Welcome to The Hero 🗞️. This is approximately a 2.5-minute read.

The question is changing…

It used to be "which AI tool should I buy?"

Now it's "how do I manage a teammate that isn't human?"

Korn Ferry surveyed roughly 1,900 talent leaders and found 52% plan to add AI agents to their teams in 2026.

Not chatbots you prompt - agents that work on their own and make calls without you in the loop.

Some companies are already giving them employee records and digital identities - their own profiles, permissions, and responsibilities.

Most leaders have no idea how to manage a mixed human-AI team.

How could they?

Nobody's done it before.

And that gap - is the real gap of 2026.

The full breakdown is just below - don’t miss it! 😉

Here are some of the best links I’ve found since last time I emailed you: 

Free Employee Onboarding Checklists and Templates (2026) (link)

Onboarding Best Practices: A 30-60-90-Day New Hire Plan (link)

10 Actionable Candidate Engagement Strategies for 2025 (link)

How to Improve Candidate Experience: 15 Strategies That Work (link) 

Stay Interviews: The Retention Tool You’re Not Using (link)

Employee Engagement and Retention: 2026 Strategies (link)

79,000 Tech Jobs Cut, But the Talent War Isn't Over (link)

Everyone's asking how much they can automate.

The winners are asking the opposite.

When half your competitors are adding these agents, automating the process stops being an edge - it becomes the baseline.

So the real question flips:

It’s not "how much can I automate?" but "which calls do you keep a human on, no matter how good the tool gets?"

And the data backs this hard…

Korn Ferry found that 73% of talent leaders now rank critical thinking as their #1 hiring priority - while AI skills rank 5th.

The logic is blunt:

Most people can pick up an AI tool in weeks.

Sharp judgment takes years.

And as agents do more, you need people who can judge the agent's work, catch its mistakes, and know when to overrule it.

Automation is a tech problem.

Where the human stays is a leadership one.

The second is the one that matters.

Four moves to draw the line on purpose.

Go stage by stage.

Sourcing, screening, scheduling - the agent can run those.

The decision to advance, the offer, the close - name those human-owned, on purpose.

Don't let the line blur on its own.

The agent does the work.

Your people check its work and catch what it misses.

Screen for critical thinking first - it's rare, and it's the one thing you can't install in a month.

Sooner or later, an agent will make a bad call.

Before you put one to work, name the human who owns the outcome.

No clear owner?

Then it doesn't go live.

Onboard the agent.

Define its access.

And track its performance like you would a new hire's.

Treating it as "just a tool" is how its mistakes become nobody's job to catch.

Half of talent leaders are adding AI agents this year - so automation alone won't set you apart.

The edge is knowing exactly where human judgment stays central, and hiring the critical thinkers who can hold that line.

Soon everyone will have the agents.

Few will have decided where a human still has to make the call.

That decision is the whole job now.

There are a few ways:

Or you can just reply to this email.

I reply to absolutely everyone who writes me back 🙂