesigning it.”
-Manjuri Sinha, VP HR & Global Head of GTM Org Success & People Partners, Miro

The signature behaviors that set top performers apart

Top-performing TA teams—the small group that met at least 75% of their hiring goals—share a set of behaviors that consistently separate them from the rest of the market.

They are 20% more likely to use AI agents for interview scheduling, and the payoff is measurable: teams that use automated scheduling are 1.6x more likely to achieve near-perfect hiring goal attainment (13% hitting 90–100%, compared with 8% of non-users).

On the surface, these choices can appear operational. In practice, they signal something far more consequential. While many organizations still rely on manual coordination to move candidates through the process, top performers have automated the most failure-prone part of hiring: scheduling.

By reducing back-and-forth, delays, and rescheduling cascades, these teams protect candidate momentum and recruiter bandwidth. The result isn’t just faster movement through the funnel, but a hiring process that is more predictable, more resilient, and easier to scale under pressure.

Their advantage isn’t simply tool adoption; it’s that they invest in automation where it directly improves outcomes.

Who top performers are, and the conditions that enable them

What distinguishes these teams isn’t budget or headcount. It’s the environment they operate in and the discipline with which they design their processes.

Top-performing teams are more likely to work within stable organizational structures. They were almost twice as likely to report no layoffs in the past year and 74% more likely to have reorganized roles without reducing headcount, a sign that their organizations protected continuity rather than resetting workflows amid turbulence. Stability doesn’t guarantee performance, but it creates the conditions for it: clearer ownership, less churn, and systems that don’t need to be rebuilt every quarter.

They also operate with flexibility where it matters. Compared to the broader market’s sharp return to office-first models, top performers were significantly more likely to operate in hybrid environments. That flexibility has practical implications: distributed teams tend to rely more heavily on standardized tools, centralized communication, and automated coordination, all of which reduce bottlenecks and improve execution.

Together, these conditions allow top performers to focus less on firefighting and more on system design.

How top performers operate differently than everyone else

Automation is replacing headcount growth as the path to hiring success

One of the most striking findings in the 2026 data isn’t about tools or tactics—it’s about how top-performing teams scale.

Despite operating in the same market conditions as everyone else, top-performing TA teams are less likely to grow headcount, even as they achieve significantly higher hiring goal attainment. Instead of expanding teams to absorb rising complexity, they modernize their infrastructure to remove it. While 60% of underperforming teams grew headcount over the past year, fewer than half of top performers did the same. Instead, top performers were far more likely to keep headcount stable while reorganizing roles, signaling a deliberate shift away from logistics-heavy work and toward higher-leverage responsibilities.

This pattern reflects a fundamentally different operating model. Top-performing teams lean into automation, AI-powered scheduling, and workflow orchestration to eliminate the manual coordination that slows hiring down. By reducing scheduling drag, communication friction, and process noise, they increase throughput without increasing staffing.

The result is not just efficiency—it’s resilience. These teams hit hiring goals at a higher rate and avoid the cycle of constant headcount expansion that many organizations rely on to keep pace.

In 2026, the strongest TA organizations aren’t scaling by hiring more recruiters. They’re scaling by building systems that make recruiters more effective.

Top performers thoughtfully embraceAI agents

While AI agent adoption is widespread across talent acquisition, how teams deploy AI clearly separates top performers from everyone else.

Top-performing TA teams are significantly more likely to use AI agents for core workflow mechanics and decision support, not just surface-level automation. Their highest adoption areas, analytics and reporting (43%) and interview scheduling (42%), map directly to the two biggest operational levers in hiring: visibility and speed. By contrast, teams that underperform are less likely to apply AI in these system-level functions, limiting its impact on overall hiring outcomes.

Notably, top performers also lean more heavily into structured evaluation tools, including scorecard analysis and interview intelligence. This suggests a more mature use of AI, one focused on improving signal quality and consistency, not just reducing manual work.

