A record quarter for Private Equity deals sees a sharp hardening in the hiring market

This report marks the fourth installment of Movemeon’s Quarterly Hiring Analysis, a regular update designed to help hiring managers and candidates stay ahead of the market across Private Equity, VC-backed scale-ups and large Enterprise businesses. Our insights are powered by over 2.2  million data points from the Movemeon platform, giving you a clear picture of how candidate interest and hiring demand are shifting.

At the heart of this analysis is the Movemeon Hiring Index, a scale from 0 to 100 that reflects how attractive the job market is for employers. In short: a higher index means higher candidate interest per role. When the economy slows, candidate supply tends to rise, pushing the index up. When hiring demand picks up and candidate availability falls, the index drops.

The Strategy and Transformation Hiring Index dropped to 68% this quarter. This is the lowest value, signalling the hardest market to hire in, that we’ve seen for two years.

The driver of this hardening of the market seems to be two fold. Firstly, there has been a sharp uptick in demand for talent from Private Equity. The combination of an increase in deals (Q3 was a record), and the increasing focus on using talent as a key driver of Portfolio business performance, has resulted in the increase in demand. Secondly, we’ve seen candidates less attracted to working in Large Enterprise businesses, resulting in a harder market for Corporates to hire.

We conclude the article by reflecting on what we think might happen next. In short, given the amount of PE Funds awaiting to be deployed, we find it highly unlikely things will abate. If anything we expect this market to continue to harden into Q1.

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The Movemeon talent index

The Index is designed to give employers a read on the talent market: is it competitive? Are candidates open to new roles? Are certain industries or job types seeing more traction than others?

Below is how the index has changed over the last five years. For context, it's worth understanding who the Movemeon community are:

• It’s global: our 90k members are based across the world, with our main hubs in the UK, France, DACH, the Middle East, APAC and the US
• Everyone has worked in a leading consulting or accounting firm: 45% are ex-McKinsey, BCG and Bain; 30% are leading strategy firms; the remainder are the Big4
• They are future leaders and Board members: consultancies make up six of the top eight "CEO factories" (companies whose alumni become CEOs of the largest businesses). And this isn't constrained to just large businesses, with a disproportionate number of unicorns founded by consulting alumni

In terms of interpreting the numbers: 

• 0-25: a very hard market to hire in. Focus on retention, as replacing people is going to be hard.
• 25-50: a hard market to hire in. Be proactive and start talent pipelining for key positions.
• 50-75: a good market to hire in. Start looking to take advantage of the market, and strengthen key positions.
• 75-100: an exceptional market to hire in. Look to bring in exceptional talent that you’ll only get a few chances to snap up.
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Demand now outstrips supply as the market tightens

The hiring index has fallen to 68%, the lowest level since October 2023, signalling the most challenging hiring environment in nearly two years. 

For the past 12 months, the index had held stubbornly above 75%. In our last quarterly analysis, we noted that this resilience persisted even as hiring activity increased, suggesting there was still an oversupply of candidates in the market.

So what has shifted in Q4 2025?

To unpack this change, we analysed the hiring index by company type to understand the underlying dynamics driving the tightening.
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Private Equity is driving a surge in hiring demand

A hiring index of 68% is the lowest we’ve seen since October 2023, signalling the hardest market to hire in for 2 years.
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Whilst we’ve seen some variability in the PE hiring index, the difference over two quarters has been profound. Moving from 80% (a good market to hire in) to 4% (a very hard market to hire in) in just 6 months, shows how quickly the market can shift.

What’s driven the rapid turnaround in PE. We believe it’s two-fold:

• Q3 was a record of capital deployed in PE
• Continued focus on talent to drive operational improvement across the deal lifecycle

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Large Enterprises/ Corporates

We’ve also seen the market tighten for strategy and transformation talent within Large Enterprises and Corporates.
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For Enterprise businesses, the sharp reduction in the hiring index appears to be driven less by increased hiring demand and more by a decline in candidate interest.

Our analysis of the hiring index by company type, a useful proxy for how attractive different organisations are to candidates, shows a clear pattern. While scale-ups, PE firms and consulting businesses perform similarly, Large Enterprises face a significant disadvantage when it comes to attracting strategy and transformation talent.

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What’s next

Given the amount of Private Equity funds ready to be deployed, we find it very unlikely that things are going to slow down for the foreseeable future. If anything, given the number of Funds we’ve been speaking to who have mentioned deals on cusp of closing, things are likely to accelerate into Q1 next year.

To find out more about hiring with Movemeon get in touch with our team here.
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