Is your TA transformation on track?
– and look for when hiring – in 2027
As artificial intelligence transforms hiring, workforce planning and even the structure of organizations themselves, talent acquisition leaders are facing a new reality as well: the skills that mattered yesterday may not be enough for tomorrow’s AI world. In this Catalyst article, AMS’ Janet Mertens, Managing Director, Research, AMS shares the top skills that TA leaders will be looking for in the coming year — not only for their organization but for their TA team as well.
Things are moving so fast it’s easy to forget that we are living through a revolution. Nearly 40 years after the introduction of affordable and functional PCs, today’s new generative AI models are revolutionizing how businesses attract, interview and vet, and retain their top talent. Not only have today’s Talent Acquisition leaders assigned mundane tasks in the hiring process to AI — writing job postings and interview questions, scheduling meetings, searching talent pools, etc. — they’re on the search for new talent with real and verifiable skills in a world where generative AI excels at the slightly unreal.
In fact, AI skills have gone from “nice to have” to being downright essential.
Along with its power for change, AI has generated fears around autonomous technology disregarding their human operators, and the loss of jobs among what is occasionally and derisively called the “Laptop Class” of workers. In fact, companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce and Duolingo have already announced waves of layoffs thanks to a new switch to AI adoption. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, announced 7,000 job cuts due to its commitment to new AI models.
The new generation of talent don’t need to be told this. In May of 2026, commencement speakers who proposed AI during college graduation ceremonies were disrupted by boos and jeers from graduating students who are entering a wholly new workforce for the first time. But as with all disruptive revolutions, there is opportunity as well. TA leaders will continue to search for new talent with valuable skills such as AI experience among others to help guide their employers into the future.
“It’s becoming an inflection point,” says Janet Mertens, Managing Director, Researchs for AMS. “Organizations know they need AI. They’re just not quite sure how to operationalize it yet.”
With this in mind, here are five skills Mertens believes will define the next generation of talent acquisition — and the broader workforce — heading into 2027.
1. Meet Your AI Guide
There are few things that HR and TA professionals agree upon but one thing is the need for AI fluency. Experience with using LLMs is quickly becoming less of a niche skill and more of a baseline expectation across nearly every role in a business. TA is now looking for the “digital native” or a young person who grew up around groundbreaking tech from their first weeks in their playpen.
According to Mertens, organizations are already beginning to ask candidates how often they use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Copilot in their daily work. However, many employers still lack a clear framework for evaluating what “good” AI usage actually looks like.
“I don’t think organizations yet know how that predicts quality-of-hire,” she says. “Because they’re still on their journey.”
The rise of “AI Guides” — consultants or specialists who help companies operationalize AI — may be temporary, Mertens suggests, but it signals a broader trend: organizations urgently need employees who can integrate AI into workflows effectively and ethically.
Look no further than the global capital markets. Investment banks are paying firms like Wall Street Prompt, a consultancy founded last year by a pair of former SoftBank fund managers, $25,000 a day to train brokers, investors and fund clients on AI workflows. College graduates are being paid $200,000 annually to train older traders and portfolio managers how to “find alpha” or the best trades for their clients at leading asset management firms. AI is also upending how Wall Street and The City of London firms build their huge and spectacularly pricey trading tools. Investment bank ING claims that it has built a trading platform in days as opposed to years, and investment firms are mulling building their new tech inhouse as opposed to hiring a team in India or Viet Nam and parts of eastern Europe.
The rampant adoption of these tools is also spurring the rapid rise of a new job title: Chief AI Officers, or CAIOs. Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, The US Department of Defence have all added this new job title that often operates alongside chiefs information, technology and data officers and often answers to the chief operating officer. According to research Mertens referenced from IBM, only one in four organizations reported having a CAIO a year ago. Today, she says, the number has climbed to three in four.
As companies rush headlong into adopting these disruptive tools, there is potential for confusion. What remains unclear is where AI leadership ultimately belongs. Some organizations place it under technology or data teams, while others see AI as an operational or even HR responsibility, says Mertens.
“When we think about AI as part of the workforce now — as kind of a digital member of the workforce — the CHRO potentially has a key role to play,” she says.
According to Mertens, organizations are already beginning to ask candidates how often they use AI tools such as ChatGPT or Copilot in their daily work. However, many employers still lack a clear framework for evaluating what “good” AI usage actually looks like.
“I don’t think organizations yet know how that predicts quality-of-hire,” she says. “Because they’re still on their journey.”
The rise of “AI Guides” — consultants or specialists who help companies operationalize AI — may be temporary, Mertens suggests, but it signals a broader trend: organizations urgently need employees who can integrate AI into workflows effectively and ethically.
Look no further than the global capital markets. Investment banks are paying firms like Wall Street Prompt, a consultancy founded last year by a pair of former SoftBank fund managers, $25,000 a day to train brokers, investors and fund clients on AI workflows. College graduates are being paid $200,000 annually to train older traders and portfolio managers how to “find alpha” or the best trades for their clients at leading asset management firms. AI is also upending how Wall Street and The City of London firms build their huge and spectacularly pricey trading tools. Investment bank ING claims that it has built a trading platform in days as opposed to years, and investment firms are mulling building their new tech inhouse as opposed to hiring a team in India or Viet Nam and parts of eastern Europe.
The rampant adoption of these tools is also spurring the rapid rise of a new job title: Chief AI Officers, or CAIOs. Walmart, JPMorgan Chase, The US Department of Defence have all added this new job title that often operates alongside chiefs information, technology and data officers and often answers to the chief operating officer. According to research Mertens referenced from IBM, only one in four organizations reported having a CAIO a year ago. Today, she says, the number has climbed to three in four.
