Three Things Keeping CPOs & CHROs Up at Night (Besides Everything Else)
Real quick, let me paint you a picture of what it looks like to be an HR leader right now!
1️⃣ First, you’ve got AI reshaping every single function you oversee.
⏭️ Next in line, fraud is getting more sophisticated by the day…and I mean genuinely unhinged levels of sophisticated.
➡️ Then comes your tech stack, which is held together by hope and a few integrations that only kind of sort of work.
❗❗ Oh wait, don’t forget your employees (and you) are existing in wild and unprecedented times so stress is extremely heightened.
Leadership also wants you to solve crisis after crisis, and somewhere in between all of that, you’re still supposed to be a strategic partner with a seat at the table! HAHAHAHA.
(Sometimes we need to laugh to keep from crying, right???)
I’ve been in this industry long enough to know that HR has always operated in a state of controlled chaos, but 2026 feels different.
The pace of change has gotten to a point where keeping up is a full-time job in and of itself!
Checkr just released their 2026 CHRO Insights Report, which is a survey of 2,500 HR leaders across industries, and it confirmed everything I’ve been thinking about and occasionally stress-eating about.
The findings tell a story about a function that’s being asked to do more, faster, with tools that are just okay, in an environment that’s getting riskier by the quarter.
I pulled three findings that I think every HR leader needs to sit with, which is what we will discuss today!
🚨 Finding 1: Fraud Is Getting Wildly Creative, and HR Is Not Ready
I need to talk about something that genuinely shocked me when I first heard about it, because I don’t feel shocked easily these days!
A friend of mine who’s a recruiter at a tech company told me they’d been receiving a flood of applications that looked completely normal on the surface.
We’re talking great resumes, solid LinkedIn profiles, responsive candidates…and then someone flagged it.
Come to find out, a significant chunk of those applications were tied to an operation trying to infiltrate the company and access data. 🤯
I tell that story because the report confirmed what I already knew, which is that hiring fraud is getting way more sophisticated, and organizations are currently not confident they’re catching it.
❗ Only 31% of CHROs say they have strong controls and technology in place to prevent hiring fraud!
In a world where AI has made it easier than ever to fabricate credentials and generate fake application materials, that exposure is legitimately alarming.
And the thing that gets me is that the people who show up to interview and the people who actually show up to work can be two completely different people!
That kind of behavior is going to become more common as AI makes identity misrepresentation cheaper and easier to execute.
👀 I promise, I’m not trying to be dramatic! This is just where we are right now.
The good news is HR leaders are waking up to this!
Identity fraud detection jumped into the top five AI priorities for CHROs in 2026, up from not even cracking the list last year.
The awareness is there, but the infrastructure to act on it is…still catching up.
This is exactly where a platform like Checkr becomes a necessity.
Checkr’s background check technology is built to give HR leaders fast, reliable reports so they can make hiring decisions they can actually stand behind, instead of just crossing their fingers and hoping the person sitting across from them is who their resume says they are. (Including identity verification specifically built to handle the drama above! ^^^)
I’m truly shocked when orgs skip background checks entirely, and in 2026, doing them poorly is barely better than not doing them at all!
🔄 Finding 2: The Hiring Process Needs a Complete Rethink, and Everyone Is Struggling With the AI Piece
So, here’s what I know about AI and hiring right now…nobody has fully figured it out, and we’re all essentially building the plane while flying it!
Yes, it’s absolutely chaotic, but also just the reality of our roles in 2026.
The report shows that AI-driven hiring acceleration is now the number one perceived competitive advantage for CHROs!
37% flagged it as their top differentiator, up from 31% last year. The intent is there, but the execution is uneven at best.
Wanna know what I find fascinating about where CHROs actually are prioritizing AI in hiring???
The top two spots went to background check speed and accuracy, then resume screening and filtering.
✨Nothing flashy, just the parts of hiring that have always been manual and time-consuming.✨
CHROs are essentially saying, “Before we get fancy, can we just make the basics work better?”
😐 And I totally get it, because the resume situation alone has become essentially unmanageable!
AI-generated applications have flooded pipelines to the point where volume means almost nothing anymore.
You can have 400 applications and still feel like you’re searching for signal in a wall of noise.
The traditional screening process was not at all built for this environment, and if you haven’t already rethought your approach to early-stage filtering, this is me gently nudging you to start!
Being intentional about where AI enters your hiring process matters more than just having AI somewhere in it.
🤓 I was almost a product manager earlier in my career (fun fact), and one thing that stuck with me from that world is that you have to know exactly what problem you’re solving before you build anything.
HR leaders who are deploying AI because it’s expected, or because someone in leadership said the word “efficiency” in a meeting, are going to end up with tools that do half of what they need and nothing else.
The hiring process needs a rethink from the top of the funnel to the offer stage.
That means sourcing strategy, screening tools, interview structure, debrief processes and background screening tools.
💻 Finding 3: A Lot of HR Tech Is Mediocre and You Know It, but You Don’t Know What to Do About It
This one is deeply personal to me!!!
71% of CHROs say their HR tech tools meet some expectations, while only 26% say their tools exceed expectations or are exceptional.
This means the vast majority of HR leaders are operating with technology that is just…fine.
Not great or transformative, just functional enough to not get fired over, but not good enough to actually move the needle.
And I feel this in my bones because I’ve been there. You buy a tool, you implement it, you realize six months in that it does about 60% of what you actually needed, and now you’re too invested to rip it out and start over.
You’re committed to the mediocrity!
The report also shows that budget limitations (19%), tool integration gaps (16%), and customization challenges (16%) are the biggest blockers to building a better tech stack.
In layman’s terms, it basically means HR leaders know their tools aren’t great, but can’t afford to fix them, and even if they could, the tools don’t talk to each other properly anyway. Incredible.
What makes this worse is the AI pressure.
Leaders are being told that new tech investments need to have AI in them, which sounds reasonable until you realize it just adds another filter to an already confusing evaluation process!
Now you’re not just picking a tool, you’re picking a tool with AI, then figuring out whether that AI is actually useful or just a hyped up feature someone added to the marketing page.
Here’s what I’d tell any HR leader who feels stuck in this space: Don’t start with the solution.
✨Start with the problem.✨
What I mean is, what is the specific thing that is breaking or slowing down your process right now?
Get verrrry precise about that before you go anywhere near a vendor demo!
You’ll end up with something that actually works instead of something that looked great in a slide deck.
For a lot of orgs, the answer to that question leads back to hiring infrastructure…more specifically, the speed, accuracy, and trustworthiness of background checks and candidate verification.
That’s a solvable problem with the right partner.
Checkr’s platform is built to integrate cleanly into existing hiring workflows, which means you’re not starting from scratch or adding another tool that lives in isolation again.
It’s the kind of targeted fix that makes the rest of your stack feel more manageable!
The Full Report Has a Lot More to Say
I wonder on a regular basis what HR is going to look like five years from now. Yes, I geek out about HR.
The function is changing faster than most organizations can keep up with, and the expectations on HR leaders have never been higher!
That’s equal parts exciting and exhausting, and I think it’s perfectly okay to hold both of those things at the same time.
What the Checkr report makes clear is that the CHROs who will come out ahead are the ones being intentional, whether it’s about their tech decisions, their fraud prevention strategy, or how they’re rethinking hiring from the ground up.
Moving deliberately matters more than speed, in my opinion.
If you want to go deeper on any of this, Checkr published the full 2026 CHRO Insights Report and it’s worth reading in full.
There’s a lot more in there than I could cover in one article, and the industry breakdowns alone are genuinely useful if you’re trying to benchmark where your organization sits!
