What 10 Years of Recruiting Research Taught Us

When we started Veris Insights 10 years ago, the idea behind the company was relatively simple. We believed that leading recruiting organizations—particularly in Early Careers—needed better insight into the talent they were trying to attract, the competitors they were up against, and the strategies that were actually working in the market. 

At the time, that mostly meant conducting large-scale research and helping organizations make more informed decisions based on that data. The work itself was relatively straightforward in concept, even if operationally it was ambitious for a small company just getting started. 

What became clear fairly quickly, though, was that the environment surrounding recruiting and Talent Acquisition was far less stable than we initially anticipated.

Over the last decade, recruiting has undergone a series of structural shifts that have fundamentally changed how organizations think about talent. The pandemic forced companies to rethink hiring models almost overnight. Hiring freezes and economic uncertainty reshaped workforce planning priorities. Talent became more global. AI accelerated faster than most organizations were prepared for. DEI efforts expanded significantly and, only a few years later, came under increased scrutiny.

At various points across the last 10 years, recruiting teams have had to reverse and reengineer assumptions underlying how they hire, plan, evaluate talent, and operate. And as that happened, the role we were playing began to evolve alongside it.

What started as a focus on providing information became something broader. Over time, our work centered less on simply delivering research and more on helping organizations navigate increasingly complex decisions. Somewhere along the way, our purpose became much clearer. 

We exist to serve recruiting leaders in their hardest work.

That principle has remained remarkably consistent, even as nearly everything else has changed. The scale of our company has changed significantly over the last decade. We’ve grown from a small founding team into an organization approaching 100 people. We’ve gone from publishing a limited number of studies each year to producing thousands of research outputs. We’ve expanded from serving a relatively small collection of organizations to supporting many of the largest companies in the world, including much of the Fortune 500. 

But those changes have largely been a function of scale—not a change in direction.

The underlying focus has remained the same: understanding what is most challenging for recruiting leaders in any given moment and determining how we can help them address it. In many ways, that has been the throughline connecting every phase of our growth. 

And it’s the same lens we’re applying as we look ahead.

Because if the last decade has demonstrated anything, it’s that the level of complexity in recruiting is not decreasing. If anything, the opposite is true. The expectations for recruiting leaders are higher. The variables they’re managing are broader. And the decisions they make are increasingly tied to broader business performance and are higher stakes than ever before. 

That environment is unlikely to simplify, which means the work ahead is relatively clear. We will continue identifying where organizations are facing the greatest pressure, continue adapting how we support them, and continue focusing on the areas where better insight can materially improve outcomes for recruiting leaders and their teams. 

There are elements of Veris Insights that will evolve over the next decade—scale, capabilities, the types of problems we work on–but there are elements I suspect will remain unchanged. 

The focus will remain on our members. The work will remain centered on helping organizations navigate real and immediate challenges. And the expectation we place on ourselves to show up consistently in moments where the stakes are the highest will remain as well.

We’re proud of what we’ve built over the last 10 years and deeply grateful to the members who have trusted us to be part of their work during that time. But, more than anything else, we’re excited about where things are headed next. 

And from that perspective, we’re still early.