The Hiring Ground

Where hiring stands in 2026

I cut my teeth recruiting high volume for a tech agency in 2019. Back then, relationship-driven volume was the name of the game, and it meant things moved slow, then fast. It ran on call sheets, in-person coffees, patience, and trust. I learned from recruiters who'd weathered the dotcom bust and the 2008 financial crisis, major hiring-market collapses that showed the power of patience and trust in the process.

When the 2020 pandemic hit in the midst of a tech boom, we kept doing what had always worked: staying patient, trusting the process. Then individual buying power shifted, candidate pools expanded overnight, and work environments changed underneath us. Somewhere in that stretch, conversations that used to build over weeks started closing in days, share the number, get the answer, move on. Relationship-driven volume is still the name of the game. But the pool doesn't have to be deep anymore. It has to be wide.

Patience and trust used to be enough. Now candidates want clarity and direction. They don't want to wait and see anymore. They want to know exactly what they're going to get.

Post-Pandemic - Wage Instability

It shouldn't shock you that the fastest way to get a response from a passive candidate is to share compensation. Does that mean everyone's gotten greedy? Real wages, adjusted for inflation, fell in 2021 and 2022, while nominal pay was rising faster than it had in decades. Wages have technically caught back up since, but that recovery has been uneven and inconsistent, and just this year, inflation started outpacing wage growth again for the first time in three years.

Employers gave real raises, on paper, in dollar terms, and the employees receiving them ended up with equal or less actual purchasing power once they landed. Companies weren't being cheap, but more money on paper doesn't mean an employee is getting ahead. Most retention strategy gets set in the interview, then the focus quietly shifts to top performers (promotions) and bottom ones (performance plans), leaving everyone in the middle to figure out where they stand on their own. Candidates remember getting burned once. They're not assuming it won't happen again.

People don't take jobs for pizza parties, and I'd argue never did. Culture still matters, but people want a culture that treats them like family, one that also knows they have real bills to pay. Sharing a salary range is how people know whether an opportunity is even worth their time. I can't tell you the number of times a candidate gets an offer where the range wasn't clear before the interview, and they not only reject it, but they feel like their time was wasted. Bills have to get paid. Compensation is king.

Candidate Access

Technology changed how recruiters reach candidates. CRMs and ATS platforms have existed for years, but new tools raise a real question: what would you pay to double your current candidate pool? Triple it? I've worked with databases holding literally millions of candidate profiles, no prior relationship required to send an email, a text, or make the old-fashioned cold call. Your team just needs the right tool.

Web-crawling tools are built and marketed specifically for recruiting teams. This access cuts two ways: your team can reach a larger candidate pool, and your competitors' pool is made up of your current employees.

Most people today aren't actively job hunting but say they're still open to the right opportunity if one came along, 87% according to LinkedIn. Add in the number of recruiting tools automating outreach every week, and it should give any employer pause, because the same employees getting contacted by recruiters are the same employees with bills to pay. The retention conversations you used to wait for are being forced to happen sooner. The grass doesn't have to be greener anymore. It just has to be green.

Remote Work

The way people work keeps moving faster than most companies can keep pace with, and remote work is front and center. It wasn't invented in 2020, but it also wasn't a serious option before then. The pandemic forced it everywhere it could apply, and love it or hate it, it's here to stay. Despite return-to-office headlines, employees teleworking is still on the rise, up roughly six percentage points in the heart of major RTO mandates from 2022 to 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Just last year, I worked with a team hiring for a hands-on mechanic role. The candidate asked about a remote option during the interview, and said he figured he should at least ask, since most of his friends had that option. He felt like it was just one of those things you're supposed to ask about now. The interview moved right on to the next question, like nothing had happened. It barely registers anymore, even for a job where it makes no sense. This wasn't a common interview topic even ten years ago. Now it's routine.

"What's success look like in this role?"

"What's your bonus structure?"

"What's your remote or hybrid policy?"

Hiring Infrastructure

I hear the same handful of reasons when a hiring manager wants to talk. Most revolve around candidates, specifically, sourcing them. I always ask what happens next. Sometimes that question gets awkward, and that's fine. "I've hired for years. I just need candidates." Some teams really do just need candidates, but finding candidates isn't the hard part in 2026. There are tools to help, and plenty of recruiting firms that can hand you a "ready list" of resumes within the week. And yet, almost half of businesses with 100 or fewer employees are struggling to fill roles right now.

A lot of managers still make hiring decisions based on their gut. Sometimes gut-level hiring works out, and when it does, it feels like you pulled off something close to magic. When it doesn't, it leaves people wondering how not to get fooled the same way twice. It's not repeatable. It's exactly what it sounds like: based on feeling. One interview for one candidate, three for another. What was actually being evaluated? Which process gives your team the clearest read on what they're actually getting? Most importantly, what comes next?

If a hiring process falls apart because one team member is out, it's not a process. If the next steps aren't clear for a candidate mid-process, they won't wait around to find out. Neither one is a candidate problem. It's what happens when there was never a plan to begin with.

Wages, access, remote work. All three moved fast, and most companies are still catching up to just one of them. Somewhere in the middle of all this, AI is already rewriting job postings and résumés on both sides of the table. But that's a conversation for another day.