Why is technology hiring within insurance still difficult in a softer market?
By Alex Holliday, Director of Permanent Recruitment at Pioneer Search
The talent market still gets a vote
Most of my week is spent talking to technology leaders on one side and candidates on the other. That puts me in a slightly awkward middle, because I spend a lot of time hearing what each side thinks the other side is thinking.
What follows is a perspective on how the talent market evaluates transformation roles in insurance technology, and why the maths that looks straightforward on paper so rarely plays out that way in practice.
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Why is technology hiring still so hard in a soft market?
The wider job market is softer than it was a few years ago. Fewer vacancies, more available candidates, more caution around moving. On paper, that should make hiring easier.
But there is nothing particularly normal about the specialty insurance technology market. It has a historic reliance on consultancies, offshore capability and third parties, while permanent hiring still comes with tight parameters around location, sponsorship and right to work. Take Guidewire as one example: a Guidewire role at one insurer can look remarkably similar to the equivalent role at another. Similar technology, similar salary, similar hybrid expectation, similar transformation language. The same pattern shows up across most of the specialist platforms in this space.
I hear the same questions constantly. Why is this taking so long? Where are all the good people? Why can we not find somebody at this salary? Why do we have lots of applicants but very few real options? And, most consistently at the moment, why is it still so difficult to hire in a market that is supposed to be soft?
The answer is that the broad market might be soft, but this market is not. Insurance technology is already a specialist pool. Add a specific platform, leadership capability, location, right to work, salary and employment type, and that pool narrows very quickly.
Available market does not equal relevant market. Relevant market does not equal hireable market. The wider labour market has shifted dramatically. Specialist hiring has not shifted in the same way.
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What the UK vacancy numbers data tells us
Pre-pandemic, UK vacancies sat broadly around 800,000. Then came the extraordinary fall during the pandemic, followed by an equally extraordinary rebound. By 2022, vacancies had reached around 1.3 million.
That period changed behaviour. Employers competed heavily for people, counteroffers became commonplace, some salary increases became hard to justify on any normal historic basis, and candidates became very confident about moving. It was not a normal market. It was an extraordinary one.
Today, vacancies are back down to around 700,000 and have continued to decline. If you're wearing the hiring manager hat, the obvious reaction is: great, less competition, more people available, hiring should be easier.
But look at what else is happening alongside that. Mergers and acquisitions. Restructures. Redundancies. Cost control. More scrutiny around hiring. If you're already in a secure, well paid job, does a more uncertain employment market make you more likely to resign, or less?
That's the tension. The market has softened, but good candidates have also become more cautious. We've seen something similar with salary: relatively predictable before the pandemic, sharp rises coming out of it, and largely settled again through 2024 to 2026. The question now isn't simply whether the salary is competitive. It's whether the whole opportunity is compelling enough for somebody to take the risk of moving at all.
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Evaluate the role as both a hiring manager and a candidate
Everybody reading this has been a candidate at some point, internally or externally. So it's worth looking at every hiring decision through two lenses.
As the hiring manager: what do I really need? Then, put the candidate hat on: is this actually good for my career?
Those two questions are often not aligned. You know your organisation is good. You know your team is strong. You look at the role and think, this is business critical, we absolutely need somebody with these skills. But the candidate is asking something different: why would I leave what I already have for this?
You control the requirement. You do not control the response.
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The technology talent market gets a vote
Internally, hiring often follows a perfectly logical process. We need X, here is the job description, here is the salary, here is the location, the role is business critical so we need them in four days a week, we know several other insurers are implementing the same platform, go and find someone.
Internally, all of that makes perfect sense. But the person on the other side isn't reading your role the same way. They're asking: is this genuinely attractive? Is the proposition credible? How much authority will I actually have? Am I transforming something or fixing a mess? Who really makes the decisions? What does the implementation partner own? What happens to me after implementation?
In a more cautious market, they may be asking something even more basic. Will this role, this structure, or even this business, look the same in six or twelve months?
Sometimes the issue isn't the requirement itself. It's the story behind the requirement. Does the market believe your story? To be clear, this isn't about giving candidates everything they ask for. Sometimes you can't, sometimes you shouldn't. It's about understanding the assumptions you're taking to market and asking whether those assumptions are credible.
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Does your job description answer these questions?
Sometimes I receive a job description and my first thought isn't where am I going to find this person. It's which three people wrote this? You can often see three different sets of priorities bolted together. The programme wants delivery. Architecture wants technical depth. Leadership wants strategy. Suddenly one person is expected to do all three.
When I'm helping construct a role, these are the questions sitting behind the job description. What are they inheriting? How much authority will they have? Are they fixing a mess? Who owns this after go live? What happens to them after the transformation? Why would they leave what they already have?