Where top-performing teams don’t over-invest is equally telling. They are less differentiated in areas like candidate sourcing and conversational AI, reinforcing a broader theme from this year’s data: automation at the top of the funnel is not what drives results. Instead, gains come from tightening execution in the middle of the hiring process, where delays, cancellations, and poor coordination most often derail outcomes.

In short, top-performing teams treat AI as infrastructure, not experimentation. They deploy it where it compounds—speeding scheduling, improving insight, and reinforcing hiring discipline—while others remain stuck using AI tactically rather than transformationally.

AI-powered scheduling as a coreoperating mechanism

For top performers, AI scheduling isn’t a convenience feature — it’s foundational.

Top-performing teams were:

• 20% more likely to use AI agents for interview scheduling
• 16% more likely to run a fast, streamlined interview process
• 18% more likely to offer automated scheduling options directly to candidates

These investments matter because scheduling remains the single largest operational tax in hiring, consuming 38% of recruiter time across the industry. By automating the handoffs, coordination, and rebooking workflows that drain bandwidth, top performers free their teams to focus on higher-value work, while delivering a faster, more consistent candidate experience.

Where others still rely on people to move calendars, top performers use systems.

“The fastest teams don’t work ‘harder’; they design hiring like a product and think with the candidate in mind. They front load clarity: tight intake meetings, clear success profiles, scorecards, and aligned decision makers before the role goes live. They treat time-to-hire as a system metric, not a TA-only KPI.”
-Kobi Ampoma, Head of Talent Acquisition (NL), The HEINEKEN Company

Centralized, structured communication,not ad hoc messaging

The second major investment area—and one of the strongest differentiators for 2026—is communication discipline.

Top performers were 58% more likely to use a centralized texting platform This shift away from personal phones and fragmented messaging channels does more than tidy up communications. It fundamentally reshapes hiring operations by enabling:

• Faster response times
• Consistent candidate messaging
• Better compliance and documentation
• Reduced candidate drop-off
• Clearer accountability across the team

In a year when candidate expectations accelerated and fraud concerns grew, standardized communication became both a performance driver and a risk mitigator.

Top performers treated communication not as a task, but as a system that needed governance.

How top performersmeasure success

Top-performing TA teams distinguish themselves not only by how they work, but by what they choose to measure. In a year where candidate fraud increased, time-to-hire worsened for most organizations, and AI reshaped the mechanics of hiring, the most successful teams gravitated toward the metrics that actually predict meaningful outcomes, not just activity.

Their measurement philosophy is sharper, more sophisticated, and far more focused on downstream impact than their peers.

Quality of hire is the anchor metric

Among all metrics measured in 2026, quality of hire stands out as the signature of top-performing teams.

Top performers were:

• 22%more likely to track quality of hire
• 42% more likely to select it astheir top hiring metric

This focus is especially meaningful in a year where fake or fraudulent candidates rose to the top of anticipated challenges. Rather than respond by adding more assessments or slowing the process, top performers rebuilt measurement systems around outcomes—ensuring every hire meets performance expectations and aligns with long-term needs.

Where many teams still lean on volume-based or speed-based measures, top performers look at what happens after the hire.

“AI has raised the bar on what ‘verification’ actually means. A single background check at the end of the process isn’t enough anymore. TA teams now have to confirm identity and authenticity at multiple points – starting at application, continuing through assessments and interviews, and carrying all the way through onboarding.”
-Becky McCullough, VP, Talent Acquisition & Mobility, HubSpot

Funnel health takes priority over funnel volume

Another clear differentiator: top performers track funnel health, not just funnel size. They were significantly more likely to measure application completion rates (23% more likely). This matters because application completion, unlike raw applicant volume, reveals:

• Where friction exists in the early funnel
• Whether job postings and processes are aligned with candidate expectations
• How effectively the system converts interest into engagement

By watching the health of the funnel rather than the size of it, top performers avoid the trap of chasing more candidates when the real issue lies in process breakdowns.

