In 2026, the most effective talent acquisition professionals have stepped into the role of commercial coach. By moving beyond order-taking, these partners provide the value, data, and perspectives that hiring managers simply don’t have. This shift ensures that before a role is even posted, the strategy has been challenged and refined to maximize ROI and strategic alignment with departmental goals.
We caught up with 3 Talent Teams to find out how they’re doing things differently.
Ashleigh Lyas, Talent Acquisition Manager @ MYOB
“As Talent Acquisition Manager for Tech, Product and Early Careers at MYOB, the way we operate as a Talent function has fundamentally shifted over the last 5 years. In fast‑moving SaaS and product‑led organisations such as MYOB, Talent has moved away from a downstream hiring function. To genuinely enable growth, we have moved into an operating rhythm where we are truly commercial coaches and strategic advisors, deeply connected to business strategy, capability planning and performance.
At MYOB, this has meant moving beyond reactive recruitment to an integrated Talent Advisory model, where workforce planning, critical role mapping, talent management and succession planning increasingly sit under Talent. This shift allows us to see the full talent lifecycle, from identifying future skill requirements, to growing internal capability, to making deliberate build‑vs‑buy decisions.
A critical enabler has been developing a single, integrated view of talent. We have done this by bringing Talent Management over to Talent. By bringing internal mobility, succession planning and pipelining and external market insights together, we can identify high‑potential talent earlier, reduce critical role risk, and support leaders with data‑led conversations about readiness and bench strength.
Internal Career Conversations have also become a key mechanism for the success in this, increasing engagement, unlocking internal movement and supporting more intentional succession planning before roles become business‑critical.
At MYOB we’ve also recently evolved how we define success. Alongside traditional hiring metrics which we still monitor (but no longer live by in this increasingly skills short market), we’ve implemented a “Quality of Hire” measure, focusing on performance impact, values alignment and sustained contribution over time. For many of us in Talent, this feels like a necessary industry shift: measuring what truly matters and identifying tomorrow’s high performers, rather than optimising for speed alone.
As AI accelerates role evolution, Talent leaders have an opportunity and responsibility to sit closer to the centre of the organisation. When talent acquisition, talent management and succession are connected, Talent becomes a strategic input into the future workforce, ensuring long‑term capability, resilience and a high‑performance culture, and not just a function that fills roles.”
Natalie Badawy, Talent Acquisition Specialist @ Andromeda
“As the first internal TA hire at Andromeda Robotics, my biggest capability uplift focus has been building a more insightful, data-led function from the ground up. I’ve overhauled our talent metrics so we’re not just stumbling around and making assumptions about our process. We don’t just look at time-to-hire; we also track quality of hire, process health, and candidate experience signals, and I use that data to advise leaders as a true partner rather than a “job filler” — in a way that genuinely feels like real business impact.
A core part of this has been introducing what I call a Hiring Post-Mortem (HPM) framework that we run for every role we close. A HPM is a document I put together after we make a hire that walks us through the key insights from that hiring process.
For example, we cover:
- Hiring timeline and time to hire
- The hiring funnel (how many candidates make it through each stage)
- Hiring velocity (how long each stage takes)
- Disqualification (rejection) metrics
- Candidate source/channel performance
- DE&I snapshot
- A feedback section where I add my reflections, the hiring manager adds theirs, and I collate insights from our candidate experience survey, including anonymous excerpts
- And finally, a section for retention & early performance which can be filled out at 3,6 & 12 months into the candidate’s tenure with us.
Together with hiring managers, we unpack what worked in our briefing, sourcing mix, assessment design, communication, and where candidates dropped out or experienced friction. These conversations have quickly become mini talent advisory sessions, turning each hire into a feedback loop that builds trust with hiring managers, elevates their confidence in running their own searches, and continuously moves us toward a better candidate experience.
At the end of the day, you don’t know what you don’t know… and the only way to find out is through a data deep dive.”
Alexia Ellmers, Manager, Talent Acquisition & Employer Brand @ Go1
“Traditional recruitment centres on activity – kicking off requisitions, sourcing candidates, scheduling interviews, and moving people through a process. All whilst managing a calendar of interviews. Exhausting, I know!
When a lot of the heavy lifting admin of TA can now be automated, where do TA teams add value? While operational excellence matters, it doesn’t create strategic influence. I believe TA teams become indispensable when they understand the business model, challenge assumptions, and link hiring decisions directly to outcomes such as revenue, customer impact, product velocity, and cost.
In Go1’s context – we are global, product-led, and operating with velocity – our TA team is evolving to operate as a commercial partner vs an order taker. This means asking different questions. Why this role? What business problem does it solve? What’s the cost of not hiring? Could internal mobility or role redesign achieve the same outcome faster or cheaper? It also means using talent intelligence across APAC/EMEA/US to guide leaders toward the smartest capability investment.
For internal TA teams, it also means not staying ‘in your lane’ and thinking about how you are impacting the entire employee lifecycle – can your team JUST fill roles, or can your team workforce plan, design roles, drive internal mobility, manage employer branding, onboarding, retention etc.”
