Talent Predictions for 2026: How to attract and hire the best talent in the year ahead with Amplified People Group’s Sophie Graci, Zach Rose, James Adams and Lisa Crane

0:00Employer brand is going to be as much of a kind of growth lever and influencer as some of your marketing channels that you're using.

0:16James Mitra:Welcome back to 40 Minute Mentor, the podcast on a mission to raise aspirations and inspire the next generation of category defining founders, all in just 40 minutes. Today, I'm not just joined by one 40-minute mentor, but I have the great pleasure of sharing the podcast studio with some of my Amplified group and JVM colleagues. So I'm thrilled to be joined by Lisa Crane and James Adams from our Foundation Partners Embedded Talent team, and my fellow JVMers, Zach Rose and Sophie Gracci, who are going to dive into talent trends and predictions for 2026. Together, we'll be showing our predictions for the biggest hiring trends, talking through how to scale your teams and what founders need to know to attract and retain the best people next year.

1:03James Mitra:From AI in recruitment to the rise of fractional talent, we'll unpack what's changing and what's here to stay. A big welcome to my wonderful Amplified colleagues. We're going to have a fantastic roundtable chat today about all things talent. And we're going going to start with a quick round of introductions. So please, can you all introduce yourselves, share what you do within Amplified Group? And I'd also love to know what your favourite moment of 2025 has been. Hi, everyone. I am a research lead and a senior associate here at JBM. I've been here for two years. And my highlight of 2025 has been starting to build out our brilliant associate team over here at JBM and further integrating into the awesome Amplified group team.

1:50Hi everyone. Yes, I'm part of Amplified's group embedded talent team as part of the foundation partners world. My favourite part of 2025 has been joining this team. So I think I'm on about week six, seven, eight, three, something around there. It's gone so fast, but it's been amazing.

2:11James Mitra:We're very lucky to have you Lisa and thank you so much for joining us when you are still relatively early on into your journey here. I lead JBM's SOS or Scale-Up Operator Solution division and we do fractional and interim placements. My highlight of the year has been coming to Europe from Australia and moving across here with my wife being within one to two hours of 50 or so different amazing destinations is super awesome. And last but certainly no means least, James. I'm the senior partner responsible for the embedded talent function within Foundation Partners, which is part of the Amplified group.

2:51What I should say is my highlight for the year is welcoming my son into the world. What it actually is, is when Terence Crawford beat Canelo Alvarez for the undisputed Super Midway title earlier on this year.

3:02James Mitra:Thank you very much. My highlight is obviously sitting here with you all for what is going to be a fabulous conversation. We all know that hiring talent is the ultimate game changer for our clients and a lot of our listeners will be I'm sure scribbling down lots of notes throughout this conversation because you are all brilliant at what you do and all come from interesting broad backgrounds and have different perspectives so I'm super excited to dig into this. We're going to start by looking back at kind of 2025 in the round. And we've seen some pretty big shifts, I think, when it comes to how companies are hiring and building teams.

3:39James Mitra:So I'd love to know what your biggest observations have been when it comes to those sorts of shifts. So maybe we'll start with you, James. We saw a big adoption of kind of AI related tools in talent acquisitions throughout 2024. And we've definitely seen a move away from some of those tools throughout 2025. And I think that's also been reflected at some of our clients in how they've thought about hiring their teams. For example, the BDR, the SDR role, we saw a big shift towards companies assuming they could do more with less and looking to sequence and do a lot of outreach through tools. And actually what we're seeing towards the end of 2025 is a return to the hand crank in the more manual approach to BDR and SDR, which is the people buy from people.

4:24And so there's been a real spike in that hiring. A similar theme, I think companies are becoming and really focusing on being as lean as they can with as many people in the org having a hands-on role. So even senior leaders are very hands-on in the teams that they're managing. I think, Zach, I might be stealing your words here, but people operating more as like player coaches. I don't know if it's just a shift from kind of last year, but definitely I think a shift over the last few years. Yeah, and I think I'm seeing that reflected in the kinds of senior hiring we're doing as well. Seeing some really interesting searches come through for GMs of new categories, new countries.

