The Future of Recruiting 2025 | Search & Staffing
How AI redefines recruiting excellence
Evolving from routine tasks to strategic impact
As AI streamlines the rote, transactional tasks that once dominated recruiters’ time, teams are freed to focus on the strategic, relationship-driven work that delivers real business impact. Recruiting excellence won’t be defined solely by speed or short-term efficiency; increasingly, it will be based on quality and long-term outcomes.
This report distills insights based on billions of LinkedIn data points, a survey of over 1,000 talent professionals, and advice from dozens of talent leaders — all to help you better understand the shifting landscape, anticipate emerging trends, and capitalize on the opportunities of an AI-driven future of recruiting.
Read on to see how AI can help your teams bring long-sought but often-elusive goals — such as improving quality of hire and prioritizing skills-based hiring — within your grasp.
AI in Recruiting
AI is reshaping recruitment from the ground up — and organizations are catching on.
AI is transforming how recruitment firms operate, moving past process-driven efficiency to business-focused impact. By automating time-consuming tasks, generative AI (GAI) speeds up the recruiting process, allowing recruiters to spend more time on strategic activities like building relationships, improving candidate experience, and advising their clients. Organizations are getting the message.
Adoption among recruitment firms is growing, with a full 80% describing their organizations as “exploring,” “experimenting with,” or “actively integrating” GAI into their recruiting practices.
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What advantages does AI provide these recruiting teams? Efficiency is easily the top benefit; in fact, among those experimenting or integrating GAI in hiring, the average amount of time saved is about 20% of their work week — that’s a full work day saved every week.
AI is a tool to augment human judgment, not replace it. Successful organizations will find the right balance — using AI to handle routine tasks and consider complex problems, while preserving meaningful human interaction where it matters most.”
Glen Cathey
SVP, Consulting Principal, Talent Advisory and Digital Strategy at Randstad
These benefits come with added responsibilities, and recruiting teams aren’t shying away from them. Recruiters themselves are recognizing that they need to bulk up on AI skills to keep up with the changes.
But recruiters won’t just need AI skills — they’ll need human skills too. Those who want to stand out from the crowd will need to master skills that can’t be easily replicated by GAI, such as relationship building, communication, and adaptability.
The best recruiters, says John Vlastelica, founder and CEO of Recruiting Toolbox, will become talent advisors who work with candidates who need the human touch to guide them on major career decisions. “They will be much more of a career coach, working with candidates who have more complicated situations,” John says. “They will be providing more of an executive recruiter kind of experience at a much lower volume.”
With AI set to take over mundane tasks, clients are increasingly looking for recruitment partners who can take on more strategic roles. Demand for recruiters who have relationship-building skills, for instance, has surged. Compared to the year before, employers were a stunning 54x more likely to list “relationship development” as a required skill for recruiters on a paid job post over the past year.
AI in hiring can serve many functions, but it shouldn’t reduce candidates to mere inputs in an algorithm. A recruiter’s expertise is essential to ensuring candidates who don’t perfectly align with job postings, but possess transferable skills and a strong potential for growth, are given a fair chance in the hiring process.”
Gaëlle de la Fosse
President of LHH and an executive committee member at Adecco Group
But GAI also presents challenges and risks that recruiting leaders will have to address, including concerns about data accuracy and privacy, cost, and even uncertainty about how to begin.
Streamlining candidate engagement, sourcing, and matching frees up recruiters for higher value activities like advising customers on ways to attract top talent more effectively through data-driven hiring strategies and practices. In this way, AI is enhancing the role of recruiters, not replacing them.”
Jason Pyle
President & Managing Director (USA & Canada) at Harvey Nash
Tips and strategies to integrate AI into your recruitment process
Help recruiters get comfortable with using AI.
For organizations uncertain about where to start, an AI playground can provide a low-risk environment to experiment with tools and models. This helps recruiters see how AI can accelerate common tasks, like writing job ads or outreach messages.
