Introduction
The role of recruiting has transformed from a support function to a strategic driver of business success. As organizations face escalating talent challenges, recruiting executives are stepping forward to shape the workforce of the future. Their focus extends well beyond filling open roles — they are building the strategies that secure the critical skills needed to deliver results and fuel growth.
Recruiting leaders are at the intersection of strategic opportunity and mounting complexity. They set the direction for how their organizations compete for talent, manage the impact of labor shortages, and balance wage pressures, all while anticipating candidate expectations and technological disruption. This requires a strategic alignment of priorities with overarching organizational goals to ensure their companies are equipped for both short-term and long-term success.
SHRM conducted research to address these evolving demands and achieve three key objectives:
- Understand recruiting executives’ priorities for the year ahead.
- Explore the challenges that recruiting executives are facing, including market, organizational, and personal obstacles.
- Determine recruiting executives’ perspectives on emerging recruiting trends.
SHRM Thought Leadership surveyed recruiting executives to uncover their top priorities across sourcing, strategy, and securing critical talent. The findings from this research aim to provide recruiting leaders and professionals with insights into their peers’ most common priorities, a deeper understanding of the challenges shaping the future of talent acquisition, and a look at the trends — such as artificial intelligence — that are reshaping the recruiting function.
OUR PERSPECTIVES
2026 Recruiting Executives’ Priorities
Recruiting Critical Talent, Sourcing, and Strategy Are Top Recruiting Priorities for 2026
As organizations address escalating talent challenges and strive to strengthen their competitive edge, recruiting executives are stepping forward as strategic partners in shaping workforce success. Their focus extends well beyond filling open roles; they are driving the strategies that secure the critical skills needed to deliver business results and fuel organizational growth. In 2026, their top priorities are clear: developing targeted approaches for recruiting critical talent, advancing effective sourcing strategies, and refining their overall recruiting strategies. This research explores how recruiting leaders are aligning these focus areas with enterprise goals by leveraging structured, results-driven methods to attract, engage, and retain top performers. By embracing these priorities, recruiting executives are positioned to elevate their organizations and lead with vision in a dynamic talent market.
Over half of recruiting executives identified recruiting critical talent or sourcing as their top priority
Over the next year, most recruiting executives identified one of three key focus areas as their top priority: recruiting critical talent, sourcing, or recruiting strategy. About 3 in 10 (31%) highlighted the importance of recruiting critical talent, focusing on attracting those with critical skills to drive organizational success. In addition, another 22% of recruiting leaders emphasized the importance of sourcing, focusing on finding the right talent for their organization's needs. And 15% identified recruiting strategy — which centers on developing a planned approach to attract, select, and hire job candidates — as their top priority.
Recruiting executives continued to prioritize the development of a critical-talent recruiting strategy as a top focus area
Priorities for recruiting critical talent remained consistent from 2025 to 2026, showing stability in organizational focus year over year. Developing a critical-talent recruiting strategy continues to be the leading priority, holding steady at 63%, almost unchanged from 64% the previous year. Other areas — such as specialized recruiting strategies, critical-skills needs assessment, third-party partnerships, and building internal talent marketplaces — showed only minor fluctuations, as well, reinforcing ongoing alignment in how organizations approach attracting and securing top talent.
Creating a sourcing strategy was the top sourcing focus area for recruiting executives
Recruiting executives in 2026 are significantly more focused on developing sourcing strategies, such as structured approaches to identifying and engaging potential candidates for open roles, compared to in 2025 (34% versus 23%). The reliance on job boards and career websites also saw a remarkable increase, with 25% now prioritizing this area, up from just 6% in 2025. On the other hand, there was a noticeable decline in emphasis on active sourcing — engaging candidates actively seeking new opportunities — dropping from 37% to 28%. Similarly, passive sourcing, which targets candidates not actively job hunting, also saw a reduced focus, falling from 15% to 5%.
Slightly over 2 in 5 recruiting executives selected recruiting function strategy as their top recruiting strategy priority
Recruiting leaders are sharpening their strategic focus in 2026 as they place heavier emphasis on high-level planning over day-to-day operations. Executives are now significantly more likely to have identified recruiting function strategy as their top focus area compared to in 2025 (42% versus 30%). We also see a rise in the prioritization of managing recruiting initiatives, which climbed to 31% from 27%. This shift toward broader strategy correlates with a decline in other areas. Emphasis on hiring manager or stakeholder engagement dropped from 22% to 16%, while recruiting analytics and metrics saw a slight decrease from 12% to 11%. Most strikingly, recruiter talent development completely fell off the list of top priorities, plummeting from 10% in 2025 to 0% in 2026.