None of that needs to be written word for word into the advert. But somebody needs to know the answers. That's also why the interview matters. The best candidates are interviewing you as much as you're interviewing them. They're assessing the leadership, the credibility, whether the story is consistent with what they were told. An interview shouldn't be an interrogation. It should be a two way decision.
A job description tells me what you require. It rarely tells me why somebody excellent should actually want the job.
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When 600 Guidewire candidates become 6
Last year, we ran a search for a Guidewire developer, one of the more specialist platform skillsets in this space, where a theoretically sensible requirement collided with the actual market. We went into a market of 660 people. We had conversations with 252. Of those, 180 were developers.
At that point, you could look at the headline number and think, that's a sizeable market. Then we applied the real requirement: certification, budget, leadership capability, location, right to work, interest. Suddenly, only 12 of those developers were ACE certified. Only 6 had UK right to work.
That's the difference between the available market and the hireable market. Available does not equal relevant. Relevant does not equal interested. Interested does not equal hireable.
At that point, the answer wasn't to search harder. The options became strategic: develop somebody internally, use a contractor, relax the certification requirement, consider sponsorship, change the salary. The search hadn't failed. The assumptions about the market had been tested, and sometimes those assumptions fail. Every job is fillable. The question is how long you want to wait, and what you're prepared to change.
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AI changed everything, and nothing
Candidates can use AI to tidy a CV, tailor it to a role, identify relevant experience, prepare for an interview. Employers can automate responses, improve sourcing, screen applications, process more information more quickly.
So should I be worried that AI eventually removes the hiring process entirely? No. Because most of what we've been talking about is fundamentally human. Why would somebody leave? Do they trust the leadership? Do they believe the transformation story? Are they prepared to take the risk? How do they feel after meeting you? AI can make the mechanics smoother. It can't answer those questions for somebody.
There's been another consequence of removing so much friction: noise. Historically, across the skillsets we tracked, we'd broadly expect around 5 per cent of inbound applications to be genuinely suitable. We've seen that fall to below 1 per cent. Applications have become easier to produce and often better presented. That doesn't mean the underlying relevance has improved. In a highly specialist market, it can actually create more noise.
Which takes us straight back to the earlier point. Available does not equal relevant. The human part still matters. You still need to understand the person behind the CV. They still need to understand the people behind the business. Your interview process still needs to communicate the story.
AI can help somebody apply for your role. It can't make them want your role. And if you want to use robots to hire, don't be surprised if you end up hiring robots.
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Recruitment is market feedback
The answer to a difficult market is not always more recruitment. Not necessarily another recruiter, another advert, starting again. Particularly in a market like this one, where the pool is already tight and highly connected, there's a good chance you simply end up going back around the same people with the same proposition.
At some point, the question shifts from where are all the candidates, to what is the market telling us about this role. You don't always need somebody sitting in the awkward middle to tell you. If everyone wants more money, perhaps the scope and salary don't match. If everyone questions the remit, perhaps ownership is unclear. If candidates ghost after interview, what did they discover? If somebody takes a counteroffer, what suddenly became more compelling about staying than leaving?
Salary can solve a pricing problem. It doesn't necessarily solve a proposition problem. If the market keeps giving you the same answer, that's feedback.
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Before the next hire, ask four questions
Good hiring starts before anybody goes to market. Go back to the two hats. You have your requirements, but remember the person behind them.
- Why would a good person leave an excellent job for yours?
- Does the process and the expectation actually stack up?
- What feedback is the market already giving us?
- What's in it for the candidate once the transformation is over?
None of those questions mean lowering the bar. They mean making sure the bar you've set is attached to an opportunity somebody credible would actually choose.
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Why would somebody excellent leave a good job for yours?
You know why the role matters to you. You know why the programme matters to the business. But can you clearly explain why it should matter to them?
If you can't, the market probably already has told you. I spend most of my week sitting in that awkward middle, hearing both sides of exactly this conversation, so if any of this sounds familiar, I'm always happy to compare notes.
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FAQs
Why is insurance technology recruitment still difficult?
Because insurance technology requires combinations of sector knowledge, platform experience, leadership capability and regulatory understanding that remain scarce, regardless of wider vacancy levels.
Why are Guidewire professionals difficult to hire?
The apparent candidate pool becomes much smaller once certification, relevant implementation experience, salary, location, right to work and willingness to move are considered.
Does a softer labour market make specialist hiring easier?
It can increase application volume, but it may also make securely employed specialists more cautious about changing jobs.
How can insurers attract specialist technology candidates?
Employers need a credible transformation story, clearly defined authority, realistic requirements and a compelling explanation of what the person will achieve during and after implementation.
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Curious to find out more?
Get in touch today with Alex Holliday, Director of Permanent Recruitment at Pioneer Search, specialising in technology appointments across specialty insurance and the London Market. He works with insurers, technology leaders and specialist professionals across permanent transformation and platform hiring.
