Perhaps more surprising, a recent McKinsey report found that 36% of respondents quit their jobs without having another job lined up for them. A Microsoft study earlier this year found that 41% of the global workforce will consider leaving their current employer within the next year. Investors and experienced executive teams have learned from those mistakes and are now hiring a Head of People much earlier to build HR systems and teams that scale. Eventually, those rudimentary systems broke and an experienced HR leader would be brought in to begin a long and disruptive process of rebuilding everything from the ground up. The growth trajectory of startups over the past decade often centered on recruiting, scaling as fast as possible with little investment in building scalable HR operating systems. Companies are investing in HR and people operations much earlier than they did in past years.As those companies scale, many are prioritizing (and investing in) progressive People teams and operations necessary to navigate the current and post-COVID talent market. The market is flush with over $268B in venture capital investments in 2021 alone.Their inability to adapt to all of the cataclysmic changes of 2020 and beyond (pandemic, hybrid/remote, social justice, mental health, the great resignation ) made it clear that new leadership and capabilities were needed. Traditional HR teams that are more oriented around administrative and transactional tasks struggled to adapt to the volatility of the past 18 months. Legacy HR teams were exposed during the pandemic.The demand has never been higher, and there are four reasons for that: According to a recent poll by Indeed, HR job postings have seen an 87% spike since February of last year, a rate outpacing all jobs across roles by 43%.

The market for HR and recruiting practitioners has never been hotter. Lenox believes big changes are essential, noting the current environment demands a “pretty massive reset.” But getting that reset is rarely easy: “How can you hopefully have the trust with your CEO to have that really honest conversation? And then, of course, at the end of the day, to have them actually advocate for your team, because that’s the only way to really get the boundaries that you need.” Why You’re Struggling to Hire HR and Recruiting Roles Right Now

Leading an HR team during this time period has become “exponentially more difficult,” says former Stitch Fix Chief People Officer Jevan Soo Lenox.

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