For more than two decades, recruiting technology has largely focused on helping organizations manage hiring workflows, candidate records, compliance requirements and recruiting operations. Those capabilities remain essential. But the briefing also made it clear that the next phase of talent acquisition technology will be defined less by tracking applicants and more by helping organizations make better hiring decisions, automate administrative work and create more connected experiences for recruiters, hiring managers and candidates.

That shift reflects a broader transformation occurring across the talent acquisition technology market.

Built on the world’s richest set of recruiting data and experience, we’re creating an AI-native hiring platform that meets customers where they are, works wherever hiring happens and fundamentally redefines how enterprise hiring is done. — ICIMS Product Vision

Scale Still Matters

In an era where every HR technology vendor is talking about AI, it’s easy to overlook the importance of scale.

ICIMS supports hiring at global scale, with more than 3.1 million platform users, 691 million candidate profiles, 243 million applications processed annually, and more than 5 million hires made each year. Organizations using ICIMS also attract 49% more applicants per open role on average than organizations using other talent acquisition platforms, helping talent acquisition teams improve reach, efficiency, and hiring outcomes.

That scale matters because modern hiring platforms are only as effective as the data, workflows, and operational context behind them. As hiring platforms evolve, organizations with deep recruiting data and extensive enterprise experience may have significant advantages in developing practical AI applications that solve real business challenges.

From Recruiting Software to Hiring Platform

Another strong message is that ICIMS no longer views hiring as a collection of disconnected recruiting activities.

The company’s platform vision connects employer branding, candidate engagement, recruiting, onboarding, analytics, AI and frontline hiring into a unified experience. While many organizations still purchase technology in categories, the direction of the market increasingly points toward integrated hiring ecosystems.

This shift reflects a broader trend across talent acquisition technology. Buyers are looking for platforms that reduce complexity, eliminate disconnected workflows and provide a consistent experience across the entire hiring lifecycle.

The future of enterprise hiring appears to be less about individual point solutions and more about connected platforms that bring together every stage of the hiring journey.

AI Moves Into the Workflow

Another notable theme is ICIMS’ approach to AI.

Instead of positioning AI as a standalone product, ICIMS is embedding AI capabilities throughout existing recruiting workflows. Search and matching, sourcing, candidate engagement, job description optimization, interview preparation and conversational experiences are becoming integrated components of the hiring process.

This is an important market shift. The most successful AI applications in talent acquisition are increasingly those that reduce friction within existing workflows rather than requiring recruiters and hiring managers to learn entirely new systems.

The goal is making recruiting work easier.

That distinction becomes increasingly important as organizations evaluate where AI can deliver measurable business value.

Frontline Hiring Continues to Drive Innovation

One area receiving significant attention is frontline hiring.

Organizations across healthcare, retail, hospitality, manufacturing and logistics continue to face challenges attracting and hiring high-volume frontline talent. Mobile-first experiences, conversational applications, automated communication and simplified workflows are becoming critical requirements rather than differentiators.

The integration of the Apli recruitment automation into the ICIMS portfolio expands the company’s capabilities in this area while highlighting a broader market reality: frontline hiring often requires a fundamentally different experience than professional and corporate recruiting.

Solution providers that successfully address both enterprise complexity and frontline simplicity will be well-positioned as organizations continue to balance diverse workforce needs.

At HR Tech 2025, ICIMS’ acquisition of Apli signaled the company’s commitment to expanding its frontline hiring capabilities. You can read Brandon Hall Group’s earlier analysis of the acquisition and its implications for frontline recruiting here.

Responsible AI Is Becoming a Competitive Requirement

While much of the industry conversation centers on AI innovation, the briefing devoted considerable attention to responsible AI.

That focus is warranted.

As organizations evaluate AI-powered recruiting technologies, questions around governance, transparency, bias mitigation, explainability and compliance have become board-level concerns. Technology capabilities matter but trust matters just as much.

ICIMS highlights its Responsible AI program, ongoing bias testing, external audits and TrustArc Responsible AI certification as part of its strategy for helping customers adopt AI responsibly.

As AI adoption accelerates, responsible governance will become one of the most important differentiators among talent acquisition technology providers.

What This Means for Talent Acquisition Leaders

The themes discussed by ICIMS align closely with what Brandon Hall Group is seeing through our Talent Acquisition Progression Model for Empowering HR Excellence.

Our research found that 57% of organizations remain in the first two stages of talent acquisition progression, while only 9% have reached an optimized state. Most organizations are still focused on building consistency, standardizing processes and improving operational efficiency before they can fully leverage advanced analytics, AI and autonomous workflows.

The technologies highlighted by ICIMS show where the market is heading. Hiring platforms are evolving beyond applicant tracking and toward intelligent ecosystems that support strategic decision-making, automation and continuous improvement.

The organizations that first establish strong foundations in process, governance, data quality and technology integration before pursuing more advanced AI initiatives, will be the ones that benefit the most.

Learn more about the Brandon Hall Group Talent Acquisition Progression Model for Empowering HR Excellence.

Final Thoughts

The recruiting technology market is entering a new phase.

What the ICIMS Midyear Briefing demonstrated is that enterprise hiring platforms are evolving beyond workflow management and becoming strategic systems designed to improve hiring outcomes across the organization.

Whether through AI-powered assistance, integrated hiring experiences, frontline recruiting innovation or responsible governance frameworks, the focus is shifting more toward helping organizations hire better, faster and more effectively.

For talent acquisition leaders, it’s no longer if these changes are coming; it’s how your hiring strategy, processes and technology foundation are prepared to take advantage.