It’s a more mature, more diagnostic approach, one that strengthens every downstream stage of hiring.

Less emphasis on cost-per-hire

In contrast to many organizations still under budget pressure, top performers were 21% less likely to treat cost-per-hire as a central metric.

The reason is simple: Cost metrics don’t predict hiring outcomes. Quality, velocity, and funnel integrity do.

This doesn’t mean cost doesn’t matter. It means top performers refuse to optimize for short-term savings at the expense of long-term hiring effectiveness.

A measurement system designed for clarity, not complexity

Together, these choices reflect a coherent philosophy:

• Measure performance, not activity
• Track what influences outcomes, not what’s easiest to quantify
• Use data to surface friction, not justify the status quo
• Prioritize metrics that support speed and quality in an environment of rising candidate misrepresentation

“We’re not just looking at metrics like quality of hire now. We’re also reassessing where our bar is for things like time-to-fill and time-to-hire. What GoodTime is really good at is enabling us to quantify how much we can improve metrics and whether those improvements are within our control.”
-Robbie Simpson, Head of Talent Acquisition, Glovo

In short, top performers don’t just use better tools—they use better metrics. And those metrics allow them to see the hiring system clearly enough to fix what others can’t.

Top performers’ prioritiesfor 2026

Looking ahead to 2026, top-performing TA teams are doubling down on the same structural advantages that fueled their success in 2025. Their priorities reflect a clear understanding of where hiring is headed: toward greater automation, tighter workflow discipline, and a candidate experience defined by speed and clarity rather than personalization alone.

In contrast to organizations that are still reacting to rising fraud, worsening time-to-hire, and increased operational strain, top performers are proactively strengthening the systems that drove their gains. Their 2026 priorities read less like a wishlist and more like a continuation of a proven strategy.

Improving overall efficiency

Efficiency is the top priority for high-performing teams entering 2026. And this time, it’s not shorthand for cost-cutting or incremental process fixes. Top performers are focused on:

• Removing friction from every stage of the funnel
• Reducing coordination load
• Increasing workflow reliability
• Streamlining decision paths

Improving time-to-hire

While the majority of companies saw time-to-hire worsen, top performers were far more likely to prioritize and protect speed as a strategic capability.

Their focus reflects an understanding that speed is no longer a nice-to-have, it is:

• A defense against candidate dropout
• A competitive differentiator in a market with heightened candidate expectations
• A requirement for maintaining internal trust in TA

Top performers treat time-to-hire as a system-level output, not an isolated metric.

Upgrading hiring technology

For top performers, tech modernization is not about adding more tools; it’s about replacing brittle, manual steps with systems that can scale.

In 2026, they are more likely to invest in:

• AI-driven scheduling
• Automated communication workflows
• Centralized texting platforms
• Analytics and bottleneck diagnostics

These upgrades reflect a broader shift: top performers invest in technology that governs the workflow, not just supplements it.

Enhancing the candidate experience through speed, clarity, and flexibility

Where many organizations still equate candidate experience with personalization, top performers have moved toward a more modern definition rooted in:

• Fast interview-to-offer timelines
• Clear, automated communication
• Self-scheduling and self-rescheduling
• Reduced ambiguity and fewer touchpoints

This shift is especially important in a landscape where candidate expectations have risen and patience has dropped. Top performers have recognized that the most valuable form of personalization is removing the friction that slows candidates down.

The blueprint: what others can learn from top performers

Across every data point, from AI usage to workflow design, communication discipline, and measurement,  top-performing TA teams reveal the same underlying truth: they win by building systems that remove friction and amplify signal. Their results aren’t the product of luck or lighter workloads. They are the consequence of intentional design decisions that compound across the entire hiring lifecycle.

The blueprint they offer is not abstract. It’s practical and immediately actionable:

1. Treat scheduling as a strategic system, not an administrative task.
Top performers automate coordination end-to-end, enabling faster movement and freeing teams from the single largest operational burden.

