Reed boss shares tips to stand out in tougher UK jobs market

The Office for National Statistics put UK vacancies at 707,000 in March to May 2026, with 2.5 unemployed people per opening in February to April 2026. James Reed’s advice is built for a market where every application has to work harder before it reaches a recruiter.

A labour market that is giving applicants less room to be vague

The Office for National Statistics estimated vacancies were down 19,000 on the quarter and 31,000 on the year in March to May 2026, the lowest level since February to April 2021. Payrolled employees fell by 138,000 between April 2025 and April 2026. That is the backdrop for a tougher hiring environment: fewer openings, more competition, and less tolerance for generic applications.

The latest KPMG and Recruitment and Employment Confederation report on jobs points in the same direction. Compiled by S&P Global from responses from around 400 UK recruitment and employment consultancies, it found market uncertainty, weak confidence and cost pressures were still weighing on hiring activity, with permanent placements in May 2026 declining at the fastest pace since July 2025. Temporary billings rose at the strongest rate in over three years, a reminder that employers are still hiring, just with more caution and more short-term cover.

Why Reed’s reading of the market carries weight

James Reed has been at Reed since 1992 and became chief executive in 1997. Reed was founded in 1960 by Sir Alec Reed, has more than 3,000 employees in 140 locations worldwide, and is a family of companies with a PhilCo structure, meaning at least 10% is owned by a charitable foundation. Reed’s own data tracks how sharply entry-level competition has tightened.

Reed says graduate vacancies on its website have dropped from around 180,000 three or four years ago to 50,000. That is a much narrower funnel for people trying to get their first foothold, which helps explain why speed, specificity and sector targeting now matter more than volume.

How to get past the first screen

Reed’s first warning is that many employers now use artificial intelligence to screen applications before a human sees them. His basic fix is not to game the system but to make the match obvious: “try and mirror the job description” with your own skills and experience. He also says, plainly, “don’t lie,” which means the strongest applications are the ones that translate real experience into the language of the vacancy.

That means the CV has to be more direct than polished branding copy. Reed’s advice is to keep it to one page, sharpen the opening statement, and make sure it sounds like you rather than a template. In practical terms, that means matching the wording of the job advert, showing where you have used communication, organisation or customer service, and cutting anything that does not help you get through the first filter.

What to do this week if your experience looks thin

The toughest part of a slower labour market is that employers often ask for experience even at entry level. Reed says the way around that is to build evidence wherever it exists, “even if it’s temporary, casual or part-time,” through work, volunteering, community projects or free online training, including Anthropic’s AI academy. If you cannot show a long work history, show momentum instead: recent training, a short placement, a charity project, a weekend role or anything else that demonstrates reliability.

Do not wait for the perfect role to prove yourself. Add one concrete example of learning or responsibility to the top of your application, then make the rest of the CV support that story.

Where sector targeting now matters most

Permanent hiring is slowing, while temporary billings are rising, so the more efficient strategy is to focus on employers and sectors where short-term demand is still active rather than spraying applications across every vacancy board. Roles that are being covered temporarily often move faster and reward candidates who can show immediate relevance.

For applicants, that means narrowing the search by sector, role type and skill match instead of treating every opening as interchangeable. If your background fits customer service, communication, coordination or admin, lean into those themes consistently. Reed’s message is that employers are not hunting for perfection; they are scanning for a fast, credible answer to an immediate problem.

The skills that still cut through

Reed says the skills some candidates are missing, but every career still rewards, are communication, collaboration and resilience. In a softer market, those traits need to be shown rather than claimed, so the application should point to a time you handled pressure, worked with others or solved a problem without supervision.