Across Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the East Midlands, permanent vacancy volumes have held steady this quarter, with the strongest demand in engineering, quality and operations leadership.
Pay expectations continue to move ahead of advertised salary bands, particularly for technical roles where the candidate pool is genuinely small. Employers who benchmark before going to market are filling roles noticeably faster than those who advertise first and negotiate later.
Candidate availability remains tight at the senior end. Most of the strongest people we speak to are in work, not applying, and will only move for a clear step up in scope, culture or progression.
The practical takeaway for employers: shorten the process. Two well-structured interview stages within a fortnight consistently outperforms a drawn-out four-stage process, however thorough it feels.
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