Recruiting is becoming riskier in 2026. AI adoption is accelerating, skills‑based hiring is becoming the norm — and as a result, traditional resumes and interviews are increasingly unreliable. At the same time, hiring pressure is rising, people costs are growing, and recruiting software stacks are becoming harder to manage.
In this webinar, we explore how recruiting is changing in 2026, based on insights from Software Advice’s 2026 HR Software Trends survey of 1,000 HR leaders. We’ll unpack how AI adoption, skills‑based hiring, and consolidation pressures are reshaping recruiting — and what high‑performing teams are doing differently to reduce risk and improve decision quality.
In this session, we’ll explore:
- Why 62% of organizations expect AI adoption to increase headcount in 2026, reinforcing that AI is replacing tasks — not people
- Why recruiting skilled professionals has become HR’s #1 challenge, especially for small and midsize businesses
- How skills‑based hiring increases risk when fewer than half of organizations verify skills live, enabling “skillfishing”
- Why leading teams use AI to narrow the funnel and improve context — not to automate hiring decisions
- How the recruiter role is shifting away from administration toward verification, judgment, and stakeholder advising
- Why fragmented recruiting stacks make verification harder — and how integrated platforms improve skills visibility and governance
- A practical framework to compare hiring vs. upskilling through a risk, cost, and scalability lens
Meet the Presenter
-
Ines Bahr
Ines Bahr is an Associate Principal Analyst with nearly 10 years of experience specializing in HR strategy, recruiting technology, and workforce trends. She leads research‑driven HR content and translates large‑scale survey data into actionable insights for HR leaders and executives.
Ines is the primary public speaker for HR research, regularly hosting webinars on recruiting, workforce strategy, and HR technology trends. Her insights are grounded in more than 30 global research studies and are based directly on what HR leaders report in Software Advice surveys.
SHRM certification has approved this webinar for 1 PDC toward SHRM-CP or SHRM-SCP recertification. A program code will be provided at the end of the webinar.