Key Takeaways
- AI is a top hiring trend in 2025, reshaping expectations for traditional positions with a growing demand for multidisciplinary skills and technical proficiency.
- Return-to-office mandates will influence recruitment trends in 2025, but companies will need to offer competitive salaries, strong benefits, and flexible options to attract and retain top talent.
- Temporary-to-permanent roles are expected to grow as a 2025 hiring trend, helping companies accelerate hiring while reducing risk.
- While AI will create efficiencies in 2025 hiring, maintaining a human touch will remain essential for building trust with candidates and hiring managers in a competitive labor market.
Listen: 2025 hiring trends from expert recruiters you need to know.
As we wrap up another dynamic year in the staffing industry, it's time to turn our focus to the hiring trends shaping 2025. Drawing from the expertise of seasoned recruitment leaders across the marketing, creative, design, and technology sectors, we've gathered valuable insights to help you stay ahead.
From the growing impact of AI technology on both hiring managers and job seekers to the increasing importance of tech skills across roles, the landscape is shifting rapidly. At the same time, the accelerating return-to-office movement is poised to reshape workplace culture on a national scale. Here's a closer look at what's ahead for hiring in 2025.
AI will impact everything as a top 2025 hiring trend
AI is reshaping how people find, apply for, and hire for jobs. In fact, many of our leaders echoed the idea that if your organization has not adapted to AI, you will be outdone by your competitors and forced to play catch-up in 2025.
In terms of 2025 talent acquisition trends, AI will take shape in emerging job roles as well as in how recruiters find and screen candidates for those jobs.
Talent must be AI proficient
When AI was first introduced, especially in traditional marketing and content spaces, there was a lot of fear surrounding it. “People wondered, ‘Is this going to take my job? Is this something that will replace me?'” says Maggie Keeton, who leads the Direct Hire Practice at Aquent. “We are increasingly partnering with clients who have digital transformation and technology needs, particularly as they pertain to AI,” Keeton says.
Now, AI proficiency is considered integral to many creative roles and is reshaping expectations of traditional creative titles. Maggie Patterson, Practice Leader and Vice President of Experience, fills roles in the user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX) space, and has noticed companies looking for AI engineering experience where it wasn't there before.
“Experience in Figma won't be enough going forward in the rapidly changing digital landscape,” Patterson says. Brand-new roles are surfacing, such as Conversational AI Specialists, AI Customer Experience Strategists, Empathy Designers, and Ethical Product Designers. These jobs require talent to demonstrate a deep understanding of AI in the design and user experience space.
Creative Practice Leader, Lauren Monroe, says that hiring managers want to work with creatives who represent multidisciplinary skill sets in Design, UI, Video, and Production roles.
“Companies are looking for creatives who can use AI tools like Runway, or even leverage multiple AI tools to build a single creative asset.” Monroe has seen a preference for hiring senior-level creatives who can handle conceptual work and strategy, while also being hands-on with design—especially with trending tech like motion design and micro-animations. “The trend reflects a demand for versatility,” Monroe says.
Similarly, Mindy Totaro, Senior Content Recruiter, has seen a decline in traditional copywriting orders. “Companies are morphing copywriter roles into data operations roles, where the focus is on training large language models (LLMs) to be more human,” Totaro says. This 2025 hiring trend is accelerating, especially for talent with creative and strategic agency experience who are now moving into roles focused on humanizing AI. Totaro also sees large companies hiring multilingual copywriters—those with fluency in Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian, for example—to train multilingual LLMs on a large scale.
Recruiter Caitlin Bair is seeing similar moves, citing one client seeking to fill new roles in a newly created internal division dedicated to AI and Machine Learning (ML). Lisa Mitchell, Practice Group Leader in Marketing, added that skills in data analytics, AI and ML, marketing automation, and CRM software are particularly important in marketing roles.
Recruiters must know AI tools and tech for 2025 hiring
Recruiters will be tasked with staying informed of emerging tech-driven roles like these, and understanding how job skills are evolving for open positions. As job descriptions change and companies begin demanding more AI proficiencies on talent resumes, many recruiters are also testing out new AI tools to find and screen candidates when filling roles.
“Many of our clients—and even within our own company—are trying to figure out how to integrate and use AI effectively,” said Kathleen Ellison, Vice President of Financial Services. “We're doing our part to adapt, but we're also finding that a lot of hiring managers don't fully understand the AI space yet. We'll need to continue educating both ourselves and our clients about how to navigate and leverage AI effectively.”
The best new AI tools will help recruiters move more quickly through mundane tasks, according to Ryan Krivonick, Practice Group Leader, Metaverse & Development. Through keyword matching, AI tools can help recruiters sort through applications to determine the best candidates for roles. There are even predictive AI models to help estimate the probability a candidate will be successful based on skills, experiences, and behavioral assessments.
