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Hiring in 2026 won’t look much like hiring even two years ago. If you don’t pay attention, you will get left behind. I was a retained search consultant for 25-plus years. I’ve written executive and board résumés for the last 10 years. I’ve never seen so much change in candidate sourcing happen so quickly. CEO priorities and expectations have shifted. AI is reshaping how candidates get surfaced. Résumé sameness has skyrocketed. Candidate shortlist cycles have accelerated. For you to be visible, your résumé has to do more than describe your work. It has to hit leaders’ priorities, satisfy automated systems’ tests, and make sense. The following five trends show you what that means and how to stay ahead of it: Trend 1: Résumé Content Must Address CEO Priorities Late-2025 surveys found four top-of-mind priorities for CEOs as we head into 2026. Those topics map to compelling information for your résumé’s experience section. I list them below. Then, I frame the question that decision-makers want your résumé to answer. Finally, to inspire you, I share examples of subjects you might use in impact bullets. CEO Priority: AI Adoption & TransformationThe question: Can this person operationalize AI and meet ROI hurdles?Impact Examples: Introduced AI-assisted steps into a workflow. Led a cross-functional effort to apply AI to a core business process. Built an AI governance framework. CEO Priority: Geopolitical & Economic UncertaintyThe question: Can this person make decisions that protect shareholder value during volatility?Impact Examples: Used business intelligence tools to identify and report risks. Redesigned a process to protect profit margins. Repositioned the organization in response to geopolitical, regulatory, or economic shifts. CEO Priority: Talent ManagementThe question: Can this person shape and prepare our teams for an AI future?Impact Examples: Implemented AI-driven talent sourcing methods. Adopted the 4B workforce model (buy, build, borrow, bot) to design a future-ready team. Owned the talent workstream for enterprise AI adoption. CEO Priority: Business Model ReinventionThe question: Can this person drive adaptation and growth to keep us competitive?Impact Examples: Contributed insights that improved a product, service, or customer experience. Developed or scaled a new offering. Determined where the organization should invest, expand, or exit to maintain long-term viability. Trend 2: The Rise of the Reader Trio (ATS, AI, Human) For years, you’ve written for applicant tracking systems, recruiters, and hiring managers. And you still will. But in 2026, more organizations will use AI to source candidates and expand talent pools. While an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) looks for keywords, AI looks for patterns.To benefit from AIs ability to expand talent pools, you’ll need to learn those patterns and embed them in your résumé. Examples include: showing you’re ready for promotion to the next level; writing about repeated records of success; and describing challenges you’ve handled that also exist in other industries. Trend 3: Work Context Becomes Critical Beyond CEO concerns, your trio of readers wants to know where you’ve operated. If you havent already, now is the time to add company descriptions to your résumé. Basics include size, ownership, industry, footprint, and systemic challenges. Readers need to see adjacencies to their worlds to predict your effectiveness. Trend 4: Generic, AI-Written Résumés Next, I talked with many recruiters over a few days at the Unleash World HR conference in Paris in October. I wanted to learn how they use AI to find people. They wanted to talk about the crushing tsunami of generic résumés they receive. While AI might up-level a bad résumé to average, always keep a human in the loop to stand out. Make it yours. Otherwise, your readers’ eyes will glaze over from the sameness. Plus, AI continues to generate word salad and logical inconsistencies. The narrative sounds good on the surface, but it doesnt hold up to scrutiny. Recruiters catch those faux pas, so dont make them. Trend 5: Candidate Shortlist Velocity and Résumé Readiness Finally, a Siemens recruiter claims that LinkedIns AI cut his time-to-shortlist by at least 20 times. That means an accelerated recruiting cycle, with prepared candidates getting first looks. If you need time to update your résumé, you might get left behind. Career visibility in 2026 won’t happen by accident. It will be because you built a résumé that meets the moment: substantive, AI-savvy, and ready before anyone asks for it.
