The candidate exists. Does your salary band?

When a specialist vacancy proves difficult to fill, the natural assumption is often that the right candidates simply aren't available.

Sometimes that is true. Certain combinations of sector knowledge, technical expertise, leadership experience and location genuinely create a small candidate market.

Sometimes, however, the candidates are there. The difficulty is that the experience being requested and the salary attached to the role no longer align.

This is an increasingly important distinction for UK employers. The recruitment market entering the final months of 2026 looks very different from the exceptionally tight conditions seen several years ago. Candidate availability has increased and overall vacancies have fallen, but specialist skills continue to command competition.

For businesses recruiting across Supply Chain, Procurement, Logistics, Sales, Buying and HR, a broader candidate market does not automatically mean every role has become easier or cheaper to recruit.

That’s why salary benchmarking should start with what the role actually involves, from its responsibilities and required skills to the level of experience needed.

More candidates does not mean every skill is readily available

On the surface, employers should currently have more choice.

The ONS estimated 702,000 UK vacancies in June to August 2026, down 4.9% year on year and the lowest level since February to April 2021. There were 2.5 unemployed people for each vacancy.

The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs tells a similarly nuanced story. Candidate availability rose markedly again in August, while overall vacancies continued to decline. Yet starting salaries for permanent appointments increased at their strongest rate since January, with recruiters reporting continued competition for highly skilled candidates and people with niche expertise.

That combination is important.

An employer may receive more applications than it would have two or three years ago without necessarily having more suitable candidates for a specialist position. Quantity and fit are different measures.

A Procurement role requiring complex category expertise, international sourcing experience and senior stakeholder management still needs a relatively specific person. A Supply Chain leadership role combining transformation, planning, systems and operational experience may draw from a similarly defined market. The same applies when businesses need particular sector knowledge, geographic proximity or experience operating at a certain scale.

This is where salary benchmarking becomes more useful than simply looking at whether the overall jobs market is up or down.

 

A larger candidate market does not automatically create a larger market of the candidates you actually need.

 

Roles have a habit of growing while salary bands stay still

Many jobs change gradually.

A vacancy may have started several years ago as a relatively straightforward operational or functional role. Over time, the employee takes responsibility for another site, a larger budget, additional categories, new systems, a transformation project or a bigger team.

When that person eventually leaves, the original job description is opened, updated and taken back to market.

The difficulty is that the salary band may still be anchored to what the position used to be.
This is particularly relevant as organisations expect more from specialist and leadership positions. Digital capability, data literacy, transformation experience and broader commercial judgement are increasingly being incorporated into roles that already require strong functional expertise.

Skills England's 2026 Annual Skills Report found that more than a quarter of vacancies are hard to fill because of skills shortages. Its longer-term analysis also expects demand for key occupations within Industrial Strategy priority sectors to increase substantially over the next decade.

Advanced manufacturing provides a useful illustration. Skills England projects that priority occupations in the sector will require 47,000 additional workers between 2025 and 2035, while an estimated 101,000 workers will need to be replaced as existing workers leave those occupations. It also found that 71% of the sector's priority occupations were already in either elevated or critical demand across the economy.

Many of those occupations are simultaneously required by other growth sectors.
The lesson for employers is broader than manufacturing. When the combination of skills within a role becomes more valuable, the salary cannot be assessed solely against what the previous employee earned.

 

Benchmark the role you are recruiting today

Salary benchmarking works best when it reflects the real scope of the vacancy.

Two people with the title Supply Chain Manager may operate at very different levels. One may manage planning for a single site, while another owns an end-to-end function across several locations. Two Procurement Managers could have dramatically different spend, category complexity, team responsibility and international exposure.

Location matters too. The candidate market available to an employer in London will differ from the market in Manchester, Birmingham, the East Midlands or a more remote operational location. Hybrid expectations, travel requirements and the availability of comparable employers in the area can all influence the practical talent pool.

Sector experience can narrow it further.

