By Kate Wood, Associate Director, Stanton House

For most of my career, hiring has depended on a relatively simple exchange of signals.

Candidates used CVs, cover letters, LinkedIn profiles and interviews to demonstrate capability, intent and experience. Employers used job descriptions, processes and conversations to signal opportunity, expectations and credibility. Neither side ever had perfect information, but there was usually enough trust in the system for it to function.

That feels much less certain today.

Every day, I speak to CFOs, Finance Directors and senior finance professionals navigating one of the most competitive hiring markets we've seen in years. Many would have been highly sought after in almost any market. Today, some find themselves competing against dozens of similarly accomplished leaders for a much smaller pool of opportunities.

At the same time, hiring managers describe a different version of the same problem. They have never had more access to talent, but they have rarely found it harder to identify genuine fit. Applications are higher. CVs are more polished. Profiles look increasingly relevant. But confidence in what those signals really mean is declining.

On the surface, that feels contradictory. How can employers be overwhelmed by candidates while highly capable candidates struggle to gain traction? But the contradiction starts to make sense when you look at what is happening beneath the surface.

The challenge facing hiring today is not simply a shortage of talent.

Increasingly, it is a shortage of trust.

The Market Nobody Intended to Create

Across senior finance functions and the organisations we support, hiring has become more concentrated. Demand has not disappeared, but it is increasingly focused on roles directly linked to performance, value creation, cost control, transformation and critical leadership capability.

This is particularly visible in high-growth and private equity-backed businesses, where pressure to deliver value quickly is high and tolerance for mis-hires is low.

Recent labour market data shows UK vacancies remaining below post-pandemic highs while candidate availability continues to rise, creating a more competitive market for professional talent.¹ ² Organisations are still hiring, but the bar has shifted. The roles that are moving are often the ones where the business case is clearest and the need for immediate impact is hardest to ignore.

These conditions are changing behaviour on both sides of the market. Candidates know opportunities are harder to secure, so they apply more broadly, keep more conversations open and use every available tool to increase their visibility. Employers, faced with greater application volumes and more pressure to make the right decision, become more selective, more specific and more focused on certainty.

Neither side is behaving irrationally. Candidates are responding to a more competitive market. Employers are responding to higher perceived risk. But rational behaviour at an individual level can create unintended consequences at a system level.

Candidates apply more because they expect low response rates. Employers screen more because they are managing high volumes. Candidates use technology to increase reach. Employers use technology to increase filtering.

The result is a hiring experience that becomes heavier for everyone involved. Candidates feel invisible because they invest effort and often hear little back. Employers feel overwhelmed because they are dealing with more applications, but not always more useful information. Recruiters spend more time validating relevance, intent and eligibility. And slowly, trust begins to erode.

This is where candidate experience becomes complicated. In principle, most organisations want to create a better experience for candidates. In practice, when application volumes are extremely high, it is simply not possible to provide a deeply personal response to everyone. That is an uncomfortable truth, but it is still true.

The distinction that matters is what happens once a candidate is genuinely in process. At that point, communication, transparency and feedback become far more important because the relationship has moved beyond initial application volume and into active engagement.

The challenge for employers and recruiters is to create a process that is honest about capacity at the top of the funnel, while still preserving trust and care once genuine mutual interest has been established.

That balance is becoming harder, but it matters more than ever.

The Death of Signal

The most important shift may not be the number of applications. It may be the weakening of the signals within them.

Historically, hiring relied on indicators that were imperfect but useful. A well-constructed CV suggested effort. A tailored application suggested genuine interest. A professional LinkedIn profile provided context. None of these guaranteed capability, but together they helped employers interpret whether someone was relevant, credible and intentional.

AI is changing that. The problem is not that AI creates poor applications. In many cases, it creates very good ones. That is precisely the challenge.

Employers are noticing the shift. A recent Institute of Student Employers survey found that 67% of employers are concerned that candidates are using AI in ways that misrepresent their abilities, up from 48% the previous year.¹ The concern is not AI itself, but whether traditional hiring signals still accurately reflect an individual's skills and capabilities.

A polished CV, a persuasive covering note and a carefully optimised LinkedIn summary can now be produced in minutes. Candidates can tailor language to a job description quickly and convincingly. They can mirror keywords, sharpen impact statements and present experience in ways that feel highly aligned to the role.

That does not mean candidates are acting dishonestly. In a crowded market, using available tools to present yourself clearly is understandable. But it does mean the signals employers once used to assess effort, intent and differentiation are becoming harder to interpret.

When every CV sounds strategic, commercially minded and transformation-led, those words lose some of their power. When every profile appears relevant, relevance itself becomes harder to judge. The market does not necessarily become less talented, but it does become noisier.

In many ways, this is changing the role of intermediaries within the hiring process. Historically, recruiters were often viewed primarily as connectors, helping employers access talent and candidates access opportunity.

Increasingly, the value lies elsewhere. In a market where information is abundant, but trust is harder to establish, judgement becomes more important. Understanding whether a candidate genuinely fits a brief requires more than keyword matching.

Equally, helping a candidate understand whether a role is genuinely right for them requires more than a job description. Much of our time today is spent interpreting context rather than simply exchanging information. We help clients understand what sits behind a CV, and we help candidates understand what sits behind a role. In many cases, the most valuable thing we provide is not access to information, but confidence in it.