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2026 Recruiting Executives’ Challenges
Recruiting Leaders Navigate Evolving Challenges in 2026
As shifting market forces and rising talent demands redefine the recruiting landscape, leaders are positioned at the intersection of strategic opportunity and mounting complexity. Alongside heightened external competition, recruiting teams must also address persistent organizational challenges such as resource limitations, process inefficiencies, and effective collaboration across teams. At a personal level, recruiting executives are adapting to heavier workloads, evolving skill sets, and the pressures of motivating and inspiring teams in a fast-moving environment.
This research examines the most urgent challenges shaping recruiting today, including labor market competition, talent shortages, functional constraints, and individual resilience. Understanding these interconnected barriers forms the foundation for building strategies that attract, develop, and retain the critical talent required for organizational success.
Labor market competition and talent shortages are top recruiting challenges
Recruiting executives identified labor market competition and talent shortages as key hurdles moving forward. Nearly half of leaders (46%) said they view labor market competition as a challenge, with 16% pinpointing it as their single greatest challenge. Moving beyond competition, 42% of executives identified talent shortages as a challenge, with 14% reporting it as their greatest challenge.
Majority of Industries Experience Decline in Hiring: Moving into 2026, it is likely that the focus on labor market competition and talent shortages will depend, in part, on the industries within which organizations operate. According to SHRM’s March 2026 Monthly Market Review, there has been a substantial decline in hiring in 2026. Total nonfarm employment declined by 92,000 in February 2026, with reductions occurring in 12 of 21 major industrial sectors, including in health care and social assistance, typically a driver of job gains. In contrast, there were modest job gains in the professional, scientific, and technical services sector.
Similarly, 42% of leaders cited wage inflation as a significant concern, with 13% identifying it as their top obstacle. In addition to these pressures, recruiting executives were most likely to identify skills shortages (cited by 39%), remote and hybrid work (34%), demanding candidate expectations (33%), and technological advancements (22%) as critical issues to navigate in the year ahead.
Nonmanagerial positions are the greatest area of hiring need
When asked to rate hiring needs by job level, recruiting executives were most likely to rank midlevel nonmanagerial positions as their highest area of hiring need (41%), followed by entry-level positions (37%). Overall, recruiting executives were much less likely to rate midlevel managerial positions (11%) or senior or executive-level positions (11%) as their greatest area of hiring need. These views are consistent with findings from SHRM’s 2026 Talent Trends, which surveyed HR professionals working across different functions and at various levels within their organizations. When asked which types of positions they were finding most difficult to fill, nearly 7 in 10 HR professionals (66%) cited midlevel nonmanagerial positions, with 50% selecting entry-level positions. Only 37% selected midlevel managerial positions, while fewer than 1 in 5 (19%) chose senior or executive-level positions as the most difficult to fill.
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Lack of qualified candidates and sourcing difficult roles are top organizational challenges
When examining organizational-level recruiting hurdles, a clear picture emerges of the difficulties that leaders face in connecting with the right people. Nearly half of recruiting executives (49%) reported a lack of qualified job candidates as a challenge, and 1 in 5 (20%) identified it as their greatest challenge. Notably, HR professionals at all levels have reported difficulties finding qualified candidates. According to SHRM’s 2026 Talent Trends report, more than 3 in 4 HR professionals (77%) reported difficulties hiring for roles that require new skills. Issues related to hiring are compounded by the struggle to source difficult-to-fill positions and offer competitive salaries or wages, with both issues cited as a challenge by 41% of recruiting executives. Sourcing difficult roles was seen as the greatest challenge by 16% of executives, while offering competitive pay was the top obstacle for 14%. Beyond these primary concerns, 29% of executives also pointed to job candidate “ghosting” (i.e., job candidates cease communication) and the increased time spent filtering out irrelevant job applications (28%) as significant operational burdens.