Senior Recruiter Victoria Rodriguez is also witnessing a trend toward AI tools for recruiters. “As they continue to evolve, AI tools will save recruiters so much time by sourcing and ranking candidates for us automatically.”
AI tools for recruiters will likely continue to be refined in 2025, bringing along learning opportunities and the potential for filling open roles faster.
2025 hiring for return-to-office roles is on the rise
In the past five years, remote and hybrid work arrangements have become a baseline expectation, especially in creative industries. But now, that trend is reversing itself as the return-to-office (RTO) movement gains momentum.
According to a survey from Resume Builder, 90% of companies plan to require employees to return to the office by the start of 2025. This will be a shift to the status quo for many workers, as 35% of employed Americans did some or all of their work from home in 2023.
Many workers want to keep it that way. A FlexJobs study found that 65% of respondents said they want to work remotely full time. What's more, several of Aquent's recruiting leaders said that remote work is still a priority for many job seekers.
For companies asking employees to return to the office, it could be a hard sell. Recent research from the University of Pittsburgh shows that RTO mandates can result in an increase in employee turnover and slower hire rates when filling talent vacancies.
With that in mind, recruiting leaders will need to counsel their clients to consider offering higher compensation, better benefits, flexible schedules, or other incentives and perks when it comes to attracting top talent. Without it, they risk losing the best workers to competitors.
In addition to those benefits, however, talent still value human-to-human interaction. “When we talk to candidates, the person they're interviewing with is who ultimately sells them on a job,” Patterson said. “Talent might say they can see themselves working for that person—or, they say the opposite.” In the end, human leaders will still have a big impact on attracting top talent, especially when it comes to in-office positions.
Maggie Keeton puts it this way. “There are two things that matter most: people go to work for people, and people go to work for the vision of a company.” So, why would a Senior Product Designer work for a client asking its employees to be on-site five days a week when their competitor down the street is allowing fully remote or hybrid-remote? “A staffing partner helps position the company's brand and showcase their vision to the talent, enabling jobseekers to make an informed decision.'”
In fact, Keeton and her colleagues are witnessing job seekers being more open to hearing about in-office opportunities than in the past, especially after visiting new communities and being thoughtful about relocating.
“This kind of connection can't happen without that partnership. A staffing partner brings so much to the table and can truly help a company stand out against competitors who aren't leveraging that kind of support,” Keeton adds.
Temp-to-perm placements may outpace direct hiring in 2025
The American Staffing Association predicts a tightening labor market due to increased economic pressures. What does this mean for employers? Patterson foresees an increase in temp-to-perm hiring when it comes to recruitment trends in 2025.
One reason is that temp-to-perm hiring reduces hiring risks. Companies will be testing the waters to identify the skill sets that they really need and where they have gaps, Patterson says. They can evaluate talent before fully committing to adding them to payroll, benefits, and training programs, which can be costly. It also enables a faster hiring process, as it's often easier to secure budget for contract roles than for permanent positions.
“If the hire doesn't work out, it's easier to part ways quickly,” Patterson says. “On the other hand, when contractors prove themselves, they become valuable assets who have already demonstrated success on the job.”
This approach also provides an attractive opportunity for talent, who may want to test out a new employment situation before transitioning to full time. If it's an on-site or hybrid setup, they can see how it fits their lifestyle and adjust as needed.
Temp-to-perm also allows talent to network within the organization. Even if their current contract role isn't the right fit, they can meet colleagues and explore different opportunities, whether permanent or contract-based. It also offers flexibility. Contractors work by the hour, giving them more control over their schedules.
Recruiters will continue to bridge client-talent gaps in hiring in 2025. Many will be tasked with adopting AI in a way that creates efficiencies while still fostering a human connection for talent and hiring managers.
Looking ahead to hiring trends in 2025
As we look ahead to the rest of 2025, many past recruitment trends will start to change course from what we've seen in the previous five years. AI will continue to gain momentum. Competition for top-tier talent will grow. The scale may tip from direct hire roles to more temp-to-perm opportunities. Through it all, recruiters will play an integral role in consulting companies on how to attract the best talent, taking AI tools, in-office requirements, and human connection into consideration.
We'd like to extend our appreciation to our contributors—Caitlin Bair, Kathleen Ellison, Maggie Keeton, Ryan Krivonik, Lisa Mitchell, Lauren Monroe, Maggie Patterson, Victoria Rodriguez, and Mindy Totaro—for their invaluable insights. Follow Aquent for more expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of the job market in 2025 and beyond.
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