I was talking with an HR Leader who recently left their position. It’s a tale as old as time; they came in to make the massive transformation of the HR function. They were surrounded by a team that had been in place for decades. A team of professional survivors, I call them. They had been through other HR leaders, and they went through my friend.

What is a Professional Survivor?

First, let me try to define it: “An employee who does slightly above the minimum based on what the current leader desires, but they are more intuned with what the organizational politics prefers.”

Traits of a Professional Survivor:

• Friendly with the current leader and can acknowledge the failures of the past leader without taking responsibility for those failures. (I was doing what I was told and tried to advise them we should be doing what you want us to do now.)

• They are usually fairly well-connected with the old guard within the organization. Professional survivors know how to stick together.

• They never rock the boat. Even when they are demanded to rock the boat by their current leader.

• They are experts at knowing when to push for promotion and pay increases and when not to.

• They are often well-liked, good, positive energy people, so they are not viewed as a problem; they are viewed as just good employees; we wish we had more of them. They know how to “go with the flow.”

I’m not here to bash professional survivors. We see them in every single organization, and they might be the glue that keeps organizations going through major leadership shifts and changes. When we hire new leaders to come in and make change, it’s very common for these executive leaders to bring in their own next-level leaders directly under them, but rarely do you see entire teams overturn. Professional survivors always remain.

Many of us grew up with parents and grandparents who were professional survivors. For those who are type-A it might have made you mad that you were raised by a professional survivor. “How did you just stay in that position your entire career!? Working for the same company for 40 years!?” We struggle to understand that mentality. For the non-type A personalities, we struggle to understand how someone can be so reckless with their career.

Professional survivors want to see the organization succeed. I mean, the majority do. There are always bad folks in every organization. What they don’t want is for something to disturb their status quo in life, which sometimes makes it feel like they don’t honestly want to see success, as much as a new leader might believe.

The key to any new leader in an organization is understanding who are the professional survivors on my team. How do I get these people to be on my side and want to help me, help the organization, and ultimately help them maintain their status? Professional survivors can be amazing advocates to have as a leaders. They know the norms. They know the right people. And they know how to survive!

I was going through my email recently, and I saw some data pulled from Greenhouse showing that the number of applications has basically doubled per job opening in the past year. At first glance, you would believe, “Oh, the economy isn’t doing great; that’s probably the reason.” But in reality, unemployment is still relatively low. So, it is a bit harder to find a job, but historically, there has been pretty low unemployment.

My next feeling is that AI and candidates’ ability to use AI to apply for jobs are more likely the culprits and the Greenhouse team confirmed that. They are seeing candidates apply to many jobs within seconds, which isn’t humanly possible. Also, candidates are using AI tools to match their resumes to the job description, so our matching technology is also struggling to differentiate candidates.

All of this leads me to one simple conclusion.

If AI writes resumes for our jobs and matches jobs to our candidates, we are going to end up with way more candidates who look amazing but are most likely not that amazing. The only way we’ll find this out is to do an amazing job interviewing!

Guess what?!

Most of us SUCK at interviewing! I mean, not you/us/I; we are recruiting professionals, and we are amazing at interviewing! Right?! Right? Right…

It’s our hiring managers who will need the most help.

This is why I believe Interview Intelligence Technology, like Pillar (FYI—I’m an advisor and investor in Pillar—I think they’re amazing technology) and BrightHire, will be the type of HR Technology that takes off in 2025 and 2026. Right now, about 10% of organizations are using AI-built interview technology, but we’ll begin to see that percentage skyrocket.

Our reality in Talent Acquisition is this:

• We don’t have the capacity to interview enough candidates now, and it’s getting worse, not better.
• We don’t have the capacity, material, and skill to train our hiring managers to be better at interviewing to the level we need them.
• We need technology to help us be better at making interviews as bias-free as possible for all of those employees we have interviewing candidates.
• We need to be able to track all the data and content created in interviews.

