It's tight, and it's getting tighter. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list the Institution of Engineering and Technology's 2025 skills research. That's the backdrop for every software posting you write today: the people you want are scarce, so a vague advert costs you more than a slow one.
Demand isn't evenly spread, either. Against a subdued 2025 economic backdrop businesses took a cautious approach to hiring, but there were demand hotspots for specialist tech skills including AI, data, enterprise applications and cyber security Computer Weekly's tech recruitment outlook for 2026. If your brief doesn't say which of those skills you actually need, you end up competing for everyone and attracting no one.
Start with where the shortage really bites. IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, a group of 193k workers, are among the occupations in critical demand, with three out of five indicators in critical demand in 2025 the Occupations in Demand 2025 data on GOV.UK. If your software posting sits in that family, your brief has to be sharp, because the people you want have options.
And they're using them. 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026 Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, which surveyed over 500 employers and 1000 candidates. That cuts both ways: a lot of strong engineers are open to a move, but they'll only answer a brief that tells them what the job is and why it's worth the switch.
Treat the live advert as raw material, not the finished brief. The posting sells the role to the market; the brief tells your team exactly who passes. Here's how to get from one to the other.
Do this once and every later step gets faster. A shared, skills-first brief means your shortlist, your screening questions and your interview all measure the same thing, so you spend time on the right people instead of re-litigating the role.
A clean brief is what lets good matching work at speed. At Reed.ai we search a database of 15 million candidates against the requirements you set, then rank the people who fit, so a tight brief turns straight into a tight shortlist. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost. Write your brief, and let us find the engineers who match it.