2. Centralize communication to eliminate inconsistency and reduce dropout.
By consolidating texting and candidate outreach, they create a predictable, timely communication rhythm that keeps candidates engaged and reduces risk.

3. Deploy AI where it improves judgment and workflow reliability.
Instead of concentrating automation at the top of the funnel, they weave AI into screening, question generation, analytics, and reporting, the areas that shape quality, velocity, and decision-making.

4. Anchor measurement in quality and funnel health.
Top performers track the metrics that actually forecast hiring success: quality of hire, completion rates, conversion patterns, and downstream outcomes. And they deprioritize metrics, like cost-per-hire, that create false efficiency.

5. Cultivate organizational stability and role clarity.
Reorganizations, not reductions, give teams the stability to adopt new tools and refine workflows. Flexibility in work models enables faster coordination and stronger adoption of modern technology.

6. Build candidate experiences around speed, clarity, and flexibility.
Top performers understand that today’s candidates value momentum more than polish. Self-service, automation, and transparent updates create the experience candidates now expect and competitors struggle to match.

Together, these practices form a coherent operating system for modern hiring, one that is resilient to fraud, capable of sustaining speed, and grounded in metrics that matter. The path forward for TA teams is not about working harder or adding more volume. It’s about adopting the structural advantages that top performers have already proven to work.

Editor’s note: The article below is an excerpt from GoodTime’s 2026 Hiring Insights Report. The entire report is available to view online for free here.

As talent teams look toward 2026, the path to winning top talent is defined less by sourcing volume and more by operational discipline. Rising candidate expectations, concerns about authenticity, and persistent workflow bottlenecks have pushed organizations to rethink how hiring should function. And after a year marked by strain, leaders enter 2026 with remarkable alignment on what must change.

The data shows that modernization is no longer optional. 91% of TA leaders plan to invest in additional hiring technology, and AI adoption has reached a pivotal threshold: 99% of teams now use, pilot, or plan to use AI agents. With this shift, hiring is entering an era where speed, clarity, and system-level intelligence determine competitive advantage.

New pressures redefine how teams compete in 2026

Fake and fraudulent candidates become the #1 anticipated challenge

For the first time, TA leaders say fake or AI-misrepresented candidates pose the single biggest threat to hiring this year. 27% expect fraudulent candidates to be a top challenge, narrowly edging out the 26% who cite a lack of qualified talent.

This shift signals a profound change in the hiring environment. As generative AI raises the floor of resume quality and candidate presentation, teams must increase their focus on skill validation, structured interviews, and identity assurance. The challenge is no longer just finding talent—it’s confirming authenticity.

“Resumes, answers to application questions, even online portfolios—core data points in assessing candidate quality not so long ago —have all lost value in the era of GenAI. It’s one of the most urgent tasks of TA teams today to find methods of assessment which are suitable for this era. We’re seeing much greater use of synchronous assessments for skills, traits and behaviours, as well as (somewhat ironically) the return of in-person interviews.”
-Hung Lee, Founder, Recruiting Brainfood

Why tech limitations persist despite widespread adoption

Despite near-universal adoption of hiring technology, 26% of leaders still expect tech limitations to be a major barrier in the coming year. The issue isn’t access to tools—it’s how those tools function in practice.

Many organizations now rely on fragmented tech stacks made up of point solutions that don’t work together cleanly. Instead of reducing effort, these systems introduce more handoffs, data silos, and manual coordination. Automation often exists in pieces, but recruiters are still left to connect workflows, manage scheduling, chase feedback, and maintain candidate communication across platforms.

Compounding this, limited visibility into bottlenecks makes it harder to diagnose and fix delays before they escalate. When technology doesn’t clearly surface where hiring slows down, teams end up reacting to problems rather than preventing them.

In short, tech becomes a constraint when it adds complexity instead of removing it, especially as hiring speed and candidate expectations continue to rise.

