Future-Focused Hiring: How NZ Businesses Can Get Ahead

28 May

6 mins read

Employer employment market future hiring

I’ve noticed a logic that lots of organisations apply to hiring, that tends to go like this: conditions are uncertain, business confidence is low, we’re feeling cautious, so let’s hold off on recruitment.

Given the last five years or so here in Aotearoa, that’s not an unreasonable instinct. Most businesses have had to navigate shifting demand, ongoing volatility, and an unpredictable economic environment, so it’s understandable that they’re cautious.

But as uncertainty becomes the norm rather than the exception, we need to be prepared to move within that uncertainty, rather than waiting for the perfect moment. Staying in a holding pattern for too long carries its own risks.

In my decade of experience, the organisations that perform best in uncertain markets are the ones that plan early and stay ready. This blog explores why that matters, and what you can do about it now.

The Gap Between Hiring Intent and Reality

Our 2026 Employment Market Report (EMR), which draws on survey responses from over 2,300 employers and employees across New Zealand, shows that there’s a consistent gap between how many employers plan to hire, and how many actually do.

For example, in 2024, 81% of employers expected to hire at the start of the year, but by the end of the year, 95% had hired. The same trend played out again in 2025, where only 69% of employers intended to hire, but 95% actually ended up hiring.

So what does this tell us? Even if you’re not currently planning to hire, you might still end up needing to hire, which is why it’s important to be prepared. It also points to increasing competition – with 83% of employers already intending to hire in 2026, many organisations will be in market at the same time.

And while there may be plenty of candidates available, finding the right person is still a challenge. According to the EMR, the number one barrier to securing talent in 2026 is the limited supply of qualified, experienced professionals, particularly in specialist roles. Identifying candidates with the right combination of technical capability, experience, and soft skills still takes time.

The Cost of Reactive Hiring

It’s not uncommon for us to get a call from a client who needs someone super urgently – no pipeline, no lead time, just an immediate gap to fill. We always do what we can to help, and the outcome can still be great, but these moments tend to highlight how much easier (and more effective) hiring is with a bit of forward planning.

Regardless of how good your recruiter is, last-minute hiring puts pressure on every part of the process. It limits options, shortens timelines, and makes it harder to properly assess fit, especially for senior, specialist, and leadership roles.

There’s also a broader cost to being reactive. When key roles sit vacant, teams carry the extra load. Projects slow down, deadlines slip, and the risk of making a rushed or compromised hire increases.

At the same time, the strain on remaining employees can lead to burnout, and people might start looking elsewhere. In a market where lots of employees are already open to moving roles (as highlighted by data in the EMR), losing key people without a plan to replace them can quickly turn one gap into several – not ideal!

How to Move From Reactive Hiring to Strategic Planning

Shifting from reactive hiring to a more strategic approach doesn’t have to be complex, but it does require some upfront thinking. At its core, it starts with clarity: what is your business trying to achieve, and do you have the people and capability to deliver on it?

When you take the time to step back and plan, it becomes much easier to anticipate needs, reduce risk, and move quickly when opportunities arise. Here are some practical ways to get started:

Align hiring with your business strategy
Start with your goals for the next 6–18 months. Consider upcoming projects, growth plans, new products or services, and any transformation or change initiatives. This gives context to what capability you’ll need.

Assess capability gaps, not just headcount
Look beyond roles and focus on skills. Where are the gaps in technical expertise, leadership capability, or critical soft skills? Strategic hiring is as much about what you need as how many people you need.

Identify critical and hard-to-replace roles
Which roles would put delivery at risk if they became vacant? Where are the niche or hard-to-source skills? These are the positions worth planning and pipelining for ahead of time.

Map workload and future demand
Where are teams already stretched? When is demand likely to increase? This helps you anticipate pressure points and plan hiring before gaps become urgent.

Strengthen knowledge sharing
If key expertise sits with one or two individuals, that can create real vulnerability. Building depth within the team reduces risk and makes transitions smoother when changes happen.

Start building talent pipelines
You don’t need an active vacancy to start engaging the market. Building awareness and relationships ahead of time makes it much easier to move quickly when a role does open up. A recruitment partner can support with market mapping and talent pooling here.

Benchmark salaries and benefits
Our EMR data shows that pay remains one of the top reasons employees consider moving roles. The EMR salary guides provide a useful benchmark to ensure you’re positioned competitively.

Revisit your EVP (Employee Value Proposition)
What are you offering beyond salary? The EMR highlights what employees value most, and where gaps often exist between what employers offer and what people are looking for.

Engage a recruitment partner early
The best outcomes often come from ongoing relationships, not one-off engagements. Early conversations allow your recruiter to understand your business, making it faster and easier to find the right people when you need them.

Planning Ahead Gives You the Edge

Uncertainty isn’t going away, but the way organisations respond to it can change. Those that take a more deliberate, forward-looking approach to hiring are better equipped to move when it matters.

And being prepared doesn’t mean overcommitting, it just means understanding your gaps and risks, and planning in advance. Whether hiring is a priority or not, being prepared gives you options, and having options gives you an advantage.