5:10And a lot of these roles are huge opportunities for senior leaders who want to get back to really building things from the ground up within maybe, you know, particularly for later stage companies within a more established context and giving people who have you know maybe moved on in terms of leadership in their careers an opportunity to go back and really you know say that we're going to keep saying the words player coach I think but given that opportunity to really open stuff and build stuff by themselves and then build up a new team around them and have almost a mini CEO type role. I echo much of this sentiment on the player coach call out.

5:52I think there's been a kind of the coming together of two trends. One is around AI tooling. While it might not be super effective in the SDR, BDR world, I think it is still making people marginally more productive and being able to do a bit more with less. There's that trend, and then that's come together with interest rates going up significantly after the ZERP period, during COVID, money becoming more expensive, and therefore companies having to get a bit more fit, a match fit with respect to their headcount. So that's creating an expectation that employees have to be more productive, and therefore senior leaders have to be a bit more in the weeds, as well as being able to operate at the strategic level.

6:40I think that's a good point, Zach. I worked in a fund, and one of the interesting things about being in a fund is up until a few years ago, it felt like the era of free money, crazy valuations, like growth at all costs was the kind of mentality because it was funding round to funding round to funding round. And over the last couple of years, we've seen a shift to a model that actually your runway has to extend for as long as possible because there's not as much money flowing around in the ecosystem, but also to a degree, the investment thesis has changed for a lot of funds. So people that were finding it very easy to raise before perhaps aren't now.

7:11So there's definitely been a shift in how the money is being apportioned and what it's being what it's being spent from a

7:16James Mitra:venture perspective what are some of the most common mistakes you'll see founders make when it comes to approaching hiring we'd love to to make sure our listeners that maybe first-time founders are learning from our the things we've seen in my case have probably made so yeah sophie i guess given you're working day-to-day with you know some of the best founders out there on executive hiring what sorts of mistakes have you seen yeah absolutely I mean the the joy of what we do is I'm working with some of the best companies and as you say the best founders out there but I think the mistake I see them often making is because this is you know these are some of the top companies assuming that the top talent won't have other options and that they don't need to be still be selling the opportunity throughout the process hiring processes are very much a two-way street and where I see founders often fall down is because they're so embedded in the day-to-day of their business and they know it and they love it and they're passionate about it they assume that everyone will naturally have that passion as well whereas there has to be a bit more of a conversation in a cell as the process goes on.

8:24Yeah just to expand on that point actually I think that as companies go on their growth trajectory the way that a company approaches is hiring will inevitably change. So the kind of person that you're looking for, the kind of involvement that the CEO or the founder might have, the way that you're scoring and assessing skills and behaviors will change and develop. Like the bigger the company, the more likely that you're going to need specialists versus in the early days, the more likely you're going to need a very broad skill set. And it's more about the kind of behaviors and the buy-in. So I think one of the things that I'm conscious of coaching our founders to think about is actually how do you need to adapt your hiring approach to suit the stage of your company, not just assume that what got you from zero to one is going to get you from one to 10, and certainly not from there from 10 to 100.

9:12And I think that also speaks to another big point I see, which is not aligning, making assumptions about what is needed at any given stage or, or assuming that everyone internally, like all the key stakeholders have the same idea of what you're looking for. And the hires I see fall down the most often are where there's not alignment internally and then there's not alignment with your your talent partner or your search partner um but it has to start with that internal alignment and especially if you've just gone through a founding a funding round excuse me or you've grown significantly it might look very different from what hiring looked like six months ago so at the start of each key hire really taking that time to work out what this hire is why are you making this hire why are you making this hire now and what does good actually look like and conversely what does that look like um and it means that when you start actually speaking to candidates it's a it's a slicker process it's quicker for you on the on the client side of things and it creates a much better kind of experience as well completely agree with that it's such an

10:20James Mitra:off-putting thing to candidates who you know have gone through a process with what they think is a very clear view of the opportunity and then an interviewer comes at it from a completely different perspective yeah I mean building on what Sophie said I think just and this is this is particularly true in in hiring senior fractional and interim executives just ensuring that the the work has been done to to sufficiently map out that hire and a bit more specific looking at what are the jobs to be done for this individual? What is the budget both for their compensation package and potentially the budget that they're going to be able to manage?

