Article · Professional Services

Hiring may be about to change. Here is what I am seeing.

Rates are going to rise and consumer confidence sits where it did in 2022. Hiring will not stop. It will concentrate, and the people who own a pipeline will be the ones in demand.

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An empty office floor at dawn

I went through 370 data releases and more than 500 indicators, and modelled three paths for unemployment. None of them are great. There will be a hiring impact, but it will be uneven, and it will create opportunities.

Having watched this cycle three times from inside it, here is what happens in law and accounting. Firms start hiring selectively. Support function hiring slows before fee earners. Permanent BD and marketing hiring falls 15 to 25 percent over the next year, with coordinator, events and generalist roles slowing first.

The good news is in two parts. Law and accounting firms bill on activity, not on growth, and a slowing economy with rising rates and falling asset prices generates a great deal of activity. And demand does not disappear, it concentrates: at manager and senior manager level, with the BD people who own a practice group pipeline, run the pursuits and can talk pricing with a partner. Supply in that middle layer is thin, because firms promoted or lost their best senior managers between 2020 and 2023.

Hiring fell 9 percent year on year in professional services while job postings rose 14 percent. Firms are still looking. They are just taking longer to decide, and waiting longer before they come to a recruiter. The cost of an empty seat usually outweighs the fee.

Not a crisis. A market moving from rewarding movement to rewarding judgement.

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