When it comes to hiring in 2027, there are endless possibilities — but also growing risks that you can’t afford to ignore. Shifting legislation, growing pressure to use AI efficiently, and finding the right balance between global standards and local nuance are challenges your team needs to solve now to stay ahead next year.
So we put three of the most experienced voices in global hiring on one call to ask them one pressing question: what do teams need to know about global hiring in 2027?
Meet the panellists:
- Rebecca Oldham, Vice President of Talent Acquisition, Mastercard
- Trent Cotton, Head of Talent Insights & Analyst Relations, iCIMS
- Hamraj Coakley-Gulamali, General Counsel, Zinc
Moderated by Patrick White, Zinc’s CRO, the conversation that followed was full of practical advice and tips that only come from people who do this for a living.
Here are the three tips we think every global hiring team should take away when they’re hiring across borders.
Tip #1: Get ahead of the EU’s legislation changes
If you were planning to file the EU’s two new legislations — fitness and propriety and pay transparency — under “future problems”, you should probably reconsider. But before we get into why, let’s unpack what these legislations even mean. Here are the highlights of what's changing:
Fit and proper
- In January 2026, the scope of fit and proper widened to the board and C-suite, and from July 2027 new anti-money-laundering rules will extend it to a large group of people directly involved in AML compliance.
- Checks will need to start sooner in onboarding, so a board member has been checked before they are appointed.
Pay transparency
- Salaries must appear on job adverts
- Recruiters can't ask about previous salary
- Gender pay gap figures must be reported publicly (for companies over 150 headcount)
With only four of the 27 member states meeting the June 2026 pay transparency deadline, you might look at the rollout and think there's no rush. But most countries are on track to hit a 2027 deadline, which means the teams who've already done the work will be well ahead instead of scrambling at the last minute.
Trent took the same view with the EU AI Act. While it isn't fully enforceable yet, iCIMS has been making sure its systems comply anyway. "We're not waiting for them to put it into place," said Trent.
What happens if you miss the deadline?
Well, to begin with, you could get slapped with a hefty fine. Hamraj pointed out that while in the UK regulation is often seen as “slightly toothless”, the story in the EU is different. As he put it, "In the EU, the fines are punishing, regular and well administered. Regulation has bite in the EU."
The part that gets talked about less is the reputational risk, which Hamraj thinks will hit talent teams significantly: "Pretty soon candidates and employees are not going to want to work with companies that have bad pay transparency standards... because it's going to become the norm really quickly."
Candidates will be comparing pay ranges across adverts, and they'll notice who's being upfront and who's skirting the rules. The same goes for fit and proper if you're in financial services. The checks concern people that lead your business, so getting them wrong says something about your brand, not just your hiring process.
The fines are real, but the bigger risk is jeopardising your ability to attract and keep the right people. The teams who get ahead of the legislation now protect both.
Tip #2: Loop legal in before you buy
Pop quiz time: if you had to explain the difference between AI and automation to a room full of your colleagues, would you be able to?
If you're breaking into a sweat, don't worry, you're not alone. According to iCIMS' AI adoption survey, 58% of 412 senior talent leaders couldn't do it either.
And yet, we're all buying these technologies every single day. As Trent put it, you could end up "purchasing a really sexy automation but being charged at an AI price."
And while overpaying is an easy mistake to fix, forgoing compliance in the process is the one you need to watch out for. Hamraj explained that under the EU AI Act, even something as simple as an AI-assisted score next to a candidate's profile is likely to bring a tool into the high-risk category.
If you don't know what you're buying, you can't know what you're signing up for. Someone needs to spot that before the contract is signed, and that someone is legal.
If there’s one thing Trent Cotton wants you to learn, it’s this: "Bring them in early. Don't wait and build something out and get everyone really excited about it and then call legal the bad guy, because it's not their fault that you brought them in at the end."
So how do you loop legal in early?
Trent suggested a three demo approach.
- Demo 1: Just for you to decide if it’s a go or no-go
- Demo 2: For your team so you can assess how they’re feeling about it
- Demo 3: For your Compliance and Legal team to assess
So before you book your next demo, check the invite list. Is legal on it?
Tip #3: Build global, flex local
Do you secretly think a global hiring standard that works in every market is a bit like the Loch Ness Monster?
We’ve all heard the stories for decades but nobody can confidently say it exists. Lucky for us, our panellist Rebecca Oldham has seen a global hiring standard do its magic in real life at Mastercard.
According to her, a global framework gives recruiters something to anchor to, keeps the process consistent, and makes it auditable. It also means candidates get a similar experience wherever they apply. As she put it, "my recruiter in London can go and hire in Bogotá, New York, and in Australia." It's also more robust in the long run than hyper-localising and creating niche processes that someone has to remember.
But standards don’t need to be set in stone. When Patrick asked where she'd had to bend the rules, Rebecca pointed to in-person interviewing, particularly in newer markets Mastercard enters through acquisitions. If it's the only way to win high-level tech talent, you may need to flex. The key is to have a hybrid approach, keep the framework, and flex where it matters. Here's how she explained it:
So what does flexing look like in practice?
Trent thinks of the global standard as the "price of admission", the quality and efficiency every candidate should expect wherever they are. Beyond that, he said, localisation is unavoidable, and sometimes beyond even the country level.
Here's what came up in the conversation as things worth flexing by region:
- Language
When Trent managed hiring in Canada, adverts in Montreal had to be posted in both French and English.
- Messaging
He also changed how he positioned roles to reach and attract the incredible Indigenous talent in Canada,
- Interview process
Rebecca's example of in-person interviewing, where a local market expects it and it's the best way to win the talent.
While flexing isn’t an endless process because "we can't be everything for everybody”, the diversity inside a global organisation is its strength. Teams should do everything they can to acknowledge and accommodate that diversity in hiring processes.
Struggling to picture what this looks like for your own hiring?
Download “Your global hiring packing list”, which includes a short activity that helps you map what belongs in your global framework and what should flex by region. It's a good place to start before your next conversation about hiring in a new market.
Want to hear the full conversation?
We know global hiring is complex, but our conversation definitely proved it’s not impossible to do well.
Download the webinar on demand to find out what Rebecca, Trent, and Hamraj had to say about candidate fraud, hiring based on skills, and how to make automation work harder for your team.