10:59And what is the interview plan? Who will be involved from the business's side? How will we assess that candidate's ability to problem solve the particular problems relevant to the job that they'll be doing? And just the the downside of not going through that process is is so great that even if it takes time quite a bit of time and thought and effort to go through that it is far far uh worthwhile the consequences of mishires are very high and expensive there is a belief that i think we all hold but when i say all i mean all in the kind of professional world like everyone assumes they're a really good interviewer everyone assumes they're a really good hiring manager and assumes they know what they need and And actually, one of the big things that I find myself saying to founders, particularly in earlier stage businesses, is don't hire people who look and sound and act like you.

11:52You need to hire people that plug your gaps. And actually, I've worked with founders before who have come from perhaps McKinsey or Bain. And they say, well, actually, yeah, this is the kind of person I want. I want lots of other people who have come from that same background. You've got that covered. Like you've got that skill set. what you need is somebody that comes from perhaps a different demographic or comes from a different educational background or it's got different work experience particularly if it's a vocational or practical application of a skill in the in the company that you're hiring for.

12:20Being super super clear on from the candidate standpoint what they can expect so founders are excellent at selling the dream going back to what Sophie was saying about being so bought in obviously to the to the mission to the culture, what's being built. And so they're excellent at selling the dream to a candidate during the process and getting candidates super engaged and excited. I think that potentially where we see people fall down is not being as maybe realistic about some of the practicalities and realities of the world and the role that the candidate is stepping into. So the more open and honest and transparent about the stage that the business is in and the number of processes that have already been established or the ones that will need to be established.

13:02I think the more that you can do that, the more obviously we see candidates being able to be successful when they get there.

13:08James Mitra:It's honestly a huge mistake to try and cover things up that are going to come out instantly from the minute somebody lands in the job. But I think you can, you're getting a lot more respect from candidates by being open and honest about the realities. And actually that's often a bigger opportunity than people think because it actually isn't exciting. You're hiring in an executive to help transform and turbocharge the growth of a business, they're going to expect a meaty job. So the fact that things aren't all perfect, that's not a problem. The right candidates often see that as a challenge and an opportunity.

13:38James Mitra:So I think that's a really, really great point. Agree with everything. One thing I just wanted to add on to the interviewing piece is that it's amazing how many times candidates will have like five, six, seven loads of interviews, and they're all basically the same interview. They're all asking the same things. And that's a common mistake. It's really important to make sure you have different people testing for different competencies and skills or so that you're getting a well-rounded view, not just the kind of, you know, vibe check interview that I sometimes feels like everyone does the same thing and you don't actually dig any deeper and I think that's really important.

14:14James Mitra:So coming on to 2026 then, I would love to hear what the biggest priorities are that you're seeing that founders and talent leaders are going to be thinking about in the new year? Yeah, with a lot of VC money going towards companies that have AI at the end of their title, there's a real kind of competition at the moment to hire a certain type of person for a certain type of role, right? So engineering, anybody that can put LLM or AI in their CV somewhere is likely to be able to command a far higher salary. But what I would always advise founders in those times is, yes, there's something attractive about the background, like the brands that they might have worked for previously.

14:53Yes, there might be something attractive about the kind of projects or programs they've worked on, but make sure it's applicable to what you're actually hiring. Like if you're not building those kind of core products, don't hire people with that experience. Don't insist on it because you find yourself in a bidding war with the kind of people that will have deeper pockets than you. And then it means that it's very easy for founders and for delivery teams to fall behind on what they actually need to ship because they're chasing a kind of ego hire, not actually someone who's going to solve the problems that they have in the next three six and 12 months so i think it probably ties into what sophie was saying um before but it's like be really disciplined about the problems that you're trying to solve and how you're going to measure the outcomes of those and then make sure you're hiring people who can actually fix that problem not people whose cv would look good if you know you displayed it on your on your employee team page i think what's interesting that i see at the leadership kind of sees with hiring level is and we think we'll definitely get on to talking about this more I think AI is going to come up again and again in every question but like how much uh hasn't changed in some ways about about you know leadership as we see companies you know BC funding I think is going to be absolutely turned completely on its head by AI native companies who are raising so quickly and you are so well capitalized at such early stages.

16:19And so often what we would hear from founders previously is, we'd love to see someone who's gone from series A to C or X headcount to Y headcount. And I think that that's not going to be a priority in the same way as we go into 26, as things rapidly change. But what will remain the same is particularly on the COO side of things, you will still need senior leaders who can just come in, make stuff happen, get all the fundamentals in place, rally a team, and just make sure stuff is working. And if I think about some of the things I see coming down the pipeline here at JVF, I'm seeing those kinds of senior operational leaders become a priority as we go into the end of this year and the beginning of next.

