I Asked ChatGPT What Hiring Will Look Like in 2035: Here’s the 10 Surprising Predictions it Made
Right now, I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona, working on a new presentation, “Hiring 2035″, where I’ve been challenged to predict how recruitment and hiring will evolve over the next decade.
Of course, as we can all attest, most future-gazing exercises tend to get things wrong – I probably will too! But when it comes to these applications I always start by looking back. What changed over the last 10 years? Are there patterns we can learn from?
That question led me to some old decks I presented way back in 2015, where I made predictions about what hiring would look like in 2025. I hadn’t revisited them in years, and it was fascinating to see what we got right, what we missed, and – frankly – what we were obsessed with at the time!
I had a hunch: If we combed through every blog we’ve written over the past decade, we’d spot trends. And the same would likely apply to other platforms as well like LinkedIn’s Talent Blog and ERE.net. But who has time to sift through all that content?
Well, ChatGPT does!
So, I fed it the data – our past predictions, industry blog posts, old decks – and asked it to generate a fresh set of forecasts for hiring in 2035. Do I agree with all of them? Not necessarily. But they’re thought-provoking, to say the least!
10 Predictions for Recruiting in 2035
1. AI-Powered, Hyper-Personalized Job Matching Will Be the Norm
Expect AI to go beyond skills-based matching to assess cognitive fit, personality, work preferences, and career trajectory – suggesting job moves and pivots before people even realize they need them.
2. Hiring Will Become an Ongoing, Passive Process
Forget applications and interviews. Advanced biometric and digital reputation systems will create a living talent map, where companies continuously know who’s available and best suited for their needs. Traditional job applications and interviews will largely disappear.
3. Blockchain and Decentralized Career Identity Will Replace Resumes
Predictions from 2020 and 2025 focused on skills-based hiring, but a major challenge is verifying credentials and work history. By 2035, blockchain technology will serve as a tamper-proof career ledger, allowing employees to store verifiable learning achievements, work history, and projects in a universally accepted format, eliminating fraud and reliance on third-party verification.
4. Employer Branding Will Be Replaced by Real-Time Reputation Scores
Instead of static employer branding efforts, live sentiment analysis will generate dynamic company ratings based on employee feedback and AI-driven sentiment tracking. Crowdsourced scores for employers, based on employee experience will become the norm.
5. Talent Acquisition and Learning & Development Will Merge
Early predictions of talent as a unified team will evolve further. Hiring won’t just be about filling roles – it’ll be about continuously reskilling internal talent. The boundaries between TA and L&D will blur, driven by AI-powered career mobility platforms.
6. Neurotechnology Will Influence Hiring Decisions
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) could allow employers to analyze cognitive traits, processing speed, and emotional intelligence in real-time – redefining assessments and interviews.
7. “Jobs” Will Be Replaced by Project-Based Careers
The gig economy, first noted in 2015, will evolve into AI-managed project teams, dynamically assembled based on skill requirements. Full-time employment will become the exception rather than the norm. Workers will have personal AI career agents managing their opportunities, earnings, and skills development.
8. Automated, AI-Powered Salary Adjustments
Compensation will become fluid, with AI automatically adjusting salaries based on market rates, skills demand, and company performance – reducing pay negotiation and inequities.
9. AI-Generated “Synthetic Employees” Will Take Over Some Jobs
AI models will be trained and “hired” as part of the workforce, operating alongside human employees in a hybrid talent model.
10. AI-Powered Ethics Officers Will Be Standard
The growing concern over AI bias in hiring will lead to AI-powered bias auditing tools that will continuously monitor recruitment, promotions, and pay equity, ensuring hiring decisions remain ethical and fair. Organizations will have AI Ethics Officers responsible for ensuring fair and non-discriminatory hiring.
So, What’s Next?
Looking at these predictions, some feel like natural evolutions of trends already in motion, while others seem more speculative (AI-powered brain scans, anyone?).
But one thing is clear: the way we think about work, hiring, and talent management is shifting – fast.
The big question is, how do we prepare for a world where AI plays such an active role in recruitment? If hiring becomes passive and reputation-based, how do companies build trust? If blockchain replaces resumes, what happens to traditional career paths? And if AI employees become the norm, how do we ensure human workers aren’t left behind?
This article originally appeared in Johnny Campbell’s Talent Leadership Insights LinkedIn newsletter. Click here to subscribe!