“To successfully leverage AI, you need individuals who dare to disrupt and challenge your existing hiring processes. You can no longer achieve great results by adhering to rigid legacy processes — you need innovators who understand the rules well enough to know how to break them.”
-Anastasia Pshegodskaya, Global Director, Talent Acquisition, Remote

Rising candidate expectations and dropout risks intensify

Candidates expect immediate responses, flexible scheduling, and mobile-friendly communication. When teams fall behind, dropout rates spike. Leaders anticipate these pressures increasing, making responsiveness and process clarity key differentiators in 2026.

Recruiter turnover threatens continuity

Turnover within TA teams is expected to disrupt candidate flow and reduce operational stability. As workloads fluctuate and hiring needs rise, teams must build systems that maintain consistency even when people transition.

TA leaders anticipate uneven hiring conditions in 2026

One of the clearest signals in the 2026 data is not consensus, but contextual divergence in how hiring conditions are expected to evolve.

While 45% of TA leaders expect the hiring landscape to become more competitive due to increased demand for talent, nearly as many (41%) believe it will become less competitive as talent availability increases. Rather than signaling confusion or contradiction, this split reflects the reality that hiring conditions are increasingly uneven across roles, skills, and labor pools.

In practice, this suggests that competition in 2026 will be more situational than universal. Some teams, particularly those hiring for scarce, high-impact, or specialized roles, are likely to face intense competition and sustained pressure on speed. Others will contend with larger candidate pools that still require careful screening, faster decision-making, and stronger process discipline to convert interest into hires.

The takeaway is not that the hiring market is moving in two directions at once, but that there is no single hiring market anymore. Conditions will vary meaningfully depending on what roles organizations are hiring for, where those roles sit, and how efficiently teams can move candidates through the process.

As a result, speed, clarity, and execution discipline matter regardless of whether talent is scarce or abundant. Teams that move slowly or inconsistently risk losing candidates either to faster competitors or to disengagement.

What TA teams are prioritizingin 2026

The priorities for the year ahead reveal a discipline-focused mindset. Leaders are no longer trying to “add more candidates” to the top of the funnel. Instead, they are focused on fixing the entire system.

Improving efficiency is the top priority

Organizations overwhelmingly cite efficiency as their top focus for 2026. Speed is no longer just a metric; it’s a core capability. The teams that move fast are the ones that will win candidates who often hold multiple offers.

Upgrading hiring technology

With 91% planning new tech investments, modernization is accelerating. Teams are prioritizing:

• Automated scheduling
• Centralized communication
• Analytics and bottleneck detection

In other words, the age of patchwork workflows is ending and end-to-end connected systems will take their place.

“When you think about how we translate that hospitality mindset into our candidate interviewing, having a really rock-solid scheduling platform and tools is really important to deliver the experience we’re looking for.”
-Jeff Moore
VP of TA Operations and Workspaces, Toast

Elevating the candidate experience through speed and flexibility

Candidate experience has evolved. Personal touches matter, but not as much as frictionless movement through the process. The top features companies offered to improve the candidate experience included:

• Self-scheduling and self-rescheduling
• Transparent, automated updates
• Fast interview-to-offer timelines
• Mobile-first communication

Today’s candidates judge employers largely on whether the hiring process feels modern, predictable, and respectful of their time.

Speed becomes the primary differentiator

Fast interview-to-offer processes are now one of the strongest predictors of acceptance. Teams that can move candidates forward without delay create a competitive advantage.

Self-service scheduling becomes standard

With 53% offering self-rescheduling and 41% using automated scheduling, candidates expect flexibility and control. These capabilities reduce friction and lower dropout rates across the funnel.

Transparency drives trust

More than ever, candidates expect real-time visibility into where they stand. Automated updates reduce uncertainty—and demonstrate operational maturity.

