How to Ensure Hiring Success in 2026

[00:00:00] Hello, and thank you for tuning in to today’s episode of the Hirewell Update. I’m your host, Ryan Ross, vice president of the Corporate Functions Team. My co-host, Emily Canna, is on maternity leave. So joining me today is none other than Jeff Smith, partner of recruiting experience. Jeff, how you doing? I am very well.

Emily is in the thick of it in her new motherdom, so yeah, I am hopefully here to do half as good a job. Well, I can bank on you doing half as good a job for sure. Emily’s number one in my heart when it comes to co-host seats, but you are a very close [00:01:00] second. And it’s been forever since we partnered on a show together, so I’m excited to chitchat today. You know, scary as this sounds, we’re in Q4, which is low key, terrifying because that means the holidays, the end of the year, all of that is upon us. And you know, typically this time of year, Emily and I do a show just kind of chatting through how planning for the upcoming year is important, what critical hires organizations can make before the end of the year.

So we’re gonna do the same thing this year, Jeff, but we’re gonna talk about things for 2026 because it is fast approaching. So, You know, kicking things off with today’s subject, you know, it’s so important for organizations to think about talent planning from more of a proactive mindset as opposed to reactive.

You and I have both seen the flip side of that, where we partner with organizations, they implement very reactive strategies, then they’re struggling to find talent. The bottom line has impacted all of those, all of those things. So I’m curious for, from your perspective, when you think about proactive talent [00:02:00] planning, what does that look like?

You really hit the nail on the head. The reactive recruiting happens most often in Q4. We have these conversations that, usually start September, October, even pushing into November that are, we know we’re gonna have X amount of headcount growth starting in the new year, but we’re still tinkering with some stuff.

It’s like, okay, great. Let’s follow up in a couple weeks after you’ve had that internal conversation. And the too long didn’t read is. Then we’re having the conversation in January, that target is still there and no one has planned for it. And so when we say reactive, it’s not, it’s not necessarily this viscerally bad word, but what I would implore everybody thinking about, you know, when you think about this stuff is really, the planning has to start two to three months in advance.

And [00:03:00] if you’re doing it internally, you’re behind the eight ball. If you’re going to, you know, collaborate with an external vendor like us, like that prep time is just as valuable to get the ball rolling in the right direction. It’s not like, certainly we have repositories of, of candidates and all of this stuff, but it still requires active headhunting.

And it totally does. Yeah. And I, you know, I think this time of year can be a struggle for many reasons. This is the time of year where folks are taking a ton of time off, whether it’s holiday or they’re just trying to use their PTO and then you kind of like forget that the end of year is coming up and then all of a sudden it’s day one of Q1 and

all of this stuff is still in waiting. So it’s interesting that you say that because I’ve noticed a lot of the conversations I’ve had over the past several months that are very similar to that, where organizations are thinking about it, but there’s not really like a clear go forward strategy in terms of what that looks like.

However, on the flip side, a lot of the companies that I’ve partnered with this year where we’ve been very proactive about how we’re [00:04:00] partnering together and what that looks like, we already have like at least a foundation of how we can approach things moving into the beginning of the year. Some of that means we’re starting our sourcing strategies now, knowing that those hires likely won’t start until the end of January or maybe even beginning of February.

Yeah. If you think about it, just through the lens of one hire. If you have a conversation, about that hire with a hiring manager as a recruiting professional, and you have it one month out to when you have to kick off the search and you’ve already dug into some profiles, gotten a sense to how they’re going to react to it.

And then, you know, conversely, you get to calibrate, you get to do all these things and ultimately it reduces that time to hire once the role is officially open now at scale. If you don’t do that upfront, every single part of that initial process is baked into actually when the [00:05:00] role goes live and you’re pushing your time to fill.

30, 45, 60 days out. Totally. And it pushes all of the initiatives back. Yep, it does. And what an impact that has just in terms of like the financial stability of an organization. You know, like there’s significant costs that organizations incur when they’re not being proactive, thinking about talent planning.

