The CVs rising to the top of the pile look a little different these days

You may have noticed something unusual about your hiring pipeline lately – a subtle shift, a creative flourish. The CVs floating to the top of the pile aren’t all MBAs and management consultants anymore. Increasingly, they come with strong creds in design, digital culture or game development. No, it’s not a glitch in your Applicant Tracking System. It’s the future calling.

So, what’s going on?

As AI quietly eats up the linear, repeatable, spreadsheet-friendly tasks of business life, what we need from humans is changing. The World Economic Forum reckons over a billion people will need retraining by 2030 – they’re calling it ‘The Reskilling Revolution’. 

Educational publishing and services provider Pearson sees creative careers playing a vital role in the future of business, especially as automation takes over routine tasks. Human creativity, through design, storytelling, innovation and problem-solving, will become the key differentiator. They also believe creative thinking will be in growing demand across all industries, not just in traditional ‘creative’ sectors, and that nurturing creative skills will be essential for businesses to stay competitive and innovative in a fast-changing economy.

The old rules – hire for experience, reward consistency, favour the ‘safe pair of hands’ – are being pushed aside by reality. And who’s quietly and confidently picking up the pieces? Creative thinkers. The ones who thrive in ambiguity, find clarity in the fog and probably couldn’t care less about how you did things ‘back in 2015’.

Welcome to the ‘humanitocracy’, where potential trumps pedigree and your next CEO might be an art school alumnus or alumna.

Out with track record, in with brain-first

Traditionally, hiring has been obsessed with ‘proof’. The right jobs, the right schools, and knowing the ’right people’. But the ability to repeat what worked before is no longer a virtue – in fact, it can be more of a hindrance.

Creative minds don’t cling to precedent. They question it. They dream better systems into being. They’re allergic to ‘we’ve always done it this way’. They ask better questions, such as, ‘What if this entire industry is built on outdated assumptions?’ ‘What if the real value lives somewhere we’re not even looking yet?’ And they bring with them a whole new kind of network too. A network that’s typically more dispersed and diverse, and will unlock new business avenues that were never on the visible horizon. 

It’s no accident that some of the most iconic businesses of the past 50 years – think Apple, Airbnb, Patagonia – were led by individuals who valued design, purpose, problem solving and storytelling as much as they did profit and loss and quarterly growth.

Despite this, creative individuals have repeatedly faced challenges in corporate environments due to conflicting expectations and biases. Businesses often prioritise order and established processes, which can clash with the unconventional and often disruptive nature of creativity. 

Creative thinkers are comfortable with uncertainty. They’re natural collaborators, able to pull ideas and people together across silos. They’re gifted storytellers who persuade not just with data, but with vision. They make purposeful problem solving pivotal. And most crucially, they’re optimists – because without optimism, innovation dies on the whiteboard. These are the skills that can’t be automated. They’re the ones that build cultures, spark revolutions and, yes, change the world. 

The new secret sauce

We’ve clung to the idea of meritocracy for decades. But it’s always had blind spots – it rewards people who’ve already been seen.

A humanitocracy asks: ‘Who are you becoming?’ ‘What can you imagine?’ ‘What could you lead?’

It values emotional intelligence, inclusive thinking, democratic leadership and hope. These may sound like unconventional attributes in business, but they’re fast becoming the hallmarks of a bold, forward-thinking strategy.

As AI continues to do more of the ‘what’, businesses need people who can shape the ‘why’.

Entrepreneur, CEO and keynote speaker Margaret Heffernan puts it best. In an uncertain world – whether from pandemics, political shocks or tech disruption – the classic ‘forecast-plan-execute’ model doesn’t work. She calls for adaptability over certainty, experimentation over control. She talks about optionality and building systems that flex, whatever’s thrown at them.

She argues against over-relying on tech to shortcut complex understanding. And she makes a compelling case that effectiveness now means being comfortable with ambiguity and imagining multiple futures, not just optimising for one.

To sum up, thriving in uncertainty takes creativity, collaboration and the guts to sit with the unknown.

From gatekeeping to path-making

If you’re still hiring to protect what was, rather than to shape what’s next, it’s time to rethink your approach.

Gatekeepers are out. Path-makers are in – the people who carve new routes into industries and spark careers that didn’t exist five years ago.

At Bond & Coyne, we know the impact of organisations telling their ‘true story’ creatively. It means audiences are engaged, staff are inspired and the doors are opened to unexpected talent too. It’s a powerful cycle. When your customer-facing and employer brands stand out as future-focused, energised and distinctive, you attract the right talent, build stronger relationships with prospects and stakeholders and position your business to grow.

So, what now?

You don’t need to abandon all your hiring processes straightaway. But definitely start asking better questions.

• Look for agility, not just accolades. Can this person adapt, learn, lead with empathy?
• Widen your channels. If your pipeline all looks the same, your outcomes will too.
• Celebrate imagination. Not just in the design team, but in leadership, performance reviews and boardrooms.
• Rethink what leadership looks like. Maybe it’s someone with a street mural on their CV. Or a game designer who’s never set foot in the corporate world.

Change is uncomfortable, especially for those who’ve spent years guarding the gates, but a shift is essential if we’re to build what’s needed next to optimise potential and accelerate growth.

Because in the age of AI, your biggest asset won’t be your data, it’ll be your people. The ones brave, ingenious and quirky enough to think outside of the box.