Human curated highlights from last week:
Allowing only authorized artificial users: Workday to acquire C1.ai to manage AI agent access;
Needing more than products: Cielo finds 87% upped TA tech buying, but still struggle to hire;
Finding the glass half full: Recruiters source faster with AI but lack confidence in candidates;
Pushing to break old habits: The “Frontline Gap” degrades recruitment for 70% of U.S. workforce;
Mitigating the expected disaster: Anthropic commits 5% of shares to new public benefit fund.
Plus...
Hey! If you’re a talent technology company in the hunt for funding, look no further than Propel Summit! It will be held at Boston University on January 20-21, 2027 to promote the development and implementation of Human Advancement AI, a meta-category encompassing HRtech, TAtech, Edtech and Worktech. It serves the Builders, Backers and Buyers of those applications with the goal of generating new term sheets and partnerships that accelerate AI solutions for advancing people at work. Don’t miss this inaugural event; Register today!
Conferences are great; in fact, we’ll be hosting three of them next year. But, you also need to form partnerships and promote your brand in between those events. That’s what TAtech Year-Round is all about! Join the TAtech Network and connect with other TA solution providers globally for partnering, product integrations, marketing joint ventures and more, plus see your products featured in a Buyer’s Guide promoted continuously to TA/HR and industry leaders and shine a spotlight on your individual and corporate thought leadership in talent acquisition and technology. Give your company the competitive advantage it deserves; sign up today!
Workday To Acquire C1.ai To Manage AI Agent Access
Workday signed a definitive agreement to acquire C1.ai. It provides identity governance technology to manage access to enterprise systems. The platform connects with applications used for email, customer relationship management, finance, software development and cloud infrastructure. Workday plans to use C1.ai's technology to manage permissions for both employees and AI agents. The system is intended to grant access based on a person's role or an agent's requirements and revoke it when it is no longer needed.
87% increased talent acquisition tech investment, but most still struggle to scale hiring
Cielo, the world's leading Talent Solutions Partner, today released its new Talent Benchmark, a global research report on how enterprise organizations are evolving talent acquisition through technology investment, AI adoption, adaptive operating models, workforce agility and business-value measurement. Based on a global survey of enterprise HR leaders, Cielo's Talent Benchmark finds that organizations are investing heavily in AI and talent technology, but many have yet to translate that investment into a more agile hiring model.
Recruiters find people faster with AI — but confidence in candidates hasn’t followed
More than 2 in 3 recruiters told TestGorilla they spend an hour or more manually checking a candidate’s credentials, while 30% said they spend two hours or more. “Recruiters got a better search engine and a worse index in the same 12 months,” said Wouter Durville, CEO and co-founder of TestGorilla. “Every sourcing tool sells reach, and reach is close to free now. The expensive thing is a shortlist you can defend to a hiring manager, and most tools give recruiters no way to tell a checked claim from an unchecked one.”
The Frontline Gap degrading recruitment for 70% of the U.S. workforce
Over the past decade, human resource (HR) software has been rebuilt around what happens after hire, everything from cloud payroll to mobile scheduling. However, HR software for frontline workers—often “deskless” employees in industries such as healthcare, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, etc.—changed far less, and for many hourly employers it’s still a mix of job boards, spreadsheets, and a recruiter working the phone. The lack of adequate HR tools for this particular segment of the workforce is referred to as the “frontline gap.” Aptitude Research’s State of Hiring Automation 2026 report gave post-application hiring an average automation score of 21%. Drawing on a survey of more than 300 organizations, it found 94% of organizations don’t schedule interviews inline, and frontline hiring fared no better than knowledge work.
Anthropic commits 5% of shares to new public benefit fund that could address AI job disruption
Anthropic said Sunday it plans to commit 5% of its shares to a new public benefit fund, with the stake potentially increasing as the company’s valuation grows. Subject to shareholder approval, the fund would immediately commit 5% of Anthropic’s shares, with the board adding, at its discretion, an additional 2% for every 50% increase in the company’s value above a set baseline that has yet to be disclosed.
