Renu Midha
Equifax
“We need to be on board with AI, not to take our jobs, but to do our jobs more efficiently, more effectively, so that we can be more strategic in our approach.”
Renu Midha has been named to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, the annual award recognizing up to 100 of the most exceptional leaders and practitioners in each category of talent acquisition. Honorees are selected by the Talent 100 committee from thousands of nominations and candidates across the industry, chosen for the impact of their work, the depth of their craft, and their influence on the future of recruiting. This is Renu's story.
The most significant shift in recruiting over the past year, in Renu Midha's reading of the market, did not happen inside talent acquisition teams at all. It happened on the other side of the application form. "Every candidate typically has access to some form of AI," she says, "and they know how to use it really very, very well." The result is a candidate pool that can now apply at something like 100 times its previous rate, and a profession that has to learn, quickly, how to tell one polished application from the next. Midha, a talent acquisition leader based in Atlanta, has spent a career on both sides of the human resources house preparing for exactly this kind of problem.
She offers her views, she is careful to say, on behalf of herself and not any company she has worked for. The precision is characteristic of how she talks about the market generally: less interested in what the trend says than in what a given organization can actually absorb.
From a London HR Desk to Both Sides of the House
Midha began her career in human resources as an HR business partner in London, the generalist seat where performance conversations, organizational questions, and employee relations all land on the same desk. That grounding shaped how she thinks about hiring: not as a transaction that ends at offer acceptance, but as the front end of an employment relationship the business will live with for years.
The move to the United States brought a move into talent acquisition. She took a role in early careers, hiring at the entry point of the pipeline rather than competing for finished professionals, and that assignment carried her from the HR side of the house to the recruiting side for good. "That's kind of the journey," she says, "in terms of having both sides of experience."
That dual fluency is rarer than it sounds, and more useful than it used to be. Having sat in both chairs, Midha can translate between them at a moment when talent functions are increasingly asked to justify themselves in business terms rather than requisition counts.
The 100X Problem
The candidate side of the AI story, Midha believes, is under-discussed relative to its impact. Companies that have not yet adopted AI are catching up, and that conversation gets the airtime. Meanwhile candidates armed with Gemini, ChatGPT, and everything adjacent have already changed the physics of the funnel. If you can apply 100 times in a day, she notes, you never would have been able to do that before. It is genuinely advantageous to candidates, and she says so plainly.
The consequence lands on recruiters. Teams are being flooded with applications that all look and sound and feel the same, which erodes the traditional screening signals almost entirely. Midha's conclusion is not to lament the volume but to raise the skill level of the people receiving it. Recruiters, she argues, now need to upskill in order to differentiate a candidate pool that has been algorithmically flattened. The craft has moved. Reading a resume is no longer the job; reading past one is.
Listen First, Then Build the Plan
Her advice to other talent leaders starts with a verb that rarely tops these lists. Listen. Whatever the state of AI adoption at your own company, whether it is front and center and ready to go or still theoretical, seek to learn, to listen, and to understand first, then interpret what will actually work for the organization you are in. Market trends, she says, should be taken with a grain of salt. One size does not fit all.
The interpretation should then be structured rather than urgent. Midha insists that nothing has to happen immediately, but that leaders should always arrive with a plan built in horizons: zero to three, three to five, five plus. It is a discipline that converts anxiety about change into sequencing, and it gives executives something concrete to approve.
None of which excuses timidity. Leaders, she says, need a certain level of willingness to take a risk, to ask the questions that may not be comfortable, and to push the envelope. It is the lesson from that first manager, now stated in her own voice and aimed at her peers.
On the technology itself she is neither an evangelist nor a skeptic. Talent acquisition, like every other business unit, is rapidly evolving, and Midha sees this as the moment when the function has to get on board. The purpose is not displacement but leverage: doing the work more efficiently and more effectively so that talent leaders can be more strategic in their approach. That is the caveat she keeps returning to around AI today, and the reason she keeps reading.
The Talent 100 exists to celebrate the people shaping the future of how the world hires, and few embody that better than Renu. We are honored to welcome Renu Midha to the Talent 100, Class of 2026, and grateful for the experience, perspective, and craft they bring to this community. Congratulations, Renu. Welcome to the Talent 100.
About the Talent 100
The Talent 100 is an annual list spotlighting the leaders who push HR and talent acquisition forward, organized by Noon AI. Honorees are selected through peer nominations and independent selection committees. Selection is entirely merit-based, with no fees or pay-to-play requirements.
