5 Strategies Talent Acquisition Leaders Are Prioritizing for H2 2026

The labor market is giving Talent Acquisition (TA) leaders little room to coast.

Hiring momentum remains low. Demand for AI skills continues to rise. Candidate behavior is changing. And organizations are taking a harder look at the skills they already have, the skills they will need next, and where those capabilities should come from.

In our latest webinar, 5 Strategies Talent Acquisition Leaders Are Prioritizing for H2 2026, we shared findings from our 2026 State of the Recruiting Market research and examples of how Heads of TA are responding.

Five priorities are showing up repeatedly:

1. Building more agile recruiter capabilities
2. Realizing measurable gains from AI
3. Rethinking screening and assessment controls
4. Connecting internal mobility to workforce priorities
5. Repositioning TA as a business strategy partner

Together, they show how TA leaders are working to strengthen hiring execution while expanding the function’s role in broader workforce decisions.

The Recruiting Market Entering H2 2026

The labor market remains constrained. Job openings are up approximately 3.1% from a year ago, but hires are down 1.4%, quits are down 4.1%, and layoffs have increased 5.4%. There may be more openings on paper, but actual talent movement continues to decline.

Job growth has also remained sluggish. Improvement earlier in the year largely disappeared beginning in June, and July recorded a net loss of 23,000 jobs.

And the limited growth is not evenly distributed across industries. Education and healthcare have carried much of the recent momentum, while technology and professional and business services have shown signs of limited recovery rather than a major rebound. Much of the rest of the economy remains flat or, in some cases, is contracting.

At the same time, demand for AI talent and AI skills continues to climb. The number of active AI jobs has more than doubled over the past year. Sixty-one percent of TA leaders say evaluating candidates’ AI skills is at least moderately important, while 67% of employers say skills gaps are a primary barrier to organizational transformation. For TA leaders, that changes the question from simply, “Can we fill this role?” to a broader one: “What talent and skills does the business need, and what is the best way to get them?”

Priority 1: Build More Agile Recruiter Capabilities

As hiring priorities, AI capabilities, regulations, and economic conditions continue to shift, leading TA teams are focusing less on any single future-proof skill and more on agility. Our research shows recruiter development broadening across three areas.

AI and Tech Fluency

Recruiters need to know when and how to use AI, automation, and recruiting technology to improve workflows while still critically evaluating outputs and preserving judgment where it matters.

Core Recruiting Excellence

As AI automates more transactional work, teams are doubling down on the uniquely-human skills that most directly influence hiring quality and candidate experience: sourcing, screening, interviewing, candidate engagement, and hiring decisions.

If recruiters interact directly with candidates at fewer points because of automation, the quality of those remaining interactions matters more.

Strategic Talent Partnership

Recruiters are also increasingly expected to help shape hiring decisions, advise hiring managers, anticipate future talent needs, and contribute to workforce planning rather than simply execute against requisitions.

Together, those three capabilities create the kind of recruiter agility leaders increasingly need.

Here’s a clip where I breakdown how one organization put this approach into practice and the results it saw.

Priority 2: Realize Measurable Gains From AI

AI adoption is increasingly expected of TA teams, but adoption alone is no longer enough.

Our benchmarking data shows that 62% of TA leaders report strong executive pressure to adopt AI tools, while only 7% describe their teams’ current use as advanced and optimized.

The efficiency story is also mixed. Time to fill increased slightly, time to hire remained flat, recruiter requisition loads rose 13%, and acceptance rates held steady.

That does not mean AI is failing. It does mean leaders need to be more disciplined about identifying which use cases create measurable value instead of assuming that broad adoption of AI will improve performance on its own.

Proving AI’s Impact Through Capacity Gains

One professional services organization measured AI through a simple capacity lens.

An AI sourcing tool reduced manual sourcing work by an estimated five hours per recruiter per week. An interview intelligence tool saved 77 hours during a short pilot, with roughly 700 hours projected after full rollout. The organization estimated approximately $1.5 million in projected billable consultant time saved.

Just as important, the team did not roll the tools out broadly from day one. It started with small pilots, legal review, bias checks on AI-sourced candidate pools, and recruiter upskilling through internal AI champions. That gave the organization the evidence it needed to decide what was actually worth scaling.