17:07and so I think we it's almost to say more of the same I I don't think huge amounts are going to change in terms of the kinds of senior leaders that people are looking for you still want highly competent experienced operational leaders who can who can make stuff happen no matter what your organization looks like yeah on the fractional side we've seen a massive influx especially towards the back end of this year in go-to-market roles. And I think, I mean, this is an old truth but remains the case today that having a fantastic product is one thing and is great, but you don't have a business unless you can get it into the hands of users and customers.

17:50So building incredible distribution networks is essential. So we've seen a lot of founders bring in specialist, fractional marketers to help build those go-to-market engines, especially where there's a new product or a pivot in the business model from B2B to B2C, for example, and therefore the kind of the existing marketing team doesn't necessarily have that experience of building for that channel. So bringing someone in on a fractional basis to help build that strategy and then hand it back over to the team to execute on is something that we've seen founders focus on and prioritize? I think you can now sit in communities and breakfast meetings and sometimes 75 or 80 % of the people that are at those tables are fractional and spending time with multiple different businesses, sharing ideas.

18:45So I think the rise of communities is going to continue because we've been so digital and everyone wants to get back out and actually meet people and network and learn from one another, especially when they're running or managing lean teams with fewer resources the more you kind of know and the more you can learn from your community I think the better people are able to operate in those leaner environments so rising kind of communities and then I would just add that what I hope and I am seeing but I can hope it's going to continue is people focusing on their employer brand and being a really good employer somewhere that where people want to work and and having that message go out into the market there's been a lot of obviously frustration I think from people maybe not getting good candidate experiences with the reduction in talent teams over the last few years so hopefully seeing a rise back in focusing on the people side and the hiring side of bringing people in.

19:38James Mitra:And I guess what what may have worked historically might not work so well in 2026 when it comes to actually attracting talent with I guess potentially candidates just different channels different opportunities different things that candidates are looking for. So what do you see as the future when it comes to talent attraction? And is there anything that we can pass on to our listeners? Yeah, I think there was probably a golden period of time in the early days of LLMs where you could get away with AI slop on your employer branding, on your JD, or on the candidate side in your application, your resume, your outreach message, your cover letter.

20:19And the kind of receiver of that would be thinking, wow, this person has an incredible vocabulary and they know how to use an M dash. Hire them immediately. They must be highly intelligent. But, you know, with the popularity of these tools just absolutely skyrocketing, it's now so evident when effort hasn't been put in. It's not to say that LLM shouldn't be used in these processes on both sides. Certainly they should, but the inputs, the data has to be well thought out to ensure that the output is relevant and compelling.

20:59James Mitra:You can spot the AI co-letter a mile off and it really is starting to grate. I want personality. I want the human. I want authenticity. I'm not interested in a robot. And although the tools are brilliant and helping us in many ways, They're also, you know, I think if you're too reliant on them, I think you'll come a cropper in this new era. I think the use of AI and how it's used in your talent attraction and talent acquisition process can potentially differentiate companies. So if you're utilizing it in a way that makes your talent team better able to spend time with people, if it's improving, you know, your speed of communication.

21:39and so you're able to to keep people updated as to you know the stage that they're in in the process then that's a win rather than using it as kind of that frontline screening application that I think people are a little bit worried about that there isn't a human reviewing their CV when it comes into an ATS I'm seeing it obviously at Fixer where I'm lucky enough to be on site with them and the Fixer draft functionality to to draft my emails to my candidates and and let them know So updates on where we are is just honestly life-saving as a recruiter who has never got out of a buried inbox. So hopefully we're improving the candidate experience, but not utilizing it as a replacement for a human, but just to aid in our ways of working.

