The Cautious Year: Redundancies, Resilience and the Road Ahead

Confidence returned – albeit quietly

FY25/26 felt meaningfully different to the year before. The market moved again, but cautiously. Firms weren’t hiring for growth in most cases; they were hiring where they could clearly see a commercial return.

That caution wasn’t purely internal. The geopolitical backdrop, conflict in the Middle East, volatility across global markets, and a general sense of uncertainty about where things are headed, has had a real effect on business confidence here in Australia. Hiring doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and this year more than most, the mood outside the office has influenced the mood inside it.

Business Development and client mandates led activity at Ampersand, particularly at Advisor and Manager level. The brief was consistent: find people who can connect activity to revenue.

Marketing and Communications roles were more constrained. Not because the function is undervalued, but because there has been limited movement and fewer new roles created.

The phrase I kept hearing

“We’re looking for someone commercial.”

I heard this repeatedly across the year, and it’s worth unpacking.

It’s rarely about technical or financial literacy. It’s about commercial instinct: the ability to think beyond delivery, challenge partner thinking, and actively contribute to growth conversations.

Technical capability is now the baseline. Commercial judgement is what differentiates candidates.

More talent, narrower briefs, and a question worth sitting with

There is more high-quality, experienced talent in the market than I can remember for a long while. Strong track records, deep expertise, and proven delivery capability are widely available. And yet many firms are still finding it difficult to hire.

A big part of that comes down to how briefs are being written. Highly specific practice or sector experience. Direct competitor backgrounds as a preference. Prescribed career pathways as a proxy for fit.

I understand the logic: hiring is a risk, and specificity can feel like safety. But in a market this rich with talent, those constraints can quietly become self-limiting.

The question I keep coming back to, and one I’ve started raising more directly with hiring managers, is: are we hiring for potential, or are we hiring for comfort?

Some of the strongest appointments I’ve been part of this year have involved people who didn’t tick every box, candidates who brought something adjacent, something different, something the brief hadn’t thought to ask for. Not every one has landed perfectly, but the pattern is consistent: the biggest upside doesn’t necessarily come from the safest hire.

There’s another dimension to this worth sharing. Many of the strongest candidates in the market aren’t looking, and they’re not going to start. They’re good at what they do, valued where they are, and they’ve watched colleagues and friends navigate redundancies and a difficult market over the past year. That’s made them considered, not complacent. They’ll move for the right opportunity, presented the right way, by the right person. But they won’t respond to a job ad, and they won’t put their hand up unprompted.

If your hiring strategy relies on inbound applications, you’re already working with a smaller pool than you think.

A pool of talent that’s easy to overlook

One thing I’d flag directly to hiring managers: there’s a genuinely strong pool of candidates on working holiday visas right now, many with six months or more left on their visa, and a number with experience at law firms in the UK or US. They’d hit the ground running, and could provide real capacity at a time when many teams are stretched. They’re also routinely overlooked. The visa requirements and costs make some firms nervous, and sponsorship rarely makes it onto the table as a serious option, even though, for the right person, it’s a conversation worth having. Whilst a handful of firms do consider it, most don’t, and I think that’s a missed opportunity given the calibre of people we’re talking about.

There’s also a broader pool of experienced professionals, immediately available and genuinely open to contract work. Bid and pursuit specialists, marketing campaign managers, events specialists, people overseeing tech implementations as examples. These are candidates who can step in during busy periods, cover a specific project, or provide capacity without the commitment of a permanent hire. Some of the strongest operators I know are happy working this way, and it’s an underused option for firms that need help now rather than in three months.

There’s also value in bringing someone in on a fractional basis to run a genuine audit of the BD and marketing function. A fresh, independent set of eyes on what’s working, what isn’t, and where the gaps are. We’ve partnered with a few smaller legal and accounting firms this year who have found real value in exactly this. It’s a relatively low-risk way to get senior-level insight, and one more firms could consider.

