Is Anyone Hiring Junior Talent Anymore?

It's a question we've found ourselves asking a lot recently.

As we've been analysing the data from the last 12 months to produce our 2026 Salary Survey, one trend stood out more than any other: the number of junior hires has fallen dramatically.

At first, we didn't think too much of it. We assumed businesses were simply recruiting junior roles directly rather than using recruitment agencies. But over the past few months, something has changed.

When we have been asked to recruit more junior level roles across PPC, paid social, PR and marketing where clients ideally wanted candidates with around 12 month experience, we’ve hit a few issues….They barely exist.

There is a surprisingly small pool of candidates with one to two years of hands-on experience in specialist digital marketing disciplines. And when we looked back at our own data, the reason became obvious.

If fewer junior roles were available during 2024 and 2025, then naturally there are fewer people today with 12–24 months of commercial experience. We're now seeing the consequences of that hiring gap.

The Long-Term Impact

This isn't just a recruitment issue for today—it's a skills issue for tomorrow.

If businesses continue to reduce investment in junior talent, we'll eventually face a shortage of experienced marketers across multiple disciplines. Every Marketing Manager, PPC Lead, SEO Specialist and Head of Digital started somewhere.

Without creating opportunities for people at the beginning of their careers, the talent pipeline simply dries up.

Hiring Juniors Doesn't Have to Be Difficult

One of the biggest reasons businesses hesitate to recruit junior talent is the time involved.

Advertise a junior role on LinkedIn or Indeed and you could easily receive hundreds of applications. Sorting through them all to find the genuinely capable candidates is time-consuming, and it's often difficult to know who has the practical skills they're claiming on their CV.

That's why we're building something different.

We're creating a platform that will allow businesses to access high-quality junior marketing, creative and digital talent at a fraction of the traditional recruitment cost.

Every candidate will be carefully screened, genuinely looking for a new opportunity and assessed to ensure the skills they list are backed up by real capability.

The aim is simple: less time sifting through hundreds of applications and more time meeting the right people.

Helping Close the Skills Gap

We hope this initiative does more than just make hiring easier.

If we can help more businesses recruit junior talent, we can play a small part in rebuilding the talent pipeline for our industry and stop the current skills gap becoming an even bigger challenge over the next few years.

If you've been thinking about hiring a junior marketer, creative or digital professional, we'd love to have a conversation about how we can help.

The future talent our industry needs is out there—we just need to keep giving them the opportunity to get started.

Watch this space; we’ll be launching our junior talent database soon! If you've got any questions, get intouch - info@pitchconsultants.co.uk