22:24James Mitra:One of the other things I've noticed is particularly with some of these hyper growth AI companies that scaling incredibly fast, there's a real speed of process that is sort of a lot of these processes that are being turbocharged now. But despite that, I still think there is particularly in terms of senior hires, there is still a really important point about spending enough time in person with individuals. and we're seeing this with some of our execs search at the moment the clients that are it's super competitive for elite talent that will have multiple options but if if it's a COO search the ones that I think are closing the candidates are the ones that are spending it doesn't need to be it doesn't need to be thousands of interviews but it's the little touch points throughout a process the little personal connections the quick debrief and coffee after an interview the dinner at the end of a process to connect on a deeper level and really test chemistry and motivation but also be vulnerable and open and you know help sell the dream the postcard thank you you know the personalized thank you you know i've heard uh on the podcast somebody sending a board game to a candidate at the end of a process because they'd heard that their family are board there are little things you can do that help you stand out from the crowd and i think in an ai world don't forget the importance of those little touch points those little personalizations that make people feel good um and i think it will make a big difference we want to move on to talk about fractional hiring we've already touched upon it but it's it's obviously a huge evolution in the in the past few years something that we've leaned into heavily both through foundation partners and jbmsls so we'd love to see how you're seeing it evolving and how you think 2026 will sort of how companies will lean more into that and leverage it to good effect so james do you mind sharing your perspective from a foundation partners angle yeah i think fractional hiring has sort of come hand in hand with the gig economy and people at all different levels in organizations being able to engage on a shorter term basis it's incredibly useful for smaller earlier stage businesses businesses that don't want to commit to a massive salary on their books for the next 12 24 36 months but need some very highly specialized guidance Lisa's talked earlier about how you know teams can do more with less and the advantage of that is that businesses can move quicker and there's less kind of overhead the disadvantage is that there's still a limit to the amount of knowledge that comes from tooling versus having the scars on your back and that's one of the things that about senior fractional hiring that I'm a real champion of in in the clients that I work with it's like they're they're experts for a reason so bring them in and let them do their expert bit and then they can move on to somewhere else and I think there's a certain type of person a certain type of employee who enjoys that, who enjoys working multiple clients concurrently and having different touch points in different businesses at different stages of their growth trajectory.

25:16Yeah, big fan of fractional and a big fan of the problems it solves for companies that have a very clearly defined piece of expertise that they need to get them from A to B.

25:26James Mitra:Zach, in terms of maybe bringing to life a bit more about JVMSOS, there may be founders and hiring managers listening to this thinking, okay, maybe it is time to consider the fractional route. So what would be your advice to them? What are some of the additional benefits or the watchouts things they need to consider as to why it may or may not be the right option? I think the headline for fractional hiring is consider it as a more dynamic way to match the supply of talent to the demand your organization has for talent. When you're hiring a full-time permanent executive, you're locked into having that person and paying for that person five days a week for an indefinite period.

26:05With a fractional executive, you can scale them up from one day to five days and back down to one as and when required. And you can, frankly, you can end the contract when you want to within the notice period. So that creates a much more effective way to manage cost. But it's not always about cost either. There are specific instances where hiring fractionally makes a lot of sense and some where it doesn't make sense. I think, for example, where there is a short to medium term outcome driven project, that's when a fractional executive is a perfect fit. We've recently worked with a business that was pivoting from a retail only distribution channel to a direct to consumer digital marketplace product.

26:54And they didn't have that skill set to build that marketing strategy internally. So they brought in a fractional marketing executive to help them with that journey. They'll build out that strategy and then hand it back to the team to execute on that. Another really great example of where fractional works is when companies have potentially been burnt by hiring full-time permanent execs. They still need to hire someone full-time, but you can use fractional as a way to try before you buy. And the final, more general advice around when to hire fractional is when you need high caliber expertise, but you simply don't need it five days a week.

27:31Where it doesn't work, roles requiring 24-7 ownership and indefinite continuity of work. That's when your core full-time permanent employees should come into play.

27:41James Mitra:Thanks very much. And yeah, the try before you are on is such a, it's been such a game changer for so many of JVM's clients. You know, I'd probably say it's been maybe well over 50 % of the SOS placements we've made have converted Perm. Who doesn't like to have sort of do a taster of wine? If you like it, brilliant, get a bottle. If you don't crack onto the next, like it's an obvious, it's a game changer. And the impact that you can get from doing that can be exponential. And particularly when you're able to acquire talent that you would never be able to necessarily hire on a full time basis. we've seen some great examples of getting in a really high quality operator two days a week three days a week they then have such an immediate impact in the business drive significant change they get to their next you know funding round and then all of a sudden they can they can hire them full-time and they've built the conviction from both sides they've got to know each other it's effectively an extended interview process there's so many benefits to it this is something i'd definitely recommend anyone who's maybe been a bit skeptical to explore.