Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts the 21st century will see 20,000 years of technological progress in just 100 years. This mind-boggling advancement is already reshaping industries like publishing, where a stable, print-focused business heritage has morphed into an uncertain multi-platform future.
So, with the acceleration of emerging technology and changing consumer behaviour, how do you hire for capabilities no one fully understands yet, for roles that might not even exist in their current form a year from now? Answering this question will define learning, development, and hiring strategies for years to come.
Understand what you have is a moving target
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, by 2030, 170 million new jobs will be created due to structural labour-market transformation, while displacing 92 million. These disruptions are already evident in our own industry, where the nature of roles and required skills are constantly evolving.
Consider editorial teams. Just a few years ago, they were print specialists. Today, they’re multi-media journalists creating content for everything from short-form video and podcasts to online platforms and Apple News algorithms.
It’s not just editorial staff. AI Overviews have significantly impacted traditional organic SEO strategies for publishers, forcing digital marketers to develop new strategies almost overnight. Keeping up means evolving at the same pace as the tech platforms that now have a commanding role in audience reach. Standing still means falling behind. The same applies to almost every discipline in our industry.
So, how can publishers build the right foundations to not just withstand, but actively embrace these winds of change?
Reframing emerging technologies from threat to opportunity
Before considering any hiring strategies, publishers must first cultivate a vibrant, innovation-embracing culture. Leaders must reframe emerging technologies like AI not as a threat, but as an opportunity for development, experimentation, and creativity. By instilling a sense of optimism, they can empower staff and encourage them to view new technologies as tools for growth rather than a risk to their jobs.
A critical part of this cultural shift is creating a clear, positive vision for future roles, one where AI is seen as a way to augment people, not replace them. This message must be consistently championed by leaders, who serve as the architects of this new environment.
They must also model humility, vulnerability and honesty. By admitting they don’t have all the answers, leaders can give their teams permission to collectively solve challenges and experiment. Establishing clear values and leadership behaviours isn’t just a checklist item. It’s the filter that guides every action, including recruitment.
Creating a foundation of AI literacy
The next critical step is establishing a foundational understanding of AI and emerging technologies across the entire organisation. This isn’t about turning everyone into data scientists, but equipping all your people with a baseline of “AI literacy”.
This foundation of AI literacy should serve as a guiding principle for hiring, dictating how a company evolves its overall skillset and how individuals are expected to contribute.
For media companies, AI literacy involves more than just understanding core concepts. It means comprehending the ethical implications, such as copyright and algorithmic bias. Crucially, it also means providing hands-on experience with AI tools relevant to their specific workflows. This practical focus moves AI from the theoretical to the actionable, reinforcing a mindset of curiosity and learning. As the saying goes, everyone learns by doing.
At Immediate, we’ve encouraged all teams to explore how they can adopt AI into their daily tasks through dedicated learning programs and knowledge sharing. This day-to-day use helps people become comfortable with the technology and overcome the hurdles of unfamiliarity. Our teams use AI to automate laborious, time-consuming tasks, freeing up more time for content creation and innovation.
Hiring for multi-dimensional skills
This new reality requires a fundamental shift in how we assess candidates. While technical ability was once the most critical factor, mindset is now just as important. This is particularly true when evaluating a candidate’s AI literacy and their ability to adapt to new technologies.
We must place a greater emphasis on a candidate’s willingness to grow, experiment, embrace uncertainty, and learn from feedback. This approach moves beyond simply looking at a person’s knowledge and experience, which can quickly become outdated.
This is a time for doubling down on robust assessment practices, not for getting lax. We need to focus on identifying the right competencies for the mindsets we need. This should involve emphasising collective problem-solving, as well as structured, competency-based assessments that focus on the skills necessary for a culture of adaptability. This focus on developing a different mindset — one that sees opportunity and leads change — should be central to any hiring philosophy.
Building a talent portfolio
A forward-thinking approach to talent management is then about logging and tracking people’s evolving skills, interests, and experiences to anticipate future needs. This “talent portfolio” allows companies to proactively identify internal talent for emerging opportunities, rather than always looking externally.
At Immediate, we have created a Skills Academies programme — upskilling around data, video and commercial skills. These academies help people understand expectations and identity development gaps. Crucially, the programme is constantly updated to match the changing needs.
A critical aspect of this shift is breaking free from traditional thinking about people confined to specific jobs, roles, or functions and potentially missing internal talent by not recognising transferrable skills and growth potential. This rigidity extends to how roles are defined.
This is something we have tackled as a company, where we’ve started seconding members of our editorial teams with our AI specialists. They then return to their brands with new skills and innovation mindsets. It’s about stretching people beyond their core roles and instilling a mindset of curiosity and a willingness to seize new opportunities.
Towards a future of co-created job descriptions
As roles shift and change, static job descriptions are quickly becoming obsolete. A more collaborative and flexible approach to defining roles is needed to keep up with the new skills required.
Looking ahead, organisations should focus on supporting and tracking evolving career paths as traditional boundaries and static processes disappear. This requires a flexible framework that encourages people to experiment, develop new skills, and even co-create roles that address emerging business needs.
This reversal of the previous top-down approach will help companies stay attuned to technological shifts, enabling them to react quickly to changes. Embracing this cultural shift means senior leadership teams must be grounded in their approach, recognising they don’t have all the answers and are on this journey together with their teams.
Investing in your people and creating an experimentation culture
Creating the right environment internally is key to this change in strategy. Companies need to ensure they have the right L&D programmes in place to develop and encourage new skills, innovation, and a culture of experimentation.
Creating psychological safety is vital. People need to know it’s okay to try new things and learn as much from what went wrong as what went right.
At Immediate, we’ve been developing a culture of experimentation in a variety of ways; guest speakers from other industries, holding AI hackathons, experimentation days and launching an innovation fund where people can pitch for funding for new ideas, regardless of what function they work in. All of this has helped develop an environment where we’re trying and testing new ideas and, importantly, developing new skills and ways of working.
The flexible organisation will win the race for talent
Ultimately, the revolution in talent acquisition isn’t just about the mindset of the hires, but about a transformation of companies themselves. Legacy-based hiring systems, rigid structures, and a narrow focus on immediate skillsets are becoming outdated. The ultimate competitive advantage lies in hiring for mindset.
Cultivating adaptability, curiosity, and a willingness to learn is key, especially when many traditional skills are becoming redundant faster than they can be acquired.
Further reading
- Understanding the Accelerating Rate of Change, by Ray Kurzweil, Chris Meyer
- World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025: The jobs of the future — and the skills you need to get them
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
