Hiring has been a recurring problem in the mid-market for the past decade (but for different reasons):
📈 2015: Post-crisis normalization, steady hiring recovery, disciplined budgets, early signs of tightening talent supply
📈 2016: Continued expansion, confidence rises, hiring improves but still grounded in fundamentals
📈 2017: Early bubble formation begins – cheap capital pumped into growth, hiring starts getting ahead of productivity
📈 2018: Acceleration phase – fighting for talent, compensation inflates a lot, first signs of inefficiency in hiring layers
📈 2019: Late-cycle excess, record openings and quits, overstaffing in growth functions starts to build quietly
❔ 2020: COVID shock! hiring freezes then uneven rebound, digital roles recover faster, massive policy intervention resets cycle
📈 2021: Rebound + hiring distortion, a mix of remote work + ZIRP + stimulus drive aggressive hiring, quality standards drop a ton
📈 2022: Peak overhiring / Great Resignation, maximum demand, inflated org charts, hiring based on projected not real growth (bubble top)
📉 2023: Correction begins; layoffs in overbuilt sectors, hiring slows, shift from growth-at-all-costs to efficiency
📉 2024: “Quiet stay” market; low mobility, fewer quits, hiring cautious, hold, but still ongoing cuts. RTO mandates slice organically
❔ 2025: Selective hiring; focus on ROI-positive roles, reduced middle layers, continued pressure on non-core functions
🤖 2026: AI-driven competitiveness gap; hiring favors high-output, AI-leveraged talent, outdated skill sets rapidly lose relevance
When recruitment is such a massive pain for the enterprise market, it should be no surprise agentic systems get hundreds of billions of funding lately.
1. Hiring is a long and painful process with constant screening and interviews, betting on application promises and success stories, background checks.
2. Onboarding is hoping that the talent will fit culturally and morally, and of course, skill-wise. This may fail at any stage of the process.
3. Long-term risk of churn includes costs, potential IP risks, possibly poaching, shifting in-house and trade secrets to 3rd parties and competitors, and potential security breaches or data leaks imposed internally.
I’m expanding on the hiring principles in 2026 since DevriX is hiring actively for several of our mid-market and PE-backed portfolio companies for our advisory arms (post-merger, FP&A, value creation, RevOps).
What we see holistically is our internal recruitment process, advising operators and PE partners in their internal cycles, vetting VPs in the process, and my own take across Growth Shuttle advisory clients + companies I’ve invested in (one of them raised a new $50M round last week and accelerates recruitment fast).
Growth Shuttle InsiderGrowth Shuttle Insider
The Hiring Playbook is Broken (and PE Need to Act Fast)
Mario Peshev
