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Over the last year, talent leaders have faced relentless change, with increased calls for return-to-office; an urgent need to upskill on AI; and hiring surges followed by headcount reductions. But amid all the change, one thing has remained true: A company’s success depends on its people. 

In such a topsy-turvy labor market, talent leaders may wonder how best to hire, nurture, and retain talent. That’s why LinkedIn assembled a panel of industry leaders for a recent audio event, Global Talent Trends: Data-Driven Insights into the Changing World of Work. Aneesh Raman, LinkedIn’s chief economic opportunity officer, hosted the discussion with Karin Kimbrough, LinkedIn’s chief economist, and Johnny Campbell, CEO and cofounder of SocialTalent. 

They discussed the findings in LinkedIn’s most recent Global Talent Trends report, along with how talent leaders can navigate the changing world of work. 

Here’s a recap of the event:

1. Hiring should pick up a bit in 2025 

Aneesh kicked off the conversation by acknowledging the moment we’re in. “If you are feeling overwhelmed right now in terms of how quickly things are changing, you are not alone,” he told listeners. “We are all going through a moment, a big change in history when it comes to the world of work.” The best way to manage this change, he said, is by trying to understand it. 

And to do that, he asked Karin to explain the current labor market. 

Karin said that over the last two years the labor market has been on a “journey of rebalancing.” While job seekers held most of the power during the Great Reshuffle, the balance has gradually tilted toward employers. “It’s far more balanced now, but that’s not enough,” she said. “You also need momentum, and one of the things we’ve been observing, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, is that hiring is sluggish and competition is high.”

Nonetheless, Karin sees a small silver lining. “We expect hiring to pick up a little in 2025,” Karin said, “but not necessarily rebound wildly, globally.” The bright spots have been in healthcare, utilities (mostly green energy), and government, where hiring has been robust. And she thinks tech hiring is about to pick up. “After a really sharp slowdown in technology a few years back,” she said, “it’s one of the strongest areas for hiring that we’ve seen — and a lot of that is AI-driven.” 

2. The uptick in hiring is at least partly due to increased internal mobility

At least part of the increase in hiring has been due to internal mobility, which LinkedIn data shows has increased 6% over the previous year. “People are staying put, but moving around in their current company,” Karin explained, “and it’s pretty encouraging because it shows that companies are finding ways to leverage their internal talent.” 

Aneesh saw all this as a good sign. “I think internal mobility is going to become more and more how we measure hiring, how we measure the health of the labor market,” he said, “and how we measure just mobility in the labor market, period.” 

3. Company leaders are looking for AI skills

Of course, one of the biggest topics was AI, and how important employers consider AI skills when they’re hiring. According to the  2024 Microsoft and LinkedIn Work Trend Index, two-thirds of leaders say they wouldn’t hire a candidate without some AI skills.

So, yes, AI is that important. “And I think it’s only going to rise,” Karin said. She added that companies consider it essential for candidates to have some AI skills and that recruiters on LinkedIn are now five times more likely to search by skills than they were before. What’s more, LinkedIn has seen a huge increase in nontechnical professionals using LinkedIn Learning to build their AI skills. 

4. Remote and hybrid jobs remain popular, even as they’re on the decline 

Before diving deeper into a discussion of AI, Aneesh asked Karin about something that many talent leaders are grappling with right now: the issue of remote or hybrid work versus return to office.

“I couldn’t agree with you more that this seems to be top of mind,” she replied. She pointed to LinkedIn data showing that in the United States about 20% of jobs offer flexible work, whether that’s remote or hybrid. But in other parts of the world, those numbers are much higher. In India, Karin said, 30% of jobs offer flexibility. In Germany, it’s 35%; in Australia, it’s 40%; and in the United Kingdom, it’s close to 50%.  

“Believe it or not,” Karin said, “the U.S. is on the low end, with only 8% of our jobs completely remote.” But remote jobs have remained extremely popular; while they make up a small fraction of job postings, they receive 40% of the applications. “People really, really like it,” Karin added. “As I always say, nobody misses their commute.” 

With RTO calls increasing, remote work could decline a little further. “That doesn’t mean it’s going to fade totally,” Karin said, “but it’s probably not the thing we’re coalescing around.” 

5. Most companies are in the earliest stages of adopting AI 

Aneesh then shifted back to AI, mentioning to Johnny that the AI revolution seems different from past disruptions because it’s coming from the ground up. Employees are adopting generative AI, Aneesh said, while leaders are still “trying to come up with an AI point of view, a strategy, or an adoption plan.” He asked Johnny why there was such a wide range between the companies that are adopting AI and those that are kind of stalled out.

Johnny said that social media was also a “bottom-up movement,” particularly in terms of hiring. Companies, he said, were originally afraid of using social media, including LinkedIn, for hiring, not that different from what’s happening now with AI. But he mentioned a valuable framework from Boston Consulting Group that emphasizes three stages of AI transformation: deploy, reshape, and invent.

Most companies, Johnny said, are currently in the deploy stage; they’re using Copilot, ChatGPT, or Gemini to assist with tasks. “The second phase, reshape, is where you’ll actually take a process and transform it with AI,” Johnny said, “which is what I saw with the announcement of LinkedIn’s new suite within Recruiter.” He estimated that the reshape stage could yield productivity gains of around 40% to 50%. 

“But the invention stage, part three, is when we completely rethink how we do something,” he said, “and I think we’re nowhere near that stage yet.” 

Final thoughts: The one thing companies can do now 

With so much advice and information about AI, Aneesh said, it can feel overwhelming to know where to start. So, he asked Johnny if there was one thing companies could do now. 

“I think the first thing you can do is build a risk matrix,” Johnny replied, “that clearly identifies  potential areas that are low risk and high risk.” He added that it’s not necessary to identify hundreds of risks and to put them through a robust committee. “There are many, many applications of AI that you can start with easily today,” he said.

In the areas where there’s very low risk, he suggested that companies encourage a culture of innovation and experimentation. “Unless you try many things, and take a scientific, experimental approach to it,” he said, “including trying different tools for hiring and HR, you’ll never find out.”

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