Where demand was strongest

Specialist capability continued to outperform generalist skill sets, particularly where candidates could demonstrate measurable impact. The areas that came up most consistently were client development and account growth, pursuits, bids and tenders, CRM and marketing technology, communications to support through periods of change and transformation, and digital marketing and campaign analytics.

Generalists remain important, particularly in smaller firms, but depth and evidence of outcomes continue to be what drives the strongest interest.

AI is now operational, not theoretical

Every firm was talking about AI last year. This year, they’re actually using it.

The shift I’ve noticed is that the conversation has moved away from possibility and toward something more practical: how do we stop our best people drowning in admin?

In BD teams specifically, we’re seeing real, practical impact: faster proposal and tender development, better capture of matter experience from fee earners, and more efficient content creation and reuse. Firms are also starting to think seriously about visibility in AI-driven search environments, where discoverability is increasingly shaped by structured content and clear articulation of expertise.

None of this is replacing skilled BD professionals. If anything, it’s clarifying what they’re there for. The firms getting the most value from these tools are the ones pairing them with people who can do what AI can’t: shape a compelling narrative, manage complex stakeholders, and make a judgement call under pressure.

Comfort with AI tools is becoming a quiet differentiator in hiring conversations. Not a headline requirement yet, but increasingly part of how the strongest candidates are distinguishing themselves.

I also expect this to become a more direct hiring conversation in its own right. We’ve already got a few interesting briefs in the pipeline for later this year for dedicated AI innovation roles, which says something about where firms see this heading next.

A tale of two markets

One of the more notable dynamics this year has been the gap between what’s happening at the senior end and what’s happening in the middle.

At Director and Senior Manager level, there is an oversupply of experienced candidates relative to available roles. To put it in context, the start of the calendar year saw a cluster of senior roles come to market at Dentons, HWL Ebsworth and Allens, more activity at that level than we’d seen across the whole of the previous twelve months. But since then, it’s been relatively quiet, and there are still a significant number of strong Senior Manager and Head of candidates actively looking. The pipeline of roles simply hasn’t kept pace with the pipeline of people at this level who are exploring new opportunities.

At Advisor and Executive level, the picture is quite different. Demand has strengthened as firms increasingly focus on building internal pipelines earlier, developing commercially minded talent from within rather than competing at the crowded top end.

For firms holding out for an exact match at Manager level, it’s also worth considering what’s sitting just below. There are a significant number of Senior Advisors in the market right now who are ready for that next step and actively looking for someone to back them. They may need a little more support in the early stages, but in return you tend to get hunger, loyalty and genuine commitment from someone who knows you gave them their opportunity. In a market where like-for-like Manager candidates are thin on the ground, that trade-off is often well worth making.

For hiring managers, this is increasingly where attention is shifting. For senior candidates, it’s worth understanding clearly the shape of the market you’re entering.

The redundancy wave, and why this year felt different

Restructuring across the Big 4 has continued to flow through marketing, BD and communications teams as global efficiency programs have been implemented locally. The result has been a steady, and sometimes unexpected, flow of strong candidates into the market.

But what has stayed with me more this year is what I’ve seen happening in law.

Law firms have long carried a degree of insulation from broader economic cycles. The counter-cyclical nature of legal work has historically meant that marketing and BD functions were somewhat sheltered from the kind of restructuring seen elsewhere in professional services. This year tested that assumption.

The volume of redundancies I’ve seen across law firms, at firms of various sizes, across multiple cities, has been unlike anything I can recall in more than a decade. These aren’t firms in crisis, they are firms making considered decisions about the size and shape of their support functions, and the talented professionals caught in those decisions haven’t always had much warning.

Law firms are not immune to economic pressure. They are insulated, but there is a meaningful difference between the two, and I think it’s one the sector is still coming to terms with.

For anyone navigating this: the market does have capacity, and your experience is genuinely valued. It just takes longer than it should right now, and that’s a frustrating reality.

What candidates are actually looking for

Salary still matters, of course it does, but for experienced professionals who have options, it’s rarely the whole story.

Things I hear from candidates consistently include: the quality of the leader they’d be working for, real flexibility rather than just a policy that exists on paper, a clear sense of where the role could go, and confidence that the organisation knows where it’s headed.

