Posted in Industry news,
Three months in and the market feels different to this time last year. Briefs are coming in faster, international enquiries are up and the way businesses are approaching senior hiring looks quite different. Here is what our team has been seeing.
Social media and marketing have had a strong start to the year, with agencies, SMEs and startups all active. The briefs tend to fall into one of two camps: businesses that need someone to roll their sleeves up and run social on a daily basis, and those that want a senior pair of hands to shape strategy ahead of a launch. Both are in demand and clients in this space are not hanging around.
Events are busy too. Clients are already thinking about summer, planning earlier than usual and coming to us for freelance support before they have even finalised the details. There is a broader point here. The more that AI handles digital delivery, the more businesses seem to want real rooms, real conversations and real experiences. We do not expect that to change.
Quarter after quarter, B2B tech continues to generate consistent work. Startups and growing businesses across AI, fintech, industrial technology and supply chain are coming to us for PR and marketing support, often for part time roles running a couple of months to begin with. It suits the freelance model well.
Agencies are also looking for flexible capacity, mainly around press and campaign delivery. We are also picking up a small but steady stream of European tech businesses wanting to break into the UK or expand across the continent, which suggests confidence in the UK market has not gone away.
What stands out most this quarter is businesses moving away from permanent hires, not as a stopgap but as a deliberate choice. It has been coming for a while, but it has gathered real pace this year.
Fractional leadership is being taken seriously by SMEs and scaleups that want proper senior expertise without committing to a full time salary. Interim support is filling gaps while businesses wait for budget certainty or a clearer strategic picture. And more organisations are bringing in senior communications advisers to work directly with leadership, not to execute but to think.
In every case, businesses want the right person for the job, not a permanent headcount to manage.
Clients are taking more time to commit and budgets are being scrutinised more closely than they were. But demand for properly senior communications expertise has not gone anywhere. Clients are spending where it counts, on reputation, handling a crisis when it comes and getting ready for growth, and they want people who have done it before, not people who need managing.
The UK is still where most of our work sits, but Q1 has brought more international briefs than we would normally see at this point in the year, across the US, Europe and the Middle East. Businesses are running across multiple markets and they need people who understand the nuance of each one, not just someone who has worked abroad once.
We expect this to build through the rest of 2026.
Flexible models will keep growing. Budgets will stay tight. And as more of communications becomes automated, the parts that cannot be, judgment, relationships, presence, will become harder to ignore.
The businesses that do well will be the ones that know when to bring in outside expertise, move quickly when they find the right person, and do not assume a permanent hire is always the answer.
The Work Crowd is an award-winning platform connecting organisations with vetted independent experts across Marketing, Communications, Digital, Events and Public Affairs. With a global network and local industry expertise, we make finding exceptional freelance, fractional and interim talent fast, simple and effective — whether you need to lead a project, fill a gap or bring specialist skills into your team.
Ready to find the right expert? Visit theworkcrowd.com