Contact Us
Questions, comments, ideas for future content? Contact us below.
Tracking salary trends is important for companies and job seekers. Yet, doing so becomes increasingly difficult as ...
Innovators in the recruiting space since 2001.
Our sister company. Helping people become better job seekers.
Visit Hirewell.com
Technology is pushing organizations to transform every aspect of their business to digital experiences. This means hiring people who have specific skills sets, experience and cultural expectations. This also means determining who you need to hire for your digital transformation project. Making these hires can prove challenging, but by the time you finish this post you’ll have the smarts you need to hire the right talent to help you build… and manage your digital transformation.
Five Steps to Fundamentally Rethink how to Hire for Your Digital Transformation Initiative
1. Ask The Right Questions
There are a number of questions you can ask when starting your digital transformation project, and we suggest you start with the following:
• What skills sets do I need now, in six months, in three years?
• Do we hire leadership first?
• What does a digital transformation organization chart look like?
• What do I look for in soft skills?
• Do I have the tools in place for the team to start working right away?
• What tools do we need?
These questions can prove challenging to answer, but throughout this post we have thoughts on how you can guide these discussions.
2. Manage Your Expectations
Ultimately, digital has taken marketing from a brand function to a top line sales function, which many companies realize can more effectively, and efficiently, increase top line revenue than the traditional sales function. But it takes a lot of know-how to make that happen. We suggest that you start with understanding your digital transformation goals and as a recent article in Inc. titled: “How To Manage Your KPIs And Expectations During Digital Transformation” recommends, we encourage you to “be realistic about what your organization is capable of.”
3. Start with Strong Leadership
Building on expectations, you need to make sure you have a plan for your digital transformation. This plan should be focused on what you want to accomplish business wise, so you can find a candidate who can evaluate the challenges and clearly articulate how they would solve it. Otherwise, you’re just lighting money on fire. What this means, is that hiring a generalist who can do everything is not the solution for handling a transformation such as this. Instead, your company needs to start with a strong, savvy leader who knows the customers’ needs, and we would suggest, as Inc. does in another post titled, “The Key People You Need On Your Digital Transformation Team,” that you look at your Chief Marketing Officer to fill this role.
4. Find the Right People
Once you have that strong leader in place, you can then fill in the gaps around him or her with consultants or specialist FTEs based on need. As the Inc. post “The Key People You Need On Your Digital Transformation Team,” also stresses, the right people, even more than “technology or strategy… (are the difference) between success and failure.” And one of the key traits the right people need to possess for a digital transformation, is their ability to adapt, because as the video “How to Hire Great Talent for Digital Transformation,” from ca technologies highlights, your job in hiring the right people, is to look to the future.
5. Embrace Transformation
Technology is forcing organizations to transform every aspect of their business to digital experiences. That means hiring people who have specific skills sets, experience, and cultural expectations. Those who don’t embrace digital transformation will be out of business. We suggest you not only embrace it, but proactively manage the transformation… and make the right hires to ensure success.
Technology is pushing organizations to transform every aspect of their business to digital experiences. This means hiring people who have specific skills sets, experience and cultural expectations. This also means determining who you need to hire for your digital transformation project. Making these hires can prove challenging, but by the time you finish this post you’ll have the smarts you need to hire the right talent to help you build… and manage your digital transformation.
More blogs from Dawn Maragos
Marketing has changed dramatically over the past decade and continues to evolve at a rapid pace. What many ...
Technology is pushing organizations to transform every aspect of their business to digital experiences. This means ...
Coming Soon...
See all Talent Insights Blog entries....
Our Latest Featured Episode
No results found.
Plenty has been written about AI over the past two years. For much of that time, AI has been more hype than reality. I THINK 2026 is when that starts to change.
Here’s the first in a three part series of where we see AI going in the recruiting world.
———-
For the last few years, most companies treated AI like a recruiting assistant. It helped draft job descriptions, summarize resumes, and speed up outreach. Useful, sure. But it didn’t fundamentally change how hiring worked. And oftentimes, things needed to be double checked before hitting send.
I think that’s going to change.
In 2026, we’re seeing the rise of agentic HR. These are systems that don’t just support recruiters. They can execute work autonomously inside defined guardrails.
That shift is forcing talent leaders to rethink what recruiting teams are actually responsible for and what still requires a human.
From Copilot AI to Agentic Recruiting Systems
Traditional recruiting AI waited for humans to click “next.”
Agentic systems don’t.
They can interpret real-time funnel data, align to hiring goals, and take multi-step action. That includes adjusting sourcing spend, coordinating interview schedules, and triggering workflow changes without manual oversight.
This isn’t automation layered onto old processes. It’s the early version of a self-driving recruiting function.
The Metric That Matters More Than Time-to-Fill
Time-to-fill and cost-per-hire still matter. They just don’t fully capture what’s changing.
A concept showing up more in 2026 is Return on Autonomy. It measures the value created when humans and autonomous systems are paired intentionally.
In plain terms, the question is simple.
Are we using technology to eliminate busywork, or are we just doing the same work faster?
Because speed doesn’t help if it leads to worse decisions, a weaker candidate experience, or more noise in the funnel.
Why This Changes the Role of TA Leadership
As agentic systems absorb transactional work like screening, scheduling, and coordination, the role of recruiting leadership shifts.
The best TA leaders are spending less time managing process and more time doing what actually drives hiring outcomes. That includes aligning hiring to business priorities, building trust with candidates, and improving decision quality.
The real opportunity of 2026 isn’t more AI. It’s that recruiters finally get to focus on the work that requires being human.
The Mistake Companies Are Making Right Now
Here’s the trap.
Companies adopt advanced recruiting technology but keep the same habits. Long approval chains. Inconsistent communication. Unclear evaluation criteria.
When that happens, speed increases, but trust collapses.
Candidates don’t experience innovation. They experience silence, confusion, and a process that feels even more impersonal than before.
In 2026, the human experience of hiring is becoming a differentiator again because so many companies are getting it wrong.
What Talent Leaders Should Be Thinking About Now
You don’t need a total rebuild tomorrow. But you do need clarity.
The companies winning in 2026 are asking the right questions.
What parts of our hiring process truly require human judgment?
Where are we slowing things down out of habit?
Are recruiters trained for strategic work, or just process management?
Do our systems increase transparency, or just efficiency?
These aren’t technology questions. They’re leadership questions.
What’s Next
Agentic HR is changing how recruiting works. It’s also creating a new challenge.
As employers deploy autonomous systems, candidates are doing the same. The result is an emerging AI-on-AI hiring arms race that’s flooding pipelines with highly optimized but low-trust applications.
Next in this series: The AI-on-AI Hiring Arms Race and How to Protect Hiring Quality Without Breaking Trust
A lot of companies are going to try to AI their way into faster hiring this year and still end up with worse results. If you want to build a recruiting model that actually works in 2026, one that balances speed, quality, and credibility, we can help. Reach out if you want a second set of eyes on your hiring approach.
No results found.
Our Shows
