This content will be shown in the summary on the main blog pageMore Candidates Doesn't Mean Specialist Recruitment Is Easy
Candidate availability is rising across the UK, but specialist Engineering, Fire Safety and Building Safety skills remain difficult to secure.. Click on this text to edit it.
The UK recruitment market has changed.
Candidate availability has increased. Permanent vacancies have weakened. Businesses remain cautious about committing to permanent hires.
That sounds like good news for employers recruiting. It is — up to a point.
The danger is assuming that a larger candidate market means employers can once again produce enormous wish lists and wait for the perfect applicant.
Specialist recruitment does not work like that.
The July KPMG/REC Report on Jobs found permanent appointments were still declining in June, although at their slowest rate for three months. Temporary billings, meanwhile, grew at their fastest rate since April 2023. Candidate availability continued to increase sharply. Yet employers were simultaneously increasing starting salaries to secure sought-after talent. Engineering was one of only two categories where permanent demand improved.
That tells us something important.
Candidate quantity and candidate suitability are not the same thing.
Specialist skills remain specialist
This is particularly relevant across Fire Safety and Building Safety.
In March the Government committed £70 million to address shortages in building safety professionals, including training up to 700 Registered Building Inspectors and supporting Fire Engineering education and capacity.
Governments do not commit £70 million to solving a skills shortage because the market is overflowing with qualified professionals.
Facilities Management faces similar pressures. IWFM describes persistent skills shortages, retention problems and the need to develop future-ready capability while FM functions deal with increasing regulatory complexity, digital transformation and client expectations.
The perfect-candidate trap
We regularly see requirements that begin sensibly and gradually become a description of somebody who may barely exist.
Must have ten years' experience.
Must have worked in exactly the same sector.
Must hold every desirable qualification.
Must live locally.
Must accept the advertised salary.
Must already be doing essentially the same job.
And preferably be available immediately.
Every additional requirement reduces the candidate pool.
Sometimes that is necessary.
Often it isn't.
Essential or preferred?
A useful hiring exercise is brutally simple.
Divide the specification into two columns:
ESSENTIAL
Without this, the person cannot competently perform the role.
PREFERRED
This would be useful, but a strong candidate could acquire it or succeed without it.
If almost everything ends up in the first column, challenge the brief again.
Slow recruitment remains expensive
A cautious market also tempts employers to add interview stages.
That can be counterproductive.
Strong candidates rarely participate in one recruitment process at a time.
A company that takes three weeks arranging a second interview can easily lose someone to an organisation capable of making a confident decision.
The objective should not be to hire recklessly.
It should be:
Move quickly. Decide carefully.
The market has changed. Good recruitment hasn't.
Employers currently have more leverage than they did during the extreme candidate shortages following the pandemic.
But leverage should not be confused with unlimited choice.
For genuinely specialist roles, the fundamentals remain the same:
Clear brief.
Realistic salary.
Sensible requirements.
Good communication.
Fast decisions
Recruitment gets considerably easier when those five things are right.
People4U provides specialist recruitment at a straightforward fixed 10% fee. No inflated percentages and no recruitment theatre — just realistic advice and properly matched candidates.
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