Right, that’s it, summer’s over, it’s time to get serious, it looks like we are about to catch a wave.

It does feel a bit like that this week, and perhaps more importantly, the recruitment and executive search market genuinely seems more buoyant than it has been for quite some time.

We’ve got a hell of a lot more vacancies on our plate at the moment. We’re seeing more movement from experienced recruiters, more businesses talking seriously about growth, and one of the biggest shifts has been a noticeable increase in graduate and junior recruiter hiring.

The REC is also forecasting 4.4% growth in recruitment activity during 2026, following the contraction the industry experienced during 2025, and that tallies fairly closely with what we’re seeing on the ground. There also seems to have been a change in sentiment among recruitment business owners. JobAdder’s 2025/26 Recruitment Benchmarking research found that 53% of UK agencies expected revenue growth in 2026, with almost nine in ten respondents expecting the recruitment industry itself to grow. Perhaps even more tellingly, 59% of agencies said they planned to increase their focus on business development.

Recruitment companies don’t generally invest in BD teams, new desks and junior recruiters because they think nothing is going to happen, those investments tend to come when leaders believe there is enough opportunity ahead to justify increasing capacity.

One of the clearest changes for us has been the return of trainee and graduate recruitment vacancies.

Hiring juniors into recruitment slowed significantly over the last couple of years. When markets are difficult, trainee hiring is often one of the first things businesses reduce because a graduate recruiter represents an investment, they need training, management and time before they become productive.

In a difficult market, many recruitment businesses understandably concentrated on experienced hires, replacements, or simply maintaining the teams they already had. We’re seeing more companies prepared to make that investment again, which, to me, is a reasonably strong indicator that confidence is beginning to return.

Interestingly, this isn’t part of a general graduate hiring boom. The wider UK graduate market remains extremely difficult, with Adzuna reporting just 8,383 advertised graduate vacancies in July 2026, a record low and 45.6% lower than the previous year.

That actually makes what we’re seeing within recruitment more interesting.

Businesses aren’t simply hiring graduates because everyone else is, some recruitment businesses appear to be making a deliberate decision to rebuild their junior pipelines after two or three years of relatively limited hiring.

And that has created another consequence - There simply aren’t as many recruiters with 1–3 years’ experience.

If fewer graduates entered recruitment during 2023, 2024 and parts of 2025, inevitably there are now fewer recruiters sitting in that sweet spot of around one to three years’ experience.

The wider industry contracted during the downturn too. REC data shows employment across the broader recruitment sector fell from 243,118 people in 2023 to 236,470 in 2024, even while the number of recruitment businesses continued to increase.

That doesn’t tell us exactly how many consultants have one, two or three years’ experience, but it does support what we’re experiencing, recruitment businesses became leaner during the downturn and now some of those businesses want to grow again.

Suddenly, the recruiter with 18 months or two years of solid experience becomes valuable.

Your first recruitment move could therefore be an interesting one, If you joined recruitment during the last couple of years and you’re now considering leaving your first company, you could be in a stronger position than you realise.

That doesn’t mean everyone should immediately hand in their notice, but it does mean it is worth getting out there and understanding what is available rather than simply assuming your current salary, commission structure, progression or working environment represents the market.

For someone with around one to two years’ permanent recruitment experience, for example, we’re currently seeing situations where moving to a growing or emerging business can mean a £3,000–£7,000 increase in basic salary.

So, if you’ve got one to three years’ recruitment experience and have quietly been wondering what else is out there, now the summer is over, this might be a very good time to find out.

You don’t have to be desperate to leave your current company to have a conversation about the market.