With 2025 promising to be a year of recovery, top industry leaders shared valuable insights during a panel session on the current state of IT staffing at the recent Executive Summit, held in November last year. Joel Leege, the then President-Elect of TechServe Alliance Board of Directors, moderated a lively and informative discussion with leaders of some of the industry’s largest workforce solutions providers.
Panelists:
— Bruce Morton, Head of Strategy of Allegis Global Solutions,
— Graig Paglieri, CEO of Randstad Digital Americas, and
— Mike Small , US Country President of The Adecco Group and President of Akkodis North America.
Moderator:
Joel Leege, President & COO, Red Oak Technologies, and President of TechServe Alliance Board of Directors
Key Highlights
During the discussion, Leege asked the panelists for their predictions, expectations, and
strategies on the upcoming trends in the staffing and services industry.
Key topics discussed during the session included:
- Market dynamics and predictions for 2025
- The impact of Gen AI on the staffing and recruiting industry
- Tools and technologies impacting businesses
- Client engagement and talent experience
- Future visions for the industry
Market Dynamics for IT Staffing in 2025
To begin the discussion, Leege asked the panelists what the industry will look like in 2025, especially after coming off of a tumultuous 2024.
Mike Small said: “From a market dynamic standpoint, we continue to see our services business growing and taking market share … as we’ve continued to diversify with the near shore, offshore operations and services.” He continued to say that given the staffing and direct hire business has been going through challenging times, “When we normalize for that, we’re seeing a very much a stair step recovery, not a hockey step recovery, coming off of the highs of 2021 and 2022.”
Bruce Morton agreed with Small about expecting growth driven by the services business. “I think we will see more vigor and control … I think organizations will be taking a laser focus on the headcount,” he added.
After Q3 in 2024, optimism began to rise, and Graig Paglieri said that areas such as ecommerce and consumer retail will drive growth in 2025. He added, “I think [we are] starting to see some good signs in our large buyers working on their platforms, and anything tied to e-commerce, both in consumer retail, and financial services is definitely where we see the strongest headwinds.”
The Impact of Gen AI on the Staffing and Recruiting Industry
An increasingly hot topic among many staffing firms is how generative AI will impact the business and its employees. Leege asked the panelists what is working successfully in terms of GenAI and what they may have already implemented.
Morton stressed the importance of playing around with the technology and experimenting with how it can be used to free up time for us to focus on other tasks: “We’ll have 12 million actions taken by the AI that human beings were doing in 2023—that obviously frees a lot more time to be more consultative and add value and all that great stuff.”
Paglieri agreed that GenAI will have a large impact not only on the industry but also on the work of the organization. He added, “We’re trying to take a future stance and say, ‘This is how compensation needs to change to be reflective of the work that we’re performing.’ You know, the recruiter title as an example— is that really the right definition of the work that’s being done? Or is it much more a talent manager? So, thinking in advance of the tech and the AI that is going to have the impact that we really wanted to have from a productivity standpoint, but moving the organization and the change along ahead of that.”
Small also sees that Gen AI can transform business only if companies are not limited with data stuck in silos – those that have a clean set of data to work on.
“[Gen AI] is something we must have an industry point of view and approach on. This is an opportunity to innovate and disrupt. And we as an industry are really going to lean on the midsize staffing companies for this as they can just get after that a lot quicker than our teams,” Small said.
“We have the responsibility to help prepare the workforce, our candidates for that transformation – it’s happening. It’s starting in big tech, we are already starting to see the roles that we would service in the big high-tech firms, they are not as plentiful as they once were. And that’s not just because of a downturn,” he added.
Tools and Technologies Impacting Businesses
Building off the discussion on Gen AI, Leege asked the panelists if there were any other technological platforms that have helped contribute to their businesses’ success. Morton mentioned their partnership with UiPath and AI Insights which he said are “brilliant, great partners” that have helped him create PowerPoint decks and other creative content.
In addition, Small spoke about his experience with Microsoft Co-Pilot, and how there has been efficient gains in the recruitment process because of this. He shared, “We’ve taken a subset of that technology that we used at one of my last organizations and brought it into the recruitment world, and we’re seeing efficiency and effectiveness gains of around 42%.”
Client Engagement and Talent Experience
Leege asked the panelists what they are seeing from buyers this year, commenting that there has been a notable shift in procurement strategies, whether its near shore, offshore, or projects, and professionals are curious which strategy buyers are leaning toward.
Morton explained that there has been a shift towards nearshore and offshore locations, with a preference for control over the work that is being conducted.
“I think we’re going to see more and more high-end offshoring, but not to the traditional outsourced BPO companies. This is going to be more of the GCC model, where [clients are] looking for partners to work with to help them set up, but they want control of those people,” Morton said.
“I think organizations moving more and more to services is just phase one. Because once you get your arms around that, the mindset of the organization gets comfortable with getting this work done on a price, on a guaranteed price, and all that, then it’s easy to shift it,” he added.
Future Vision for the Industry
What the future has in hold for the IT staffing industry is up for debate as strategies shift, technology advances, and the market fluctuates. The panelists were asked what they would like to see in the next three years and where the industry might be headed.
Morton said, we must be in the game as the next shift in the industry comes: “We’ve got to be the organizations that the CIOs and everybody else goes to, to say, ‘Hey, what is the best way for me to get this work done? On what contract should it be? How long should it take, and how much should it cost me?’ If we’re not advising, we’re going to be left behind again and end up in the supply chain.”
There are opportunities for significant advancement in the industry. It is up to the industry to break out of its comfort zone of what’s worked in the past three-plus decades and embrace these opportunities. “We have to get a little bit more agile …, leveraging the breadth of technical experts and staffing experts that can scale fast, fail fast, and help us test some of these models in order to, as an industry, move it in a certain direction,” Small said. “I’m worried about, with the advent of technology like Gen AI, someone in the garage somewhere, thinking about following us into one of our clients, and getting access to the data that we sit on. We should be able to get out in front of it with innovative solutions.”
Paglieri emphasized the importance of a more collaborative and stronger client engagement strategy. Understanding what’s the best fit for an organization and recognizing that there are different forms and capabilities of solutions and services is critical. He said he would like to see “more of that openness and knocking down of some of the internal obstacles and walls that create all these friction points.”
Additionally, Paglieri said it would be good to see significant gains made with AI and digital enablement to provide a higher level of candidate experience.