The post What ICIMS’ Midyear Briefing Reveals About the Future of Enterprise Hiring appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The way companies match candidates to jobs is long overdue for a revolution. For decades, hiring has relied primarily on resumes, interviews and gut feelings to make important people decisions. But as the world of work rapidly evolves, this approach is no longer sufficient.

Brandon Hall Group Chief Strategy Officer and Principal Analyst Michael Rochelle and I had a thorough analyst briefing with Caitlin McGregor, Plum’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder, and Michelle Meehan, VP of Marketing at Plum, the innovative Canadian start-up paving the way in next-generation psychometric assessment. Founded by experienced entrepreneurs who are passionate about helping employers make informed decisions about job candidates, Plum is leveraging recent technological advancements to create an efficient, comprehensive solution that takes candidate selection into the future.

“I created Plum to democratize access to psychometric data so that no one would have to rely on luck for someone to realize their superpower,” McGregor states on the company’s website. “Everyone deserves the same opportunity to do great things, and that’s exactly what Plum gives them.”

Through modern machine learning algorithms, Plum helps employers provide detailed data-driven insights into each potential hire, with key indicators including cognitive abilities, personality attributes and technical skills — allowing companies to find their ideal match faster than ever before.

Plum then uses this data to power its matching algorithms. Through an automated 8-minute job analysis, the platform understands the behavioral indicators required for success in any given role. It can then evaluate millions of profiles to identify top matches between people and opportunities.

Plum measures personality, problem-solving skills and social intelligence in every applicant with one 25-minute online assessment, allowing organizations to quantify job fit by comparing individual profiles against the needs of the job.

Early adopters like Manulife, Citibank and Whirlpool are already seeing significant benefits. Plum consistently delivers a 90% quality-of-hire rating from managers and increases retention by up to 77%. HR shouldn’t be a cost center — and Plum can prove it.

Plum also improves diversity hiring by screening overlooked candidates. Plum Talents encapsulate the thoughts, feelings and behaviors that drive candidates. These Talents help uncover what drives — and drains — them and where they’ll find the most success in their careers. Plum realizes that talents live on a spectrum and being high or low in a talent is not a measure of good versus bad. Instead, Plum Talents surface what innate behaviors energize you and which ones deplete you. Understanding the difference means you can advocate for your needs at work and focus on growth over survival.

Perhaps most impressively, Plum has managed to achieve this at scale. Where traditional assessments can take over 100 hours per role, Plum streamlines the process while maintaining a predictive accuracy that is 4x better than resume screening alone. That’s why it’s used in 144 countries and across 20 languages.

As the future of work brings more change and uncertainty, having the right talent in place will be critical for business success. Plum is paving the way for a new paradigm — one where companies can truly understand and optimize their human capital. It’s a revolution that can’t come soon enough.

The post Using Psychometrics and AI to Revolutionize</ br> Talent Assessment appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Retention of top talent is a top-of-mind topic for all high-performing organizations. According to research by Brandon Hall Group, 92% of organizations surveyed agreed that the top talent in their organization is at risk of leaving in the next year. Losing an exceptional employee is not just a disruption, it is also a costly setback. Expenses may include lost productivity, replacement costs and decreased morale.

Complexities

Despite the clear benefits of retaining top talent, many organizations struggle to do so. The competitive landscape, increasing demands from employees for more fulfilling work experiences and ongoing shifts in workplace dynamics have further complicated the matter. The result of these ongoing challenges is that organizations are divided in knowing where to invest time and energy to best impact retention. Knowing which aspects of the employee experience or company culture to focus on seems to vary somewhat based on the size of the organization.

Consequences

Our research shows that many organizations will make two cultural attributes their top priority over the next year:

Critical Questions

1. How can you identify the hidden superpowers of your team members?
2. What are some ways to create connection between employees and a meaningful sense of belonging in a digitized world?
3. Are you clearly communicating information up and down the organization on a continuous basis?

BRANDON HALL GROUP POV

Consider these three high-level strategies to address increasing retention of your workforce.

1. Get to Know Those Hidden Superpowers — Organizations that prioritize respect, integrity and open communication tend to have lower turnover rates. One way of demonstrating this is by fostering a strong connection between leaders and their team members. As a leader, carve out a few short pockets of time to check in with your team members. Notice what surrounds them in their workspace. I once learned that a team member practiced calligraphy as a hobby by noticing all the beautiful notes on her desk. Now we put that to great use, helping us make the office look bright and beautiful. It’s not about the handwriting. It’s about the connection and recognition for contributing something seemingly non-work-related to help her team that made her feel seen, heard and appreciated in a new way.
2. Build a Sense of Belonging to the Organization — Providing the space and time for team members, and their leaders, to get to know each other and learn about each others’ skills and strengths. When team members have a chance to get to know each other, they thrive. They are delighted and a bit more connected after learning something new about each other. On the surface, it may not be something directly work related, but those capabilities can be filed away and brought up when the need arises. Ask curiosity questions that might seem to be irrelevant, but actually serve as a catalyst for valuable interaction.
3. Ongoing Communication: Up, Down and Every Which Way — It’s been said that the role of chief executive officer should actually be called chief repetition officer. And for that matter, leaders at all levels. Crafting a meaningful and relevant message for the workforce and then repeating it, consistently over and over, to multiple groups is a powerful tactic that all leaders should use. Messaging should also be used as a chance to convey the company’s mission, vision and values. It may feel uncomfortable, being so repetitive. Remember, the employees are hearing the message for the first time, or maybe even the second. Cognitively, people cannot absorb the entire message on the first or even second go around. Be prepared to convey the message with continued enthusiasm repeatedly.

— Marie Barnes, Principal Analyst, Brandon Hall Group

The post Cultural Attributes that Impact Retention</ br>in High-Performing Organizations appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.