Shane Barnfield, is a a seasoned Talent Acquisition leader with over 20 years of experience building and scaling recruitment functions across global, high-growth industries.
Shane is currently partnering with Etihad Airways on a 6-month contract, supporting recruitment delivery during an intensive hiring period. His focus is on sourcing, screening, and closing key hires across critical business areas, ensuring Etihad continues to attract and onboard world-class talent.
Previously, Shane served as Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Keywords Studios, where he built and led a centralised global TA and sourcing function spanning 70+ studios in 25+ countries. He’s also led talent strategies at Spartan Bioscience and Assent Compliance, and earlier in his career, Shane drove large-scale recruitment projects in the energy sector with Qatargas, Kentz, and Technip.
I’m passionate about combining data-driven decision-making with a human touch, leveraging technology, creativity, and collaboration to deliver great hiring outcomes.
What’s a recent professional achievement of yours that you are proud of?
Shane Barnfield is a seasoned Talent Acquisition leader with over 20 years of experience building and scaling recruitment functions across global, high-growth industries.
He is currently partnering with Etihad Airways on a 6-month contract, supporting recruitment delivery during an intensive hiring period. His focus is on sourcing, screening, and closing key hires across critical business areas, ensuring Etihad continues to attract and onboard world-class talent.
Previously, Shane served as Global Head of Talent Acquisition at Keywords Studios, where he built and led a centralized global TA and sourcing function spanning 70+ studios in 25+ countries. He has also led talent strategies at Spartan Bioscience and Assent Compliance, and earlier in his career, drove large-scale recruitment projects in the energy sector with Qatargas, Kentz, and Technip.
Shane is passionate about combining data-driven decision-making with a human touch—leveraging technology, creativity, and collaboration to deliver outstanding hiring outcomes.
What is your prediction for the future of the TA industry?
I think the future of Talent Acquisition is moving away from process and toward experience – a shift from filling jobs to designing intelligent, human-centered systems that connect people and purpose.
AI will take over much of the repetitive work; sourcing, scheduling, matching, but it won’t replace the human layer that makes hiring meaningful. The recruiters who thrive will be those who know how to use technology as an amplifier, not a substitute; who can interpret data, tell a story with it, and create moments of trust in an increasingly automated process.
We’ll see TA become a strategic intelligence function, plugged directly into business planning, workforce design, and brand experience. Instead of reacting to hiring needs, the best teams will anticipate them, building pipelines and communities long before requisitions appear.
And as organizations compete globally, the candidate experience will become a true differentiator. Every interaction, from job ad to offer, will shape how talent perceives the brand. The companies that win won’t necessarily hire faster; they’ll hire with more intent, empathy, and transparency.
In the end, the future of TA isn’t about replacing recruiters with AI; it’s about freeing them to do what humans do best: understand potential, build relationships, and turn hiring into an extension of a company’s culture and story.
What projects are you planning on working on in 2026?
In 2026, I’m planning to go deeper into how AI can truly reshape the recruitment process, not just automate it.
I want to spend the year experimenting, testing, and learning how different AI models impact candidate sourcing, shortlisting, and experience design. The goal isn’t to replace recruiters but to understand how we can combine machine precision with human judgment to make hiring faster, fairer, and more engaging.
That means exploring predictive analytics to anticipate hiring needs, conversational AI to personalize outreach, and better data to help hiring managers make smarter decisions. It’s about turning recruitment into a continuous, insight-driven system – where technology works quietly in the background and the human side shines through.