True Trend or Tall Tale? 2026

Every year, Talent Tech predictions tend to oscillate between genuine signals of change and confident storytelling dressed up as inevitability. It’s become an annual tradition of ours to try and separate the two. Not by guessing where vendors wanted the market to go, but by looking at behaviour: what organisations actually invested in, what recruiters actually changed, and where friction persisted despite the hype.

Before looking ahead to 2026, it is worth grounding ourselves in what really happened in 2025.

Looking Back at 2025: What Trends Held Up and What Softened

Robots Join the Workforce: 2025 prediction: Hot. Actual result: Warm and getting warmer

AI was everywhere in 2025, at least in marketing language. Every ATS, CRM, and recruitment platform now has some form of generative AI embedded within it. Resume parsing improved. Matching logic became more explainable. Workflow automation matured slightly.

What we did not see was widespread autonomy. These were not “great bots” running hiring processes end to end. They were assistants. Useful in places, unreliable in others, and still heavily dependent on human oversight (which may not necessarily be a bad thing, as we may not be fully comfortable completely cutting humans out of the loop just yet). Momentum did not slow, but expectations became more realistic. Organisations shifted from transformational ambition to incremental, risk-aware adoption.

Economic Optimism Sparks TA Tech Stack Investment: 2025 prediction: Hot. Actual result: Warm

Early optimism faded quickly in 2025 as political and economic uncertainty returned. While corporate investment in HR tech continued, spend skewed heavily toward Core HR, payroll, and workforce management rather than Talent Acquisition platforms.

TA buying decisions slowed. Replacement cycles stretched. Many organisations deferred ATS or CRM change while prioritising stability elsewhere. This was not a rejection of TA technology, but a reminder that hiring platforms are still considered discretionary spend by some in uncertain conditions.

Unicorns and the Circle of Life: 2025 prediction: Hot. Actual result: Hot

Market consolidation played out largely as expected. Venture funding tightened. Profitability became non-negotiable. Acquisition conversations accelerated, mostly driven by large players vying for market share in a stagnant Talent Tech space, and boosting sluggish improvement in their own AI capabilities by purchasing AI-capable assets.

This was particularly visible across sourcing, recruitment marketing, and analytics tools. Buyers benefited from simplified portfolios, but choice narrowed further. The middle of the market continued to thin.

In-Person Hiring Makes a Comeback: 2025 prediction: Warm to Hot. Actual Result: Warm

This trend gained momentum late in the year. Graduate hiring had already returned to face-to-face interviews in many markets, but by late 2025 experienced hiring followed suit.

The driver was not nostalgia. It was trust. As candidate-side AI usage increased, employers became less confident that virtual assessments reflected real capability. Vendors responded with AI detection features, but many organisations still viewed in-person interaction as the simplest safeguard.

TCO Becomes a Must-Have Metric: 2025 prediction: Warm to Hot. Actual Result: Warm

Total Cost of Ownership mattered, but not in the way many expected. Rather than justifying best-of-breed expansion, TCO became a rationale for simplification.

Integration fatigue and overlapping functionality pushed organisations to rationalise. Fewer systems with deeper integrations increasingly beat broader stacks with higher operational drag. Put simply: large teams maintaining systems are expensive. A simple solution is a cheaper one.

Looking Ahead to 2026

Now that we’ve reviewed 2025, let’s look at this year; what we think the actual biggest trends in Talent Tech will be, and what is just wishful thinking.

Further HR Tech Vendor Consolidation

Trend prediction: Hot

Consolidation shows no signs of slowing. If anything, the line between technology vendors and services firms is beginning to blur. Expect more hybrid models, with platforms acquiring advisory capability and consultancies investing in proprietary tools.

For buyers, this reinforces the importance of understanding vendor ownership, roadmap stability, and long-term viability rather than focusing solely on feature sets.

