A Guide to the Executive Search Industry
The UK labour market has become increasingly difficult for people at the beginning of their careers.
Hiring has weakened across the economy, while graduate and entry-level opportunities have become particularly competitive. Employers are recruiting cautiously and have a larger pool of candidates to choose from. At the same time, artificial intelligence is changing the type of work traditionally carried out by junior employees.
For recruiters and employers, this raises a longer-term question. If businesses hire fewer junior employees today, will they have enough experienced candidates to hire in the future?
Entry-level hiring has weakened
The slowdown in junior recruitment needs to be viewed in the context of the wider UK jobs market.
Entry-level recruitment has broadly followed the same trend rather than declining significantly faster than the overall labour market. However, the picture varies considerably between occupations.
Knowledge-based and information-processing jobs were among the most affected. Entry-level hiring was down:
- 29% for accountants
- 28% for graphic designers
- 27% for software engineers
- 24% for product managers
- 15% for data analysts
- 14% for legal assistants
Some customer-facing occupations performed considerably better. Hiring for retail assistants increased by 25%, while sales development representative hiring increased by 17%.
The data suggests that the difficulty facing junior candidates is particularly pronounced in some of the professional occupations that have traditionally attracted graduates.
Graduate opportunities are also under pressure
Indeed has found a similar trend in graduate recruitment.
Opportunities to gain early workplace experience have also fallen. Indeed reported that summer job postings were at a four-year low in July. Earlier in the year, summer vacancies had been running 31% below 2025 levels and 71% below their 2023 peak.
This matters because temporary work, internships and graduate positions often provide candidates with their first evidence of workplace experience.
A weaker market makes it harder to obtain that first experience. It can then become harder to compete for jobs that expect candidates to have already developed workplace skills.
Employers can afford to be more selective
One consequence of weaker hiring is that employers often have more choice.
The government’s entry-level hiring analysis notes that businesses are likely to favour more experienced candidates when vacancies attract a surplus of applicants. It also identified a skills mismatch in declining occupations, with employers looking for operational skills that many candidates entering the workforce have not yet had the opportunity to develop.
This creates a difficult situation for entry-level candidates.
A company recruiting in a tight candidate market may be prepared to hire someone with strong potential and train them. When many qualified candidates are applying for the same vacancy, there is less pressure to make that compromise.
A candidate with two years of relevant experience may therefore compete for a role that could previously have gone to a recent graduate.
For recruiters, this can make conversations about what genuinely constitutes an entry-level role increasingly important. A long list of required skills and previous experience may make a vacancy easier to fill in the short term, but it reduces the number of genuine new entrants being brought into the profession.
Is AI reducing demand for junior employees?
AI is inevitably part of the discussion around entry-level employment.
Many junior positions contain work that current AI tools can assist with, including basic research, document preparation, data analysis, administration and drafting.
AI-related skills are also becoming much more common across the UK labour market. Indeed found that 9.4% of UK job postings mentioned AI in June 2026, the highest proportion recorded on its platform.
The occupations experiencing some of the largest falls in entry-level recruitment also include jobs where generative AI has developed significant capabilities.
However, there is not yet enough evidence to conclude that AI is the primary cause.
The government and LinkedIn study specifically warns against making that assumption. Hiring has also fallen at more senior levels within many of the same professions, suggesting that wider economic conditions remain an important factor.
Software engineering illustrates the difficulty. Entry-level hiring fell 27%, but weaker technology hiring overall also contributed to the decline.
The more immediate change may therefore concern the expectations placed on junior employees. Employers may still hire graduates, but expect them to use AI tools and become productive more quickly.
The experience problem
There is a broader workforce issue behind the fall in junior recruitment.
Experienced candidates have to gain their experience somewhere.
Someone hired as a senior accountant in five years’ time needs opportunities to develop earlier in their career. The same applies to software engineers, analysts, marketers, recruiters and other skilled professionals.
Reducing junior hiring can make financial sense for an individual company during a difficult year. If many employers take the same approach for several years, a shortage of experienced talent can eventually emerge.
Employers may then find themselves competing for a smaller pool of mid-level candidates whose development they did not invest in.
Academic requirements are becoming less important
There is one area where access to graduate employment has improved.
Large employers have gradually reduced their reliance on strict academic requirements.
Meanwhile, 23% of employers had no minimum academic entry requirement, more than twice the 11% recorded in 2015/16.
This suggests that employers are increasingly willing to consider skills and competencies alongside academic achievement.
The difficulty is that broader academic eligibility does not necessarily create more vacancies. Candidates may face fewer formal barriers while competing for a smaller number of roles.
A difficult market for younger workers
The wider labour market data also reflects the pressure on younger people.
This does not mean that every young person is struggling to find employment, and many people in this age group remain in full-time education. It does indicate that entering the labour market has become more difficult.
Recruiters are likely to see the effects directly through higher application volumes for junior vacancies and candidates becoming more flexible about the type of work they are willing to consider.
What does this mean for recruiters?
Recruiters can play an important role when employers have a large number of candidates to choose from.
The temptation in a weak hiring market is to look for an exact match. If several applicants already possess every skill requested by the client, selecting the most experienced candidate can appear to be the safest choice.
Recruiters can also help clients consider whether every requirement is genuinely necessary.
A junior candidate who meets 80% of a job specification and demonstrates the ability to learn may develop into a stronger employee than someone hired purely because they have already performed an identical role elsewhere.
Recruiters also have visibility across multiple employers. They can identify when clients are consistently requesting levels of experience that are unrealistic for the salaries or seniority they are offering.
That market knowledge becomes particularly useful when companies are making short-term hiring decisions that could create longer-term skills gaps.
Where will tomorrow’s experienced hires come from?
The current weakness in entry-level recruitment cannot be attributed to one factor.
The UK is experiencing a broader hiring slowdown. Employers have become more selective. AI is changing how some junior work is performed. Graduate vacancies are limited, while candidates face increasing competition for the opportunities that remain.
For employers, hiring an experienced candidate may be the easiest decision today.
The harder question is what happens several years later.
Every experienced employee began their career as an inexperienced one. Businesses that continue to invest in junior talent during a difficult hiring market may therefore find themselves in a stronger position when demand for skilled employees increases again.
