This article is an opinion piece by Natalia Perkowska, Deputy Chief HR Officer at SOFTSWISS and Denis Romanovskiy, Chief AI Officer at SOFTSWISS.
Two-fifths of professional skills will be obsolete by 2030. Candidates are walking away from poorly run hiring processes. AI challenges the hiring process from both sides.
These were some of the main conclusions from a recent talent roundtable we hosted in Malta, alongside Alastair Cleland, Managing Director at Pentasia, and Andrew Cook, Head of Conexus Leadership at The Conexus Group. The discussion drew on findings from the 2026 iGaming Talent Trends report, but the themes went well beyond one report or one sector. They point to a broader reality: employers are not just competing for talent, they are also being assessed by it.
Data says skills are changing faster than hiring models
The discussion drew on WEF data cited in the SOFTSWISS report: 39 per cent of today’s professional skills are expected to be disrupted or become obsolete by 2030. Andrew Cook framed the figure like this: “That is roughly two-fifths of somebody’s skill set, in whatever job they hold, shifting within the next three years.” He said it doesn’t matter whether those skills vanish because AI replaces them or because employers simply stop valuing them. The scale of the shift will be the same either way.
The implication is not that jobs will disappear entirely, but that the composition of those roles will change. Technical skills may evolve or be automated, while domain knowledge and decision-making ability become more important.
This change creates a practical challenge for HR departments whose hiring processes are designed around stable role definitions. When those definitions shift, recruitment criteria can become outdated before roles are even filled.
Сandidates are evaluating you too
Another trend highlighted during the discussion describes a shifting balance between employers and candidates – the latter have become more active participants in the hiring process. Candidates now assess employers based on communication transparency – updates on timelines, holding emails during slow periods, and honesty about where they stand. “It is no longer about the business saying ‘Tell me why I should hire you.’ The tables have turned,” Natalia Perkowska noted.
Many companies still treat hiring as a one-sided process in which only the employer decides. “They don’t take a great deal of consideration for the fact that the candidate also may have a choice themselves,” Cook said.
This changes how recruitment should be structured. Companies that assume they hold all the power in hiring are falling behind and losing candidates to those that do not.
AI assists hiring, not decides it
During the panel, AI came up repeatedly, with the discussion returning to the same question: where it helps and where it should not.
Cook noted that AI is already taking over administrative and data-processing tasks. Romanovskiy took the idea further. The Chief AI Officer described a future where companies use AI to simulate work environments during interviews – for example, asking a candidate to organise the work of AI-generated team members in a realistic business scenario. He framed this as an emerging possibility rather than a current practice.
Alastair Cleland shared an example from his own business: a tool that auto-matches CVs from a database of roughly a million candidates. “Beyond that,” he noted, “you still need a human involvement to bring those candidates in, make a phone call, and hold an interview.”
Perkowska drew a borderline between what AI can process and what human expertise can discern. AI should support productivity and reduce repetitive tasks, but hiring still depends on personal interaction. “I think that in hiring, the people-first approach is still what’s going to win companies good talent,” she said.
The junior role gap
As AI absorbs entry-level tasks, the traditional career path – junior to mid-level to senior – is losing its lower rungs.
Romanovskiy shared that SOFTSWISS technology teams are almost entirely hiring seniors because the market makes it easy and affordable. While effective in the short term, this approach reduces the number of professionals developing internally. He predicts that in three to five years, the talent pool will lack mid- and senior-level specialists.
The speakers identified three probable developments that could ease the talent shortfall over time. Companies will have to invest more heavily in internal training programmes to develop their own junior talent. The market could also see more external academies that prepare early-career professionals to a mid-level standard.
A third option is less obvious. AI could open pathways for professionals from related industries to fill iGaming-specific knowledge gaps, particularly in compliance, regulation, and marketing.
The framework
The discussion highlighted practical hiring recommendations for employers.
The speakers’ responses clustered into six themes – these are not new concepts individually, but their importance increases when combined with current market conditions.
- Default to honesty. Tell candidates how long the process will take. Update them when things slow down. “The number of candidates that reply and say ‘thank you for letting me know – most companies don’t, it’s staggering,” Perkowska said.
- Treat hiring as a two-way process. Too many companies still assume they are the only ones choosing. They are not. How a company runs its recruitment – the speed, the communication, the professionalism – shows candidates how it operates. “I still speak to a disproportionate number of clients who believe it is a one-way process,” Cook shared.
- Take employer branding seriously. Many iGaming companies overestimate how well-known they are. Even some of the larger brands lack the visibility their leadership assumes. Consistent messaging and thorough recruitment briefs help close that gap.
- Prioritise domain knowledge over tool proficiency. AI tools change too fast for mastery of any single AI platform to stay relevant. What lasts is deep knowledge of the business paired with a readiness to learn new tools. “Having great domain skills and knowing a bit of AI will open more doors than the other way around,” Romanovksiy said.
At the same time, hiring external AI specialists is not always the best strategy. Employees already experimenting with AI understand the company’s workflows and can drive adoption faster than someone learning the business from scratch.
- Pick up the phone. In a hiring landscape full of automated outreach, a phone call stands out. Natalia recalled a mantra from early in her career: “Do not write emails. Pick up the phone.”
Where iGaming hiring goes from here
The 2026 iGaming Talent Trends report and the panel point in the same direction. Hiring in iGaming is moving beyond filling vacancies toward more deliberate alignment of people and processes for future needs of both the candidate and the employer. The talent pipeline is getting more complex, but also more structured.
One of the clearest conclusions from the SOFTSWISS Talent Trends report is that talent strategy can no longer be separated from business strategy: how companies attract, assess, and develop people is becoming a defining factor in their ability to adapt and grow.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the SiGMA News editorial team.
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