If you’re considering a job change, 2024 might be your year. From the number of potential openings to the qualifications you’ll need, candidates may find a friendlier job market, especially if you work in tech.

Some of the new selection criteria, however, may mean you’ll need to update your résumé and LinkedIn profile. We spoke to hiring experts, and they predict five new hiring trends in the New Year:

1. COMPANIES WILL BE HIRING AGAIN

The layoffs and hiring freezes that happened this year will come to an end, says Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of LaSalle Network, a national staffing, recruiting, and culture firm. “Three-quarters of the companies we’re working with plan to add headcount in 2024,” says Gimbel. “A lot of companies laid people off this year, and that was cutting fat and getting lean. Next year, they’re going to be adding some headcount.”

While hiring won’t mirror levels seen in 2021 or 2022, Gimbel says his firm’s data found that a third of the companies that plan to hire will add less than 4% to their headcount. “You’re not seeing huge swaths of people,” he says.

Many of the jobs are staff-level with salaries of $50,000 to $90,000, and the roles in demand will include technology, says Gimbel. “If you’re not hiring technology people, you’re falling behind,” he says.

Gimbel says there’s one caveat to this outlook: “The situation in the Middle East could impact everything, such as what happened during the pandemic and the Great Recession of 2009.”

2. TURNOVER IS SLOWING DOWN

The Great Resignation is over, and the dust is starting to settle, says Brandon Stevens, CEO of Scoutr, a hiring platform.

“A lot of people are staying put,” he says. “They are taking their time and being a lot more methodical and a lot more intentional about making a move. You’re not seeing knee-jerk resignations.”

According to Stevens, companies are being increasingly methodical about building their talent pool, too. “Companies are becoming much more intentional about their employer brand,” he says. “We partnered with Gartner, and they call this the hype cycle. [Employer branding] has been happening for a few years, but now it’s becoming much more mainstream.”

3. COMPANIES FOCUS ON SKILLS

Traditionally, most organizations work off a position-based model, says Stevens. To fill a role, managers worked with HR professionals to build a job description. This method is changing, however, as many companies put greater emphasis on skills.

According to Stevens, skills-based models allow companies to create a database of skills specific to that organization. Hiring managers can better predict who can come into that role and perform well based on their potential.

Companies will look at behavioral skills more than technical skills, adds Lucy Beaumont, solution lead manager and leader for SHL, a talent acquisition and management platform.

“The focus on technical skills has helped HR hire people who can hit the ground running and deliver quickly,” she says. “Yet the pace of change and the emergence of ever-new skills will mean that organizations will fall into a constant race to find people with the latest and greatest technical skill of the day.”

Instead, Beaumont expects companies to start identifying individuals with the agility to learn new skills and who can problem-solve and communicate their findings to others.

Shifting from a position-based model to one that’s skills-based can increase productivity and retention by improving morale, says Stevens. “This is fairly new in the world of work,” he adds.

4. COMPANIES WILL EMBRACE REMOTE WORK (AGAIN)

The return-to-office push will start to slow as companies recognize the workforce’s values of balance, flexibility, and autonomy, says Laura Daniels, chief people officer at Typeform, a survey services provider.

“This push is largely the result of office space that companies can’t yet divest, as well as a lack of innovation that solves remote work challenges,” she says.

Daniels predicts that companies will embrace remote work again as their leases expire and new tools emerge to improve async collaboration. Employers will reimagine workspaces with smaller spaces for intentional collaboration and connection.

“Think about it this way: When the automobile was invented, people bought cars long before highways existed,” she says. “Remote work is the same. As we lean in, experiment, and innovate, it won’t be long before enabling tools and technologies catch up to make remote work seamless.”

5. AI WON’T IMPACT HIRING . . . YET

If you’re worried about losing your job to AI, Gimbel says you can relax—for now. AI isn’t a 2024 problem.

“The companies that are doing great are going to be hiring people because they want to keep it going,” he says. “They are going to try to implement AI, but they can’t put all their eggs in that basket quite yet. The AI evolution is a three-, four-, or five-year [in the future] situation. Companies will need to get the grasp of it. It’s the same way it was for e-commerce in the late ’90s and early 2000s.”