What ANZ Senior HR Hiring Actually Looks Like Right Now

The most common thing I hear from HR leaders considering a move right now is that they are not looking. They are fielding calls, thinking about it, but not actively on the market. That is not a sign of a quiet market. That is a sign of a market where the best people are staying put until something genuinely compelling comes along, and organisations that do not understand that are waiting for candidates who are never going to apply.

I run a specialist HR and HSE executive search agency in Sydney. I have been doing this for 13 years. The last 12 months have been some of the most interesting I have seen in the senior end of this market, and not always for the reasons you would expect.

Earlier this year we published the Civitas Talent Global HR Market Intelligence Report 2026, based on responses from 1,500 HR and Talent leaders globally, 720 of them from Australia. The respondents included CPOs, HR Directors, Heads of Talent and Acquisition, People Analytics leaders, and senior HR Business Partners. What came back was not a surprise to me. But the scale of it was.

What is actually happening

The broad Australian labour market is softening. AHRI’s March 2026 Work Outlook survey, which covered 602 senior HR professionals and decision-makers, recorded net employment intentions at +38, down from +48 in both the September and December 2025 quarters. Only 59% of organisations planned to hire in the next three months, compared to 71% the quarter before. Average turnover has eased to 14%. On the surface that reads as a cooling market.

Senior HR is not behaving like the broad market. Demand for commercially fluent People and Culture leaders has held firm throughout. What has changed is the quality bar. Organisations are not replacing like for like. When a senior HR role opens up, they are asking what they actually need now, which often looks quite different from what the last person was hired to do three or four years ago.

The roles that are genuinely hard to fill are the ones sitting at the intersection of strategic advisory, regulatory fluency, and functional credibility. Employee and industrial relations capability is scarce and in high demand. Leaders who can walk into a boardroom conversation with the same ease they bring to a consultation process with a union do not come up often, and when they do, they move quickly.

Australia still has 36% of occupations in shortage nationally. That number does not dominate headlines the way it did in 2022 and 2023, but it has not gone away. It creates the underlying tension that keeps senior HR relevant at the executive table even when the broader hiring market is pausing.

What is happening specifically in Talent Acquisition

The TA function deserves its own read because it is behaving differently from the broader HR market, and if you are in Talent you will know this better than most. Senior TA leaders in ANZ have had a rough 18 months. When organisations reduced hiring volumes through 2024 and into 2025, TA teams were often the first to feel it. Headcount cut, contractors released, scope narrowed. What is left in many organisations is a leaner team being asked to do more with less, led by a Head of TA or TA Director who now needs to be as much a strategist and technology architect as a hiring practitioner.

Our market intelligence data shows that recruitment and talent acquisition is the single biggest area of AI application inside HR functions right now. 69% of HR departments surveyed are using AI primarily in TA, ahead of L&D at 46% and employee engagement at 44%. That is happening at a function level. Whether the senior TA leaders sitting above those teams are actually equipped to govern it is a different question, and in many cases the answer is not yet.

The demand signal for senior TA leaders is real but uneven. Organisations genuinely investing in hiring capability are actively looking for people who have done that work before. Organisations that cut too deep and are now feeling the consequences of hollowed-out function are also looking, often urgently. The briefs sound similar from the outside. They are not. The first is a genuine build. The second is a rescue, and experienced candidates can tell the difference quickly.

One pattern worth noting, particularly in PE-backed, high-growth, and restructuring environments, is consistent demand for HR and TA leaders who have moved across people, talent, and business operations at different points in their careers. They  understand the P&L. They can read a business strategy and translate it into a workforce plan that makes commercial sense to a board or an investment committee. That profile is rare, it is in demand, and it commands a premium the broader HR market is not seeing to the same degree.

The structural tension nobody is solving

The single most consistent finding across our global survey was this: HR accountability consistently exceeds HR decision authority. Leaders are responsible for outcomes shaped by structural, operational, and technological factors beyond their direct control. That is not a new observation. But the gap is widening.

CEOs now expect CPOs to operate as executives first and people specialists second. 85% of CPOs surveyed described their primary focus as strategic leadership and influencing organisational decision-making. Yet when we asked about readiness for the next three to five years, confidence dropped sharply, most acutely in workforce planning, people analytics, and AI governance. Confidence today does not equal readiness tomorrow, and most leaders know it.

The most capable candidates at this level are doing real due diligence before accepting roles. They want to know whether there is genuine executive access, whether the CEO understands what good looks like, and whether the organisation is willing to invest in the function beyond salary. When I am running searches at this level those conversations happen early and they matter.

What the AI shift is doing to hiring criteria

Two years ago, AI literacy barely featured in a senior HR job spec. Today it is a baseline expectation in most, and a primary differentiator in some. Our data found that 71% of HR functions have already begun adopting AI, 8% significantly and 63% through active pilots. The three biggest blockers to moving faster are governance and compliance concerns at 24%, data quality at 22%, and change management at 22%. The hurdle is no longer the technology. It is the structural and ethical framework around it, and organisations are hiring people to build that framework from scratch.

HR job postings requiring AI skills grew 66% in the period to 2024, according to Lightcast analysis of over 1.3 billion global job postings, the fastest growth rate of any job function. 86% of Australian HR professionals expect major operational AI impact on their function. The gap between expecting that impact and being genuinely prepared to lead through it is where a lot of senior hiring is now happening.

Psychosocial risk is moving in the same direction. Australia’s regulatory framework in this space is now among the most demanding in the world. With Victoria’s standalone psychosocial health regulations commencing in December 2025, every Australian jurisdiction has completed that legislative shift. Breaches can constitute criminal offences. Safe Work Australia data shows median compensation for serious psychological injury claims at $67,400, more than four times the median across all serious claims. Regulatory fluency in this area is now a genuine selection criterion at the senior level, in ways that would have seemed over calibrated three years ago.

What comes next

Nearly half of Australians are working flexibly and the right to disconnect is now embedded in law. Both are live complexity for every People leader in the country. The cumulative weight of what is now expected of a senior HR leader in ANZ, commercial acumen, AI governance, regulatory breadth, and genuine strategic access, is significant. The market for people who carry all of that is not large, and it is not getting larger quickly.

Later in 2026 we will publish the ANZ Senior HR Hiring Confidence Report, built on primary data from People and Culture and Talent leaders across Australia and New Zealand. If you want to contribute your perspective or be notified when it publishes, you can register at civitastalent.com.