Kari Robinson (Pattern Operations Consulting, formerly Intercom and Dropbox) and Jackie Bisonthe (Tides) closed RecOps Con 2026 with a simple read on the year: recruiting went agentic. A few years ago, you asked AI for help and did the work yourself. In 2026, teams started handing it the work.
Build or buy got harder. Talent Llama went to Ashby. Greenhouse bought Ezra. Vendors ship the feature you just built (or bought) a quarter later. Kari’s advice: tell finance now that overlapping spend will happen, and weigh the cost of not buying as seriously as the cost of buying.
The hard part moved. It’s no longer doing the work. It’s deciding what to hand over, checking what comes back and noticing when a workflow quietly stops working.
RecOps inherits new stakeholders. Guardrails, governance and ownership used to sit with IT and legal. Now they sit with RecOps. Kari admitted she struggles to push back on an InfoSec “no” when she doesn’t understand the risk behind it (and suspects they don’t understand her ask either).
You’ll hire bots. In 2027, your team will include agents you build, assign, train and (the fun part) name. ATS admin, reporting and headcount planning don’t go away. This sits on top.
Then the room wrote its own 2027 job description. Answers ranged from bot governance to basic code literacy to an “AI fluency score” based on how well you prompt. One early-career attendee went the other way: back to first principles, because most problems don’t need AI.
Their close: your 2027 job starts now. Pick 1 skill that made you uncomfortable and do 1 thing about it on Monday.
