There’s a tension sitting at the heart of talent acquisition right now, and most teams are feeling it without being able to name it.
The mandate is familiar: do more with less. But the bar has shifted. It’s not just more volume — it’s higher quality output, better decisions, and greater accountability, all at the same time. And AI, which was supposed to make this easier, has introduced a whole new layer of complexity that many teams weren’t prepared for.
We’ve written about why the pressure to cut headcount in the name of AI efficiency is a trap — and what the smarter play actually looks like. Read that here.“
Kyle Lagunas, Founder of Kyle & Co, joined Matt Alder on the Recruiting Future podcast to unpack what’s really going on — and what talent leaders need to do differently.
Kyle laid out three things he expects to define the next chapter for talent functions:
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AI literacy across the board. Not expertise — literacy. Everyone in the function needs to understand enough to engage with AI meaningfully, not just the central SWAT team.
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Risk readiness, not risk avoidance. The teams building structured, rigorous pilot programs right now — with real problem statements, real success metrics, and real go/no-go criteria — are ahead.
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A relentless focus on quality. Not volume. Not novelty. Quality of decision, quality of output, quality of hire. That’s what should be scaled.
AI could be truly catalytic for HR and talent — not just to do more of the same faster, but to fix what’s been broken for years. That’s the opportunity. But only if we’re willing to do the foundational work.
We automated the wrong things.
In the rush to scale, many organizations did what organizations always do when a new technology arrives: they lifted and shifted. Same processes, new wrapper. The same thing happened when companies moved to the cloud. But AI has a multiplying effect — it doesn’t just move your processes, it scales them. That means any dysfunction you had before? You’ve now got a lot more of it.
The result is a large volume of automated decisions being made without the kind of foundation that makes those decisions defensible. And “defensible” is no longer just an operational nice-to-have — it’s a legal one. Actions that used to be considered simple workflow steps are now being scrutinized in courts as consequential decisions.
Risk avoidance is not the same as risk management.
HR has historically been risk avoidant — and there’s a difference. Risk aversion involves actually calculating your exposure, building mitigation plans, and managing against real scenarios. Risk avoidance means not looking at the risk at all. Most HR functions have those skills siloed in one or two people rather than embedded across the culture.
That has to change. The good news: legal, compliance, and infosec teams are stressed and actively want better partnership from HR. Coming to those conversations prepared — knowing the objections, understanding the exposure, having a point of view — is an opportunity, not a burden.
Human-in-the-loop is a design choice, not a tagline.
One of the most important shifts talent leaders can make right now is treating “human-in-the-loop” as a solution design requirement, not an assumption. It needs to be documented. It needs to be operationalized. It needs to be audited. QBRs with vendors should no longer be about vanity metrics — they should be about responsible innovation.