So it’s something that it, you know, is obviously incredibly important. We talk about this almost every year without fail that organizations have to start thinking about this in Q3, leading into Q4 being really intentional with what planning is going to look like and how to implement it early next year.

Yeah. I think you know when you’re thinking about what to do, especially if you have a pretty crystallized view of what the growth looks like. You have to then start piecemealing you being, you know, talent acquisition director, CHRO, or hiring manager. If it’s a smaller [00:06:00] company, like who’s doing what, in what instance, who’s interviewing, what role are they gonna play in the interview process?

From a role perspective, what gaps are they going to fill? All of that stuff, because just, as much as that pre-work is important to recruiters, it’s also it’s important to, to justifying the role in general. And all of that takes time again, from that time to fill perspective. When we were prepping, we were talking about how go to market.

There’s a lot of doom and gloom about, you know, the job market in 2026, for good reason. Maybe some cooling. Yeah. But the go to market team on our end is really seeing some wins, which means from our point of view, companies are ready to ship product and services, but via their Salesforce. That’s why they’re hiring more salespeople.

And if you aren’t on the front end of that, and those people aren’t seated to push those goods and services, that will affect your bottom line. [00:07:00] And I think that is kind of part and parcel to why it might be projected to be cooling. Because there’s a lot of like, ooh, like what do we do right now?

Right. Yeah. It’s almost like organizations are too scared to kind of like make that move. They’re pausing, waiting to see what’s gonna happen. But to your point about what we’re seeing on the go-to-market side, in corporate functions, we’ve seen an influx of talent acquisition roles this year, probably the most we’ve worked on since

2021, 2022. So that’s always a really solid indicator of what’s gonna be happening in the job market the next year, at least with, you know, organizations that are being proactive when they’re thinking about talent planning, bringing in internal resources from a recruitment standpoint. So that always gives us, I think, a better feeling going into the new year.

We, you know, are never a hundred percent sure what’s gonna happen. It’s like a big, bet internally within Hirewell, like what the job market is gonna be in the upcoming year. But when we see that type of talent being hired and organizations being intentional with bringing [00:08:00] in, recruitment support, that typically means some pretty good stuff is on the horizon. Now.

Companies out there, okay, number one, as you hire these TA folks back into your ecosystem. Let’s not over hire and let’s not do the whole like in three years, like lay off all the recruiters and then do the whole thing over again. Please. Right. We beg of you, we love this trend. We love getting our talent acquisition folks jobs, but let’s, let’s do a little bit more measured approach. If I may, I’ve pitched it a hundred million times on a hundred different, you know, episodes of the Hirewell Update and The Rant. This is what I do. The RPO product at Hirewell can supplement this stuff, so get your people seated internally. Both Ryan and I are huge advocates of having solid

scalable internal teams that know your process inside and out. [00:09:00] But if you know that you have a place in time recruiting initiative that’s probably gonna have a faucet off at some point. It’s very worthwhile to at least talk to us or a firm like us that can act as an extension of your recruiting team.

That’s all it is. We’re good at recruiting. We’re good at finding talent. We’re experts at process. And we know how to bolt onto companies, get it, get the job done, and leave you to the work that needs to be done. Right. I think it solves for the problem at hand, which is scaries on the market, but also, shoot, we’ve gotta, we’ve gotta recruit for all these roles.

Yeah, a hundred percent. You know what’s interesting, Jeff, is this quarter alone, actually this week alone, I had several of these conversations just so everyone has some context. It’s Tuesday, the day that we’re filming this, it’ll go live another day. But it’s only Tuesday. And the fact that I’m having several of these conversations we’re only two days into the week like that, is pretty telling that organizations are starting to think really thoughtfully around what [00:10:00] that needs to look like and RPO solutions,

from our experience, when they’re done right and they’re done well, which is what we do, are typically the right, stop gap for organizations when they’re thinking about that type of hiring. You know, you, you mentioned like the faucet on, we’re also really good at determining like when the faucet needs to turn off. Yeah.

