With each new year come new challenges, and while we don’t know everything that 2025 will hold for hiring, there are some signs that point to these 6 trends dominating recruitment this year. From new tools to candidate expectations, let’s dive into the top trends you can expect to see in 2025 and how you can adapt your hiring strategy to meet them.
Hiring Trends We Expect to See in 2025
- Skills-based Hiring
- Conducting Smarter Interviews
- Development as a Key Benefit
- Navigating New Workforce Demographics
- Increased Use of AI Tools
- Hybrid Work Environments Continue
Hiring Trend 1: Focusing on Skills instead of Resumes
The reality of the tight labor market of the last few years means that you’re unlikely to find the perfect candidate on paper. And that’s alright – because the reality is that the candidate on paper never mattered much anyway. It’s the how that candidate shows up in person that matters most.
What does this mean? It means that 2025 is the year to truly embrace hiring for skills and potential over hunting for a specific work history. This year, focus instead on evaluating a candidate for their potential to learn and acquire new skills over their current knowledge base, past job titles, or education.
One of the best ways to evaluate skills is by using proven assessments that are designed to measure and confirm a specific skill set. From the ever-applicable cognitive aptitude and computer skills to critical soft skills like emotional intelligence, finding the right suite of assessments in 2025 will be a game-changer. These assessments can highlight capable candidates with unusual backgrounds that could otherwise be overlooked during the hiring process.
By including nontraditional candidates for consideration, organizations can dramatically expand their talent pipeline in 2025. Research from Korn Ferry indicates that by 2030 – the not-so-distant future! – there could be a global human talent shortage of 85 million human workers, impacting global productivity regardless of industry or geography. For this reason, we consider skills-based hiring to be a top hiring trend in 2025.
Skills-based hiring identifies candidates with the capacity to succeed and get up to speed quickly on the job. While skills-based hiring initially gained popularity for closing the skills gap, we’re predicting that 2025 will see a continued push that makes hiring decisions based on candidate abilities and potential to learn skills over traditional evaluation metrics.
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Hiring Trend 2: Conducting smarter interviews
Time-consuming interviews need to be left in 2024. This year, organizations need to step up their interview game to save time, money, and frustration. Instead of pouring more resources into the in-depth interviewing of more candidates, employers should focus their attention on interviewing techniques and strategies that will result in better hires and a more effective interviewing process.
This year, we expect to see more organizations revamping their interview process with better video interviewing tools and improved interview structure, cementing a place for smarter interviews on our list of top hiring trends of 2025.
Now that video interviews are the norm (thanks, Covid), organizations should tap into preliminary interview tools that allow hiring managers to review candidates in bulk. These asynchronous video interviews are more convenient for candidates and interviewers, making them the perfect blend of positive candidate experience and easy applicant review.
Criteria’s video interviewing tool makes shortlisting your candidates 75% faster and twice as predictive compared to traditional methods.
But in 2025, conducting a smarter interview isn’t just about the tools you use – it’s also about how you conduct the interview itself. Structured interviewing has been proven to be significantly better at surfacing talent that succeeds in the job compared to old-school conversational interviews.
Interviewing has long been one of the most time-consuming and subjective parts of the hiring process, but with better tools at their fingertips, we think hiring professionals will make smarter interview practices a top priority this year.
Hiring Trend 3: Skill Development becomes a cornerstone of recruitment strategy
As the Gen Z wedge of the workforce pie grows, many organizations are finding these workers lack some (or many, depending on who you ask) of the skills expected of employees historically. From soft skills like networking and communication to hard skills like computer literacy and technical prowess, industries are starting to feel the strain of the skills gap.
One of the best ways to close the skills gap is to bridge it yourself. In 2025, we anticipate that more organizations will invest in reskilling and upskilling their current workforce with internal development programs.
More than just a means to an end, career progression and development opportunities are something many job seekers are actively on the hunt for: a lack of career growth is the among the most common reasons people go looking for a new job. We expect employers to capitalize on this thirst for knowledge by offering robust development opportunities to secure top talent, making it a top hiring trend this year across industries.
In addition to driving increased offer acceptance, education and development of your workforce acts as a retention strategy too: 67% of employees are willing to stay at a company they don’t like if they have access to upskilling and career advancement.
Criteria’s Develop was created with the goal of making it easier for managers to guide and grow their teams to reach their full potential. From increased employee engagement and grab-and-go collaboration guides to AI-powered coaching, Develop is a must for your 2025 HR toolbox.
Since the benefits of continuous learning extend long after an offer letter has been signed, we feel confident that highlighting development opportunities will be a top hiring trend in 2025.
Hiring Trend 4: Shifting workforce demographics will require creative hiring solutions to meet demand
Get ready for some major shakeups as older workers exit the workforce. The wave of Baby Boomers set to retire this year is the largest in American history: 4.2 million American workers. Organizations are turning to Gen Z to fill these fresh openings.