Mobile-first communication is universal

Texting and WhatsApp are now part of every team’s communication toolkit. What differentiates organizations is whether those channels are centralized, compliant, and consistent.

AI’s ever-expanding role in talent acquisition

One of the more interesting signals in the data is where AI adoption has concentrated, and where it hasn’t.

TA teams are most likely to apply AI to tasks where value is clear, risk is low, and outputs are easy to validate. Analytics and reporting (45%), interview question generation (42%), and interview intelligence (39%) all rank at the top, use cases where AI augments decision-making without replacing human judgment.

By contrast, even some of the most operationally straightforward uses of AI remain under-adopted. Interview scheduling stands out as the clearest missed opportunity: it’s widely understood, low-risk, and directly tied to the biggest bottlenecks teams face today. Scheduling is often the best place to start with automation because it delivers immediate efficiency gains without introducing new decision-making risk.

“AI agents handle orchestration, not just execution — leveraging data and insights to make more informed decisions. We’ve been able to cut our scheduling time from 30 minutes to five.”
-Tiffany Clark, Head of HR Strategy & Shared Services, S&P Global

The pattern is telling: teams are embracing AI fastest where it provides insight without requiring structural change, and moving more cautiously where adoption would force deeper workflow redesign. As AI becomes infrastructure rather than experimentation, the next wave of differentiation will come from teams willing to rebuild processes, not just layer intelligence on top of them.

AI-powered scheduling gains strategic importance

With scheduling still the largest operational tax in hiring, AI-powered coordination continues to differentiate faster teams from slower ones. Automated scheduling (already a strong predictor of higher goal attainment) is becoming a core mechanism for reducing delays, protecting candidate engagement, and supporting faster interview-to-offer decisions in the year ahead.

“Recruiters aren’t slow—scheduling is. Until companies adopt systems that absorb complexity instead of pushing it onto humans, scheduling will remain the single biggest bottleneck in hiring.”
-Shelby Wolpa, Founder, Shelby Wolpa Consulting

The metrics that matter in 2026

Quality of hire leads all metrics

Quality of hire is now the most tracked metric at 42%, and the most prioritized, with 22% naming it their top measure of success. As candidate authenticity becomes harder to assess, quality signals become more vital.

“The real competitive advantage will be applying AI in ways that drive quality: quality of process and hire. By quality of hire, we mean improving the rigor of our assessment, accuracy of our decision making, and ultimately, the success of the hires that we make relative to historical benchmarks.”
-Ben Sesser, Co-Founder, BrightHire

Efficiency metrics gain momentum

Teams are still prioritizing key efficiency measures:

• Time-to-hire (37%)
• Offer acceptance rate (36%)
• Application completion rate (38%)

These metrics give leaders earlier warnings and clearer insight into when slowdowns or gaps begin to form.

The bottom line: How teams will win talent in 2026

The data reveals a clear blueprint for success:

1. Build AI-first workflows

AI should orchestrate scheduling, detect delays, surface insights, and simplify complexity throughout the hiring process.

2. Modernize scheduling and remove manual coordination

Automation must replace back-and-forth messaging, fragmented calendars, and human bottlenecks.

3. Strengthen verification and assessment

With fake candidates on the rise, structured interviews, skills tests, and identity protocols are essential.

4. Standardize processes for consistency and scale

Standardization reduces confusion, speeds decision-making, and improves measurement.

5. Redesign TA roles to maximize human value

Free teams from administrative burden and shift focus toward relationships, advisory work, and better hiring decisions.

The takeaway

Winning top talent in 2026 requires precision, speed, and a new level of operational discipline. As candidate authenticity becomes harder to evaluate and expectations rise across the funnel, competitive advantage shifts toward teams that automate intelligently, measure what matters, and eliminate friction at every step.

Organizations that modernize now—adopting AI-driven workflows, upgrading communication systems, and prioritizing quality of hire—will be the ones best positioned to hire confidently in a challenging and rapidly evolving hiring landscape.