Hiring demand surges, talent supply shrinks: Inside Q2’s shifting job market where Private Equity booms, advisory hiring accelerates, scale-ups rebound, and corporates face mounting pressure to compete
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This report marks the third 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 1.8 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.
To find out more about hiring with Movemeon get in touch with our team here.
Hiring demand for permanent roles is at its highest we’ve seen for 18 months. We saw an initial strengthening in the market last quarter, but expected this to have dropped given the macroeconomic environment and the impact of tariffs.
However, after a small initial dip in May, the hiring market has continued to grow, reaching its 18-month peak in Q2 2025. As the hiring market has strengthened, the talent index (measuring the supply of great talent on the market) has started to drop. Between Q1 2024 and Q2 2025, the market index averaged at an all time high of 90, before dropping to 75 in July 2025. This is only slightly above the average for 2023 (70), when companies were still struggling to hire post COVID and the Great Resignation.
In this article we look at how different types of companies are being affected by these broader trends. We find that Private Equity is seeing a boom in demand for talent, driven by an increase in deals and an increased focus on operational improvement across ever larger portfolios. We were also surprised to see, despite the coverage that AI is already disrupting the advisory market, that there has been strong growth in hiring across consulting firms.
Finally, we look at the different dynamics of the freelance and permanent markets: Whilst the permanent market has definitely tightened, with visibly less supply, freelance is still a high supply market for talent. We hypothesise that this is more driven by the broader freelance revolution, and a sharp increase in freelancers/ interims available who have chosen to freelance for more control over their work life (which projects they do; hours worked etc.). This might also be contributing to the righter permanent market.
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 the Movemeon community:
In terms of interpreting the numbers:
The Talent Index has dropped from 80% last quarter to 76% this quarter. This is considerably below the average over the preceding 12 months of 90, and suggests it is getting harder for companies to hire the talent they need - in other words, demand is increasing as supply decreases. For a point of comparison, it is now at the average level of 2023, where a number of companies were still struggling to hire post COVID and the Great Resignation.
To understand the drivers of this, we are looking into the changes to hiring demand across different company types.
There has been a very clear strengthening in the hiring market since January 2025. We’ve seen hiring activity broadly double over the past 6 months, although this has been very varied by company type.
Whilst Private Equity, Advisory and Scale-ups are fuelling demand in the hiring market, Corporates and Large Enterprises are continue to lag. When we compare the current hiring market with the previous 12 months an even clearer picture emerges: Private Equity funds and portfolio companies have seen sustained growth, whilst hiring across Corporates and Large Enterprises has declined.
There are two primary drivers for hiring demand for PE-backed businesses - the number of new deals and the requirement for portfolio operations support.
New deal activity: There’s been a modest increase in PE deal activity in H1 of this year. This can be shown by EY’s market pulse: there were 275 deals over $100mn vs. 200 in H1 2024. However, this is a long way short of the 400 that were averaged in 2021, and analysing the amount of dry powder in the market, it feels like these are still depressed numbers. Interestingly, based on conversations with funds over the summer period, we’ve noticed a large uptick in deals which we are confident will carry on into H2, so are expecting PE deal activity becoming an increasingly strong driver of hiring demand. This is further supported by EY’s pulse survey, with an overwhelming majority (68%) expecting an uptick in deployment.
Portfolio operations support: The requirement of portfolio operations support is driven by the size of the portfolio and the transformation requirement to achieve the VCP. We believe the increased requirement of support has been the main driver of the increased demand in H1. As funds have held onto portfolio companies for longer, there has been a multiplier effect on the support required. Not only are there more portfolio companies to support, longer holding periods require more frequent chnage to VCPs, often with more hands-on transformation/ operational support. This is against a backdrop of an increased focus on operational improvement, as interest rates have risen and financial leverage has become less effective.
The risks posed by AI to consulting have been widely written about.
It’s clear that AI poses existential threats to the current consulting operating model. At the core of the consulting proposition is synthesising complex data, market intelligence and driving to clear recommendations. All things that AI will be able to do better than humans. It’s not an if; it’s a when.
However, we’ve seen strong growth in hiring for advisory firms. So what’s going on?
Our initial hypothesis was that boutique advisory firms pivoting to focus on AI were growing fast and therefore needing to hire. This would suggest that rather than the advisory segment growing, that it was more a case of people moving from large consulting firms to smaller ones. However, when we ran the numbers, it became clear that hiring demand was coming from both both boutique and large advisory firms.
What this suggests is that the short-term impact of AI on consulting talent has been over-played. It might also indicate another trend at play: Consultancies going through a period of growth as their clients invest in getting to grips with what AI means for them and their operating model. What remains to be seen is if this is a temporary blip, or the future of consulting.
The scale-up market has been depressed since the 2020-21 VC-driven bubble. The focus has increasingly been on the bottom line, and for many this has meant going into survival mode to elongate runways or drive towards cash-flow positive business models.
There has understandably been a big focus on AI scale-ups, and there is an increasing concern among many that there may be a new bubble forming around AI. But when we look at the hiring demand we’ve seen, it’s been broad and feels like more a return to normal levels.
When we look at the increase in hiring demand, alongside the change in the Talent Index, it’s interesting to see that despite the growth in hiring there is still a lot of supply; the Talent Index remains stubbornly at 94%, well above average in the market. This suggests that this is still a market where there is a lot of talent looking - driven by 2-3 years of depressed hiring.
Large Enterprise hiring is trailing well below the growth we’re seeing across Private Equity, Advisory and Scale-ups. Not only is it below the average demand it’s seen over the last 18 months, it’s also reduced in growth over the last three months.
What’s interesting is that this doesn’t mean there’s oversupply in the market. We were expecting to see a very high Talent Index - indicating there’s a lot of talent in the market looking for new roles. However, at just 58%, Large Enterprises and Corporates have the lowest value of any of our different company types. This suggests there is a real attraction challenge - the growth of PE, and to some extent scale-ups, is taking talent away from more traditional routes like joining the Strategy team of a well-recognised, large, global business.
If Private Equity and Scale-ups continue their growth - we foresee this being a hard part of the market to hire in for the foreseeable future. It’s for this reason that we’re starting to see an increase in freelance and interim demand across Large Enterprises.
Whilst the Talent Index has tightened for permanent roles, it appears to be more resilient in the freelance market, where a continued over-supply of talent persists.
We’ve seen broadly consistent demand across freelance and permanent roles on the hiring side, so it feels like there is something a bit more fundamental at play on the supply side. We have written extensively on the freelance revolution that we are witnessing in the market - some of the very best talent choosing to enter the freelance market to have more control over the work they do, and their lifestyle. The more resilient talent index suggests that very strong supply on this side of the market could be the main driver. It might also help explain why we’re seeing the dip in the permanent market.
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