Priority 3: Rethink Screening and Assessment for an AI-Shaped Market

AI has changed both the volume of applications and the reliability of traditional screening signals.

Applications per position are up 31% across all roles and 54% for technical roles. Candidates are also increasingly using AI to edit resumes and cover letters, prepare for interviews, and align their materials more closely with job descriptions.

As resumes, assessments, and even interviews become easier to augment with AI, recruiting teams are adding new verification layers to separate authentic capability from application noise and, in some cases, outright fraud.

Add Verification Where Existing Systems Fall Short

One manufacturing organization added stronger identity verification after encountering authenticity concerns.

Candidates now either interview in person or pick up equipment in person on day one, creating a physical checkpoint before remote work begins. The organization also added identity verification technology, involved cybersecurity in parts of the interview process, and trained recruiters and leaders to recognize authenticity red flags.

The team accepted some additional friction in exchange for greater confidence in who was moving through the process. The tactics may vary by organization, but the objective is the same: restore confidence in hiring signals that AI has made easier to manipulate.

Priority 4: Connect Internal Mobility to Workforce Priorities

Internal mobility is not a new priority. What is changing is how closely it is becoming connected to workforce strategy. External hiring alone is increasingly insufficient to close emerging skills gaps.

World Economic Forum research projects that approximately 59% of the global workforce will require upskilling or reskilling by 2030, rising to 67% in the United States. Organizations already fill roughly 29% of roles internally, and 70% want to increase internal hiring further in 2026.

That shifts internal mobility from primarily a retention tool to a capability that can support skills development, succession planning, and future workforce needs.

Build Internal Talent Before the Need Becomes Urgent

One energy organization is building its leadership pipeline well ahead of openings. The company first defined the skills and experiences employees need before they are ready for senior roles. It then introduced more flexible development opportunities, including stretch assignments, role swaps, and pathway positions that serve as stepping stones to leadership.

The goal is to develop readiness before a senior vacancy creates an urgent talent problem. The organization is also working with compensation, legal, and other stakeholders to define how internal opportunities are sourced, how pay works for moves, and how the process can scale compliantly.

The example reinforces an important point: mobility infrastructure matters just as much as mobility opportunities.

Priority 5: Reposition Talent Acquisition as a Business Strategy Partner

The fifth priority was also the one webinar attendees ranked highest: repositioning TA as a business strategy partner.

Traditionally, organizations have often made hiring, contingent labor, development, and automation decisions separately, then brought in the relevant function to execute.

That becomes harder as skills needs shift faster, AI changes how work gets done, and capacity decisions become more interconnected. Organizations are beginning to bring TA and adjacent functions into workforce conversations earlier rather than making those decisions in silos.

Build, Buy, Borrow, or Budget

For any capability need, organizations generally have four options:

• Build: Develop the capability internally.
• Buy: Hire the capability through TA.
• Borrow: Use contingent labor.
• Bot: Automate the work.

The direction we are seeing is toward evaluating those options side by side based on availability, cost, speed, capacity, and risk.

Two-thirds of business leaders recognize the importance of moving beyond traditional functional boundaries to drive business outcomes. And 48% of TA leaders say restructuring the function to align with evolving business needs is one of their top priorities for 2026.

How TA Is Expanding Its Role

There is no single organizational model emerging. Instead, we can identify two broad categories of change.

Decision-model changes alter when and how TA participates in workforce decisions. That can mean partnering with talent management and HR business partners on mobility decisions or entering workforce-planning conversations before roles and headcount are finalized.

Structural changes go further by changing ownership or reporting lines. TA may merge with adjacent talent functions under one leader or absorb work that historically sat elsewhere, such as contingent labor.

Organizations may pursue several of these approaches at once.

At one technology company, TA shifted from a geography-based structure to a business-aligned model. Recruiters now own relationships with the business end to end and participate in talent reviews before roles open. That gives recruiting teams earlier visibility into performance, retention risk, leadership potential, and where external pipelines may be needed.

It is a practical example of the broader shift this priority represents: TA moving from responding to requisitions toward helping shape workforce decisions before the hiring need is finalized.

The recruiting market remains low-momentum, and there is no single catalyst likely to change that overnight. The themes themselves are not entirely new. Recruiter upskilling, internal mobility, screening controls, and TA’s evolution into a strategic adviser have been discussed for years. What keeps changing are the tactics.