Our role isn’t, you know, to be a part of an organization for longer than you need us. But typically what happens is our relationship and, you know, the output is so solid. Those relationships, are something that stay for a very long time. But that’s like the difference that we’re talking about in terms of you don’t need to bring in 20 recruiters if you’re gonna be hiring in Q1 and Q2.

You need to have your solid team of internal recruiters and then partnerships with organizations like Hirewell that can really help supplement, that increase in volume. And from a commercial perspective at arguably similar cost per hire structures. Like

you’re gonna inflate your payroll or you’re gonna work with a [00:11:00] consultant or a group of consultants, IE us that. Like that money’s going out the door somewhere. Right. I think like, I mean, and every situation is different, but again, if you know that it is a place in time sort of initiative.

The RPO makes a whole lot of sense. It totally does. Yeah. And you and I have both, you know, gotten very creative with what those types of structures can look like. To the, begrudging, you know, the, the ire of Don and Matt, of our internal team as we continue to force them into new and creative agreements.

But, that’s the fun part of it, right? Yeah. There is not a one size fits all solution when it comes to this. And I think being able to partner with organizations that are going through this type of change, and evolution and growth is what makes things super exciting for us. So, you know, that’s the approach that I think is necessarily not only for us to take when looking at these partnerships, but also for organizations when they’re thinking about how to proactively

plan for talent initiatives. It does not mean you have to build out a team of 30 recruiters unless your organization really needs that. There are [00:12:00] creative ways that you can supplement that type of growth and work that end up making quite a bit of sense, not only from a bottom line perspective, but also just from a planning perspective in general.

Yeah, if you happen cross this, and have gotten this far, Ryan and I and any of the recruiters at Hirewell are always open to having the conversation. Even if it’s just to pick our brain on, Hey, you touched on something that like, I feel like I don’t have an answer for.

A lot of the times that’s where most of these conversations start. And even if it’s not a situation where we can be immediately beneficial from a partner, a official partnership perspective, we’re always more than willing to lend our insights on this stuff. So please do reach out.

Yeah, absolutely. And we do have a ton of, examples, case studies on our website too. That’s a great way to, to take a look at the great work that we’ve done with organizations over the years and, those strategies that we’ve been able to deploy. So, I guess, you know, what we’re suggesting for organizations, for folks in TA that are listening to this, for [00:13:00] anyone that’s responsible for talent planning in the upcoming year, the time is now.

Start really, really thinking about what that’s going to look like. Don’t wait until the first day of Q1 because it falls on a really funky time of the week in 2026 this year. Well, it’s not even, it’s not even now. We’re probably late in putting this out, but it was, it’s probably like two weeks ago.

Absolutely. But now works as the placeholder now, now works because that’s where we’re at with filming. So now is the time. And we’re here to. So like you mentioned, Jeff, any organization, any person that is looking to have a conversation around this, we’re here, we’re available. We’ll put our email addresses in the comment section so anyone can reach out to us.

Beautiful. Love it. Anything else to wrap up? Can you believe it, Jeff? We literally are halfway through Q4. It’s scary times how quick this year went. It’s scary, but I’m also looking forward to. You know, my one month of not being a, a Grinch, I love Christmas. I [00:14:00] love the holidays. Yes. I say bring it on.

Yeah. But I would love to bring it on with like five, you know, new conversations of, potential RPO work from all of you wonderful viewers. A hundred percent. Well, maybe we’ll get a bet going, seeing who. The most conversations out of this episode, huh? I typically lose bets to you, so. Well, let’s do it anyway.

It’s always fun for me. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for joining me. It was great to have you on the Hirewell Update. It’s so strange to be filming. Obviously I’ve been missing my co-host, but it’s great to get back into it with you. I appreciate it for sure. but that’s gonna be a wrap. For this week’s episode of the Hirewell Update, thank you all for joining us.

As a reminder, you can find all of our insights@talentinsights.com. Or if you wanna learn more about Hirewell and our service offerings, check on our website, www.hirewell.com, or reach out to me or Jeff. Thanks Ry. Thanks everyone. Bye.