As companies rush headlong into adopting these disruptive tools, there is potential for confusion. What remains unclear is where AI leadership ultimately belongs. Some organizations place it under technology or data teams, while others see AI as an operational or even HR responsibility, says Mertens.
“When we think about AI as part of the workforce now — as kind of a digital member of the workforce — the CHRO potentially has a key role to play,” she says.
2. Real Human Skills
As automation accelerates, uniquely human capabilities will become even more valuable. After all, when was the last time you gave up on your health insurance company’s chatbot helpline only to shout “representative” to speak with a real person? The bots may be improving but clients still wish to speak with a human being after dealing with a robot for more than one excruciating minute. People still matter.
Mertens says employers are increasingly prioritizing behavioral and interpersonal competencies such as empathy, curiosity, adaptability and systems thinking, such as skills that are difficult to automate and even harder to teach.
“We used to call them soft skills,” she says. “But we all know soft skills are harder to develop.”
Among the most important emerging competencies is systems thinking, such as the ability to understand how decisions, teams and workflows interact across an organization. Also, while generative AI platforms such as Google’s Gemini and ChatGPT are improving, they still produce bad answers, poor suggestions and sometimes nonsense that a person with AI fluency and discernment would immediately dismiss.
“How do you actually see the organization as an ecosystem?” Mertens asks. “That’s the kind of stuff that will continue to be absolutely sought after.”
These capabilities are becoming especially important as traditional distinctions between desk-based and deskless work begin to disappear. Mertens points to the growing rise of the “gray-collar” workforce, such as employees who blend technical expertise with frontline operational work. Think architects, environmental workers and fulfillment centers such as Amazon.
“We’re really seeing a convergence in the center,” she adds.
3. Cybersecurity and Fraud Detection Awareness
The rise of AI-generated resumes, fake job applicants and automated application tools is creating new risks for employers along with new responsibilities for TA teams. Mertens says that AMS has seen application volumes nearly double as AI-powered “easy apply” tools flood recruiting systems with resumes. At the same time, some candidates are using AI strategically to game hiring algorithms.
“There really are true examples,” she says. “ “We’re seeing intense competition in how AI is being used throughout the job-seeking process.”.”
One emerging challenge involves candidates tailoring resumes using the same large language model employers used to generate job descriptions. In fact, the common rule of thumb for job seekers now is to copy the job description text into an AI tool like ChatGPT and prompt it to rewrite your cover letter and resume. But recruiters are catching on.
“There’s actually research that shows if I use the same LLM as the employer used to create the job description, I’m 40% more likely to be shortlisted,” Mertens says.
As a result, organizations are increasingly deploying AI tools to detect fraud, validate skills and identify suspicious candidate behavior.
Cybersecurity skills remain in high demand, Mertens notes, though the field itself is evolving rapidly and often lacks clearly defined career paths.
“It’s become a bit of a catchall role,” she says.
4. Data Literacy and Analytics Fluency
Data literacy is no longer reserved for technical teams. Everyone in the workforce will have to have an increased level of media discernment going forward. The days of ignoring the impact of AI are gone, warns Mertens. The ability to interpret data, work with analytics and make informed decisions using AI-generated insights is becoming essential across nearly every job category, she says.
“It used to be that your technical skills were your technical teams,” she says. “But now every role is being expected to come in with a certain amount of fluency.”
That trend is also transforming talent acquisition itself. Recruiters increasingly must evaluate not only whether candidates possess certain skills, but whether those skills are authentic and transferable.
At the same time, organizations are struggling to become truly skills-based enterprises.
“We want to be a skills-based organization,” Mertens says of one financial services company AMS recently advised. “How do we bring it all together?”
The answer, she suggested, remains elusive for many employers.
5. Green Skills
Though political and economic pressures have slowed momentum around environmental initiatives in some sectors, Mertens believes sustainability-related capabilities will remain important in the years and decades to come.
“Green skills or sustainability skills continue to slow-burn,” she says.
Organizations may not be talking about climate initiatives as loudly as they were several years ago, but demand for employees who understand environmental sustainability, clean technology and energy transition strategies continues to grow beneath the surface. For TA leaders, that means preparing for hiring needs that may evolve unevenly across industries but are unlikely to disappear.
Ultimately, Mertens believes that the broader challenge facing organizations is not simply identifying future skills, but understanding how AI-driven workforce changes will reshape institutional knowledge itself.
“With these rounds of layoffs,” she says, “they’re not only laying off one person, they’re laying off dozens of skills at the same time.”
The TA Professional of 2027 Will Look Very Different
Today’s TA leaders are evolving into a variety of roles that include AI evaluators, workforce strategists, skills analysts, fraud prevention partners, and change management leaders. At the same time that they are recruiting new talents, they must help ease the inevitable tension between automation and human judgment, and ease fears about AI-fueled layoffs. The concerns that large swaths of talent and institutional knowledge could diminish as an organization becomes heavily supported by AI are not to be ignored.
This could be the dawn of transforming TA staffers into skills architects. Afterall, the future of recruiting may depend less on resumes and more on understanding skills, adaptability and human potential, says Mertens.
That said, there are signs of a mismatch between what’s being taught in advanced graduate programs in academic institutions and what organizations are starting to need Mertnes believes that there will be some partnerships focused on building skills, making connections and seeing the organization as an ecosystem.
“That’s what will continue to be vital: creativity and curiosity,” says Mertens. “Those are the things that will be sought after in every job market.”
© 2025 Alexander Mann Solutions (AMS)