One theme that has come through consistently from conversations with professionals who have recently completed their remuneration reviews: salaries across the function appear to have plateaued. Increases, where they have happened, seem to be landing in the 3–4% range, barely keeping pace with the cost of living.

It’s worth saying something that often goes unsaid: if you want a significant salary uplift, moving externally is almost always where that happens. Firms competing for a new hire are motivated in a way that an internal review cycle rarely is. Yes, there’s a trade-off: a new role comes with a probationary period, a learning curve, and the uncertainty of somewhere new. But for candidates who have been sitting at the same salary band for a year or two, the risk is often worth considering.

Most firms are now paying bonuses, but they remain discretionary, typically ranging from 5–15% and there’s no guarantee year on year. Firms that consistently pay out, even modestly, tend to do better on retention, though that’s not a guarantee either, just a pattern worth noting.

By comparison, financial services, technology and some consulting environments offer 15–40%, and that gap is real. It doesn’t disqualify law firms from the conversation: culture, remit and stability still matter enormously, and candidates weigh all of it together, but firms that can tell a compelling, honest total package story tend to fare considerably better when competing for senior talent.

Professional services candidates are no longer just evaluating roles. They are evaluating decisions.

The process is part of the proposition

Something I’ve been more direct about with clients this year: the hiring process itself has become a competitive differentiator.

In a market where strong candidates have options, a slow, opaque or overly complex process isn’t just frustrating, it’s costly. The firms consistently securing the best talent are the ones that move decisively, involve the right stakeholders early, and communicate clearly at every stage. They treat the process as the first real impression of what it’s like to work there, because candidates, particularly at the senior end, are paying very close attention.

Firms that run drawn-out processes, go quiet between stages, or layer in unnecessary rounds of interviews are quietly losing people they never knew they’d lost.

Private equity, mergers and what it means for BD and marketing

There has been more chatter this year about private equity’s interest in Australian professional services firms than at any point I can remember. No floodgates have opened, and the regulatory landscape still makes it complicated, but the conversation has shifted from theoretical to genuinely exploratory, and that matters.

The logic is straightforward enough. PE-backed models accelerate investment decisions, sharpen performance expectations, and bring a level of commercial discipline that many firms have historically applied unevenly. For BD and marketing functions, that’s significant. Where firms have traditionally treated these teams as a cost, PE influence tends to reframe them as a growth lever, and that changes both the resourcing conversation and the calibre of leadership being sought.

We’ve seeing something similar play out through a few mergers across the mid-market. Firms combining to achieve scale aren’t just reducing overhead, they’re creating the conditions to invest meaningfully in AI, build genuine centres of excellence in pursuits and client development, and professionalise functions that have sometimes operated in isolation. The result, in the better examples, is a more sophisticated and commercially integrated BD and marketing capability.

For candidates, this is worth watching closely. Firms going through PE-backed transformation or post-merger integration tend to need experienced operators who can lift capability quickly, manage change, and help reset expectations, not just execute. Those roles, when they come, tend to be interesting ones.

Looking ahead to FY26/27

My expectation is that the market continues to strengthen, gradually rather than dramatically.

Investment in BD roles will continue. Strategic marketing positions with genuine commercial accountability will remain competitive. CRM, client insights and account management will keep growing in importance. And as more firms navigate periods of structural change, strong communications professionals are going to be increasingly hard to find and increasingly valued.

The talent will be there. The harder question, for firms and for those of us who support them, will be deciding what good actually looks like, and whether they are willing to hire for where someone can go, not just where they’ve been.

Thank you to everyone who has been generous with their time, thinking and honesty over the past year. These reflections are only possible because of those conversations.

Here’s to FY27.

For further information on any of these points or to discuss the professional services  market in more detail, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Will Dunn, Managing  Director, +61 457 885 505 or wdunn@ampersand.com.au

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES 

SALARY SURVEY 2026/27

All salaries are inclusive of superannuation but excluding any bonus entitlement.

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