The UK jobs market is in a critical transition. British Chambers of Commerce surveys show rising AI adoption, while the Office for National Statistics counts 1million 16 to 24-year-olds as not in employment, education or training. Data from KPMG, REC and S&P Global reveals a decline in permanent hires in April, with temporary appointments increasing as employers adapt to geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change.
This is the 30th consecutive month in which overall demand for workers fell in the UK. Yet the preference for temporary staff creates a more flexible, fluid and fast-paced recruitment environment. Experis’ client services director Victoria Allwright has a first-hand view of these shifts. Experis is one of the largest professional service workforce suppliers in Europe, and part of the global ManpowerGroup. During her career, Allwright has witnessed multiple evolutions in hiring, but says AI is now rewriting the playbook at unprecedented speed.
Clients face more uncertainty, faster technological shifts and tighter budgets
“Clients face more uncertainty, faster technological shifts and tighter budgets, skills shortages and more pressure to deliver transformation quickly,” she says. This contrasts starkly with the situation in 2011, when clients were generally hiring for well-defined roles and had longer-term headcount plans.
“Today, the pace of change is much faster,” she explains. “A client may need cloud skills today, AI skills tomorrow, cyber capability next quarter and a completely different mix of skills in 12 months’ time.”
Transactional business needs
Allwright explains that recruitment was very different back in 2011, when she began her career in the sector. “It was much more phone-led, relationship-led and, in many ways, more transactional,” she says. Recruiters during this period tended to pick up the (often landline) phone, build up their networks of candidates, identify who was active in the market, and then move quickly to field applicants whenever a client had a vacancy.
Probably the biggest difference was that there was considerably less technology involved, putting the onus on recruiters to independently learn their markets and develop strong relationships in a more direct way. “Job boards were heavily used, LinkedIn was not the recruitment machine it is today, and there was far less automation, data or insight available,” she recounts.
A business may need cloud skills today, AI skills tomorrow and a different capabilities mix in a year
Recruitment during this period was very much about filling a clearly defined role, with a traditional job spec that would be compared against an initial longlist. This made it “very people-focused,” Allwright reveals, which was a big part of the reason why the sector appealed to her in the first place. She started her career in recruitment delivery and account management, joining Manpower in 2013. In subsequent years she moved into larger enterprise accounts and strategic client partnerships, working at IBM and Atos before taking her current role with Manpower-owned Experis in 2022.
Fast forward to today, and Allwright is now Client Services Director at Experis, where she works with senior stakeholders at enterprise clients and technology partners, helping them to source the skills, capabilities and delivery models they need to achieve growth. Her role has changed considerably over the years, but so too has recruitment, which has tracked far-reaching changes in the world of work.
Such changes are borne out in the aforementioned data from KPMG, REC and S&P Global, which Allwright cites when discussing the current preference for temporary hirings. “For me, that reflects what I’m seeing with clients,” she acknowledges. “They still need skills, but they want more flexibility in how they access them.”
Flexible, AI-literate, and culture-focused workers
In addition to wanting greater flexibility, employers are also being much more deliberate in terms of adding to permanent staff numbers. Instead, they increasingly require quick access to niche skills, while also managing costs and risks. “They also need advice on the best way to get the work done, whether that is permanent hiring, contractors, project-based delivery, outcome-based services, offshore teams, nearshore capability or a managed service,” Allwright explains.
Technology cannot replace trust, judgement or relationships
Allwright has also witnessed a parallel change in candidate expectations, which back in 2011 revolved more around salaries, job titles and locations. “Those things still matter,” she admits, “but candidates now look much more closely at flexibility, hybrid working, culture, purpose, progression, leadership and the quality of the work they will be doing.”
Such changes have also been enabled and facilitated by the increasing role of technology in work, which in turn has had a tangible impact on recruitment. As Allwright explains, “LinkedIn, automation tools, CRM platforms, AI, data insights and digital engagement have all made recruitment more sophisticated.” But despite the incursion of such tools, Allwright still believes that the best recruitment will remain human-led. “Technology can help identify people, speed up processes and improve market insight, but it cannot replace trust, judgement, relationships or the ability to really understand what a client and candidate need,” she adds.
Looking ahead, she expects that the UK recruitment market will become even more flexible and even more skills-focused in the next few years, driven by the growth of AI. She notes that the UK Government has projected that jobs directly involving AI activity could rise from 158,000 in 2024 to around 3.9 million by 2035, covering roughly 12% of the workforce. This is a harbinger of how quickly the skills and recruitment landscape is moving.
“Permanent hiring will remain important, but organisations will be more selective about where they add fixed headcount,” she concludes. “Recruitment has evolved from a very transactional market into a much more strategic one, and I think the recruiters who will be successful in the future are the ones who can advise, challenge, understand their market and help clients make better workforce decisions.”
The UK jobs market is in a critical transition. British Chambers of Commerce surveys show rising AI adoption, while the Office for National Statistics counts 1million 16 to 24-year-olds as not in employment, education or training. Data from KPMG, REC and S&P Global reveals a decline in permanent hires in April, with temporary appointments increasing as employers adapt to geopolitical uncertainty and rapid technological change.
This is the 30th consecutive month in which overall demand for workers fell in the UK. Yet the preference for temporary staff creates a more flexible, fluid and fast-paced recruitment environment. Experis’ client services director Victoria Allwright has a first-hand view of these shifts. Experis is one of the largest professional service workforce suppliers in Europe, and part of the global ManpowerGroup. During her career, Allwright has witnessed multiple evolutions in hiring, but says AI is now rewriting the playbook at unprecedented speed.
Clients face more uncertainty, faster technological shifts and tighter budgets
