The wider labour market is best described as 'low hire, low fire'. Recruitment has softened and vacancies have dropped below pre-pandemic levels, even though redundancies have risen only slightly the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. For finance leaders, that means a slower, more deliberate market rather than a freeze.
There are still bright spots. The largest volume increase in vacancies in August to October 2025 came from professional, scientific and technical activities, which rose by 5,000 according to the ONS Vacancies and jobs bulletin, November 2025. Demand for senior, specialist expertise is holding up better than demand for entry-level roles, which shapes how you should plan a financial controller hire.
The trend across professions is a widening gap between junior and senior hiring. In engineering, for example, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10% per GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. Experienced roles like financial controller remain a comparatively resilient part of the market.
A financial controller owns the numbers. They run the month-end close, maintain the integrity of the ledgers, manage the finance team, and keep the business compliant with reporting and tax obligations. In a mid-sized firm they usually sit between a finance manager and a finance director or CFO, and often act as the bridge between day-to-day accounting and board-level decisions.
The dynamics of the role are shifting. Businesses are taking a cautious approach to hiring while chasing specialist skills, with clear demand hotspots for data and analytical capability as Computer Weekly's 2026 recruitment outlook notes. For finance, that shows up as controllers who can handle systems, automation and reporting insight, not just the technical close.
The pattern of hiring more experienced people close to home matters too. For engineering, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, showing low reliance on international recruitment GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering found. Senior finance hiring tends to follow the same logic: you are usually recruiting from a defined domestic pool of qualified professionals.
Start with a tight brief. Separate the essentials (qualification, statutory reporting, team leadership) from the nice-to-haves (specific ERP experience, sector background). In a 'low hire' market, an over-broad brief slows you down and shrinks your pool, while a precise one helps you assess quickly and fairly the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report describes this quieter recruitment backdrop.
Speed is your friend. Demand for specialist skills is what drives the current market, so a slow process risks losing your first-choice person Computer Weekly's outlook highlights that specialist demand. Build a short, decisive interview loop and agree your decision-makers before you advertise.
We built Reed.ai to make senior finance hiring faster and fairer. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface people who match your brief, then manage the process end to end so you can focus on choosing the right person. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. If you are hiring a financial controller, tell us the role and let us bring you a ranked shortlist to review.