If you’re looking for practical insights to support that planning, the 2026 Employment Market Report brings together data, salary benchmarks, and trends from across New Zealand. You can download it here. And if a conversation would help bring this to life for your business, our team is always here to support.

Sarah Harland

Regional Manager - Wellington and Christchurch

With eight years experience helping to shape people’s careers, three in Melbourne, and five with Madison Recruitment, Sarah is now leading the Absolute IT and Madison teams in the Christchurch branch.

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About Madison's Services

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How to Choose the Right Recruitment Approach for Your Business

Gemma Hill

29 Oct

5 mins read

Employer hiring managers partnership recruitment retained

From Multi-Listing to Meaningful Partnerships

When employers are looking for hiring support, many instinctively think “Let’s give the role to a few different agencies, and see who and what comes back first”. On the surface, this feels like common sense – more agencies mean more activity, which should mean better results, and faster. But is this ‘multi-listing’ approach really the most effective way to hire? Spoiler alert: not always!

Let’s explore how multi-listing became the default in recruitment, where it can work well, and when working with one agency exclusively can deliver better outcomes.

How Multi-Listing Became Common

The logic behind multi-listing is straightforward: engaging multiple recruiters seems like a good way to widen the candidate search pool and fill roles faster. But if you think about it, this approach is actually quite uncommon in most other professional services.

I haven’t found the perfect analogy yet, but for example, you wouldn’t hire multiple lawyers to take on the same case, or engage several financial advisers to manage the same assets. In both situations, the overlapping responsibility would likely create confusion, duplication of work, and miscommunication.

In most industries, exclusivity is standard for a reason – because it works. So how did recruitment take a different path? From my experience in the industry, I’d say it’s due to a mix of market pressure and competition during times of talent shortage.

Employers struggling to find the right talent in a tight market would have wanted to maximise their chances by hiring multiple agencies. With agencies also offering “no win, no fee” arrangements, over time the multi-list approach became the norm rather than a strategic decision.

When Multi-Listing Works (and When It Doesn’t)

There are times when multi-listing can be effective. When there’s plenty of available talent in the market and you’re hiring a high volume of roles, or filling entry-level roles where speed generally outweighs the need for deep candidate engagement, then having several agencies working at once can produce results quickly.

However, in today’s market, where unemployment is high but specialist skills remain in short supply, multi-listing can have unintended consequences. New Zealand’s talent pool is relatively small, and when the same candidate is contacted multiple times about the same job, it can create a poor experience that puts them off from the outset. The result is that you could miss out on skilled talent, or damage your brand reputation in the market, which can be difficult and time-consuming to repair.

It’s also inevitable that recruiters working in competition will tend to prioritise speed over depth. They might be excellent recruiters who know that finding the perfect fit the first time is important, but in multi-listing, there’s a natural pressure to get results for the employer as fast as possible.

Another key consideration is accountability. When no single agency feels fully responsible, the result is duplication, mixed messaging, and more work for you to manage. What may appear efficient at first often ends up costing more time. Briefing multiple agencies, maintaining separate lines of communication, reviewing several shortlists, and coordinating feedback all add up. That’s time and effort that could be better spent working efficiently with one trusted partner who understands your needs and owns the process from start to finish.

When to Work with a Single Recruitment Partner

Choosing to work exclusively with a single recruitment agency is a strategic decision. For specialist, senior, or business-critical roles where the stakes are higher, or roles where cultural fit is just as important as technical skill, it can make a huge difference.

When you partner with a trusted recruiter, they can fully represent your brand, invest their time where it matters most, and move beyond the surface. Instead of racing to send CVs, they have the time to be thorough: to seek out passive candidates, test alignment carefully, and invest in understanding your culture and long-term goals.

They can also put weight behind tailored marketing activity, things like targeted campaigns, creative job advertising, and proactive promotion of your employer brand. It allows them to promote your opportunity confidently and consistently, without the pressure of competing submissions.

For the employer, it streamlines the process. You’re dealing with one point of contact, clear accountability, and a single shortlist that reflects quality over quantity, which often results in hires that stay long-term. For candidates, it provides a smoother and more professional experience – one voice representing your brand, not multiple.

No Right or Wrong Approach

There’s no single “right” or “wrong” way to recruit – it’s about choosing what works best in your specific scenario. Multi-listing still has its place when speed and volume are the priority, while in a market where attracting skilled, engaged professionals is increasingly difficult, working exclusively with a recruitment partner offers a strategic alternative.

At Madison, the general pattern is that employers who work with us exclusively see the benefits quickly and it becomes their preferred way of working. Most start by trialling it with one role – a low-risk way to experience what a genuine recruitment partnership can deliver: focus, clarity, and better long-term hires.

If you’re interested in learning more about either of these approaches, or want advice about which might work best for you, I’d be more than happy to help!

Gemma Hill

Principal Consultant

A bit about me In 2016, I arrived in New Zealand from the UK and my recruitment journey began. With experience in people focussed industries like healthcare and hospitality across the UK and…

More about Gemma

About Madison's Services

Our bespoke recruitment methods allow us to provide unique solutions that can help solve your hiring challenges.