Why Mid-Sized Tech Companies Struggle to Hire and What to Do About It

Overhead view of a dynamic team collaborating, with laptops, notebooks, and smartphones spread across a table filled with work essentials.

Hiring in the UK tech market has never been simple, but for mid-sized companies, those with 50 to 500 employees, the challenge is particularly nuanced. You're not a scrappy startup anymore, but you're not operating with the brand gravity or salary flexibility of a FAANG giant either. You're in the middle zone, where hiring gets complicated fast.

The Hiring Catch-22

Most mid-sized tech companies in the UK are growing steadily. You have product-market fit, you’re scaling your teams, and you're building something real. But that success brings hiring pain:

• You need talent fast, but can’t afford a mis-hire.

• You have an internal talent team, but they’re stretched thin.

• You’re attractive to candidates, but you're often the runner-up to bigger names with flashier perks.

That balancing act, between urgency, quality, and retention, is where many teams stumble.

Job Ads Aren't Enough

A common approach is to advertise and wait. And in some cases, that works. But if you’re hiring engineers, data specialists, or tech leaders, the market is passive. Great people aren’t scanning job boards. They're doing the job they already have, until something genuinely better comes along.

So if your hiring strategy relies solely on job ads and inbound interest, you're not even playing on the same pitch as your competitors. You're sitting on the sidelines hoping the right players show up.

When Internal TA Hits Its Limits

In-house talent teams are invaluable. But at mid-size scale, they're often juggling:

• Multiple departments with overlapping needs

• Hiring managers who expect instant results

• Back-to-back role briefs and interview coordination

When a critical role stays open too long, or worse, gets filled badly, the cost to delivery is real. Sometimes, internal teams just don’t have the bandwidth or network to land the right person fast enough.

Where a Good Partner Makes a Difference

This isn’t a pitch for a pile of CVs. Most hiring managers don’t want more options, they want the right ones.

A good recruitment partner brings:

• Market insight: who’s moving, who’s available, what salary trends look like

• Pre-qualified candidates: not just skills, but cultural fit and timing

• Relief for your internal team: so they can focus on strategy, not constant sourcing

At Grow Talent, we work with UK tech companies who are scaling, changing, or just trying to get one critical hire right. We work alongside internal TA, not instead of it.

TL;DR

If you’re a mid-sized tech business struggling to compete for talent:

• Your brand alone might not be enough

• Your internal team might be over capacity

• Your job ad strategy probably needs backup

Let’s have a chat if you’re open to smarter, faster hiring without adding noise to your process.

www.growtalent.uk