Mind the candidate experience gap
Something odd is happening in the market right now. If you’ve been working within Change and Transformation for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly noticed it. Redundancies and new vacancies are running simultaneously. Hiring processes are taking three months to fill a position, when it was mission critical to have it filled in 6 weeks. And a growing sense, on both sides of the table, that the system isn’t quite working.
The two-tier market
The strangest dynamic in the current market is the co-existence of redundancies and active hiring, often in the same sector, sometimes even within the same organisation. What we are seeing is companies restructuring – reducing headcount in legacy functions, while simultaneously building out capability in transformation, data and technology delivery. The people leaving the business rarely have the same skills and experience as the people being hired.
For candidates, that context matters. Being displaced as part of a function be restructured says nothing about the demand for your skills in the market. Demand for experienced change and transformation professionals remains steady, but the skills needed are shifting slightly. For hiring teams, they are finding themselves needing to rationalise headcount, while racing to fill specialist roles that internal pipelines can’t service.
The skills paradox
Organisations want transformation leaders who can navigate AI-enabled change. However, very few are investing in developing those skills internally. ManpowerGroup’s 2026 Talent Shortage Survey identified AI as the hardest skill to recruit for, with 19% of employers struggling to find people genuinely confident using it. The Government’s Skills England data projects AI-related roles rising from 158,000 today to 3.9 million by 2030.
The expectation for transformation professionals has shifted accordingly, with defined outcomes, clear ownership and accountability from day one. The bar for what good looks like has risen faster than many job descriptions have been able to keep pace with, and faster than many candidates have had the chance to articulate. If you’re not framing your experience in the language of AI-enabled delivery yet, it’s worth reviewing how your profile reads. And if you’re writing job specs that demand AI fluency, which your organisation hasn’t built yet, a reality check on the available talent pool is probably overdue.
A business risk
The best candidates are typically committed within five weeks. The average UK hiring process takes eight.
That three-week gap is the difference between a top candidate working for you, or your competitor. And in a small and well-connected market like change and transformation, the way a process is run – the communication, the timelines, the feedback – gets noticed and talked about, long after the role is filled or withdrawn.
A candidate-heavy market, which we are experiencing now, can create both a false sense of security and decision paralysis for hiring managers, as there’s always the potential that the next candidate will be perfect. But in reality, senior programme and change professionals are managing multiple conversations, and making judgements about organisations throughout the process, not just at offer stage. A slow or disorganised process, for someone whose job is stakeholder management and structured delivery, will always create a bad impression.
AI in hiring: A double-edged sword
The rapid adoption of AI in recruitment has created something few anticipated: a significant rise in AI-powered candidates. GoodTime’s 2026 data found this was the number anticipated threat to hiring quality across organisations. Inflated CVs, AI-completed applications, misrepresented experience – these are now among the most commonly flagged concerns by hiring teams. At exactly the moment when AI adoption in talent acquisition is practically universal on the employer side too.
What this means in practice is that the top of the funnel has become almost impossible to trust at face value. We’ve all seen examples of it on LinkedIn – a role goes live, and within 24 hours, there are 400 applications. Most of them well-formatted and keyword-optimised. Very few would survive a conversation about programme context and what their delivery experience actually looks like.
The takeaway here is that the value of genuine human networks has never been higher. A trusted referral or recommendation from someone who knows the work carries a weight no automated application can replicate.
The cost of getting it wrong
In a programme environment, a bad hire is a business problem, as well as an HR one. A Change Manager who isn’t landing with stakeholders, or a PMO Lead operating below the level required, affects delivery timelines, team confidence and leadership credibility. By the time it’s visible enough to act on, significant programme time and momentum has already been lost.
Onboarding one excellent candidate, who understands the context, can hit the ground running, and is committed to what you are trying to achieve, is worth considerably more than four or five that need managing, retraining or replacing. The economics of using a specialist recruiter look very different when you factor in the full cost of getting it wrong, rather than focusing on the fee.
We do the hard work before the shortlist reaches you. The pre-screening, the honest conversations, the context-checking. We provide you with the highlights, not the haystack.
That’s where we come in. Levick Stanley works exclusively on change and transformation roles, meaning we deliver a shortlist based on our knowledge of the market, the skill set and cultural fit of the candidates, and the programmes they’ve delivered.
So, what should you do next?
If you’re actively looking for a new role: Your network is still your most reliable route. Don’t focus on random LinkedIn connections, instead focus on real relationships with people who really know you and your work.
If you’re hiring: look honestly at your timelines from sign-off to offer, and at what your process is actually testing. In a market where AI can get almost anyone through an application stage, differentiation has to happen through conversation and context. And if your process is taking eight weeks or more, it’s worth looking at what the impact of that might be.
We’re always happy to give an honest read on the market – whether that’s a candidate wanting to understand where they stand, or a hiring team struggling to find talent for specialist change and transformation roles. Reach out to the team to get started.