The wider UK labour market is best described as 'low hire, low fire': recruitment has weakened and vacancies have dropped below pre-pandemic levels, even though redundancies have only risen slightly Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK. For logistics and supply chain operators, that means fewer people moving between jobs, so the strong order management staff you want are often not actively looking.
There are still bright spots. In the three months to October 2025, the largest volume increase in vacancies was in professional, scientific and technical activities, which rose by 5,000 ONS – Vacancies and jobs in the UK: November 2025. Demand has not disappeared, it has concentrated. The task for operators is to compete for a smaller pool of available people without slowing down.
That caution runs across sectors. Through a subdued 2025, businesses took a careful approach to hiring while still chasing specialist skills in areas like data and enterprise applications Computer Weekly (tech recruitment outlook 2026). Order management sits right at that intersection of process discipline and systems know-how, which is exactly where demand holds up.
Order management is the engine room of any supply chain: taking orders in, checking stock and pricing, coordinating fulfilment, and keeping customers updated. The core roles are order processors and administrators, order management coordinators, customer service and fulfilment specialists, and the team leads who hold service levels together. Increasingly, all of them need to be comfortable inside ERP, WMS and order platforms, not just spreadsheets.
One dynamic to plan around: entry-level hiring is getting harder to rely on. Adzuna has seen a 30% drop in UK entry-level job postings since ChatGPT launched, with graduates facing the toughest market since 2018 techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?. In engineering specifically, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a nine-point gap GOV.UK - A snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. If your pipeline depends on junior hires learning on the job, that route is narrowing.
So how do you keep feeding the team? Apprenticeships are one answer. In AI roles, apprenticeships have risen from 3% of hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. The same logic applies to order management: build the people you need rather than waiting for a perfect match to appear.
Start by writing the role around outcomes, not a wish list. Order accuracy, on-time fulfilment and clear customer communication tell you more than a fixed number of years in a warehouse. Hiring for narrow experience shrinks your pool at the worst possible time, given how few people are moving between jobs right now Low Pay Commission Report 2025, GOV.UK.
Next, screen for systems fluency and problem-solving. Ask how someone handled a stock shortfall, a pricing error or a spike in orders. Those scenarios reveal the judgement that keeps service levels intact when a shift goes sideways. Then move fast: in a cautious market, the operators who make quick, clear decisions win the shortlist while others are still arranging first calls.
Finally, build your own bench. With entry-level postings down techUK – What's actually happening with entry-level and graduate jobs?, an apprenticeship or structured trainee route gives you a pipeline you control, mirroring the apprenticeship growth seen elsewhere GOV.UK / DSIT – AI Labour Market Survey 2025 report. Pair that with a fair, quick process and you protect service continuity for the long term.
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