Busy London A+D hiring market despite challenging climate

In London, despite the unsettled climate the architecture and interiors hiring market remains incredibly busy with hiring requirements across a wide variety of sectors and levels. 

Despite the uncertainty over Brexit in the past few years the feeling among practices and job seekers seems to be that they cannot put their careers or business needs on hold any longer and it is time to move forward.  As market confidence improves, we have seen an increase in Antipodean candidates considering a move to London and also witnessed a rise in job seekers with technical skills from non-EU countries.  As clients reach further afield to win work with our European friends, architects and designers with French, Spanish or German language skills are also in high demand.

Some individuals with very specific skills are seeing sharp uplifts in salaries due to the limited talent pools, but more generally salaries are increasing at a steady pace, a trend we expect to continue. Revit users with a technical leaning are particularly sought after and we predict that practices will need to continue to move fast when hiring these skills. 

Studios looking for individuals with commercial workplace, residential and hospitality specialisms are also likely to find they need to move quickly to secure talent. We predict that Part IIIs with 5-10 years’ post-qualification experience will continue to see lots of opportunities presented to them in the coming year and that the trend to strengthen marketing and business development teams with strong bids and communications professionals will continue. 

Work-life balance is one of the biggest considerations for candidates choosing their next career move. Flexible working, extended leave, additional health benefits and social consciousness also play a large part in the decision-making process for a job seeker and we see this trend continuing throughout the year.

Looking forward to the year ahead, we are hopeful that the recent uplift in market confidence following the election result will continue and hopefully create some much-needed stability for all. We remain in a candidate short market and clients will have to strike fast in order to secure the best talent.

Download the London Salary & Benefits PDF here.