Offer targeted training.
Offer courses on mastering both the ins and outs of using AI in recruiting, as well as the soft skills needed to succeed.
Prioritize responsible AI use.
“Invest in tools that are rigorously tested for accuracy and fairness,” advises Salma Rashad, Global Executive Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Siemens. Be transparent: candidates should understand how AI is being used in the recruiting process. Ensure the tools you use protect candidates’ privacy and comply with data privacy regulations.
Establish guiding principles on the use of AI.
LinkedIn, for instance, has five principles guiding its AI work: advance economic opportunity, uphold trust, promote fairness and inclusion, provide transparency, and embrace accountability.
Quality of Hire
Organizations are getting serious about candidate quality — measuring and improving it.
Hiring the best person for the job has always been a central goal of recruiting, but it’s becoming even more important now. Volatile business conditions are amping up demand for quality candidates who can adapt to rapid change. “Maintaining a laser focus on the quality of our hiring process has become more vital than ever,” said Jude James of UST. “High-quality talent can navigate uncertainty, make informed decisions swiftly, and adapt to new technologies or processes.”
Today’s urgency around quality of hire is also a course correction. During the Great Reshuffle of 2021 and 2022, many employers over-indexed on speed, prioritizing quick fills over thoughtful decisions. With hiring slowing, the pendulum is swinging back toward quality. Every placement must count — and that means prioritizing long-term value over short-term efficiency.
It’s not surprising, then, that as many as 85% of recruitment pros agree it will become increasingly important to measure quality of hire. By continuously assessing the value of recent placements in consultation with their clients, recruitment firms can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of their recruitment process and make necessary adjustments.
For now, measuring quality of hire remains notoriously difficult, with only 47% of recruitment professionals reporting they feel highly confident in their organization’s ability to do so effectively. But AI is poised to help in measuring the elusive metric, with tools that can analyze employee performance data, identify trends, and predict long-term success.
Organizations are likewise optimistic about AI’s potential to improve their ability to source and hire the best candidates. Hays, for instance, is using AI tools to gain more accurate assessments of candidates’ skills and potential. “AI is already having a big impact on talent metrics. It will enable us to measure a larger and more complex set of metrics to better evaluate new hire integration and performance over time,” said Ruth Munday, global head of client development at Hays.
The platform insights in this report measure quality of hire as a combination of demand, retention, and mobility — but as we'll see, there's no one-size-fits-all formula.
What are some other ways organizations can boost quality of hire? LinkedIn’s new research underscores the crucial role of employer branding. Companies that are known for delivering on certain candidate priorities — like the ability to work with talented people — are more likely to attract a quality hire.
“To achieve that quality, a strong employee value proposition and brand positioning are essential in helping attract the best talent. This needs to be supplemented by recruiters and hiring managers following consistent recruitment and evaluation processes — which are increasingly being enhanced through AI tools that help score candidates’ applications and interview performance.”
Justin Somerville-Cotton
Head of Flexhuis UK
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The takeaway is clear: employer branding isn’t just about attracting talent; it’s a proven driver of quality hires. Communicating your clients’ key talent drivers, like flexibility and innovation, to potential candidates can give recruitment firms a measurable edge in placing quality candidates.
‘Quality of hire’ is measured across a whole range of categories. Whatever your priorities are, you need to collect the right data and perform the right analyses for these metrics. This data is mostly about the goals and satisfaction of our clients, but we should not forget the perspective of our candidates. Highly desired freelance talents in particular will decide who they will and won’t work with.”
Alexander Heise
CEO Germany and CEMEA at Hays
Tips and strategies to measure and improve your quality of hire
Find new ways to evaluate candidates’ skills.
Uber, for instance, created a three-part framework for improving and measuring quality of hire. Your clients will look to you for similar rigor:
1. Develop success profiles, i.e. the common attributes of the best performers at the organization;
2. Create an assessment process that uses these standards as a benchmark for evaluating candidates;
3. Validate the quality of your hires with post-hire surveys of hiring managers.
Identify the quality of hire measurement method that’s right for your organization.
