What Q3 Actually Looked Like for Tech Hiring Locally and What I’m Watching in Q4

TLDR

• The Tech hiring market is active, but very selective.
• Technology hiring is being driven by projects and transformation.
• Larger candidate market doesn’t mean people are easy to find.
• Problem’s been the brief, not the candidate market.
• Hiring managers need to decide what matters before going to market.
• Technology workforce planning needs to start earlier.
• Slow hiring processes cost businesses candidates.
• Contract and interim hiring could become more relevant.
• Companies that navigate this best are ones who understand the market before GTM.

 

A bit of context before I get into this because I think it matters.

These aren't national labour market statistics or conclusions pulled from a large piece of economic research. They're my own observations from the ground based on what’s actually being seen whilst recruiting technology roles for SMEs and larger businesses in East Anglia; looking at the vacancies being recruited, the candidates moving through those processes and the conversations I'm having with hiring managers and internal talent/HR teams.

I’m not suggesting this represents every company or every part of the UK technology market. However, I hope it gives a fairly honest picture of what I’m seeing day to day, informed by my conversations and internal data.

 

The first thing that stands out from Q3 is that hiring is happening, but it is very selective.

Businesses aren’t suddenly opening the floodgates and adding large amounts of headcount to the Tech teams. Most of the demand is attached to something specific that the business needs to get done:

• CRM work
• Legacy to cloud migration
• Data and analytics
• Implementing AI and automation
• Power Platform and Power BI upgrades
• Software development, infrastructure support and digital technology.

That sounds like a fairly obvious point but I think it's quite an important one if you're responsible for your technology team.

The conversations being had are often, "We've got this project coming up", "this system needs replacing", "we're trying to get more out of our data", "we've started this migration and need more expertise", "we simply don't have the people internally to get this delivered" etc.

General hiring might feel cautious but businesses will spend when there is a clear operational or commercial reason to do it… and from the conversations, transformation has been one of the clearest reasons companies have been prepared to recruit.

 

Where it gets more difficult is that having a lot of candidates available doesn't necessarily make those hires easy. We've got a bigger candidate population now than we did during some of the more candidate short markets of previous years, but that doesn't mean every role suddenly has ten suitable people.

A company might need somebody who’s worked with a particular CRM, has been through a migration, understands the integrations around it, sits at the right level of seniority, is happy with the location and hybrid arrangements, fits the salary and is interested enough in the role to move. There may be hundreds of people with "CRM" somewhere on their CV, but once you start putting those things together the realistic market becomes smaller.

I saw the same thing with my own numbers during Q3. The most common reason for rejection in the active pipelines I reviewed was "a lack of relevant experience”, that was followed by rejections for being “over budget”... and these two together tell a useful story.

The problem is that the job specification often describes someone beyond what the business actually needs.

There's been conversations where the requirement makes complete sense when you hear what the company is trying to achieve but once you turn that into a market search, there are five or six different things that all effectively become "must haves". None of those requirements are necessarily unreasonable on their own, but together they create a very narrow market. This is where I think internal Talent teams and technology leaders can save themselves a lot of time.

 

Before going properly into the market, it's worth having a straightforward conversation about what actually matters:

1. If somebody can do four of the six things you’ve asked for but hasn't worked in your particular industry, is that genuinely a problem?
2. If somebody has the technical expertise but is £5,000 above the budget, is the budget fixed because it “has to be”, or because that was the number originally approved?
3. If the person has delivered exactly the type of project you are about to undertake but lives outside the preferred commuting area, is three days in the office genuinely essential?

There isn't a universal right answer to any of those questions but I think businesses lose time when they only start having those conversations after four weeks of searching and several rejected candidates later.

That's also why I'd encourage tech leaders who know they have significant projects coming next year to start thinking about the people side earlier than they traditionally might. Three months’ notice is more common than you think!

If you know a CRM migration is coming, or you're moving more infrastructure into the cloud, or you're trying to make better use of your data, it is worth working out what skills that creates before the project is already underway... you can at least understand whether the people you need are available, what they normally cost and where you might have to compromise.

OR

The alternative is waiting until the project becomes urgent and then discovering that the person everybody assumed would be relatively easy to hire is actually quite difficult to find... (I’m being facetious but it’s a path that’s been trodden many times, “don’t make the same mistake twice” etc.).

 

One other thing that’s noticeable is what happens when processes slow down. Again, this is familiar to anyone who's hired.

You find two or three people who could do the job, CVs go across, everyone is busy, a meeting gets moved, somebody is on holiday, feedback takes a week and suddenly one of those candidates is interviewing elsewhere or has taken another offer.

From the employer's side none of those delays necessarily feel dramatic. It's totally normal for a series of perfectly understandable small delays…

But from the candidate's side, a week of silence is still a week of silence.

And it’s a tough market for candidates looking, they need to put themselves first.

There's one Q3 assignment where four presented candidates had been waiting for feedback for circa 23 days. Maybe the candidates weren’t strong enough. Maybe the brief needs changing. Maybe the salary is wrong. Maybe something internally has changed, but knowing which one it is matters because otherwise everyone just keeps adding activity without moving the hire forward.

 

I'd also keep an eye on contract and interim technology hiring over the next few months.

I'm not saying there’s suddenly going to be a huge shift away from permanent recruitment (my data isn't strong enough to justify that conclusion) but Q3 conversations suggest that temporary and contract demand may be recovering faster than permanent hiring in some areas.

It would make sense given what businesses are dealing with.

A company might not feel comfortable adding another permanent £70k salary to the cost base, but it may still have a six-month migration that has to be delivered, a data project that’s behind schedule or a Power Platform programme that needs additional capacity.

In those situations, the conversations become more about "What do we actually need to get this piece of work done?"

Sometimes the answer will absolutely still be a permanent hire.

Sometimes it might be a contractor.

Sometimes it might be developing somebody already in the team and bringing in a specialist to help around them.

The important thing is not automatically assuming one hiring model before properly understanding the problem.

So…

if I had to summarise what Q3 has looked like from where I'm sitting:

 

I'd say it's selective.

 

Hiring is happening, particularly around modernisation, data, CRM, AI, automation, software and infrastructure, but companies are being more considerate about where they add cost whilst candidates are still being asked to meet quite specific briefs.

The businesses most likely to make it work well are the ones that are clear about what they properly need, understand where the market might force them to compromise so they’re able to move once they find somebody who can do the job.

And if you're a Technology Director, Head of IT or Talent Lead looking at your plans for the next six or twelve months, I think there are a few useful questions in there.

1. Do you already know what experience your technology projects are going to require?
2. Do you know whether those skills are “actually” available locally at the salary you're expecting to pay?

And if the answer is "Hmm I guess.", do you know which parts of the brief you're prepared to change?

Those are the conversations I'd rather be having now rather than later once the project is three months behind and the hire has suddenly become urgent.

These are only my thoughts and data, I'm interested to know whether this reflects what other people are seeing as well, particularly those running internal technology or Talent teams. Are you finding the challenge is actually finding people, or is the bigger issue getting the requirement, budget and hiring process aligned internally well enough to secure them?

Sometimes a straightforward conversation about availability, salaries and what other businesses are doing is useful before a vacancy even exists, and you can get in touch via the website, www.synergy-rec.com, or give me a call on 01603 542300.