ai

The working from home, hybrid working, back-to-office story has played out very publicly and very vociferously over the last five years. We’re all very aware of the various arguments and counter arguments defending or denigrating working from home. It may well evolve again, however, a very soft recent labour market means the power rests today with the employer. Emphasising this point, property firm Knight Frank reported that 1.2m sq ft of space was let in London during 2025’s first quarter, up 39% on 2024’s final three months. 

So, physically, at least, employees are closer to their employers than at any point in the past half decade. However, this doesn’t necessarily signify that employers are on the same page mentally and philosophically as their current or, more specifically, future employees. 

Let’s look in a little more detail about a growing gap between organisations and their candidate markets. 

What about the current labour market? 

In many ways, it has ceased to function as a market. All the major quoted recruitment firms have, in their recent quarterly results, touched on this same point. Both candidates and hiring organisations are taking much longer to come to decisions. Employers are putting candidates through more and more assessment stages, extending the time taken to make a firm decision on that candidate. Those same candidates are taking longer and longer to respond to an offer and are more and more likely to accept counter offers from their current employer. As a result of wariness and a disinclination to take a career risk, the gap, therefore, between employer and candidate/future employee has grown wider. Such distance does not encourage trust and confidence. Little wonder, then, that Adzuna reported the average time to hire had increased from 34.9 days to 35.3 days between March and April this year.

What about skills? 

There is so much evolution and movement in terms of what future work and future employers are going to demand from candidates and their skill sets. LinkedIn, earlier this month, reported that the skills likely to be needed for jobs in 2030 are expected to change by 70% from today. And more than half of the fastest-growing jobs did not exist just 25 years ago. It’s no surprise, then, that applicants have a less than perfect grasp about what employers are seeking in terms of skill sets – meaning they are likely to either apply for jobs they are unsuitable for and/or ignore roles that might be perfect. It’s understandable, too, that employers will not necessarily be able to articulate the skills their business requires over the next five years to candidate audiences. The speed and volume of change across workforce skills can be bewildering in the absence of absolute clarity of communications from employers. Confusion over what skills are important in the workplace is only increasing the gap between employer and candidate.

AI, not surprisingly, is playing a role in the widening gap between candidate and employer. Candidates suspect that they are being rejected by AI, rather than through human intervention, when they apply – whether this is indeed the case or not. On the other side of the ledger, hiring organisations are being inundated by AI-enhanced and enabled applications, attempting to game systems and processes. Greater volumes of AI applications tend to encourage employers to use more AI to assess such volume, in a vicious technology circle. Again, the net impact of such AI shortcutting is a greater gap between candidates and employers. Clearly, we could make a very similar and linked point with organisations and their ATS. Some appear specifically designed to create additional, and very frustrating, distance between organisation and their candidate audiences. Such frustration leaves many would-be candidates at a growing distance from the employers they wish to engage with.

This feels pretty consistent with a very recent Adecco survey which suggests just 10% of firms worldwide had structured AI plans to support workers and build skills. The same survey also pointed out that workforce strategies that don’t keep pace with AI disruption represent the top talent risk.

An employer’s careers site may too be exacerbating such a gap. We have such high and increasing expectations of online consumer experiences today. The better the online experience we have, the greater the proximity we feel to such organisations. We feel they understand us. They encourage repeat visits. We want such transactions to be personalised, slick, value adding and fast. And, generally and increasingly, that’s what we get. 

But what about the experience we have with careers sites? Have they all kept pace with the advancements, the user-friendliness, the speed, the intuition? Do they inspire us to return? Do they enhance our impressions of that organisation as a potential employer? Does exposure to them have a positive impact on their employer brand? 

Or do such careers sites further distance candidates from employers? 

For me, this is about employer insularity. About not having sufficient insight into the candidate and the candidate journey, how candidates are responding to such a journey and what their likely reaction might be. Perhaps such insularity is no surprise, given how bruising and challenging the last two and a half years have been. But, equally, things are unlikely to improve if the experience being delivered to candidate audiences is widening the gap between employer and applicant.

We use the term ‘if you can’t see it, you can’t be it’ often in terms of inclusivity. I’d suggest that fewer and fewer candidates, regardless of their background, can accurately picture themselves, other than through binoculars, within many employer organisations.