The picture is shifting fast, and it's not only about filling seats. The way firms source AI-adjacent skills has changed sharply: apprenticeships have risen from 3% of AI hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025, according to the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025. That tells us employers are building talent in-house rather than only buying it ready-made.
The wider skills gap is real but uneven. The same AI Labour Market Survey 2025 notes that the proportion of employers struggling to fill vacancies has declined, while a comparison with the Cyber Security Skills 2024 report showed 70% of cyber firms reported at least one hard-to-fill vacancy. For a lean claims team, the lesson is clear: generic demand is easing, but specialist, judgement-heavy roles stay hard to fill.
A lean team can't carry passengers. Every hire needs to handle complex claims and work alongside AI agents that draft, summarise and triage. That blend is what we mean by agent fluency: the person reviews what an agent produces, spots where it's wrong, and keeps the final decision human.
The skills are learnable, and the market is moving to teach them. During London Tech Week 2025, the UK government announced a partnership to upskill 7.5 million UK workers in essential AI skills by 2030, equivalent to around 20% of the UK workforce, as reported by techUK. So you're hiring into a growing pool, not a fixed one.
Start with the work, not the job title. Write the role around the decisions the person will own and the agents they'll supervise. That keeps your shortlist focused on people who can do the actual job on day one.
Screen for judgement with real scenarios. Give a short claims case plus a sample AI-drafted summary that contains a subtle mistake, and ask the applicant to find it and justify the right call. You'll learn more in ten minutes than a CV tells you in a week.
Then look at how people learn. With apprenticeships now a meaningful route into AI work, per the GOV.UK AI Labour Market Survey 2025, some of your best hires may come in with strong reasoning and grow the agent skills quickly. Hire for curiosity and sound judgement, and train the tools.
When every hire counts, you want range and speed. We search 15 million candidates to surface people who can own complex claims and work confidently with AI agents, then we rank a shortlist and handle the process end to end. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Ready to build a claims team that's fluent with agents? Start your search with Reed.ai today.