Quality of hire is typically calculated as a combination of other metrics, the most common being new hire retention (which 58% of recruiting pros use), client/customer feedback (56%), and job performance ratings (52%), according to our survey. No matter which metrics you use, the most important thing is to measure them consistently.
Explore AI tools that can help improve quality of hire.
LinkedIn, for example, is experimenting with using AI tools to record and analyze transcripts of interviews conducted by recruiters. Using this information, LinkedIn can determine the areas that need improvement and ultimately lead to better quality of hire.
Bolster your clients’ brand.
Make sure you’re highlighting the talent drivers that quality candidates are looking for. Do your clients offer new hires opportunities to work on innovative projects? Do your clients’ employees get to learn in-demand skills? Spell these out clearly in your candidate communications.
Skills-Based Hiring
As employers hunt for AI-skilled workers, skills-based hiring is gaining steam.
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Skills-based hiring — the practice of hiring based on candidates’ skills, rather than their degrees or their job history — is becoming an increasingly important practice in a rapidly shifting economy. As employers strive to keep up with advances in technology, they’re seeking employees who have certain skills — including AI skills — to fill skills gaps.
In fact, over nine out of ten recruitment pros believe accurately assessing a candidate’s skills is crucial for improving quality of hire. And indeed, LinkedIn data shows that organizations with the most skills-based searches are +12% more likely to make a quality hire.
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Skills-based hiring can be challenging and time-consuming — but AI is poised to change that. AI tools can help recruiters analyze resumes to uncover skills, automate skills assessments, remove bias from the hiring process, and more. Recruiters’ roles can more easily extend beyond placing candidates to serving as a strategic advisor, guiding clients toward improved hiring outcomes.
At the same time, as AI automates basic recruitment tasks, recruiters will have more time to focus on skills-based hiring. Among recruitment pros already integrating or experimenting with GAI, 33% say the time saved by GAI goes towards candidate screening, while 25% say they use the time saved to focus on skill assessments.
By focusing on what candidates can do — not just where they’ve been — skills-based hiring unlocks untapped potential. Not only does this approach expand access to talent, it drives better alignment between candidates and requisitions, translating into more quality placements and happier, stronger client relationships. It’s no wonder that employers are increasingly dropping degree requirements: In 2023, 26% of paid job posts on LinkedIn didn’t require a degree, compared to 22% in 2020 — a difference of 4 percentage points that translates into a +16% increase.
The role of recruitment professionals is to ensure that every candidate is evaluated based on their actual skills, far beyond their academic or professional background. We are witnessing a fast-paced evolution in terms of skills, aligned with digital, ecological, and strategic transformations faced by businesses.”
But while organizations are increasingly focused on skills-based hiring, implementing this approach effectively requires more than just good intentions. Organizations will need a well-thought-out strategy that includes identifying skills, assessing candidates, and structuring the recruiting process.
It’s not that qualifications don’t mean anything anymore, it just means that there can be other ways to prove you can do a job well. This approach can help a company be more inclusive and access talent that might otherwise have been hidden in the recruitment process.”
Patrick Hollard
Chief Customer Officer and Executive Board Member at Page Group
Tips and strategies for skills-based hiring
Make the most of AI.
Use AI tools to analyze the skills required for success in each role. These insights can help refine job descriptions, ensuring they attract candidates with the right capabilities.
Find new ways to evaluate candidates’ skills.
These might include skills assessments, problem-solving exercises, and simulations of on-the-job experiences to see candidates’ skills in action.
Standardize interviews
Standardize interviews with structured protocols that focus on evaluating skills rather than relying on intuition. This approach not only ensures consistency but also minimizes bias.
