As 2025 winds down, we want to extend our deepest gratitude to you, our incredible partners. In a year where hiring norms continued to shift and AI evolved at record speed, your resilience, curiosity, and collaboration have driven shared success. You’ve shown up for your clients, innovated under pressure, and helped businesses of all sizes hire smarter and faster. We couldn’t be prouder to work alongside you.
Before we step into a new year, we’re excited to share a powerful new AI resource you can immediately offer your clients to provide updates on 2026 regulatory changes and highlight the trends that will shape the next era of HR technology. Let’s set the stage for a strong, opportunity-filled year ahead.
✨ New Download: AI Hiring Playbook for Your Clients 📈 2026 HR Tech Trends We’re Watching ⚖️ New AI Compliance Laws Effective Jan 1: What to Know 🎁 A Year-End Thank You from Our Team 🤝 Tools & Resources to Drive Growth in the New Year
✨ The New AI Hiring Playbook: Now Available for You to Share
AI has officially shifted from “emerging tool” to essential hiring advantage, especially for SMBs navigating lean teams, competitive labor markets, and rising candidate expectations. We created the AI Hiring Playbook, an approachable, actionable guide that helps your clients understand:
Where AI delivers hiring efficiency today
Practical AI-powered workflows teams can put to use immediately
Ethical + compliant use of AI in recruiting
How to future-proof their hiring strategies for 2026
In your Partner Sales Acceleration Portal, you can download:
A ready-to-share PDF version (no branding required)
An editable InDesign file to apply your own branding and positioning
This resource was built directly from partner feedback and reflects our ongoing commitment to giving you tools that shorten sales cycles, increase adoption, and strengthen your consultative value.
📈 Looking Ahead: The Forces Reshaping Hiring Next Year
2026 is shaping up to be a year of expansion, modernization, and continued regulatory evolution. Based on industry data, conversations with product leaders, and insights surfaced through our blog, here are the trends partners should keep on their radar:
1. AI + Automation Will Move From “Nice to Have” to Core Infrastructure
Hiring tools that automate sourcing, screening, and scheduling will become baseline expectations, especially for SMBs competing with larger organizations. ATS platforms that blend AI with human oversight will be best positioned to support compliant, high-quality hiring.
2. Compliance Becomes a Competitive Advantage
With new regulations taking effect (more below), organizations will increasingly lean on their HR tech providers for clarity, safe implementation, and structured workflows. Compliance will stop being seen as a burden and start becoming a brand differentiator.
3. The Return of Employer Branding
After years of market fluctuation, companies are reinvesting in candidate experience, personalized communication, and role clarity. Platforms that streamline communication and elevate employer identity will stand out.
4. Integrated Talent Ecosystems Will Accelerate
Recruiting teams want seamless workflows: no more juggling systems. Integrations between ATS → onboarding → payroll → performance will see significant adoption, especially among growing SMBs.
For deeper insights, you can explore our latest blog content to fuel your sales conversations and strategic planning.
⚖️ New AI Laws Take Effect January 1, 2026. What HR Needs to Know
As states continue rolling out AI hiring regulations, more organizations are asking how to maintain compliance without slowing down operations. Several new laws take effect on January 1, 2026, shaping expectations around transparency, bias reduction, and human oversight.
What to share with your clients:
These laws primarily focus on risk mitigation, auditability, and candidate communication.
They do not restrict businesses from using AI, they simply require clarity (such as disclosure statements) and responsible implementation.
Together, we’re taking a compliance-first approach to AI innovation, continuously aligning our roadmap with emerging standards to ensure secure, responsible, and confident adoption for your clients.
You can help clients stay ahead by encouraging them to review and document their hiring workflows before year-end.
For a helpful overview, this HR Dive article breaks down the newest regulations and what HR leaders should expect:
Our commitment to you: as AI regulations evolve, so will our product, with transparency, ethical use, and partner enablement at the center.
Security Update: 2FA Is Being Replaced in January
To continue strengthening platform security and modernizing our authentication experience, for partners not currently using SSO, we’ll be sunsetting our current two-factor authentication (2FA) method in January and replacing it with TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password) authentication.
This update introduces a QR-code–based MFA process that works with common authentication apps, offering a more secure and reliable login experience for users who are not leveraging SSO.
If you or your clients have any questions about this transition, our team is here to help.
As we wrap another year of innovation, collaboration, and mutual growth, we want to say thank you. Thank you for trusting us with your brand, your clients, and your vision. Thank you for your feedback, your partnership, and your relentless dedication in a rapidly changing market.
We’re energized for what's ahead: major enhancements to AI functionality, workflow automation, compliance tools, and partner enablement resources are already in motion for early 2026.
We can’t wait to continue building a powerful future together.
Warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season and a successful start to 2026, - The HiringThing Team
✅ Live Custom Demos – Our expert sales team is on deck to deliver engaging, tailored demonstrations for your clients, answering their unique questions in real time.
📺 On-Demand Demo– Need a flexible option? Share our ready-to-go product demo anytime, giving clients an inside look at the platform on their own schedule.
Discover new sales collateral, educational resources, and tools in our Partner Sales Acceleration Portal.
We'd love to hear from you - take a brief survey to share your preferences, and let us curate your experience even further and deliver the resources that would be most valuable to your team.
