An email landed last week from a head of IT who had four strong CVs and wanted a few more before booking second interviews.
A year ago that would have been sensible. For about three years, waiting was the safe choice. Vacancies were thin, budgets were questioned in every meeting, and a senior hire that could slip to spring usually did. But yesterday's KPMG and REC Report on Jobs suggests the ground has shifted under that habit.
The survey asks recruitment firms what they are seeing on the ground. In September, permanent placements rose at the fastest pace in four years, as Reuters reported. The permanent placements index reached 50.9, up from 50.5 in August and its strongest reading in about four years. Anything above 50 means growth.
And IT is out in front.
Recruiters reported the highest demand for IT and computing roles, along with engineering. Reuters pointed out that this chimes with official growth data showing an AI-related upswing in activity. The roles in demand are exactly the ones that were hardest to fill when the market was slow.
Is this actually a boom?
Not quite, and it would be daft to pretend otherwise. Overall demand for staff still fell in September, just at the weakest pace in over two years. Retail and hospitality saw the sharpest drops. Nobody is calling it a boom.
Permanent starting salaries also rose more slowly than in August, which Reuters said may offer some reassurance to Bank of England officials watching pay pressure. It is a recovery, not a rush.
The honest picture is a pocket of real demand inside a cautious market, and IT happens to sit in the pocket.
Why does a slow hiring process cost more when the market turns?
Because the people you want stop waiting for you. A slow process was an inconvenience when few employers were competing for senior developers, architects and heads of IT. When more of them hire at once, the employer who decides first usually gets the yes.
We see the same pattern again and again. A hiring manager gets a strong shortlist and wants a few more names before committing. Second interviews get booked for the following fortnight, because that is when the diaries line up. By the time sign-off arrives, the best candidate has accepted an offer from a company that moved inside a week.
Nobody did anything wrong.
The clock just got faster, and the process kept running on last year's.
Where does the time actually go?
Mostly in the gaps between interviews, not the interviews themselves. It is a diary that will not clear, a director who has not read the shortlist, or a finance team still deciding on the top of the salary range. Nobody sets out to build a slow process, but it builds up one sensible approval at a time.
Most hiring managers can tell you how long it takes to hire a senior developer from advert to start date. Far fewer can tell you where the days disappear. Ask them to sketch the process on a whiteboard and the gaps show up within minutes.
Each gap looks small on its own.
Added together, they stretch a hire that should take weeks into one that takes months. And notice periods make it worse, since senior technical people often have a month or more to serve. Every week lost before the offer is a week added to the day they actually start.
What is pulling IT demand up?
Nobody can say for certain from one survey. The AI-related upswing Reuters mentioned is one likely driver, and it tends to create demand for people who can build and run systems, not just talk about them.
But even if the cause is patchy, the effect on a hiring manager is simple.
In our experience, competition for the strongest candidates tends to pick up before many hiring processes have noticed. Budgets have not caught up either, so a salary range signed off in the spring may look thin against what a good architect is being offered now. Pay growth overall is easing, but that does not stop individual offers jumping. That gap is both the opportunity and the risk.
What should you fix before the next senior role goes live?
Start with the people, not the advert. Agree who has a say in the decision, and get their interview slots into diaries before the role is advertised. Then write down what a good candidate looks like, so the shortlist review takes an afternoon rather than a week of opinions.
Next, settle the salary range early. Candidates compare offers, and an approval that takes a fortnight to arrive costs you a fortnight of their patience.
Give feedback within days, not weeks.
Silence reads as a no. A candidate who has heard nothing for ten days has usually started talking to someone else. And nobody enjoys chasing a company for an answer. Ten days feels like a long time when you are weighing two offers.
Finally, ask whether the permanent hire has to land straight away. Contract cover can keep a project moving while you hire properly, and we looked at contract IT hiring recovering ahead of permanent only last month. Or, if the project can wait, protect the start date you have set. Then hold every stage of the process to it.
Is a specialist recruiter worth it for a senior IT hire?
Often, when the role is hard to fill or the clock matters. A specialist already knows who is looking, what they will accept and how long they are prepared to wait, so the timeline stops being guesswork.
If a senior IT hire is on your list for the autumn, you can see how the team at Coburg Banks approaches roles like that on our IT recruitment page. We start with the timeline, because that is where most senior searches are won or lost. And we are always glad to compare notes.
The market is not roaring.
But it has stopped holding its breath, and a hiring process built for the breath-holding years will start to cost you.
