Talent acquisition teams are about to experience an excess of talent like we’ve never seen before.

But will this surplus of applicants be good or bad for recruiting teams?

We experienced a huge surge five years ago when companies laid off millions of people during the pandemic. There was a glut of talent on the market and those of us who were deemed “essential businesses” saw huge spikes in applicant volume.

When the pandemic ended; however, many of those applicants went back to their jobs. We returned to familiar labor shortages with the added complexity of reduced participation rates and stimulus checks keeping people on the sidelines.  

So the whole talent surplus era was just a six-month blip on my applicant flow reports. 

The difference this time is that entire jobs and job categories will be deleted at the hands of robotics, automation, and AI. It might take a year or three years, but those jobs are not coming back. So, employees won’t have their old job to return to. 

Of course, new jobs will be created but only those with AI-native capabilities will land what few jobs will be available. 

As someone who needs to be looking around corners, the questions I’m grappling with right now include:

1. What does this mean for our industry? 

2. What does this mean for my company?

3. What can I do to prepare my team? 

Let’s look at some pros and cons to help clarify the opportunity specific to talent acquisition teams.

THE UPSIDE

There are some very obvious positives that recruiting leaders will enjoy as AI and automation begin to reshape the talent landscape:

• Jobs that used to be hard to fill will be easy to fill. We’re already seeing this with data scientists and software developers. 

• Talent who would not have considered your company in the past, will now reconsider. 

• Talent that would normally turn their nose up at working in certain industries will now “trade down” to organizations that are more stable. 

• Deflation will stabilize wage wars between companies creating a more level playing field for all companies to compete. Hopefully this is offset by lower consumer costs!

• If you are hiring for roles that require human judgment or empathy your talent pool just got an incredible upgrade.

For me at Sheetz, I think the future looks bright as our model involves serving people in person, we’re a highly stable company, and our business model is largely unaffected by AI.

THE DOWNSIDE

Seeing the positives of a talent surplus is easier than identifying the downsides. I’m interested to know what you think the downsides would be but here are a few that I foresee:

• Candidates may adopt autoapply technologies to apply to hundreds of jobs daily. 

• Recruiters and recruiting systems will be overburdened with unqualified candidates.

• Candidates may suffer as hiring timelines and increased automation impact the candidate experience.

• An increase in AI capabilities and unemployment will lead to a rise of AI generated applications and candidate fraud. 

• Companies who don’t adopt a skills-based approach to hiring will spin their wheels still looking for perfect fit talent. 

• Companies looking for talent with modern skills will find a shallow pool of available talent.

• Teams without solid processes and proper resources will suffer as the volume breaks unstable processes.

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO PREPARE?

This article is by no means meant to be a doomsday premonition. Rather, it’s the up and downside of something that is already happening. Leaders who view this as an opportunity will prepare their teams to take advantage of the surplus. Here are a few strategic ways you can begin to prepare:

• Adjust (or build) your Employee Value Proposition to appeal to the segments of impacted workers with transferable skills to your industry.

• Review your screening and assessment processes to ensure they’re prepared to identify the right candidates.

• Review your hiring processes to ensure they can handle higher applicant volumes while also providing a great experience.
  
  

• Research “skills-based hiring”. It’s a great way to identify candidates with transferable skills.

As mass layoffs, hiring freezes, and agentic AI workforces continue to grow over the next several years, recruiting teams will face a dilemma like they’ve never seen before. How we all prepare will determine how well we position our teams to handle it AND how helpful we will be to a population of workers who will no doubt be struggling to adapt to a new reality. 

We have a critical role to play in the future labor market and I’m personally looking forward to the challenge. 

What are some ways you’ll be preparing yourself and your team?