When I start to ask myself what the future of HR and Talent Acquisition looks like in an AI-enabled world, this is one of the things I’ve come up with. We’ll be having way more face-to-face interviews than ever before, and it’s going to be more critical for us to make fewer false-positive hires, not only from a skills standpoint but also from a fit standpoint.

Have you ever considered how your company handles terminations when annual review season rolls around?

Back in the day, Tesla made headlines when they let go of 400 employees right after performance reviews. If you missed the details, it’s an interesting read, and you can check it out online. Plus, my friend Kris Dunn took a deep dive into Tesla’s unique culture over at The HR Capitalist—definitely worth a read!

When the news broke, Tesla confirmed in a statement that these departures were “part of an annual review” but didn’t provide an exact number.

The San Jose Mercury News reported that up to 700 employees across roles, from engineers to factory workers, were cut. Tesla’s statement mentioned that performance reviews sometimes lead to employee departures—a common practice for companies of their size, with more than 33,000 employees worldwide.

But here’s the question: is tying terminations to annual reviews a good way to sustain a healthy workplace culture?

Sure, Tesla’s got the cool factor—having “Tesla” on your resume is a badge of honor for many. But does that still apply if employees feel like they’re on the chopping block every review season? I get that letting go of underperformers is a necessary part of business, but should it be tied to once-a-year performance reviews?

Picture the lead-up to review week at Tesla. I can almost imagine the “just-in-case” goodbye lunches, where everyone’s invited to break bread “just because.” And once reviews are over, that Friday could be one big post-review party.

Let’s be real—firing employees around annual review time can turn a standard process into a high-stress, anxiety-driven experience. If a company only addresses performance issues annually, that’s a sign performance management might be falling short.

Strong, performance-driven cultures don’t wait for review season to give feedback; they make it a continuous process. If improvement isn’t happening, high-performing companies usually address the issue immediately, rather than waiting for an annual purge day that piles on unnecessary stress.

But hey everyone can march to their own drumbeat! I’d love to meet Tesla’s HR leader back then and hear their take on how they think this approach strengthens their culture.

Keep it real in HR!

With fall comes HR and TA conference season. From October through December, there are events happening every week around the globe. These conferences are packed with vendor booths, big-name speakers, and the chance to step away from the office for a bit. But there’s a common strategy behind these events that keeps people coming back year after year.

The secret? They won’t tell you that your processes are bad. Instead, they show you how far ahead everyone else seems to be, making you feel like you’re behind.

Picture this: You’re at a session, and they’re talking about how a company like Google has created the perfect, diverse workforce. Now, you’re thinking, “How can we ever compete with that?” That’s when you start looking at the expo booths for tools to help you “catch up.”

The truth is, no company is perfect, even if it seems like it at these conferences. The reality is that everyone is trying to improve, and most companies are far from flawless.

“Exceptionalism” is this idea that every company has achieved greatness. But if everyone is “great,” doesn’t that just make “great” average? The cool new tools you see at a conference today will be standard practice for everyone else tomorrow.

In HR and TA, we see this all the time. A new trend or tool spreads fast, and before you know it, everyone’s doing the same thing. You’re not paying all that money to be just like everyone else, but that’s often what happens.

What Really Builds a Great HR or TA Team?

Here’s what they don’t always talk about:

• It’s about small, consistent improvements: Great HR and TA teams aren’t built overnight. Instead, they grow through steady progress that matches what your company actually needs.
• Chasing the top 1% isn’t always the answer: It’s tempting to try to be like the few companies doing amazing things, but leadership often doesn’t want to make those big changes. Pushing too hard for this can lead to burnout or frustration.
• Real greatness takes sacrifice: Reaching the highest levels of success requires both vision and hard work, but not everyone has the desire or resources to make those sacrifices.

But let’s be honest, this isn’t what sells conference tickets. What sells is the idea that you can be just as great if you invest in the latest tools or strategies.

At the end of the day, it’s not about being perfect. It’s about making steady improvements that move your company forward. So instead of feeling like you’re always behind, focus on what really matters for your team’s success.