What should recruiters focus on in 2026?
With ongoing uncertainty and volatility across industries, I believe employees will be more hesitant to explore new opportunities and will prioritize stability in their current roles. In interviews, I increasingly hear candidates emphasize stability as a key factor in their decision-making. The term “job huggers” is starting to replace “job hoppers,” reflecting a shift toward risk-averse career behavior.
While this trend still needs more empirical validation, it’s clear that recruiters will need to go beyond cold LinkedIn outreach or job ads to attract top talent. Building a strong talent network will be more important than ever, and paradoxically, offline sourcing activities like attending conferences, hosting meetups, and creating community-driven events will play a key role in forming deeper candidate-recruiter and candidate-company relationships.
If you could give one piece of advice to the industry, what would it be?
Prove your value. AI is changing recruitment, and many tasks like sourcing, screening, and scheduling can now be automated. But that doesn’t mean recruiters are any less important. The best ones understand the dynamics of their company, the team culture, and what kind of person will thrive in a specific environment. They also notice things that AI simply can’t, like how a candidate behaves between interviews or during casual moments. Some of the most telling insights come from walking a candidate to the elevator, when the pressure is off and you get a glimpse of their personality, curiosity, or how they treat others. These small interactions matter, and they’re exactly where human recruiters still make a real difference.
What would be the one lesson you would share from 2025 based on your professional activities?
Leadership hiring is one of the most complex and high-impact areas of recruitment. If your Talent Acquisition team is not involved in hiring for senior roles, you are missing a real opportunity to shape the future of your organization. In 2025, I saw how valuable it is when TA teams are part of these conversations, not just focused on operational or mid-level roles. Being involved at the leadership level gives you deeper insight into the company’s direction, culture, and long-term goals. It also allows you to act as a true partner to senior stakeholders, helping them think through what kind of leader they actually need, not just what’s written in the job description. This kind of involvement builds trust and shows that TA is not just a support function, but a strategic one.
What has been the biggest professional challenge for you so far?
The biggest challenge in my career was relocating from Australia to Croatia. I had built strong recruitment skills in Australia, but moving to a new country with only basic to intermediate language proficiency meant I had to rebuild my most important tool, communication, from scratch. It was a humbling experience that tested my adaptability and resilience. I had to learn how to connect with candidates and stakeholders in a new cultural and linguistic context. Over time, this challenge helped me grow into a more empathetic and resourceful recruiter, capable of navigating diverse environments with confidence.
What are some recruitment challenges you would highlight specifically in your country/region?
I mostly recruit in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, and one of the biggest challenges is the limited talent pool. For some roles, there might be only a couple of people in the entire country who fit the profile, or sometimes none at all. That means we have to be creative, do deep research, and think about whether someone with partial experience could grow into the role. We also deal with brain drain, where skilled professionals leave the region for better opportunities abroad. To work around that, we rely a lot on referrals, informal networks, and long-term relationship building.
Thank you for the answers Dina Gruber, the Talent Acquisition Expert of Infobip!