Category:
E-Commerce
Leaders typically spend January prepping for the year ahead. But thats difficult when youre eight months pregnant, and your baby has zero concern for your deadlines. Ive lost count of how many times people have asked how long Ill be away, whether Ill be checking my emails, or what support Ill need when I return. People often expect leaders to have all the answers, but the truth is: I dont know yet. Lucky for me, that uncertainty worked to my advantage. It forced me to change my approach from setting goals to building flexibility. This has resulted in a team that is autonomous and adaptable, whether Im in the room or away on leave. You dont have to have all the answers According to a report by Careers After Babies, 98% of moms want to return to work after having a child. However, less than a quarter actually do. Early parenthood is unpredictable, and theres no way of knowing how itll unfold. While Im committed to my career, Im under no illusions that March might bring me sleepless nights, and the months ahead may be full of doctors appointments. I might have no time to work at all. That isnt a challenge you can plan your way through. Sure, you might end up returning after six weeks. But if you set yourself that deadline and you end up delaying, you may end up feeling like youve failed and start to question your leadership when youre actually managing two of the most demanding roles there are. But you do have to be ready for anything When you dont know the outcome, you need to prepare for every possibility. That means focusing on building flexibility and developing resilience, because systems that can cope with volatility and deal with change dont rely on a single timeline or person. At Woofz, were focused on setting out clear decision ownership, so everyone understands where to turn for support, and also how to train our teams to handle pivots and take on new responsibilities when we need to. We aimed to create a team capable of thriving even when conditions change, without constant oversight. Resilience doesnt just help organizations get through difficult moments. It actively improves long-term performance. Research from software and consultancy firm MHR Global found that 82% of the most resilient organizations rank highly for customer satisfaction, while 76% score highly for employee engagement. Overall, resilient businesses are far more confident in their ability to outperform competitors across growth, profitability, reputation, innovation, and adoption. And the flexibility that this culture of autonomy and adaptability provides will allow me to be flexible too, as I deal with the birth of my child. How to embed flexibility within your organization If you dont have flexibility embedded in your organization, the following can be helpful: Encourage cross-training: Let your team experiment and explore new skills, or take on “side quests” as we like to call them, even if it doesnt support their primary role. If only one person knows how something works, thats a risk. Theres high value in having people who can step in when a problem arises, and the person whose job it is to fix it is unavailable. Give your team some slack: Its okay to set deadlines and timelines, but if you dont leave room for issues to arise and situations to change, thats a problem. When theres no time to adjust (and you inevitably miss deadlines), you start to associate change with failure. Plan for scenarios, not certainties: You cant set one plan and expect the universe to deliver. There are many potential outcomes to any given situation, so it helps to agree in advance how you would respond to each one. When you anticipate change rather than react to it, it becomes way less scary. Take a momentary step back: Make yourself unavailable for a day and see where the system wobbles. Its useful to identify where dependencies lie, what gaps exist, and where there isnt a clear sense of ownership. Pinpointing issues while the stakes are low gives you time to fix them before the system breaks down and youre not there to step in. Not knowing is part of the job The concept of the all-knowing leader is such a myth. Many leaders talk big, but the fact that 44% of founders suffer from imposter syndrome says it all. Were human, and nobody has it all figured out. Most of the time, were putting on a brave face and hoping for the best. If the experience of managing pregnancy and leadership has taught me anything, its that admitting I dont know yet isnt a weakness. Like early parenthood, startups are full of unknowns. What separates good leaders isnt their ability to eliminate uncertainty, but how they equip their teams to respond when difficulties arise and circumstances inevitably change.
Category:
E-Commerce
The housing market just crossed an important thresholdone thats especially good news for anyone who might be planning on buying a home any time soon. The massive wave of COVID-19-era mortgages with ultra-low rates were a huge boon for many homebuyers, but the housing market hasnt been the same since. A huge swath of homeowners in the U.S. suddenly had mortgage interest rates well below 4%and very little incentive to sell their homes for less affordable options with todays higher rates. That dilemma has created a nightmarish scenario for the U.S. housing market. Many potential buyers and aspiring first-time homeowners remain priced out due to high home prices and higher interest rates. With more homeowners staying put whether they want to or not, housing inventory dried up considerably, shrinking the pool of options for home shoppers. Thats beginning to change. According to new data from Realtor.com, the share of U.S. homeowners with mortgage rates over 6% is now greater than the share hanging onto those ultra low sub-3% rates. In the third quarter of 2025, 21% of outstanding mortgages carried a rate above 6% compared to the 20% of mortgages with rates below 3%. That change signals a meaningful shift from the gridlock thats defined the last few years in the U.S. housing market. Mortgage rates above 6% now represent a larger share of outstanding loans than the ultra-low rates that defined the pandemic-era housing boom, Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said in a press release. This crossover reflects a gradual resetting as some households trade in low-rate mortgages for higher-rate loans or enter the market for the first time, even as rate lock-in continues to limit the pace of inventory recovery. Lasting impact of low rates and lock-in Those ultra-low rates are on their way out, but many homeowners still have rates well below what theyd be offered today. According to the new data, over 50% of mortgages still have rates at or below 4% and almost 70% have rates of 5% or lower. As long as that remains the case, the average homeowner might see their monthly mortgage payment spike by as much as $1,000 if they sold their home and took on a mortgage with todays rates. Still, the new mortgage data is a promising sign. Rates are very unlikely to get as low as they did during the early days of COVID-19 again in our lifetimesparticularly now that we know just what a lasting disruptive impact the low rate homebuying frenzy had on the market at large. The period between July 2020 and September 2021 is the only time that the U.S. 30-year fixed mortgage rate has gone below 3% since those records began being kept in the early 1970s. The high cost of buying a home is more salt in the wound for many Americans, who have seen the price of everything from groceries to used cars soar in recent years. With little relief in 2025, the unaffordability crisis seems to be on everyones mind lately. If interest rates settle down and the present trends continue, at least the housing market might be getting back to something a little closer to normal this year. Even with rates still elevated, modest mortgage rate decreases into the low-6% range could encourage additional home buying activity, Hale said. Further easing in inflation and mortgage rates would be key to unlocking more seller participation, helping to relieve price pressure and competition in an under-supplied market.
Category:
E-Commerce
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