By Saholy Rabetsitonta
Recruitment is changing in nature. In Switzerland, as in the rest of Europe, companies now face a new equation: more vacancies, fewer candidates with the right skills immediately available, and jobs evolving at an accelerating pace under the influence of artificial intelligence. For business leaders, the challenge is no longer just about hiring. It is now about anticipating tomorrow’s skills and building an organisation capable of developing them.
Long considered a support function, recruitment is becoming a strategic issue: demographic ageing, artificial intelligence, skills shortages and changing employee expectations are reshaping the rules of the game. The recruitment revolution is therefore not simply about the number of vacancies. It is about a deeper question: how do you attract, persuade and, above all, retain the skills the company will need tomorrow?
The old model rested on a simple question: which candidate fits this role? Today, that question raises another: what skills will our company need to master in two, three or five years’ time?
The Swiss paradox
With its tight and internationalised labour market, Switzerland offers a particularly telling case study. Unemployment remains low, yet companies continue to struggle to find the profiles they need: there are 98,700 vacancies, 2.7% more than a year earlier. In the second quarter of 2026, 33.9% of companies said they were having difficulty recruiting qualified staff (FSO).
The phenomenon is not unique to Switzerland. In the European Union, companies are also facing a skills gap, and the pressure there is, if anything, slightly greater: in the second quarter of 2026, the vacancy rate reached 2.0% in the EU and 2.1% in the euro area, compared with 1.7% in Switzerland (European Commission). The labour market therefore remains dynamic, with unemployment at 3% in August 2026 (SECO). This situation reflects less a general shortage of workers than a mismatch between available skills and those in demand.
For a long time, hiring followed a relatively simple logic: define a role, draw up a job description, look for the matching degree and experience, then choose the candidate who could be operational soonest. That approach is increasingly being challenged.
Artificial intelligence is accelerating the transformation of jobs and shortening the lifespan of certain skills. The skills required in the Swiss occupations most exposed to AI are evolving 66% faster than in other occupations. Even more striking, the share of job postings requiring a university degree in these occupations fell from 43% in 2019 to 38% in 2024 (PwC). The degree is not disappearing, of course. But it is less and less a sufficient shortcut for gauging a candidate’s ability to succeed in a changing workplace.
Recruitment is thus gradually shifting towards a skills-based approach, focused on what a candidate can actually do. The question is no longer only: “Does this person fit the job?” It is now: “What will they be able to do tomorrow?”
The technological revolution is not limited to automation. It also creates new needs. In Switzerland, job postings directly linked to AI increased tenfold between 2018 and 2024, rising from around 2,000 to 20,000. Even in occupations heavily exposed to AI, the number of job postings rose by 442% between 2019 and 2024. In 2025, AI-related postings rose by a further 9,000 or so to reach a record high, even though they still accounted for only 1.8% of the overall market (PwC).
These figures tell a more nuanced story than that of a technology mechanically replacing workers. AI is transforming tasks, roles and the profiles companies are looking for. Businesses need employees who can use these new tools, but also verify their output, understand their limitations and integrate them into existing processes. For CEOs, the challenge is therefore less about predicting which jobs will disappear than about identifying how jobs will evolve.
Faced with this acceleration, companies will not always be able to find a fully trained candidate on the market. Another solution is therefore gaining ground: hire for potential and build the missing skills afterwards. This marks an important shift in philosophy. A candidate who has 70% or 80% of the required skills and a strong ability to learn may become more attractive in the medium term than an immediately operational specialist whose skills risk becoming obsolete.
Recruitment and training are thus beginning to merge. For business leaders, this implies new indicators: what does a hire cost, certainly, but also what does a missing skill cost? How long does it take to make someone operational? How many employees could move into a new role after targeted training? Human capital is no longer a fixed resource. It becomes a portfolio of skills that the company can develop over time.
This transformation is taking place in a country that has long offset its shortages through its openness to the international labour market. Immigration still plays a considerable role. Between 2010 and 2025, the number of workers from the EU/EFTA in health and social work rose by 90,000. Labour migration has helped support Swiss economic growth against a backdrop of demographic ageing (SECO).
But this talent pool is changing. In the first half of 2026, net immigration into the permanent foreign resident population fell by 12.5% year on year. Immigration from the EU/EFTA remained almost stable (-0.7%), but the number of European workers arriving for long-term employment declined by 1.6% (SEM). For companies, the message is clear: international recruitment remains a major asset, but it cannot on its own constitute a skills strategy. Talent already present in the economy must also be developed.
The vocabulary of business leaders may evolve too. The “war for talent” is gradually giving way to a war for skills. The goal is no longer necessarily to attract the most prestigious candidates, but to bring together the right skills at the right time. A bank will need specialists able to combine finance, cybersecurity and data analysis. An industrial company will look for employees capable of working with automated systems. An SME may prioritise versatility and the ability to learn quickly.
In every case, skills matter more than job titles. This shift can also create an opportunity: it opens recruitment to profiles that would once have been ruled out because they did not perfectly match traditional criteria.
The paradox of this technological revolution is that it could strengthen the value of the human dimension in recruitment. The more AI automates the writing of job ads, CV screening or certain administrative tasks, the more companies must convince candidates that they offer an environment in which they can learn and grow.
Pay, flexibility, quality of management, training, autonomy and career prospects are becoming core components of the employer value proposition. The company no longer merely selects a candidate. It must also be selected by that candidate.
This is probably the most profound change. Recruitment can no longer be seen solely as an HR issue. CEOs must now integrate demographic, technological and professional shifts into their strategy. Should they recruit abroad? Train existing teams? Automate certain tasks? Reorganise work? Broaden hiring criteria? There is no single answer. Competitive advantage may lie precisely in the ability to combine these different levers.
And the outlook remains encouraging. In the second quarter of 2026, companies planning to increase headcount represented 11.3% of total employment, compared with just 3.9% for those expecting to reduce it (FSO).
The recruitment revolution is therefore not only a story of shortage. It is also a story of adaptation and opportunity. The challenge of the coming years will no longer simply be to find “the right person for the right job”. It will be to build organisations capable of learning quickly enough to keep pace with the transformation of their professions.
In this new talent economy, the company best able to develop skills may well also be the one best able to recruit.
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