It sounds like a contradiction.
Essex has a population of around 1.5 million people and an employment rate of 77.5%, above the England average of 75.7%. (Essex Open Data)
So why are businesses still telling us:
“We simply can't find the right people.”
The answer is that recruitment is about finding the right people.
And that is becoming increasingly difficult.
The Essex skills paradox
Essex County Council's skills research identifies recruitment difficulties across a number of important sectors.
Advanced manufacturing, engineering and aviation alone employ more than 47,000 people across Essex, with demand for mechanical engineering, maintenance engineering, systems engineering, technical management and digital skills.
Yet the sector is facing an ageing workforce and continued skills shortages. (ECC)
At the same time, Essex has over 70,000 businesses, of which 99.8% are SMEs employing less than 250 staff.
That means thousands of smaller businesses are competing for the same pool of experienced people. (ECC)
And there is another problem.
The best candidates aren't necessarily looking for a job.
A highly skilled engineer, IT specialist, accountant, sales professional or operations manager may already have a decent job.
They’re not sitting on Indeed waiting for you to post an advert, and they probably aren’t sending out 20 job applications every week, and it’s likely that they may never see your advert!
They might, however, consider an opportunity if someone approaches them with the right role, company, salary, career opportunity and reason to move.
That's a completely different recruitment process.
Essex has a second problem
There is also a disconnect between people struggling to get into work and employers struggling to find experienced staff.
With 26% of adults in Essex having low or no qualifications, Essex County Council has acknowledged the issue with its £1.33m Essex Year of Opportunity programme specifically designed to improve skills and help people move into employment.
But it doesn’t solve the problem for businesses looking for skills.
And that's where recruitment needs to become more than advertising.
This is where a good recruitment strategy with proper time allocated to searching is paramount, or its where a good recruitment agency should earn its fee.
We don't believe recruitment starts when a job advert goes live.
It starts with understanding:
And perhaps most importantly:
Because when you're recruiting for a genuinely skilled position, the answer isn't always another job advert.
Sometimes it's knowing the market well enough to identify the 10 people you really want to speak to, rather than the 100 random people who happen to apply.
The Essex recruitment market is changing
Essex is actively investing in skills and future growth. In July 2026, Essex County Council announced a £900,000 Skills and Innovation Capital Fund to help training providers modernise facilities and better align training with employer requirements.
That's great news for everyone, but training tomorrow's workforce doesn't solve every employer's problem today.
If you need someone with five, ten or fifteen years of experience right now, you can't simply create that experience through a training programme.
You have to find them.
And increasingly, you have to go looking for them.
That's the difference between recruitment advertising and recruitment.
One-to-One Personnel, Locally focused. Personally invested
#Recruitment #EssexBusiness #EssexRecruitment #SkillsShortage #Hiring #TalentAcquisition #SME #Essex #RecruitmentAgency