However, a common complaint is that Gen Z is underskilled, with one survey showing that 75% of employers consider most Gen Z grads unprepared for the workplace. But it’s not just employers saying that; Gen Z admits it too: 61% of workers between the ages of 22 and 28 feel that college didn’t help prepare them for a career.
Combine this with the fact that Gen Z’s entrepreneurial spirit and their commitment to maintaining work-life balance? Many hiring professionals are unsure about how to court this incoming class of workers. With that in mind, we forecast that creative recruitment strategies will be a top hiring trend in 2025.
To win over these digital natives in 2025, organizations should focus on what they can provide to employees that can’t be gained elsewhere. This year, use job descriptions to highlight your company as an opportunity for professional growth. The job description is your organization’s chance to help candidates envision themselves in the role, so make full use of it.
As a terminally online generation, Gen Z craves in-person interaction and mentorship that they missed out on during the pandemic. Consider fleshing out a careers page on your website and highlight your company’s unique culture, including photos, quotes of what it’s like to work at your organizations, and what your company stands for.
When it comes to getting Gen Z the skills they’ll need to succeed, businesses that are willing to invest in on-the-job training of new hires see will a significant return on that investment. 43% of companies see an increase in their revenue after implementing strategic training programs. This year, go beyond general HR-related and compliance training. A study from MIT found that their workforce training program focused on soft skills delivered a 250% return on investment. Offering employees the ability to hone their skills can increase their sense of company loyalty and belonging.
Hiring Trend 5: AI tools will keep ramping up in popularity
Between retiring baby boomers, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, and Gen AI, the shape of the workforce is changing in 2025 – and fast. Of course, the addition of AI tools is an obvious hiring trend in 2025, but what’s uncertain is which tools will be most impactful.
Those who don’t explore and embrace new AI-powered tools are likely to struggle to keep up with their competitors who do. However, this doesn’t mean that the “human” is being removed from Human Resources. Instead, this is the year to dive deep and find AI tools that are best suited to your business.
But how can you determine which tools are right for you? And on top of that, which tools are ethical to include in the hiring process?
As new laws, like New York’s AI hiring laws, limit the types of decisions that employers are allowed to lean on AI to make. Automated employment decision tools (AEDTs) are likely not appropriate for most organizations to adopt at this point, as they will likely be subject to further scrutiny.
However, ChatGPT and other GenAI tools can be used to offload some of the burden on overtaxed hiring managers by using these tools as a shortcut to create strong job descriptions, identifying gaps in current teams, and even summarizing candidate resumes and cover letters for easy review.
It’s critical that AI tools be used ethically: any tools you consider incorporating into your hiring process this year should be evidence-based, human-centric, and evaluated for their long-term impact to your organization (not just jumping to whatever hot new thing the AI techbros pump out next.)
Only consider tools that give you clear visibility into how they function and the kind of data they are training their language models on, and avoid those who take a black box approach to their functionality. The livelihoods of real people are on the line and these tools should be used to enhance decision making, not take it out of human hands.
Hiring Trend 6: Hybrid is the new normal
Since 2020, many workers learned that their jobs, in fact, can be done remotely. It’s a cat that outright refuses to go back into the bag, vexing commercial real estate moguls and executive teams alike.
Hybrid work makes our list of top 2025 hiring trends because it’s becoming clear that employers who offer remote hybrid work arrangements will have a much easier time attracting candidates than those who require in-person work 100% of the time.
The reality is that hybrid work is here to stay. Despite full Return to Office mandates being announced left and right, companies that are able to maintain a hybrid work schedule in 2025 will find it to be both an effective recruitment tool and a solid strategy for retaining employees. The numbers don’t lie: in a 2024 survey, 54% of people want to work fully remote, 41% want to work hybrid schedules, and just 5% of people want to work in the office full time.
Hybrid blends the best of remote work flexibility with in-person days benefiting collaboration and improving employees’ sense of belonging. Job seekers are actively seeking employers who can provide the flexibility they’re looking for.
What does 2025 look like for hiring?
As we look ahead to 2025, it’s clear that the hiring landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by shifts in workforce demographics, technological advancements, and changing candidate expectations. By embracing these top hiring trends – skills-based hiring, smarter interviews, workforce development, creative recruitment strategies, ethical AI adoption, and hybrid work environments – organizations can position themselves as employers of choice in an increasingly competitive talent market.
The key to success in 2025 will be adaptability. Companies that prioritize skills over resumes, invest in employee development, and leverage innovative tools like Criteria’s assessments and Develop™ platform will not only attract top talent but also retain and grow their workforce for long-term success. Additionally, fostering a flexible and inclusive work culture that aligns with the needs of a diverse, multigenerational workforce will be critical.
By staying ahead of these trends and implementing forward-thinking strategies, your organization can navigate the challenges of 2025 with confidence, ensuring a robust talent pipeline and a thriving workplace.
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