What the Numbers Tell Us: Reading the Trends in Seven Years of Brellis Placements

Over the years, I’ve noticed that our roles tend to follow a trend. We often get related roles from different clients depending on the time of year, economic reasons and even political ones. Recently we’ve had an influx of customer service and business supporting roles, but last year we also had a number of very high senior management and director-level positions. This week it seems to be sales related positions, and so it goes on.

As a micro business, it’s hard to know if this is correlation or causation, so I ran our sales ledger through Claude to see what it made of seven years of Brellis data, going right back to when Zoe and I started out in 2018.

The August Effect

The clearest pattern in the data is a genuine seasonal one. Admin and office roles spike in August every year. So if you’re looking to recruit, or you’re a candidate hoping for that next role, it’s worth getting those CVs updated now or approaching us to get those vacancies posted, rather than waiting until September when everyone else has the same idea.

Two Very Different Types of Client

When we looked at which types of roles tend to land together, a clear pattern fell out. Our clients split fairly neatly into two camps. One group consistently needs customer service, admin, finance and sales support, often several of these at once. The other group is far more likely to come to us for engineering, quality, buying and technical roles. Rarely do we see a client needing both.

It’s not a coincidence that this splits almost exactly along the lines of what Zoe and I each specialise in, and it’s a useful thing to know. If one client in that commercial group goes quiet for a while, it’s often worth checking in, because others in that same group tend to move on a similar rhythm. The same goes for our engineering and manufacturing clients.

2025, the Year of the Senior Hire

The data backs up what I remembered anecdotally. 2025 was our biggest year by some distance for senior management and director level appointments, more than any other year we’ve recorded. It’s a trend worth keeping an eye on. Businesses that are willing to invest in senior leadership during a cautious market are often the ones setting themselves up to come out the other side stronger.

So, correlation or causation?

Honestly, probably a bit of both. Economic caution, sector cycles and the time of year all seem to play a part, and untangling exactly which one is driving a particular spike is easier said than done. But having seven years of our own data to look back on gives us a much better sense of what’s coming next, rather than just reacting to what’s in front of us this week.

If you’re a client wondering whether now’s the right time to recruit, or a candidate wondering whether now’s the right time to move, we’re always happy to have that conversation. Just give us a call.