If the brief requires somebody who has worked within one specific industry, managed a particular system, operated at a certain scale and lives within commuting distance of the site, the salary needs to be considered against that candidate population rather than a broad national average for the job title.

This is where specialist recruitment market knowledge becomes particularly valuable. A salary guide provides a useful benchmark, but a live recruitment brief adds context: geography, sector, scope, scarcity, candidate expectations and the other opportunities competing for the same people.

 

Pay is moving differently across the market

The current pay environment also deserves context.

ONS data for May to July 2026 showed annual regular earnings growth of 3.5%, with private-sector regular pay growing by 2.9%. Once CPIH inflation was taken into account, regular earnings were up only 0.6% in real terms.

At the same time, recruitment-market data shows that starting salaries can behave differently from average earnings. KPMG and REC reported in September that permanent starting salary growth had accelerated to its strongest level since January, partly because employers were competing for candidates with highly valued or niche skills.

This is exactly why a general percentage increase cannot answer every salary question.
Applying the same annual uplift to every position may work administratively, but recruitment happens in individual talent markets. Some skills have become more available. Others remain difficult to secure. Some roles have changed significantly. Others have remained relatively stable.

The salary attached to a vacancy needs to reflect those differences.

 

When the salary and brief do not match

If a business takes a role to market and repeatedly struggles to engage suitable candidates, increasing the salary is one possible response, but it is not the only one.
The first step is understanding what the market is saying.

Perhaps the salary genuinely sits below the level expected by people with the required experience. In that situation, changing the package may be necessary.

Alternatively, the brief itself may be too restrictive. An employer may be asking for ten requirements when only six are genuinely essential. Sector experience could potentially be widened. A particular system might be teachable. The level of management experience requested might exceed what the role actually requires.

There may also be other elements of the proposition that can change. Flexibility, bonus structure, progression, benefits, job title, working pattern and the clarity of the role itself can all influence how an opportunity is received.

The answer depends on why candidates are declining or disengaging.

That is one of the reasons feedback during a recruitment campaign matters. If one candidate thinks the package is low, that is an individual view. If the same feedback emerges repeatedly from suitably experienced people, it becomes useful market information.

When the same objection keeps appearing, it stops being an objection and starts becoming data.

 

Future skills will make accurate benchmarking more important

Looking beyond the immediate 2026 recruitment market, the case for more precise benchmarking becomes stronger.

Skills England expects employment demand in priority occupations across key sectors to increase substantially over the next decade, while many occupations will also experience considerable replacement demand as existing workers leave the workforce.

Advanced manufacturing alone is projected to need around 148,000 workers across its priority occupations between 2026 and 2035 when expansion and estimated replacement demand are combined. Skills England also notes that 84% of projected additional employment in those priority occupations is expected to require qualifications at Level 4 or above.

The skills attached to these roles are changing as well. Digital literacy, problem-solving, decision-making, leadership and the ability to work with increasingly sophisticated systems feature prominently across the government's 2026 skills assessments.

Employers therefore need to think about the capabilities they will require tomorrow as well as the experience they can afford today.

Adding future-facing requirements to a role increases the importance of understanding what those capabilities are worth in the external market.

 

Build the brief around the market you are actually hiring in

A successful recruitment process starts with alignment.

The responsibilities, required experience, location, flexibility and salary need to make sense together. When they do, employers can approach the market with greater confidence and candidates have a much clearer opportunity to assess.

When they do not, recruitment can become unnecessarily long. Applications arrive but do not meet the brief. Strong candidates withdraw. Offers become difficult to close and the business can spend weeks searching for a profile that was unlikely to engage with the package in the first place.

At Cast UK, our consultants work within specialist markets across Supply Chain, Procurement, Logistics, Sales, Buying and HR. That means our conversations with clients go beyond finding CVs. We can help businesses understand candidate availability, salary expectations, regional differences and how the scope of a role compares with the market before a search gathers momentum.

If you're preparing to recruit and want to understand how your salary and brief compare with the current market, speak to Cast UK.

0333 121 3345 | hello@castuk.com