Where businesses are still seeing growth – and the roles they’re backing

The jobs market is not frozen but it is increasingly selective. Better Placed Managing Director Dean Bartle looks at what the roles securing approval reveal about where businesses still see opportunity.

Nobody is signing off headcount for the sake of it.

One point we have kept coming back to this year is just how hard a new hire change to role now has to earn its place. Clients still want to grow, but proposed roles are being challenged much earlier in the conversation.

Clients still want to grow, but proposed roles are being challenged much earlier in the conversation.

What will this person change? Where will they add value? Why does the business need them now?

Because we recruit across marketing, digital, tech and wider commercial functions, we see those decisions being made inside very different organisations. The roles that survive that scrutiny offer a useful view of where confidence still exists and where businesses believe the next opportunity lies.

That is why I struggle when people ask whether “the market” is up or down. There is no single answer.

Our tech team, headed up by Jonathan Moran, has had more conversations and placements around CTO and technology leadership this year than in the previous two years combined. At the same time, other parts of the mid-to-senior market remain slow and fiercely competitive.

One client can put a role on hold while another approves a major senior appointment in the same week. The difference is usually not confidence alone. It is how clearly the business can explain what that person is there to deliver.

Marketing has to make the commercial case

You can see that clearly in marketing. Commerciality has always mattered, particularly in larger businesses where marketing sits close to growth and investment decisions. But it is now being written much more explicitly into briefs.

Measurement and effectiveness are moving towards the centre of the role. Performance teams face harder questions about where budgets are going and whether that investment is working. Even in creative and social briefs, clients increasingly want people who understand the commercial impact of the work as well as the craft behind it.

That is changing the type of person employers want.

Deep expertise in one area still has real value, but businesses are placing a premium on people who can see beyond their own specialism. A senior marketer who can talk confidently about performance, customer behaviour and commercial priorities will have more influence than someone who remains entirely inside their own channel.

We are seeing clients demand that broader capability more often, particularly when the salary and seniority require a serious commitment from the business.

AI is changing jobs faster than job titles

AI is probably the clearest example of how quickly established roles are changing.

SEO has moved significantly in the past 12 months. Traditional search expertise still matters, but AI search, GEO and LLM knowledge are now appearing in briefs that would once have concentrated much more heavily on rankings and visibility.

The title on the job description might be unchanged. The job itself is not.

Our tech team is seeing the same shift from another direction. Practical AI experience is appearing in CTO, Product and Engineering searches even when AI is only one part of the role.

We are also beginning to have more conversations about AI governance, risk and assurance. Once a business starts using AI seriously within its products or day-to-day operations, questions about data, accountability and oversight become immediate. They are no longer issues that can be parked for another year.

For me, that is a more useful way to examine AI’s impact on the jobs market than trying to count the number of entirely new job titles it creates.

Some new roles will emerge, but much of the change is happening inside jobs that already exist. People are expected to understand more, and the brief is moving with the technology. We are seeing that among retail clients working on significant LLM projects, while elsewhere AI is simply becoming another capability expected within an established function.

Headcount is no longer a trophy

Agency owners are having a similar conversation about where people genuinely add value.

There is more optimism than there was a year ago, but headcount is no longer being treated as a measure of success in its own right. Owners are far more conscious of margin, productivity and where they genuinely need specialist expertise.

If they are going to make a senior appointment, they want a clear answer to a simple question: what will this person add to the business?

Technology inevitably comes into that discussion. We still hear the occasional joke about AI replacing half the team, but the serious conversation is usually about productivity – where technology can remove some of the load without sacrificing the judgement or specialist expertise clients are paying for.

That is influencing how businesses think about their structures and, in turn, which roles they choose to recruit.

Follow the roles that win approval

When I look at the market now, I am less interested in whether total vacancy numbers are simply rising or falling. I am more interested in which roles businesses are still prepared to approve – and why.

Senior technology leadership, marketing effectiveness, digital capability and practical AI are all attracting investment because employers can attach a clear outcome to the hire.

That does not mean every part of the market is flying. It clearly is not. Securing approval for additional headcount remains difficult in many businesses, and employers are asking far more questions before they commit.

I suspect some of that discipline will remain even when confidence improves.

Recruitment gives you a fairly direct view of what a business genuinely believes about its prospects. Plans can sit on a slide for months. Creating a role means putting a salary against the plan and expecting somebody to deliver it.

There are still enough businesses prepared to do that for me to feel positive about where the market is heading.

Growth is still being funded. Businesses simply want much stronger evidence that the person they hire can help deliver it.