Q2 2025 HIRE Report
Q2 2025 HIRE Report
Quarterly Hiring Insights and Recruiting Environment (HIRE) Report by Advanced RPO
In our Q1 HIRE report, we asked you to share what you were most optimistic about this year. Here’s how you responded:
- Identifying great talent for open roles – 50%
- Having a compelling employer brand – 17%
- Delivering a great candidate and hiring manager experience – 8%
- All the above – 25%
Given that our readers were least optimistic about delivering a great candidate experience, we’re tackling that topic in this edition. Not only are we sharing why now is the time to focus on it, but we’re giving you two resources to help get you started. By the second half of the year, you’ll be ready. We promise.
Much of the content in this HIRE report aims to help you make sense of our current hiring climate in the wake of new administration in the White House. The new administration has brought with it significant changes that are or will have an impact on the labor market. Right now, we’re witnessing significant government job disruptions, ongoing tariff battles, heightened geopolitical tensions, and persistent economic uncertainty.
Currently, many DEI programs are being eliminated due to shifts in the political landscape. We’ll start by exploring that topic.
Pam Verhoff
President and CEO, Advanced RPO
Hiring Insights
DEI takes a new turn
In a significant reversal from recent years, numerous global public businesses are either eliminating or scaling back their DEI programs. We’ve already seen a significant wave of announcements during the first quarter of the year.
A Resume.org study identified the key reasons for these decisions:
- political climate changes: 49%
- economic pressures: 37%
- lack of measurable impact: 36%
- employee resistance: 36%
It remains to be seen how these decisions will impact mid-market organizations. One of the biggest challenges with DEI has always been demonstrating ROI. Measuring the impact of these efforts is challenging, and in today’s uncertain economic climate, securing budget becomes even harder when the ROI isn’t immediately reflected in the bottom line.
A modern (and positive!) take on job hopping
For years, employers have seen job hopping as a red flag. Too many jobs on the resume means one of two things – candidates have some fatal flaw that prevents them from fulfilling their duties, or they’re opportunistic flight risks who aren’t worth hiring.
Thorough interviews, assessments, and reference checks can weed out the low performers, but employers should reconsider their stance on the latter.
Today there are many of valid reasons for job hopping. There are far more employers and new work opportunities available. And remote work has made the whole experience less sticky. It’s much easier to switch jobs from a physical – and emotional – standpoint.
Job hopping also acts as a rewards system for high performers. In one study, 64% of respondents said that changing jobs accelerates their career progression. And, a Zippia study found the average salary increase when changing jobs is 14.8%, while wage growth is 5.8%.
But, and here’s the important part for employers – it also helps employees develop a more diverse skill set. This is in terms of both hard skills learned in different work environments and soft skills like adaptability and communication gained through periods of career change.
Our expert’s advice
Job hoppers may still be flight risks, especially if you don’t offer them a career path internally, but those skills often make them worth hiring anyways. Why? In today’s world, the currency of employment is skills rather than tenure. While loyalty is a nice-to-have attribute, diverse hard and soft skills are king.
Jennifer Daugherty
Program Manager, Advanced RPO
Why talent is #1 on the reshoring agenda
One of the biggest talent trends we’re seeing this year is reshoring. According to a survey, 69% of U.S. manufacturers have already begun reshoring efforts. There are a few things driving the work back to the United States, including global relations tension, logistics challenges, government incentives, and tech advancements that make it all possible.
Arguably the biggest concern when it comes to reshoring is who’s going to do the work. According to a Wall Street Journal/MSN article:
1️⃣ The gap each month between manufacturing job openings and hirings is approximately 100,000 positions.
2️⃣ In a recent survey by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), more than 60% of employers said attracting and retaining talent is a top concern.
3️⃣ NAM forecasts 3.8 million unfilled roles over the next decade with retirees leaving the industry and growing manufacturing demand.