Recruiting function challenges center on budgets and inefficiency
A closer look at recruiting function challenges reveals that internal process and resource limitations are significant pain points for leaders. Recruiting budget constraints or limited resources emerged as a top concern, with 24% of recruiting executives reporting it as a challenge and 17% identifying it as their single greatest challenge. This finding aligns with broader challenges facing HR departments: SHRM’s 2026 CHRO Priorities and Perspectives report revealed that CHROs also identified budget constraints or limited resources as their top function challenge for 2026.
This focus on resources is closely followed by difficulties in collaborating with hiring managers and other stakeholders, which 22% of leaders cited as a challenge and 11% named as their greatest hurdle. Inefficiency in recruiting processes also presents a major obstacle, with 20% of recruiting executives calling it a challenge and 14% highlighting it as their top functional issue. Beyond these primary concerns, leaders also struggle with collecting or using data to guide recruiting strategy (cited by 18%) and implementing new recruiting technologies (15%), underscoring the operational pressures faced in building a high-performing recruiting function.
Workload management and balance are top personal challenges
On a personal level, recruiting executives are grappling with the pressures of an increasingly demanding role. Mirroring results from SHRM’s 2025 Recruiting Executives: Priorities and Perspectives report, workload management continues to stand out as the primary hurdle for recruiting executives, with 46% of leaders reporting it as a challenge, compared with 47% in 2025, and 27% identified it as their single greatest personal obstacle, compared with 32% in 2025. These personal challenges are consistent with those facing other leaders within HR, including CHROs. SHRM’s 2026 CHRO Priorities and Perspectives report found that workload management was the top personal challenge for CHROs, with 38% citing it as a challenge and 20% reporting it as their greatest challenge. Closely related to this is the struggle for work/life balance, which 31% of recruiting executives cited as a challenge, with 13% viewing it as their top concern. The need for upskilling on AI also weighs heavily on leaders, with 30% acknowledging it as a challenge and 16% seeing it as their greatest personal hurdle. Beyond these immediate pressures, executives are also navigating complex interpersonal dynamics, citing workplace or office politics (26%) and the responsibility of leading to inspire or motivate others (18%) as significant challenges in their lives.
2026 Recruiting Executives’ Trends and Expectations
The Future of Recruitment: Key Trends for 2026
The landscape of talent acquisition is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by the rapid acceleration of AI and a renewed focus on the candidate experience. Recruiting leaders are moving beyond traditional methods, increasingly leveraging generative AI and automation to enhance efficiency, reduce bias, and streamline operations. Simultaneously, strategies are shifting to prioritize transparency and accessibility, with organizations embracing mobile-friendly approaches, clear pay structures, and skills-first hiring to better connect with a diverse talent pool. As these technologies and tactics converge, they are reshaping how organizations identify, engage, and secure the critical skills needed for the future of work.
Generative AI and automation to dominate recruiting strategies
Recruiting executives displayed high confidence that AI will reshape the talent acquisition landscape in the coming year. The data reveals a strong consensus on the growing prevalence of AI across the board, particularly in content creation and process automation.
The highest adoption projections are for using generative AI tools to create job descriptions and recruitment content. Nearly all executives (92%) said they anticipate this practice to become more prevalent, with nearly 40% describing it as becoming much more prevalent. These findings are consistent with current AI usage practices, as SHRM’s The State of AI in HR 2026 report revealed that job description drafting and refinement is currently the most prevalent use case across a wide range of areas. This trend signals a decisive move toward improving existing practices to increase efficiency when creating initial candidate engagement materials.
Broader automation follows close behind. Approximately 87% of leaders said they expect increased use of AI and automation in general recruiting processes. Specific applications, such as chatbots and automated resume screening tools, are also predicted to expand, with 85% of executives forecasting greater usage. This trend aligns with the expectation that AI will phase out repetitive work, a shift predicted by 81% of respondents.
Beyond efficiency, AI is influencing strategic decision-making and role requirements. About 85% of executives said they foresee a rise in the use of AI to determine recruiting metrics and predictive analytics. Additionally, the demand for technical proficiency is impacting job criteria, because 78% of leaders expect AI skills to appear more frequently as a qualification for open roles. Finally, 68% of executives anticipate increased reliance on AI-powered tools to monitor and reduce unconscious bias, supporting efforts to build fair and inclusive hiring practices.
