We're more than halfway through 2026, and the job market is still stuck in a strange holding pattern. Not just on the hiring side — on the candidate side too. If you're an employer wondering why your req has been open for three months, or a job seeker wondering why nobody's calling you back, you're not imagining it. Here's what I'm actually seeing on both sides of the table right now.
The Market, In Two Words: Slow and Strange
Employers are still hiring cautiously. But what's more unusual is what's happening on the candidate side: responsiveness is the lowest I've seen it in a decade. The most common reply I get isn't "not interested" — it's "I'm happy where I'm at." That's a normal answer from finance candidates. It is not a normal answer from IT and professional services candidates, and seeing it at this volume is a real shift.
Meanwhile, a lot of people laid off from tech and engineering roles in the last six months have effectively disappeared from the visible market. Best guess, based on what I'm seeing: they landed a contract role somewhere, they're running out the clock on severance, they've made a career pivot (hard to do right now, but happening), or they've simply stopped advertising that they're looking at all.
For Employers: Stop Hiring for Purple Unicorns
Too many job descriptions right now are describing a purple unicorn with pink polka dots that lives on a grassy hill in Antarctica. And when a company somehow finds one, they build artificial fences the unicorn can never quite clear.
My recommendation: cut your requirements down to 3-5 must-haves and 3-5 nice-to-haves. Let go of the university pedigree requirement. Let go of the "no contract work" bias. And unless someone's genuinely job-hopping every 3-6 months, let go of the tenure obsession too.
On location: unless the work physically has to happen in your building — the product can't leave the office, or the role requires face-to-face customer interaction — let people work remote. If you're set on hybrid, cap it at 1-2 days a week. People will commute for that. Three days is consistently where I see candidates walk away.
And here's the part that still surprises employers: remote flexibility isn't just a retention tool, it's a cost lever. Candidates who can work from home will typically accept 10-15% less than they would for an in-office role.
If you're trying to figure out what the right mix looks like for your team, that's a conversation I'm always happy to have.
For Candidates: Stop Applying Online
If you're job searching right now, the single highest-leverage move you can make is to stop relying on job boards and start working your network. And "your network" means literally anyone you know — the goal isn't finding people who already know about the opening, it's getting introduced to people who know about openings you haven't heard of yet. A networked job search isn't about what people know. It's about who they know.
A few other things worth fixing on your resume right now:
- Explain your gaps. Caregiving, a health issue, a layoff, career development — most employers can work with a reasonable explanation. What they can't work with is silence.
- Label layoffs and contract roles as what they are. Trying to obscure it reads worse than just stating it plainly.
- Write like an achiever, not a doer. A doer's resume lists tasks. An achiever's resume shows what the company gained — money saved, problems solved, results delivered.
- Use AI to sharpen your bullets, not to write your resume. Give it your real accomplishments and let it help you phrase them better. A fully AI-generated resume is easy to spot, and it makes recruiters wonder if there's a real person behind it.
How I Can Help
I'm not looking to go back to working full-time in-house for one company — but I'm very much open to jumping into your hiring process on a fractional basis, wherever the bottleneck is. That could look like:
- Hiring blitz support — reviewing and screening applicants when volume outpaces your internal team's capacity
- Specialized hiring — filling roles outside your team's usual scope
- Interview process refinement — figuring out where candidates are dropping off and what to cut
- Interviewer training and rubric-building — sharpening your questions and how you score answers
- Sourcing — when your applicant flow has dried up and no one internally has the time or tools to go find candidates
Most of this work is hourly or project-based. Specialized hiring is typically the exception — either a monthly retainer or an hourly-plus-success-fee model, depending on what fits.
Let's Talk
*If any of this resonates — whether you're an employer rethinking your hiring approach or a candidate stuck in the job search — I'd love to connect. Reach out here and let's talk through what's actually going on in your search or your hiring process.*