Recruitment and hiring insights: October 2024

It's clear that uncertainty around the budget and the longer half term break has had an impact on businesses this month with a 36% decrease in advertised vacancies across the region.

With less vacancies, there have also been less applications from candidates in the month. While we might hope that now the budget is behind us we’ll see the market open up, we aren’t overly optimistic that this will happen, and we can expect to see a quiet lead into Christmas before the market opens up in the spring.

Why? The increase in National Insurance for businesses is having a direct impact on bottom line, or will do, from April. Therefore, we expect to see an uptick in the number of redundancies as companies trim to ensure their cost base stays flat as it heads into the new tax year.

Where there is specific, targeted or specialist recruitment we continue to see the need in the market, and our flow of vacancies remained steady from October to September, counter to what’s happening in the regional market.

It’s clear that the widening skills gap is causing challenges for businesses and the need for skilled resources is critical to business growth. There is a growth in candidates being placed from the passive (rather than those actively looking) market, and subsequently the need for a targeted approach from a recruitment partner helps deliver much needed support into growing businesses. With a time to hire of 28 days, (our average over the last 3 months), it’s clear that the market is shifting to one of employer rather than employee as there is more talent in the market open to opportunities.

October also saw a lot of activity in the HR sector with the announcement of the Employment Rights Bill , the Worker Protection Act and Autumn Budget being announced. More protections could come into effect around zero hours contracts, bereavement leave, sick pay, flexible working and more.

In the candidate market, we are seeing increasing confusion on where to apply for roles and what candidates need to do to advertise themselves. Candidates have the ability on LinkedIn to change setting (on their profile that are not visible) so that recruiters can see if they are open to making a move in their career. We are seeing greater use of this feature which helps us engage more effectively with candidates passively looking. Rather than applying for roles, these candidates are waiting to be approached by recruiters like ourselves or hiring managers. This can also be the case on CV boards where candidates are waiting to be matched for a position.

In the wider economic market, we could see global adjustments made following the results of the US election this week.

That said, there is plenty of room for optimism. Vacancy numbers are still 61,000 higher than at the start of 2020 (pre pandemic).

If you are looking to hire into your team and hit the ground running in 2025, get in touch now.