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- the friday 5 - Jan 16th
the friday 5 - Jan 16th
what's happened this week in HR?
Howdy HR friends!👋
Hope you're wrapping up a solid week! 🙌
On Tuesday, we unpacked The Workforce Freeze: why everyone's staying put in 2026. Well, today's edition shows what happens when companies do try to hire. Apparently, fancy offices and fat paychecks don't guarantee talent will show up. 🤷♂️
Time for the Friday 5! Five articles, five takeaways. Five minutes away from the chaos to grab a coffee and get caught up on everything that's been happening in HR this week!
Today’s edition is presented by SelectSoftware Reviews
Hiring is changing yet again in 2026. Teams are leaner, roles are more specialized, candidates expect better experiences, and recruiters are asked to move faster with fewer resources.
If you’re starting to wonder whether your hiring tech still fits the way your team works, SSR’s HR Software Advisor can help you step back and reassess. You’ll speak with an HR software expert who understands the HR software landscape and can help you explore platforms that support how you actually hire today. 🧑💼
🚦Coming up
In today’s edition
🔍 Recruiters hustling harder to find talent
🏢 Oracle's Nashville HQ struggles despite fancy perks
🎓 Google ditching degree requirements for skills
🤖 AI set to reshape 10M+ US jobs by 2030
📊 Smart hiring means focusing on what actually matters
💭The Friday Five
😏 Sometimes the best hiring strategy is just... doing less, better
🔎 Recruiters are doing the heavy lifting now. Online applications still dominate, but recruiter sourcing has jumped 72% since 2023 as hiring teams work harder to cut through massive applicant pools and find quality candidates.
🔗 Read more → [HR Dive]
🏙️ Oracle's billion-dollar Nashville bet isn't paying off yet. Despite a swanky 2M sq ft office and Nobu restaurant, Oracle has only attracted 800 workers to its "world HQ"—employees are wary of lower pay bands and a headquarters that exists mostly on paper.
🔗 Read more → [Fortune]
🎯 Google is hiring talent, not just degrees. Co-founder Sergey Brin reveals Google now hires "tons of people" without bachelor's degrees, as tech giants shift from credentials to demonstrable skills—degree requirements dropped from 93% to 77% since 2017.
🔗 Read more → [Entrepreneur]
⚡ AI will eliminate 10.4 million US jobs by 2030. The shift is permanent and structural, but here's the twist: AI will "strongly influence" 20% of jobs rather than replace them—meaning the future remains largely human for now.
🔗 Read more → [HRD America]
📈 Stop trying to fix everything in hiring at once. Analysis of 6,640 companies reveals the winning strategy: pick one quick win and one strategic initiative rather than scattered improvements—because what matters is fixing the right thing, not fixing everything.
🔗 Read more → [HR Executive]
For easy reading
 | When immigration and employment law collide, even small errors can snowball fast. In this session, employment attorney Jon Hyman will cut through the confusion and give you straightforward, practical clarity on what HR needs to watch for in 2026. |
That’s it for today.
Thanks for reading to the end and we hope today’s edition helped saved you a few hours in scouring the web for the latest news! 🧠
We know you’re super busy and as ever, we really appreciate you saving some room for us in your inbox 😀
Have a great weekend!
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