This matters because hiring has always depended on confidence in the signals people provide. When those signals become harder to interpret, organisations naturally look elsewhere for certainty. More validation. More references. More assessment. More proof. The weakening of signal does not reduce the need for confidence. If anything, it increases it.

When Everyone Looks Qualified

This is especially visible at senior level, where currently the issue is rarely a lack of credible candidates. In many CFO or senior finance processes, the shortlist is not made up of one exceptional candidate and several weak ones. It often contains multiple leaders with strong track records, relevant experience and evidence of impact.

Several may have delivered transformation, stabilised finance functions, improved reporting, strengthened controls or supported growth. On paper, they may all be credible. In conversation, they may all be capable.

That creates a different kind of hiring challenge. The question is no longer simply, “Can this person do the job?” Increasingly, it becomes, “How confident are we that this person can do this job, in this context, quickly and with minimal risk?”

That shift explains why hiring managers are placing greater emphasis on exact relevance. Has this person solved this problem before? Have they worked in this ownership model? Have they operated at this scale? Can they demonstrate impact in a way that is easy to understand and defend internally?

These are reasonable questions, particularly when the cost of a senior hiring mistake is high. But they also reveal a deeper pattern. Employers are not just hiring for talent. They are hiring for confidence.

And when confidence becomes harder to establish, processes naturally become more cautious.

Why More Friction Feels Necessary

For years, the direction of travel in recruitment was towards removing friction. One-click applications, simplified processes, broad attraction campaigns and frictionless candidate journeys were all designed with good intent. They made access easier and lowered unnecessary barriers.

But easier access also created unintended consequences. Applying became simpler than assessing suitability. Volume increased, but alignment did not always improve. Employer branding became more effective at attracting attention, but not always more effective at helping people self-select accurately.

Now many organisations are moving in the opposite direction. They are adding screening questions, right-to-work checks, eligibility criteria, structured assessments and additional verification earlier in the process. From a candidate perspective, that can feel like unnecessary friction. From an employer perspective, it often feels like protection.

The uncomfortable reality is that some friction is now being reintroduced because the system has become too noisy. Employers are not always trying to make it harder for good candidates to apply. They are trying to distinguish genuine relevance, genuine intent and genuine capability from a volume of applications that is increasingly difficult to interpret.

The risk, however, is that friction can become self-reinforcing. More applications lead to more screening. More screening leads to more candidate frustration. More frustration leads to more mass applications. The cycle continues, and trust declines further.

Rebuilding Trust

The answer is not to reject AI or make hiring artificially difficult. Technology will remain part of the process, and in many ways it should. Used well, it can improve access, speed, consistency and decision-making.

The challenge is to rebuild stronger signals around it.

For employers, that means being clearer about what really matters in a role, designing application processes that help candidates self-select, and communicating honestly about expectations. It also means recognising that candidate experience is not simply about making applying easier. Sometimes it is about making applying more meaningful.

For candidates, it means understanding that visibility and relevance are not the same thing. More applications do not necessarily create better outcomes if they are not targeted, thoughtful and genuinely aligned to the opportunity.

That is where recruiters and intermediaries have an increasingly important role to play. In a market where information is abundant but harder to interpret, our value is no longer simply access. It is judgement, context and confidence.

We help employers understand what sits behind a CV, not just what someone has done, but how they operate, what motivates them, where they add value and whether they are likely to succeed in a specific environment. We help candidates understand what sits behind a role, not just the job description, but the expectations, culture, leadership context and realities of the opportunity.

That responsibility also comes with a challenge for our own profession. If we believe thoughtful assessment, meaningful referencing and informed hiring decisions create better outcomes for our clients, then we should be holding ourselves to those same standards. Trust is not something we simply encourage others to build. It starts with the standards we uphold ourselves.

In many ways, the role of the recruiter has become a reflection of the wider market. As trust becomes harder to establish, the ability to create confidence between two parties becomes more valuable. Not because recruiters sit in the middle of the process, but because we sit in the middle of the trust equation.

The strongest hiring processes will not simply become better at filtering applications. They will become better at creating clarity: clarity about the role, clarity about expectations, clarity about process and clarity about fit.

That is how trust begins to return.

Final Reflection

The hiring challenges we are seeing today are often framed as technology problems. AI-generated applications. Automated screening. Mass apply behaviour. Poor candidate experience. High application volume.

All of those things matter. But they are symptoms of something deeper.

Candidates are trying to be seen. Employers are trying to be certain. Both are responding rationally to a market that has become more competitive, more complex and harder to navigate.

The question is whether we continue responding by adding more friction, more screening and more validation, or whether we start rebuilding confidence in the signals that connect people to work.

Because if we lose that confidence, the consequences extend beyond individual hiring processes. They shape how candidates behave, how employers make decisions.

Trust has always been the invisible infrastructure of hiring. And right now, that infrastructure is under strain.

The challenge facing hiring today is not finding talent.

It is knowing what to believe.

Sources

¹ Office for National Statistics (ONS), Jobs and Vacancies in the UK, 2026
² KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs, 2025 to 2026
³ Institute of Student Employers (ISE), 2026 Graduate Recruitment Survey, reported by The Times (2026)
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Outspoken is Stanton House’s thought leadership series where we raise the volume on the real-world challenges shaping work today - through the lens of leadership, inclusion, and human potential.