Everyone keeps telling me it’s a buyer’s market.
Vacancies are down. More people are looking for work. Applications are up.
So recruiting should be easy, shouldn’t it?
Except that’s not what I hear when I speak to engineering and manufacturing businesses.
What I hear is: “We’ve had loads of applications, Mark. None of them are right.”
And the thing is, those two situations aren’t contradictory. You can have plenty of people looking for jobs and still have very few people who can do your job.
That’s the distinction I think we’re losing in all the talk about an employer’s market.
A bigger candidate market doesn’t mean a bigger market for your vacancy
Imagine you’re recruiting a Controls Engineer in Birmingham.
You might receive 150 applications. Wonderful. A healthy response, apparently.
Now let’s look at what you actually need.
Someone who’s worked with the relevant PLC platforms. Someone who understands industrial control systems rather than simply having “automation” somewhere on their CV. Someone who can get to your factory in a sensible amount of time. Someone who is happy to work on site. And someone whose salary expectations bear at least some resemblance to what you’re offering.
How many of those 150 applications are still relevant?
It may be five. It may be none. It depends on the role and the market. But the point is that the national pool of jobseekers is a rather different thing from the local pool of people capable of doing your work.
You see the same issue with Mechanical Design Engineers, Project Engineers, Electrical Engineers and Technical Sales professionals.
A job title can cover a huge variety of skills. An engineer who’s spent ten years designing structural steelwork isn’t automatically the right person for a special-purpose machinery business. Equally, somebody who sells compressed-air equipment isn’t necessarily an immediate fit for capital machinery sales.
There may be transferable skills. There may be an excellent person hiding behind an unfamiliar CV.
But those are things you need to investigate, not assume.
The dangerous bit about calling it a buyer’s market
When employers hear that there are more candidates available, it’s tempting to decide they can ask for a little more.
Let’s add another essential requirement.
Let’s insist on exact industry experience.
Let’s keep the salary where it was two years ago.
Let’s make the role five days on site, even though the previous person had some flexibility.
And let’s wait for the perfect CV. There are plenty of candidates out there, after all.
Except every extra non-negotiable condition reduces the number of people who could realistically take the job.
It’s a bit like designing a machine. You can keep tightening the tolerances, but eventually you reach the point where virtually nothing will fit. The drawing looks beautiful. Production has a different opinion.
And it isn’t always a candidate problem.
It might be a salary problem. A location problem. An on-site expectation. Or a specification written around somebody who has just left after 15 years and accumulated responsibilities that no normal job advert could sensibly describe.
Sometimes you’re searching for a person who is very unlikely to be applying for jobs in the first place.
That’s a search problem, not an advert problem.
Why more applications can actually make the decision harder
There is another complication.
A large application response creates the impression that you’ve got lots of choice. But quantity isn’t the same thing as quality or suitability.
If a hiring manager has 200 CVs to get through, the temptation is to screen them against a quick list of obvious keywords: exact software, exact industry, exact job title, exact years of experience.
I understand why. Nobody has all week to read CVs.
But you risk rejecting the engineer who could learn your CAD package in a few weeks, or the Technical Sales professional who has successfully developed business in a neighbouring market.
Then you interview the person with every keyword and discover they can’t explain what they actually achieved.
That doesn’t mean requirements are pointless. Some experience genuinely is essential. You wouldn’t put an unqualified person in charge of a safety-critical design because they seemed enthusiastic at interview.
It means your screening criteria need to reflect the job, not merely the shopping list.
Don’t solve a difficult vacancy by quietly lowering the standard
This is the other mistake I see businesses make.
After weeks of unsuitable applications, they begin changing the requirements. Not because they’ve properly reassessed the role, but because they’re fed up.
We’ll overlook that. We can compromise on this. Maybe someone with less experience will do.
Sometimes that’s entirely sensible, provided you’ve identified what can be taught and you’re prepared to support the person.
But there’s a world of difference between a deliberate development hire and lowering expectations because you want the vacancy off your desk.
If you lower the hiring standard but leave the job unchanged, you’ve simply moved the problem from recruitment into the business.
You might fill the vacancy quicker. You might also find yourself recruiting for it again six months later.
Start by working out what’s restricting your market
Before rewriting the advert for the fourth time, I’d bring the hiring manager, HR and whoever will manage the person into the same conversation.
What absolutely has to be there on day one? What could somebody learn in six months? Is your salary realistic for the person you’re describing? How far will that person reasonably travel? And are your working arrangements narrowing the field more than you appreciate?
Then ask one more question: is the person we want likely to be looking for a job?
If the answer is no, more applications aren’t necessarily the answer. You need to work out where those people are and whether what you’re offering would make them consider a move.
That could mean your own contacts, referrals, an internal talent team doing proper market mapping or bringing in somebody who can search the market on your behalf.
There’s no magic to it. It’s just a different approach from waiting for the right CV to arrive.
So yes, there may be more candidates available in a slower recruitment market.
But you don’t need all the candidates.
You need the person who can do the job, wants the job and can realistically join your business.
And if your specification has defined that person almost out of existence, the market won’t solve it for you.
I work with UK engineering and manufacturing SMEs on specialist engineering and technical sales appointments. If you are getting plenty of applications but very few credible candidates, start by looking at our permanent recruitment approach. You might also find my article about the cost of leaving an engineering vacancy unfilled useful before deciding to wait another month.