Final thoughts
Adapting to the age of AI might seem daunting, but it presents an extraordinary opportunity for recruitment professionals. By mastering AI tools and stepping into the role of strategic talent advisors, recruitment firms can help shape the future workforce while showcasing their own relevance and value.
The shift to AI isn’t about replacing recruiters — it’s about empowering them to focus on what they do best: building relationships, evaluating potential, and making placements to help their clients thrive.
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Platform insights
Platform insights for this report were derived from the billions of data points generated by the 1 billion members in over 200 countries on LinkedIn today. Talent acquisition (TA) professionals are LinkedIn members with a recruiting role. To measure the growth of TA pros learning AI skills, we compared the number of skills explicitly added by members over a 12-month period (October 2023 to September 2024) against the previous 12-month period (October 2022 to September 2023). AI skills include AI literacy skills, which made up the great majority of what TA pros were learning (as opposed to AI engineering skills). Learn more here.
For skills increasingly mentioned in paid job posts for recruiting roles, only skills explicitly mentioned in a job description are included. The odds ratio (e.g., 54x increase in relationship building skill requirements) is calculated as the share of job posts that require a particular skill in the last 12 months (Nov 2023–Oct 2024) vs. the share of job posts requiring that same skill in the preceding 12 months (Nov 2022–Oct 2023).
For quality of hire analyses, we measured quality by giving equal weight to three measures: demand (whether the hire was in high demand, i.e., top 25% of members receiving InMails from recruiters within 1 year before hire); retention (whether the hire stayed at least one year at the company of hire); and mobility (whether the hire moved to a second role within the company within a year of the initial hire). Note: these are the best metrics available via LinkedIn platform data, though calculating quality of hire at your own company is typically calculated with internal data.
Companies using AI-Assisted Messaging the most are those within the top quartile, measured by the share of all InMails sent that were AI-assisted. Companies with the most skills-based searches are those with a disproportionate share (25% or more) of recruiters within the top quartile for performing searches on LinkedIn using the skills filter.
Employers known for delivering on certain candidate priorities are those within the top quartile as measured by LinkedIn’s Talent Drivers survey, which asks members how well they think companies provide various benefits to employees. Talent Drivers data includes responses on over 1,250 companies as of October 2024.
For the paid job postings without degree requirements, this report follows the same methodology found here with data from the complete calendar years of 2020 and 2023.
Survey data
LinkedIn Research surveyed 1,271 recruiting professionals in management seniority roles or higher (1,019 corporate recruiting pros, 252 search and staffing pros). Survey respondents are LinkedIn members who were selected to participate based on information in their LinkedIn profile and qualified based on survey responses. This survey was conducted in four languages across 23 countries in September 2024.
Acknowledgments
This report was informed by insightful interviews with recruiting leaders around the world, to whom we owe our sincere thanks, including:
Jessica Aguilar at Zurich
Laurent Blanchard at PageGroup
Noel Brown at HSBC
Glen Cathey at Randstad
Jackye Clayton at Textio
Fabien Desmangles at Dassault Systemes
Eric Dozier at Eli Lilly
James Edwards at Greene King
Jude James at UST
Nathalie Jaoui at Groupe CRIT
Hélène Jonquoy at The Adecco Group France
Sandesh Kumar at Wipro
Hung Lee at Recruiting Brainfood
David Luyet at Swisscom AG
Piyush Mehta at GenPact
Hamish Nisbet at Diageo
Venkatesh Raja at Shoppers Stop
Salma Rashad at Siemens
Ana Recio at Uber
Erin Scruggs at LinkedIn
Jennifer Shappley at LinkedIn
John Vlastelica at Recruiting Toolbox
Kerstin Wagner at Deutsche Bahn
Gaëlle de la Fosse at Adecco Group
Jason Pyle at Harvey Nash
Ruth Munday at Hays
Justin Somerville-Cotton at Flexhuis UK
Alexander Heise at Hays
Patrick Hollard at Page Group