On paper, the balance in hiring has moved towards employers. The CIPD's Spring 2026 Labour Market Outlook, published on 18 May 2026, found that just 12% of employers anticipate significant problems filling vacancies over the next six months, down from 15% a year earlier. Vacancies have fallen over the past year, and CIPD analysis published on 19 May 2026 attributes that decline almost entirely to SMEs pulling back on hiring.
The same survey found that a third of employers, 33%, still report hard-to-fill roles. Application volumes have risen. The supply of suitable candidates has not. That distinction matters, because a hiring process built on the assumption that candidates will tolerate anything tends to eliminate precisely the people it should be attracting.
Here are five habits that do most of the damage.
1. Advertising a role without a salary
A job advert that offers a competitive salary and nothing more tells an experienced candidate very little, other than that the figure may disappoint. Capable administrators, finance assistants and customer service staff will not invest an evening in an application to discover at second interview that the salary is below what they already earn. Withholding the figure does not preserve negotiating room. It reduces the pool.
Regulatory direction is also clear, under the EU pay transparency rules that took effect in June 2026, employers must inform job seekers of the starting salary or pay range in the vacancy notice or ahead of the interview, and may no longer ask candidates about their pay history. UK employers are not bound by the directive, but candidate expectations do not stop at the border. Salary transparency is increasingly the standard applicants judge you against.
2. Allowing the process to go quiet
The interval between stages is where most candidates are lost, strong applicants for office and business support roles are usually in two or three processes at once. A week of silence after a first interview is read as disinterest, and the offer that arrives first tends to win, even when it is not the strongest one on the table.
3. Adding interview rounds
Every additional stage filters the field, but rarely in the intended direction. Candidates with options withdraw; candidates without them remain. A third or fourth interview for a mid-level support role signals indecision rather than rigour, as do unpaid assessment tasks that take several hours to complete.
Two well-structured interviews and one short, relevant exercise will usually tell you more than four unstructured conversations, and they will do it before your preferred candidate accepts elsewhere.
4. Writing the job advert as a wish list
A specification listing twelve essential requirements attracts nobody who meets all twelve and deters the capable applicants who meet nine. It also lengthens the hiring process, because the shortlist never materialises and the role is re-advertised.
Separate what is genuinely non-negotiable from what can be trained within a month. Most office support roles have three or four true essentials. The rest is preference, and preference dressed up as requirement is expensive.
5. Rejecting candidates without closing the loop
Declining to respond after an interview carries more cost in a regional market than a national one. The North West office and professional market is comparatively small, and candidates talk to each other. A poor candidate experience is repeated, and it reaches the people you will want to attract next year.
It also removes optionality. The runner-up you never replied to is the person you would want to call when the successful hire resigns after eight months, or when the next vacancy opens.
None of these habits is about generosity towards candidates. Each is about not eliminating the people you intend to hire. A softer labour market has made applications easier to gather and has done nothing to make good support staff easier to secure. The employers who run a clear, prompt and honest hiring process are still the ones who get them.
If you want a process that assesses candidates properly without losing them along the way, our services for employers set out how we work. Contact us to discuss the roles you are recruiting for.
