Q2 2026 HIRE Report
Q2 2026 HIRE Report
Quarterly Hiring Insights and Recruiting Environment (HIRE) Report by Advanced RPO
If there’s one theme running through this quarter’s HIRE report, it’s this: the hiring process itself is broken in ways that are becoming harder to ignore.
Candidates are using AI to apply, prep, and perform their way through your funnel. Gen Z workers are arriving with strong technical skills and real gaps in the interpersonal ones. And job postings are still overselling roles in ways that cost companies more than they save.
This edition tackles all three of these challenges head-on, with practical advice you can actually use. We also take a look at what’s happening in manufacturing, life sciences, and food and beverage hiring, and share three research reports worth your time as you plan ahead for the rest of 2026.
Hiring isn’t getting simpler. But with the right approach, it can get smarter.
Pam Verhoff
President and CEO, Advanced RPO
Hiring Insights
Your candidates are using AI, too. Here’s what that means for you.
Job seekers have figured out that AI can work in their favor, and they’re running with it. But it’s presenting a few challenges for employers.
First, everyone is starting to look and sound the same, but they’re all using the same AI apps to customize their resumes to your job description. Screening for genuine fit becomes harder when every application sounds like it was written by the same person.
Next, you get them in for an interview, and you still can’t get a good read on candidates. That’s because AI is giving them interview questions, suggested answers, and even language calibrated to match a company’s stated values. Candidates who sound great in a first-round interview may not be telling you much about how they actually think or communicate on their own.
Third, it’s a volume issue. When candidates can apply to 50 jobs in the time it used to take to apply to five, your applicant pool gets bigger, but not necessarily better.
None of this means AI-assisted applications should automatically raise red flags. What it does mean is that your process needs to do more work than it used to. If your screening process can be fully gamed by a chatbot, it may be time to rethink it.
What to do about it
💡 Add a short, role-specific question that requires a real answer. A chatbot can generate a response, but a generic one will be obvious.
💡 Move faster to a real conversation. If your process relies heavily on written applications and asynchronous screening, you’re giving AI tools more surface area to work with.
💡 Change your interview questions more often. Candidates can and will find them online in places like Reddit and Glassdoor, and prepare scripted answers for them.
💡 Mix in questions that are specific to your company, your team’s current challenges, or recent industry developments. These are much harder to prep for with a generic AI tool.
💡 Use work samples or skills-based assessments. Ask candidates to do something that reflects the actual job. This is the fastest way to see how someone actually thinks and performs.
💡 Pay attention to how candidates communicate. Are they listening and asking follow-up questions? Can they go off script? These are things AI can’t do in a live setting.
💭 Advanced RPO’s take
AI means more volume, more polish, and less signal in the early stages of your hiring funnel. The recruiters who adapt their processes to account for this will spend less time sorting through noise and more time actually connecting with the right people.
You can’t automate your way out of a people problem
Everyone’s talking about AI skills. But can your candidates actually talk to people?
For the past few years, companies have been racing to hire candidates with strong AI skills, and that makes sense. That said, technical fluency doesn’t mean much if someone can’t hold a conversation, collaborate with a team, or navigate a difficult client relationship.
The assumption has long been that communication and relationship-building are baseline competencies that most people bring to the job. Increasingly, that’s not the case when it comes to Gen Z. Years of remote work, digital-first communication, and AI-assisted everything have quietly eroded the interpersonal skills that workplaces actually run on.
Turns out not everything is like riding a bike.
Here’s the good news: AI skills are teachable. Soft skills are harder to develop, but they’re not impossible to screen for. The workers who will thrive going forward are the ones who can do both, and your interview process is where you find them.
How to interview for soft skills (not just credentials)
👉 Ask for a specific story, then push on it. “Tell me about a time you had a difficult conversation with a coworker” is a start, but follow up with “What did you actually say?” Vague answers reveal a lot.
👉 Watch how they handle being wrong. Toss a gentle challenge at something they said. Candidates with strong interpersonal skills can disagree, reconsider, or hold their ground without getting defensive or shutting down.
👉 Give them an ambiguous scenario. Strong communicators can think out loud, ask clarifying questions, and work through uncertainty. Weaker ones either freeze or jump straight to an answer without engaging.
👉 Notice how they treat everyone in the room. How a candidate interacts with a receptionist or coordinator tells you as much as how they perform in a formal interview.
👉 End with a two-way conversation. Candidates who ask thoughtful questions, listen to your answers, and build on what you’ve said are demonstrating exactly the skill you’re hiring for in real time.
💭 Advanced RPO’s take
People still need to be able to communicate, build relationships, and work through problems together. Those soft skills are critical, and they have to be screened for, developed, and taken just as seriously as any technical requirement on the job description.
Honesty really is the best (recruiting) policy
Job seekers are skeptical, and for good reason. Most job postings oversell the role, gloss over the hard parts, and paint an unrealistically optimistic picture of the workplace. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Candidates can spot it pretty quickly, and it erodes trust before the relationship even starts.
Radical transparency flips that script. It means telling the truth about the job, including the parts that are genuinely difficult. Not in a way that’s discouraging, but in a way that’s real.
Being upfront doesn’t scare off good candidates. It filters out the wrong ones and draws in people who are a genuine fit. When someone applies knowing exactly what they’re getting into, they’re more likely to stay engaged, perform well, and stick around. You build trust from the very first interaction instead of scrambling to rebuild it after a bad hire.
What leading with honesty looks like
1️⃣ Tell the truth about jobs.
What’s hard about it? What will someone struggle with in the first 90 days? Saying it upfront sets realistic expectations and reduces early turnover significantly
2️⃣ Skip the generic messaging.
“We care about our people” is on every career page. It means nothing. Talk to your actual workers, find out what makes your workplace different, and lead with that instead.
3️⃣ Being honest helps you hire faster.
When the right candidates self-select in, you spend less time interviewing poor fits and less money replacing people who leave because the job wasn’t what they expected.
💭 Advanced RPO’s take
The biggest mistake companies make is treating their job postings like marketing copy. When you hide the hard parts of a role, you’re not protecting your employer brand, you’re just delaying the fallout. The candidates who are right for the job aren’t scared off by honesty. They’re reassured by it.
Recruiting Environment
Life Sciences
Articles we read
Manufacturing
Articles we read
Food & Beverage
Articles we read
Looking Ahead to Q3 2026
Next up: 2026 hiring, according to the experts
During Q1, the industry experts were out in full force with predictions and analysis on everything from how candidates are being screened to how they’re being paid and onboarded. We’ve pulled three reports worth your time. And as always, while national trends give you useful context, we know your hiring reality is shaped by your industry, your geography, and your specific roles. If you want to talk through what any of this means for your organization, just reach out.
Screening
2026 Global Background Screening Trends Report [First Advantage + ClearlyRated]
Nearly 90% of hiring managers plan to add additional background screening and identity verification solutions to accomplish two things: screen more thoroughly AND hire faster.
Compensation
2026 Total Compensation & Benefits Report [Sequoia]
Companies are rethinking pay and retention, with AI roles getting merit increases, cash becoming a primary retention tool, and short-term incentives becoming more popular.
Onboarding
2026 Employee Onboarding Statistics & Trends [AIHR]
Onboarding is critical: 86% of new hires decide to stay or go within the first 6 months. Needing improvement? Inconsistent manager involvement, admin tasks, and lack of human connection.
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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