When will marketing recruitment improve? From the quantity of roles to the quality of processes, it’s a question many marketers have found themselves asking over the last few years.  

Recruitment woes are likely to continue, according to exclusive data from IPA Bellwether, which indicates a fifth (22.8%) of marketing leaders are expecting to make cuts to their teams this quarter, with recruitment intention remaining low.  

Macroeconomic challenges are having a persistent impact on hiring, which has been the case for a long time now.  

“I am seeing teams shrinking,” says Rowan Fisk, headhunter and founder of recruitment company GrowthKind. “Macroeconomically, the country isn’t growing and so businesses need to find ways to be more profitable.”  

Marketing recruitment woes persist as brands eye cuts  

Similarly, Joseph Fitzgibbon, founder of recruitment business Growth & Company, is seeing businesses – in the startup and scaleup space – “firing a CMO” in favour of appointing a growth or performance director and brand director to lead separate teams, often reporting into the CEO.  

While most marketers would argue marketing has a direct impact on business growth, it seems some brands aren’t taking the same view.  

“The market is still in a funny place. I do think it’s improving, but I don’t think its recovered yet,” adds Fisk.

He is seeing more vacancies for senior marketers, but not on a par with the number of people searching for their next role.  

Hiring processes have long been a point of contention for marketers, who report high levels of ghosting, lengthy processes and unreasonable interview tasks as bugbears.

The market is still in a funny place. I do think it’s improving, but I don’t think its recovered yet.

Rowan Fisk, GrowthKind 

While the “quantity of vacancies” is up, based on conversations with CMOs the quality of processes is “about the same, or probably worse”, says Fisk. 

Similarly, processes taking more than three months and interview stages reaching double digits have caused problems for candidates and recruiters.  

A lot of businesses are still “dragging their heels” when it comes to making a decision about a candidate. However, the indecision about hiring is starting early in the process.

“[Businesses are] scared even to make a decision about appointing a search firm or going to market, let alone make a decision about hiring somebody,” Fisk adds.  

Pick of the bunch?

There are many senior, well-qualified candidates on the job market. This has been the case for the last two years, as reported by Marketing Week.  

Brands believe they have the “pick of the bunch” when they do make the decision to recruit, suggests Fisk. However, that’s not always the case. 

It’s the minority of jobseekers – estimated at around 30% of marketers – who are active at any one time, meaning “the minority might get bigger and smaller, but it’s only ever the minority”, he adds.  

The majority of the market are sat in roles, Fisk explains, where they are fairly content and unlikely to move considering the current economic climate and risk that comes with a new job.  

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“When the market is more challenged, those people are actually less likely to move roles rather than more,” he says.

Fisk uses the example of a banking brand ringing up a senior marketer at a competitor firm.

“They call you up and ask: ‘Hey, do you want to come and do the same job over here?’ You’d say: ‘No, why would I? I’ve been working here for five years. I’ve got a good personal brand. I’ve got a good reputation, people like me. Why would I cash all of that in for the risk to move?’”  

The market is challenging for many reasons and it’s making businesses think they’ve got greater access to the market and so are only willing to hire “perfect candidates”.  

“But the perfect candidate, statistically speaking, is probably sat in a role and probably unlikely to move for something that is very similar to what they’re doing currently,” says Fisk.  

Areas of growth

The state of marketing recruitment hinges on what function you’re working in.  

One recruiter tells Marketing Week their business had two team members responsible for hiring in market research and creative roles at the start of the year, which have now been cut because of how few opportunities there are in these functions. That’s not the case in all areas. 

“Growth marketing is still growing,” says Fitzgibbon, who notes an uptick in growth-related roles, particularly at the senior end.  

So-called “traditional” companies are “understanding growth marketing”, he claims, and rethinking their marketing teams to be “more commercial”.  

Marketing recruitment intention continues to ‘deteriorate’  

This is resulting in “CMOs getting fired” and a transition to replace them with people who “live and breathe performance marketing or digital marketing”.  

This movement is impacting leadership. Businesses want people who have 15 to 20 years of experience in disciplines that were “only in their infancy” that long ago.  

“You have this gap where you have very hands-on performance marketing people, but they can’t necessarily manage the teams and the level of complexity that you need for these businesses, and that’s why you have disconnect,” says Fitzgibbon.

Roles for copywriters and junior designers are “very rare now” at the entry-level, says Craig Lewis, head of marketing recruitment at Oxford-based Stonor Search.  

Lewis believes it’s jobs that focus more on “human connection” that will survive cuts and the introduction of AI. Social media, influencer marketing and brand partnerships are all areas that are growing – and still hiring at the junior end – compared to other disciplines, he says.  

Roles where marketers “need to understand people and be reactive” are buoyant. For Lewis, despite the poor state of marketing recruitment, 2025 has been the second best year for recruitment in these roles in the last decade.  

“If you’re a junior marketer, I would think carefully about what you want to go into and pick an area where there is some kind of human element,” he says.  

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The London job market is full of people searching for roles, he adds, however there are more opportunities outside the capital city. Lewis is getting a lot of briefs from smaller brands searching for “enthusiastic” marketers and is placing talent in roles where they’re moving from different industries.  

He notes one smaller brand which recently came to him to build out their marketing team with a marketing executive, manager and social media manager.  

“There are roles out there if you look beyond the obvious big brands, because big brands are the ones that will cut their marketing teams,” he says, noting this is in part because they’ve got shareholders to please.  

Looking ahead, Fisk believes there’s still a level of “stagnation” in the market and layered on top of that is macroeconomic uncertainty, a lack of funding and “the fact that marketing costs a lot of money”. Certain industries are performing better than others, he notes, with the venture capital world hiring marketers, but less so in corporate. 

“Realistically, it will probably be slow for the rest of the year. It will probably be next year when new budgets are signed off, when bonuses are paid out,” says Fisk. 

“That’s when it will get busy again, and busy with quality, rather than with quantity.”

Across his career, he’s seen recruitment “slow down very quickly and speed up very quickly”. For now, recruitment is in “wait-and-see mode”.