DEI Programs

Trend prediction: Cold

A clear global shift heading into 2026 is the scaling back or removal of diversity, equity and inclusion programs by major employers. Research from late 2025 shows Australian organisations toning down DEI initiatives, with some scrapping them entirely, driven by a US-led “anti-woke” backlash. This reflects a real change in organisational behaviour, not just a shift in language.

As conservative governments gain popularity globally and DEI becomes increasingly politicised, many executives are reassessing the value and risk of these programs. For some, this has resulted in reduced investment, cancelled memberships with inclusion bodies, or the quiet withdrawal of DEI initiatives altogether. This trend is likely to continue as organisations prioritise cost control, risk management, and cultural alignment over programs that have become politically contentious.

Increased Focus on Efficiency and Offshoring

Trend prediction: Warm

This trend is uneven. Tightening immigration policy and fewer temporary visas will disproportionately affect hospitality and frontline services rather than corporate roles. White-collar immigration continues to favour technology and healthcare.

For TA teams, the larger efficiency lever is automation rather than geography. Many leaders are still testing how much of the recruitment lifecycle can be augmented without degrading quality. Expect more experimentation, fewer permanent hires, and increased reliance on fixed-term or contract TA roles.

The Work From Home Standoff Continues

Trend prediction: Hot

The question of where work happens remains unresolved. Mandates are increasing. Office attendance is increasingly linked to bonuses and performance outcomes. The definition of “remote” continues to narrow.

This also raises a practical challenge. If a role is genuinely remote-only, organisations increasingly ask why it should not be offshore. As that logic becomes harder to avoid, some employers will choose proximity over flexibility, even at the cost of talent attraction.

Automation and Uncertainty Reduce TA Job Opportunities

Trend prediction: Warm/ Hot

Hiring volumes remain volatile heading into 2026. Job advertising continues to soften in many markets, while application volumes rise, driven in part by automated application tools rather than increased demand. This has created more activity without more hiring.

For TA professionals, 2025 was a difficult labour market, and there is little evidence conditions will improve in 2026. Fewer roles are being advertised, teams are leaner, and demand is increasingly concentrated in senior positions.

At the same time, the TA role is being broken apart. Agentic AI and automation are absorbing large portions of traditional recruiter work. Organisations are not replacing recruiters entirely, but testing the minimum viable human input required to keep hiring moving.

The outcome is role compression. TA professionals will need to be more skilled, because the remaining work is higher-touch and higher-risk. Organisations are choosing fewer recruiters managing more requisitions, supported by automation, rather than larger execution-focused teams. Junior TA roles are already disappearing.

TA leaders are responding by pushing automation while tightening control. Expect continued compression, greater use of contingent labour, and a shift toward governance and oversight, reinforced by tightening AI regulation, particularly in the public sector.

Skills-Based Hiring

Trend prediction: Cold

From 2023 to 2025, skills-based hiring dominated talent narratives, with organisations investing heavily in custom skills taxonomies and frameworks. Heading into 2026, that focus has clearly cooled.

The problem was execution. Skills data proved hard to maintain, inconsistent across systems, and costly to scale. Rather than enabling flexibility, many frameworks added complexity without materially improving hiring decisions.

The conversation has now shifted toward what work can be absorbed by AI and what requires human capability, often reframed as “power skills.” At the same time, confidence in AI-led assessments is softening as regulation tightens and concerns grow around levelling, explainability, and unvetted recommendation outputs.

Skills still matter, but the idea that skills-based hiring alone would transform recruitment has lost momentum. In 2026, it functions more as a supporting input than a defining strategy.

Final Thoughts

If 2025 taught us anything, it is that change in Talent Tech rarely arrives all at once. It accumulates through small, pragmatic decisions shaped by uncertainty, cost pressure, and trust.

The organisations that will succeed in 2026 are not those chasing every trend, but those making deliberate choices about simplification, risk, and where human judgement still matters.

If you are reviewing your Talent Tech roadmap for the year ahead, now is the right time to step back from feature lists and ask harder questions about behaviour, cost, and long-term sustainability. We are always happy to help with that conversation.

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