Make talent quality your leading analytic with skills-based hiring solution.
Choosing the right recruitment strategy is the first step to building a candidate pipeline that supports diversity, improves productivity, and aligns with broader organizational goals. There are several types of recruitment strategies and hiring techniques that hiring managers can use to build resilient, well balanced teams.
A contingent workforce refers to temporary staff, independent contractors, consultants, or freelance workers hired based on organizational needs and priorities. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3 percent of U.S. workers held a contingent job as their main job in July 2023, up from 3.8 percent in 2017, and broader industry surveys that define contingent work more widely, including independent contractors and temporary staff, report considerably higher shares of the workforce.
Since contingent workers do not fit the conventional full time employment framework, employers have more flexibility in deciding the terms of engagement, allowing them to scale workforce capacity up or down to support project based needs. Common hiring methods within contingent staffing include:
Contingent staffing gives companies the agility to scale with workload, since the induction and offboarding process is less cumbersome than for permanent hires.
Traditional talent acquisition typically involves hiring candidates for full time, permanent positions across different organizational levels and functions. Key benefits include:
That said, external uncertainty and shifting priorities in a competitive landscape can call for more adaptable approaches alongside direct hiring.
Skills based hiring is one of the most significant workplace hiring trends of the past few years. Rather than evaluating candidates primarily on college degrees and years of experience, it focuses on the specific hard and soft skills a job actually requires. According to NACE’s Job Outlook 2025 survey of 237 employer respondents (conducted August through September 2024), 64.8 percent of employers use skills based hiring practices for new entry level hires. This approach offers several advantages:
AI recruiting is one of the most widely discussed types of recruitment strategies, using data patterns to help reduce human bias and speed up hiring. According to a 2025 SHRM analysis, organizations using AI in recruiting report roughly 31 percent faster overall hiring times and a 50 percent improvement in quality of hire metrics compared to organizations that do not. Key applications include:
Organizations working to build an inclusive, equitable workplace run dedicated outreach programs targeting underrepresented communities, such as women re entering the workforce, people from traditionally underrepresented populations or cultural minorities, disabled applicants, and individuals from LGBTQ+ groups. This typically involves a longer term approach: exploring non traditional networks, redefining selection criteria, improving workplace policies, and training existing employees on inclusive practices.
For rapidly scaling teams or seasonal business needs, HR departments build accelerated processes that can evaluate hundreds of candidates a day through methods such as group interviews, mass screening days, or assessment centers, technology that automates scheduling and communication, streamlined interview rounds to shorten offer cycle time, and specialized temporary recruiting teams. The result is a faster turnaround for candidates on their applications.
Finding leaders who can steer an organization’s strategic direction calls for customized search strategies, including leveraging professional networks, internal and external referrals, and executive search firms, advertising in specialty portals, trade conferences, or invite only platforms, building long term relationships through community events and advisory councils, using assessment reports that cover experience, leadership style, and culture fit, and negotiating compensation with the support of specialized consultants. Securing senior talent generally warrants greater engagement, confidentiality, and expense than other hiring strategies.
How does an AI based recruitment strategy reduce bias in hiring?
AI based tools apply algorithms to screen and shortlist applicants against predefined job requirements. By focusing on the skills, attributes, and experience a role actually needs, they help limit the conscious and unconscious bias that can creep into manual review.
How does skills based hiring differ from traditional hiring?
Traditional hiring relies heavily on academic qualifications and past titles, while skills based hiring takes a more holistic view, weighing hard skills and demonstrated ability alongside soft skills and cultural fit, which widens the talent pool to candidates who can do the job well regardless of educational background.
What metrics can organizations use to measure recruitment strategy success?
Common metrics include the screening to offer ratio, cost per hire, time to fill open positions, retention rate after the hire date, performance over tenure, and the rate of internal transitions, promotions, and diversity across functions. Positive trends validate the current approach, while weak numbers signal a need to realign the strategy.
How can companies build a more diverse talent pipeline?
Effective approaches include cultural awareness training for employees, partnerships with community organizations, broadening recruitment channels to reach a wider applicant pool, building relationships with nonprofits focused on upskilling underrepresented groups, and emphasizing skills based qualifications over specific educational or work history during screening.
Glider AI’s skill assessment platform helps you validate candidate skills objectively across contingent, direct, high volume, and executive hiring alike, so whichever recruitment strategy you choose, your team can screen consistently and make faster, more confident hiring decisions.
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