Gilman Partners recently facilitated a roundtable discussion with HR leaders from a range of industries to explore what is shaping hiring, leadership, and talent strategy as organizations plan for 2026. What emerged was a clear picture of organizations placing greater emphasis on leadership capability, engagement, and internal development than in years past.
Hiring Trends for 2026
Overall hiring activity is slowing, with many organizations prioritizing internal engagement and talent development over net-new positions. At the same time, demand is rising sharply for revenue-generating roles—particularly sales, business development, and nonprofit fundraising—as organizations focus on growth, market expansion, and operating effectively with leaner teams. As one participant summarized the focus for 2026: “sales, sales, and sales.”
Functional Areas with the Highest Demand
The greatest hiring pressure is concentrated in sales and business development, with multiple leaders describing these roles as essential to sustaining growth in tighter markets. Others pointed to continued demand for nonprofit fundraising roles, technology-enabled positions, finance and accounting leadership (especially CFO-level talent), and middle management.
Middle managers were consistently identified as the most difficult group to find and retain. Leaders described roles that now require managing greater complexity, navigating ongoing change, and supporting teams with fewer resources—often without the authority or support structures traditionally associated with those positions.
Organizational Growth and Talent Strategies
Organizations pursuing growth—often through expansion or mergers and acquisitions—are experiencing increased strain on leadership capacity and retention. Several leaders shared examples of teams that expanded quickly and then realized their internal leadership bench had not kept pace.
In response, many organizations are investing more intentionally in internal development, role leveling, and assessments. Leaders described a noticeable shift away from searching for “perfect” resumes and toward evaluating learning agility and adaptability. Internal mobility and promotion are increasingly being used to build leadership pipelines while preserving institutional knowledge.
Retention and Employee Engagement
Retention strategies are moving away from purely compensation-driven solutions and toward engagement-focused approaches. Leaders cited stronger manager support, clearer role definitions, more structured onboarding, and ongoing development as key levers.
In some organizations, employee engagement groups and expanded financial or wellness programs are playing a meaningful role in retention. One theme that surfaced repeatedly was the growing desire among employees to understand more than just their own role. Several leaders shared that employees are asking for greater exposure to cross-functional work in order to better understand how the business operates as a whole.
Hiring Challenges and Candidate Market Realities
While applicant volume remains high in many markets, HR leaders described a disconnect between the number of candidates and their readiness for increasingly complex roles. Hiring teams are encountering resumes that look strong on paper but do not always align with the level of judgment, problem-solving, or accountability required.
In response, organizations are tightening “must-have” criteria, leaning into skill-based hiring, and placing greater emphasis on attitude, learning ability, and motivation. A consistent watch-out raised in the discussion was that slow or unclear hiring processes are increasingly viewed by candidates as a signal that an organization is itself slow-moving or indecisive.
Hiring Tools, Evaluation, and Decision-Making
Hiring teams are adopting more structured evaluation approaches, including scorecards aligned to core values and a small number of non-negotiable competencies for each role. Leaders emphasized the importance of clarity—knowing what truly matters versus what is simply “nice to have”—to improve both decision quality and speed. Several participants shared that these tools are helping hiring teams stay aligned internally, particularly when multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision-making process.
AI in HR and Recruiting
AI adoption is growing, though its use remains uneven and largely informal. Leaders shared examples of AI being used to draft job descriptions, generate interview questions, compare resumes to role requirements, identify candidate traits, document processes, and support training as experienced employees retire. At the same time, concerns remain around data integrity, legal risk, the authenticity of AI-generated resumes, and overreliance on keyword matching. In response, some organizations are shifting back to more in-person first-round interviews to better assess gaps between a candidate’s resume and their real-world capabilities.
A Forward-Looking View on AI
Across the group, AI was viewed as a tool to augment—not replace—human judgment. Leaders expressed concern about the long-term impact on early-career roles and leadership pipelines, alongside optimism about AI’s potential to accelerate onboarding and improve productivity when used thoughtfully.
In manufacturing settings, technology is helping offset the loss of institutional knowledge. One manufacturing HR leader described early-career employees learning to program computer-aided machines far more quickly than traditional hands-on mechanical techniques. In another organization, a charter team was formed to capture institutional knowledge by documenting processes and creating instructional videos for future employees.
Workplace Flexibility and Experience
Flexibility continues to be the top priority for candidates, outweighing strict preferences for fully remote or fully in-office work. Leaders discussed the importance of measuring engagement across the full employee lifecycle—from candidate to employee to alumni—and the growing recognition that engagement, employer brand, and long-term retention are tightly connected.
Looking Ahead
Hiring in 2026 is expected to be slower, more selective, and tightly aligned with business outcomes. Revenue-generating roles will continue to dominate demand, middle management remains the most acute talent gap, and retention will hinge on engagement, manager effectiveness, and visible growth paths. AI is already delivering efficiency gains, but long-term success will depend on stronger governance, education, and employer branding that clearly differentiates organizations in an increasingly constrained talent market.
