Is Your Hiring Strategy Aligned with Your H2 2025 Growth Goals?

As the first half of 2025 draws to a close 😧 many businesses are naturally taking stock - not just of sales, operations, and client growth - but also of the teams they’ve built (or are still building) to make those ambitions a reality.

Talent remains one of the most decisive factors in whether an organisation meets or misses its goals. But how many leadership teams are pausing to ask: "Do we truly have the right people, in the right roles, at the right time?"

In my conversations with hiring managers, founders, and HR teams so far this year, a common theme has emerged: hiring is harder, slower, and more competitive than ever before. Whether you're scaling rapidly or carefully consolidating, your ability to attract, secure, and retain the right talent is likely to be the difference between exceeding targets and falling short.

So, as you reflect on your recruitment efforts, here are some key questions to challenge your thinking and shape your approach for the months ahead...

Have You Met Your Hiring Targets for the First Half of the Year?

• Did you fill the critical roles you planned for? Or have vacancies lingered longer than expected, costing time, energy, and growth potential?

• If targets have been missed, is this due to candidate availability, internal processes, salary expectations, or something else entirely?

My Insight: Unfilled roles can quietly impact more than just workload - they can slow down project delivery, overburden existing teams, and even affect client satisfaction if the gaps are customer facing. If you consistently miss hiring targets, it may indicate deeper issues, such as unrealistic role scoping, slow decision making processes, or misaligned salary benchmarks in a competitive market.

Now is the time to review these root causes.

What’s Worked - and What Hasn’t?

• Which parts of your hiring process felt smooth and effective? Was it easier to recruit for certain roles, levels or skill sets?

• And where have the pain points been? Candidate quality? Offer acceptance rates? Time to hire?

My Insight: Patterns in hiring success (or failure) can reveal a great deal about your market positioning as an employer. Quick, high-quality hires may suggest a strong employer brand pull, while tough-to-fill roles could point to skills shortages or unattractive packages. If offer rejections are high, your proposition may not be resonating with your target talent pool.

An honest analysis will highlight the areas of your hiring process that require attention to improve outcomes in H2.

How Has the Challenge of Identifying (and Onboarding) Talent Felt?

• Have you been able to reach the right candidate pools?

• Were those candidates aligned with your culture, values, and mission?

• How successful has onboarding been? Have new hires hit the ground running, or are you still feeling gaps in capability or productivity?

Poor onboarding can quietly undo the hard work of recruitment, leading to early turnover or underperformance.

My Insight: Identifying the right person on paper is only part of the journey. Without proper onboarding and integration, even top hires can under-deliver or disengage early. If new joiners are struggling to find their feet or aren’t contributing as quickly as expected, this may suggest a need to refine induction plans, clarify role expectations, or provide more effective line manager support.

Conversely, when onboarding is done well, new hires add value faster and settle in more confidently, directly supporting your business momentum.

Have You Used the Right Resources to Hire Well?

Some businesses lean heavily on their internal Talent Acquisition (TA) teams. Others partner with specialist recruiters who bring sector insight, networks, and reach.

• Which route did you take - and did it yield the results you wanted?

• Did your internal team have the bandwidth, market knowledge, and specialist reach to fill the most business critical roles?

• Or did external recruiters add value in terms of speed, quality, or access to niche talent?

My Insight: Neither route is ‘better’ - the right choice depends on the type of roles, urgency, and the strength of your existing networks. Internal teams can excel at volume or predictable hiring, but may struggle with niche or senior level roles, where specialist recruiter partnerships can unlock hidden or passive talent pools.

If certain hires proved painfully slow or repeatedly unsuccessful, it could be a sign that the chosen sourcing method needs to change for H2.

Is Your Current Team Set to Deliver Your H2 Growth Ambitions?

• Do you have the leadership, skills, and bench strength to hit your commercial goals for the rest of 2025?

• Where are the gaps? What risks remain if these gaps aren’t filled?

• Are you prepared for potential attrition or for unexpected growth opportunities that may require rapid hiring?

My Insight: It is one thing to have vacancies filled on paper, and another to have those people truly operating at full potential. Capability gaps may persist if new hires underperform or if team structures are inefficient. Similarly, planned growth may falter without succession planning or contingency cover for key roles.

If your team’s capacity or skills are even slightly misaligned with your H2 objectives, now is the time to identify and address those risks before they impact delivery.

If You Could Change One Thing About Your Hiring Strategy So Far This Year, What Would It Be?

• Would you have moved faster on certain candidates?

• Invested more in employer branding?

• Leaned more on specialist recruiters for hard-to-fill roles?

• Budgeted differently?

My Insight: This is not a question to beat yourself up over - but one to drive better decisions in the second half. Every hiring process teaches something: where you could have been braver, clearer, quicker, or more flexible. These lessons are gold dust for improving future recruitment cycles and avoiding costly missteps or lost opportunities.

Being honest about what you’d change now can sharpen your strategy going forward.

So...Is It Time for a Recruitment Strategy Reboot?

If your answers to these questions give you pause, it may be time to recalibrate your hiring plans for H2. Whether that means redefining job briefs, partnering differently with recruiters, improving onboarding processes, or investing more in your employer brand, small changes now can have a significant impact on year-end performance.

Growth requires the right people, not just more of them! Your recruitment strategy should do more than fill vacancies - it should build the capability, resilience, and competitive edge your business needs to thrive.

How confident are you that your current team can deliver your 2025 growth ambitions? If the answer isn’t a clear “yes”, the next six months offer the perfect window to fix that.

Let’s Talk About Your H2 Hiring Plans

If this blog has raised questions for you or highlighted gaps you’d like to address, I’d love to speak with you. 

Whether you want a fresh perspective on your recruitment strategy, insights into the talent market, or support to secure key hires for the second half of the year, please get in touch.

Together, we can make sure your hiring strategy is truly aligned with your business goals for 2025 and beyond 👍