TA’s top priority is quality of hire

Published in October 2025, Fosway Group’s Talent Acquisition Realities research analyses all the critical trends and opportunities for TA teams in the next 12 months. Here, Fosway analysts look at talent acquisition strategy and priorities.

Quality of hire continues to take a significant lead in the priorities of talent acquisition teams

Steve Jobs once said that “A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players”. And whether explicitly or implicitly, that’s precisely what talent acquisition (TA) professionals are doing when they prioritise quality as their top priority for their talent strategy in 2025, ahead of candidate experience, value and employer branding.

All of these fall behind ‘quality and external hiring’ as a priority again in this year’s survey. In fact, based on our respondents, ‘quality’ is twice as much of a priority as ‘speed to hire’. So, for all the automation and efficiency that AI is bringing to the table, if it doesn’t deliver quality candidates then it’s failed the number one strategic priority for recruiters.

Internal mobility drops in recruiting priorities again

Internal mobility continued its three-year slide as it slipped from 3rd to 6th to 7th in TA’s list of priorities.  Whilst the wider movement to an employee value proposition through skills-based organisations and internal mobility in HR – TA teams seem to have reined back their attention on internal hiring.

How much of that is the deferral of internal mobility to other silos in HR, or how much is ‘recruiting DNA’ reasserting itself – with the desire to source fresh blood or the availability of a stronger talent pool as a result of headcount contractions in other organisations – it is difficult to tell. But what we can say for sure is that internal mobility is being judged on quality just like any other hire, regardless of its value to employer brand.

Only half of TA teams systematically measure the performance of new hires to determine recruiting effectiveness

Despite quality being the primary measure of success for recruiting strategy, most TA teams are unable to systematically validate how successful their hiring approach is in generating high performing and impactful hires. Less than 40% have a routine measurement of their recruiting process and only one in ten systematically measures recruiting performance.

As we highlighted in previous years, this gap in hiring performance tracking is a missed opportunity for TA teams, especially in a time of tight budgets. Given this is a long-term weakness, it is difficult to see this situation changing any time soon.

This is an excerpt from Talent Acquisition Realities 2025. Get the full insight and discover all the latest market and solution trends by reading the whole report here.

What should you do next?

• There’s still time to be involved in Phase Two – get access to a range of private assets for this AI project’s participants, with a level of detailed analysis and insight you will not find anywhere else. Contact us for more, join Fosway’s strategic AI project for 2025: ‘AI in TA’.

Other recommended reading

• Build your AI strategy with evidence, not guesswork. Get an overview of the research programme here: Fosway AI Strategic Research Programme.
• The 2025 Fosway 9-Grid^TM for Talent Acquisition – full report. Released earlier this year. All the latest market and solution trends in talent acquisition – get the full analysis today.

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