The wider labour market is cautious, and that shapes how a depot should approach its first planning hire. The Low Pay Commission describes today's conditions as 'low hire, low fire', with weaker recruitment across the board and vacancies sitting below pre-pandemic levels the Low Pay Commission's 2025 report. In practice, that means fewer people are moving jobs, so a clear, well-scoped brief matters more than ever when you want to attract the right planner.
The headline vacancy picture is patchy rather than booming. The largest recent volume increase in vacancies sat in professional, scientific and technical activities, up by 5,000 in the August to October 2025 period the ONS vacancies bulletin for November 2025. For a depot, the read-across is simple: broad demand is soft, so the roles that fill quickly are the ones defined tightly and priced around the value they add.
A first planning hire usually sits between operations and the front line. They build and adjust route schedules, balance vehicle and driver availability, react to delays, and keep costs and service levels in check. Before you write the brief, decide whether you need a pure scheduler, a planner who also handles customer communication, or someone who can start shaping process as the depot grows. Each version pulls in different skills and a different day-one scope.
Occupation demand data is a useful sense-check on how specialist your role really is. Government analysis flags analytical and systems-focused occupations, such as IT business analysts and systems designers, as being in critical demand this year the Occupations in Demand 2025 statistics. Planning has a similar analytical core. If your role leans heavily on data, routing software and forecasting, treat it as a specialist hire and brief it that way, rather than as general depot admin.
Start with outcomes, not a wish list. Write down the two or three things this person must deliver in the first 90 days: fewer failed deliveries, tighter route utilisation, faster reaction to disruption. Then work backwards to the skills and tools that make those outcomes possible. A brief built around outcomes is easier for a good planner to say yes to, and easier for you to assess against.
Be realistic about the talent pool. With recruitment subdued and specialist skills still contested, the KPMG and REC data on UK hiring is a good gauge of how tight or loose conditions are month to month the KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs. Watch how skills routes are shifting too: in AI hiring, apprenticeships have grown from 3% of hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025. The lesson for depots is to stay open on route in. A capable planner might arrive through an apprenticeship or a related operations role, not only through a direct hire with years of planning behind them.
Finally, name your must-haves versus your nice-to-haves. If routing software experience is essential, say so. If it can be trained, flag it as trainable. Clear boundaries stop a first hire drifting into an impossible all-rounder role that no single person can fill.
Once your brief is sharp, we help you fill it. We search a database of 15 million candidates to surface people whose skills match your planning role, and we manage the process end to end so a busy depot manager is not doing it alone. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. Ready to brief your first planning hire? Start with us today.