Today it’s important to have hiring needs on the agenda from the very first meeting onward. Too often, manufacturers address hiring too late in the process, leading to delayed training initiatives, higher talent costs in saturated markets, and lower productivity levels due to unfilled roles.
Our expert’s advice
To successfully execute reshoring initiatives, employers must view hiring as an immediate priority, not something to address later. It should be a consideration for everything from plant locations to construction timing. Talent sourcing and training partners should also be involved from the beginning, helping to craft an overall hiring strategy that sets employers up for success.
John Hess
Executive VP of Operations,
Advanced RPO
Recruiting Environment
Manufacturing
The hiring situation hasn’t improved much in manufacturing. Let this sink in: a Q1 survey found that well over half (64%) of manufacturers failed to meet their hiring goals last year.
In 2025, the focus is on improving hiring efficiency overall as a way to address two big challenges:
- (1) more competition for talent and
- (2) historic turnover issues.
Our expert’s advice
Efficiency is everything in the manufacturing industry – and that’s true when it comes to hiring as well. Candidates are applying to 5-10 jobs at a time. Employers must get better (and faster) at pushing candidates through the hiring process before their talent competition takes top candidates off the market. Faster hiring also softens the blow of high turnover, by backfilling positions before they begin to impact productivity and morale.
Justin King
Solution Design Director, Advanced RPO
Life Sciences
Life sciences employment hit a record high in Q4 2024, and it’s just the beginning: 94% of companies will increase headcount over the next three years, and 37% will do so by 6% or more.
The volume of lab/R&D space under development reflects the innovation boom in this sector. We’re coming off a year that ranked as the sixth highest in history when it comes to novel drug approvals by the FDA.
Our expert’s advice
With life sciences employment at an all-time high and demand continuing to grow, companies need a hiring strategy that keeps pace with innovation. The key is building a talent pipeline that balances specialized expertise with scalability. This means leveraging market insights, optimizing recruitment processes, and ensuring the right talent is in place to drive the next breakthrough.
Ryan Feeney
Director of Business Development, Advanced RPO
Food & Beverage
Turnover of any kind is hard – but the persistent, disruptive turnover of hourly employees in the Food & Beverage industry can have devastating impacts.
Whether it’s reframing how businesses think about their talent competitors or understanding and responding to the specific needs of hourly workers, our own Tim Oyer offered some practical tips for F&B companies to address turnover in an article for Food Industry Executive.
Our expert’s advice
It’s important to look at turnover from both the inside out and the outside in. Employers often fail to see their own role in creating undesirable workplace conditions. Acknowledging and addressing shortcomings – and finding ways to enable a better employee experience than other talent competitors – can have a big impact.
Tim Oyer
Vice President, Advanced RPO
Looking Ahead to Q3
Next up: Trust us, now’s the time to double down on the candidate experience
According to CandE research, candidate resentment hit the highest levels in 2024 ever seen in the 13-year history of the report.
In fact, ERE is predicting a candidate experience “free fall” this year, citing more applicants, low quality candidates, dismantled DEI programs, longer job searches, and the use of AI throughout the process as contributing factors.
It makes sense. Companies tend to deprioritize the candidate experience when the hiring pendulum swings back in favor of employers (which, in many industries, it has).
At Advanced RPO, we think this is a huge mistake – and a massive, missed opportunity.
From our perspective, now’s the perfect time for companies to get their house in order (so to speak) from a candidate experience perspective.
- Define and document your true hiring process – not just the touchpoints of recruiters, but everything from a hiring manager recognizing a talent need through onboarding.
- Identify your true challenges. Where are things taking too long? Are there any practices that are happening outside of your documented process? Fix these problems first.
- Look for ways to personalize touchpoints and build a more engaging candidate experience without burdening your recruiting team by adopting AI and automation.
We have two incredible resources on this topic:
For more information about any of these topics or to learn more about how an RPO partner can help you reach your hiring goals, please contact us.
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