AI to reshape the candidate experience
The influence of AI extends beyond internal recruiting processes to fundamentally alter how candidates interact with potential employers. Recruiting executives said they anticipate a significant rise in candidates using AI applications to apply for jobs, with a combined 85% expecting this to become more or much more prevalent. Similarly, 74% of leaders foresee candidates increasingly using AI applications to interview for jobs.
This technological shift is not one-sided. Organizations are also expected to leverage AI to enhance the candidate journey. A significant majority of leaders said they believe AI-driven tools will become more common, including those that provide real-time feedback during the application or interview process (72%) and increase transparency through automated updates and notifications (69%).
Furthermore, a combined 67% of executives said they predict that AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants will be used more frequently to offer personalized candidate experiences. Immersive technologies are still emerging but are also on the radar: 40% of leaders anticipate that virtual reality or augmented reality will see greater use for candidate assessments and interviews in the year ahead.
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Core recruiting strategies evolve to meet market demands
As the talent landscape shifts, recruiting leaders are adapting their core strategies to attract and engage candidates more effectively. The data shows a clear emphasis on improving the candidate experience and increasing transparency.
A mobile-friendly recruiting strategy is a top expectation, with a combined 73% of executives stating it will become more or much more prevalent. This focus on accessibility is matched by a push for pay transparency: 71% of leaders said they expect to see salary ranges or pay bands listed on job postings more frequently. Streamlining the application process to make it easier for candidates to apply is another key trend, with 71% of executives anticipating this will become more prevalent.
Organizations are also refining their outreach and messaging. A combined 64% of leaders said they plan to increase their use of social media in recruiting strategies. At the same time, 64% expect to place a greater emphasis on promoting their organizations’ culture in job descriptions and advertisements. Highlighting skills-first qualifications over traditional credentials is also gaining traction, with 59% of executives foreseeing this approach becoming more common.
In contrast to the trends discussed above, only 5% of executives said they see a focus on inclusion and diversity (I&D) in recruiting becoming more prevalent, while a majority (57%) reported it will become less or much less prevalent. This indicates a potential re-evaluation of how I&D initiatives are integrated into broader talent acquisition efforts.
Misalignment between job requirements and candidate qualifications
Navigating the gap between job requirements and candidate qualifications remains a significant challenge for recruiting leaders. A notable trend is the prevalence of candidates applying for jobs for which they are significantly underqualified. A combined 53% of recruiting executives said they expect this to become more or much more prevalent in the coming year. An overall misalignment between job requirements and applicant skill sets is also a key concern, with 45% of leaders anticipating that it will become a more frequent issue. At the other end of the spectrum, 43% of recruiting executives foresee an increase in candidates applying for jobs for which they are significantly overqualified, adding another layer of complexity to the screening process.
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CONCLUSION
The findings from this research underscore the pivotal role that recruiting executives play in positioning their organizations for sustainable growth and competitive advantage. By aligning talent acquisition strategies with broader organizational objectives, these leaders are championing efforts to secure critical skills, modernize sourcing approaches, and build a more transparent candidate experience. As AI and automation reshape the recruiting landscape, organizations must embrace the opportunity to streamline operations and focus on high-value human connections. Through bold, forward-thinking strategies, recruiting executives are not only filling open roles but also architecting the workforces of the future to ensure that their organizations have the talent necessary to thrive in an ever-evolving market.
Methodology
A sample of 298 heads of recruiting were surveyed between Jan. 21 and Feb. 4, 2026. The survey was fielded electronically using the SHRM Voice of Work Research Panel. For the purposes of this survey, participants were required to lead their organization’s recruitment function, either as their defined role or as a part of their broader responsibilities. Participants represent organizations across multiple types of industries, sectors, sizes, and locations. The data were not weighted.
How to cite the research: 2026 Recruiting Executives: Priorities and Perspectives, SHRM, 2026.
Resources:
- Report: 2026 CHRO Priorities and Perspectives
- Report: The Skills-First Movement — Redefining How Organizations Hire and Grow
- Podcast Episode: The New Rules of Recruitment: — From Posting Jobs to Building Pipelines
- Article: LERs Could Be the Key to Unlock Skills-Based Hiring
- Toolkit: Transform Interviewing into Strategic Talent Selection
- How-To Guide: How HR Leaders Drive Structured, Network-Driven, Executive Searches
- Report: 2026 Talent Trends