Senior recruitment specialist and executive search consultant Robert Kenward, managing director of Disrupt Search, shares his latest insights from conversations with event and experiential agency owners, HR professionals, senior leaders and C-suite decision makers across the industry.
Q3 2026 has brought more movement in recruitment, with agencies taking a closer look at the senior people they need. Owners are considering their own futures, client relationships are coming under scrutiny ahead of next year’s tenders, and AI is making it harder to tell who is genuinely good at their job.
Below are the standout Q3 2026 trends, plus Robert’s forecasts for the months ahead.
Trend 1: Succession planning is catching up with agency owners
Agency owners are starting to consider stepping back, changing their roles or bringing in someone else to run the business. Robert says these conversations are happening across the leadership forums and industry gatherings he attends, as well as in his own work.
Kenward says: “Anyone who was thinking of leaving their business or selling up before the pandemic, has had to start again. Everyone has built their business back up, so now I’m hearing, ‘I’m looking at leaving. I’m looking at exiting. I’m looking for an MD.’”
The challenge is that succession planning inevitably took a back seat while businesses concentrated on survival and recovery. He adds: “People were too busy running their businesses to think about who might eventually run them. Now they’re looking around and realising they don’t necessarily have that person in place.”
Trend 2: Client relationships are getting more attention
The approach to year end is making agency owners think about which clients might put their event business out to tender next year. Kenward says that is sharpening the focus on client services, senior account management and executive producer roles.
He says: “Agencies know that delivering a brilliant event isn’t always enough anymore. Clients want agencies that understand their business, add value and contribute to the wider conversation.”
As a result, businesses are thinking carefully about the people they put in front of their most important clients. Kenward says: “If you’ve got a major account that could potentially go out to pitch, you want somebody looking after that relationship who the client trusts and values. That’s why we’re seeing real importance placed on the senior client facing roles.”
For agencies, retaining business is becoming just as important as winning it, and recruitment strategies are beginning to reflect that.
Trend 3: Fewer hires, with more focus on what they deliver
Robert is seeing agencies consider putting their recruitment budget into one experienced appointment rather than several more junior roles. Employment costs are influencing those discussions, along with changes in how the work gets done.
He says: “Agency head are thinking ‘rather than going and getting three PMs, why don’t we put all that money together and get one senior head of projects?’”
That does not mean one person taking on three people’s workload. The calculation includes looking at the client responsibility a senior person can carry, the time an agency can bill for their expertise and the administrative work that technology can now handle.
Kenward says: “We used to have people doing research on guest lists., and it used to take them half a day, or a day. Now they can do it in about an hour. Before, it would have been a job description of, ‘Here’s 50 things.’ Now it’s, ‘Here’s ten things I want you to do really well. I want you to own this.’”
Trend 4: AI Is helping everybody look like a strong candidate
Restructuring following the recent mergers and acquisitions has increased the number of people looking for roles. But agencies should not assume that more applications mean an easier search.
He says: “There are more people looking for jobs at the moment, so there are more candidates, but they all look great because of AI, so how can an employer tell them apart?. The actual quality people are finding it harder to stand out.”
Kenward’s concern is what happens when polished applications make it difficult to distinguish between somebody’s ability to present their experience and the experience itself.
Kenward believes this places greater importance on proper candidate assessment. He says: “An experienced specialist’s ability to understand what somebody has genuinely achieved becomes invaluable; an impressive CV still needs to stand up to a proper conversation.”
Trend 5: Time to hire is becoming important again
Although there are more candidates in the market, genuinely strong senior talent remains limited – and Kenward says businesses risk losing good people by allowing the recruitment process to drag on. This is particularly relevant when candidates have been headhunted rather than actively looking for a new role.
He explains: “When I approach somebody who wasn’t thinking about leaving and introduce them to an opportunity that excites them, I’ve activated that candidate. If an employer then leaves them waiting for seven or eight weeks, they’re not going to sit there doing nothing. They’ll now start looking at what else is available.”
Robert believes businesses should aim to move senior recruitment from candidate introduction to offer within six weeks. “Once you’ve found someone really good, don’t mess them about. There might be more people looking for jobs, but there still aren’t endless numbers of exceptional people.”
Slow processes can also damage an organisation’s employer brand. Kenward adds: “This is a small industry, particularly at senior level. People talk. A bad hiring experience doesn’t stay between the candidate and the employer, they’ll tell everyone.”
Trend 6: Retention is becoming part of the recruitment conversation
Employers are looking beyond whether a new appointment lasts the first year and asking how long people stay with the business overall. Robert welcomes the broader conversation, but says repeated vacancies need more attention than simply issuing another recruitment brief.
He says: “Stop recruiting your way out of having a retention problem,” he says. “‘People have left, let’s recruit. People have left… etc’. At some point a business has to stop and ask why people are leaving.”
Understanding why people leave is part of the solution, but so is checking whether the role was right in the first place. A new appointment cannot, on its own, resolve the reasons the previous person struggled or wanted to go.
Forecasts for the Months Ahead
1) The pace of mergers and acquisitions will slow
Robert expects fewer agency mergers and acquisitions in 2027, following the consolidation seen across the market in 2026. He believes the industry should also pay more attention to agencies that have remained independent and are performing well.
“We won’t see as many mergers and acquisitions next year as we have this year,” he says, “but as I have already see this year, succession planning will become a much bigger industry conversation in 2027.”
2) A leadership gap could emerge in three to five years
Robert is concerned about who will be ready to take on department head and leadership roles in the next three to five years. His concern centres on people’s experience of managing others, particularly where remote working has limited their day-to-day contact with colleagues and managers.
He says: “These people are not used to being managers of people who have emotions and real need. When you’re a manager, you have to put the other person’s emotions first.”
He is already hearing employers question who will become their next project director or senior account director. He says: “Being capable at the technical job does not automatically equip someone to handle the people side of a more senior role, and watching experienced managers at work is one way those skills develop.”
He believes existing leaders need support too, especially as agencies recruit people with AI and automation skills and the demands on managers change.
He says: “Everything escalates up. Problems go up, issues go up to the bosses. But who then helps them? Where’s their support?”
3) Businesses will work more consultatively with recruitment specialists
Kenward sees first-hand the benefits gained by businesses who work more closely with recruitment specialists, seeking advice on the role they need before starting the search.
His approach is already seeing how those conversations can change a brief. He says: “One agency initially asked for a production director, but once we explored the requirement, I could see they actually needed a group executive producer. Another business requested a CFO, but when I drilled down, they actually needed a group finance director.”
He adds: “Sometimes a business knows what it needs someone to achieve, but it hasn’t quite worked out what that role should be. As a consultant, I can question that because you’re looking at it from outside, with experience. I think that’s where businesses will increasingly see the value; having someone who can help them work out who they need before going off to find them.”
In summary
Q3 2026 has seen recruitment become more purposeful. Businesses are hiring, but they are concentrating their investment on the people who can protect clients, support growth, strengthen leadership or help prepare the business for its next chapter.
At the same time, AI is changing how candidates present themselves, retention is becoming part of the recruitment conversation and the industry is beginning to confront a longer-term question around where its next generation of leaders will come from.
Kenward concludes: “I don’t think we’re heading into a massive hiring boom. What I do think we’ll see is businesses becoming much smarter about who they recruit and why. Recruitment is becoming more strategic, the expectations are higher and businesses want people who can make a genuine difference. For me, that’s where the recruitment market is heading as we move into 2027.”
For more in-depth insights from Robert Kenward and Disrupt Search, subscribe to Robert’s Recruitment Report for practical market intelligence, recruitment advice and honest commentary from across the events industry.