We hope the year has started well and that Q1 has brought some positive momentum.

As we move into spring, the market continues to present a complex and often contradictory picture. Much of the wider economic newsflow remains cautious. Recent commentary from Deloitte, BDO and The Times points to CFO confidence having fallen to its lowest level since the Covid lockdown period, driven by geopolitical uncertainty, energy price concerns and the potential knock-on effects for inflation and interest rates.

Against this backdrop, our aim in this update is to look beyond the headlines – combining market data, client sentiment, peer commentary and the insight gained from the hundreds of leadership conversations we have across the market each week. Rather than simply reporting the noise, we aim to interpret what these signals mean in practice for organisations navigating leadership, transformation and growth decisions.

Deloitte’s latest CFO survey notes that finance leaders are now more focused on cost control and cash preservation than at almost any point in the last decade, with many businesses deferring investment and hiring decisions while they wait for greater clarity around the geopolitical backdrop.

Yet beneath these macro headlines, what we are seeing across senior leadership hiring tells a more nuanced – and, in many places, encouraging – story.

Encouragingly, we have continued to outperform the wider market, with revenues tracking double-digit year-on-year growth and a meaningful increase in new mandate activity through the first quarter. This improving sentiment is also being echoed by industry peers across both direct and adjacent specialist firms.

This points to what we believe is becoming a two-speed market.

While broader employment data continues to paint a subdued picture – particularly at graduate and lower-volume hiring levels – strategic leadership hiring is beginning to accelerate at a different pace.

Across our core markets, organisations are now beginning to commit to transformation programmes that have been in planning for some time. In many cases, this is translating into critical board and senior leadership hires across marketing, commercial, product and communications functions.

This momentum is also reflected internally, with the appointment of Linzi Cameron as Partner to lead and further scale our global consumer markets practice.

What You Need to Know

• Strategic hiring momentum is building – encouragingly, our revenues are tracking high double-digit year-on-year growth, with a meaningful uplift in new mandate activity through Q1, a trend also being echoed by peers across the specialist market.
• The wider market is showing early signs of stabilisation – London permanent placements returned to growth in March, while UK-wide permanent placements recorded their weakest contraction in three years, suggesting confidence may be starting to improve beneath the macro headlines.
• High candidate availability is creating both opportunity and complexity – talent supply is at its highest point of 2026 so far, giving employers access to exceptional leadership talent, but also increasing the challenge of identifying the right profiles amid elevated application volumes.
• Confidence remains finely balanced for H2 – while previously delayed transformation hires are now moving forward, ongoing geopolitical uncertainty and the growing impact of AI on candidate quality, employer brand and process integrity mean the second half of the year remains sensitive to shifts in market sentiment.

A Two-Speed Market

The latest KPMG / REC data strongly reinforces the divergence we are seeing across the market. Across the UK, the Permanent Placements Index improved to 49.2 in March, representing only a marginal decline and the joint-weakest contraction in the past three years. More encouragingly for our core market, London moved back into growth, with the Permanent Placements Index rising to 52.0 – marking the first increase in permanent hiring for a year and the fastest growth of any English region.

This is highly significant. London has historically been a leading indicator for the broader professional hiring market, particularly at senior level. As KPMG noted, London’s jobs market is beginning to find its feet again, while the REC described the modest growth as particularly heartening. This aligns strongly with what we are seeing across our own markets, where momentum in strategic leadership hiring continues to build.

Much of the downbeat jobs reporting remains skewed towards lower-volume graduate and early-career hiring, where demand remains weaker. By contrast, at senior and board level, we are seeing increasing evidence that firms are moving from planning into execution, with previously delayed transformation programmes now beginning to convert into live mandates and business-critical leadership hires.

Transformation Moves From Planning to Strategic Hiring

One of the most telling observations from the latest REC / KPMG commentary is the reference to employers “pressing ahead with previously delayed recruitment plans.” That phrase perfectly captures what we are seeing across our core markets.

From the latter part of 2025 through to the start of 2026, many organisations remained focused on planning transformation initiatives, organisational redesigns and growth programmes, often delaying key leadership appointments until confidence improved. We are now seeing an increasing number of these plans convert into live mandates, as businesses move from strategy into execution.

These are rarely volume hires. Instead, they are highly targeted appointments centred around commercial transformation, go-to-market redesign, AI and digital capability, customer and brand transformation, revenue leadership and investor-backed value creation. This is why the broader market can still appear subdued while specialist leadership search continues to accelerate, creating targeted demand for proven leaders who can drive change at pace.

The Human Cost of Recruitment Automation

One of the most significant shifts we are seeing in the market is not simply the rise in candidate volumes, but the impact that AI and automation are having on the recruitment experience itself. As more AI-led sourcing, screening and outreach tools enter the market, many organisations are finding that candidate journeys are becoming increasingly impersonal, fragmented and, in some cases, reputationally damaging.

Poor candidate experience is becoming a growing issue. Automated outreach, inconsistent follow-up and prolonged decision cycles are contributing to a rise in ghosting – from both candidates and employers – which is becoming increasingly normalised across the market. For senior leadership appointments in particular, where reputation and relationship-building are critical, this creates real risk for employer brand and market perception.

We only expect this trend to continue as AI-led tools become more widely adopted across the recruitment landscape. While automation can improve speed and process efficiency, it also increases the need for organisations to partner with trusted advisers who can protect candidate experience, provide market credibility and ensure the right leadership talent is identified and engaged in a highly competitive environment.

H2 Outlook

The key question now is whether current geopolitical volatility creates a lagging impact on confidence in the second half of the year. While momentum in strategic hiring remains encouraging, it is still too early to know whether wider global events and macroeconomic uncertainty may temper investment decisions later in the year.

Our view remains positive but realistic. The recovery is clearly underway across specialist leadership markets, albeit progressing unevenly, and for businesses prepared to act decisively, the current market presents a significant opportunity to secure exceptional talent before confidence broadens further.

Best wishes,

Simon Bassett
CEO

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