If you’re looking for a job in HR, prepare for a fight. New analysis from Funding Circle, the UK’s leading SME lending platform, reveals that HR roles have become the most competitive in the country, by a considerable margin.

With an estimated 129 applicants for every vacancy, the sector is now the toughest nut to crack in the UK labour market. And the implications aren’t just for jobseekers; SMEs, in particular, are feeling the strain as hiring bottlenecks ripple through their entire business.

 
An Oversubscribed Market

Funding Circle’s research, which examined job search volumes and live vacancies across 14 sectors, paints a stark picture.

Despite nearly 5,000 live HR vacancies nationally, there are more than 118,000 annual job searches for these roles. That means each applicant faces odds of less than one percent. Retail and hospitality roles are close behind, attracting 119 and 112 applicants per role respectively. Admin, marketing, and customer service positions also see competition levels that leave candidates with barely a two percent chance of success.

By contrast, sectors such as construction, healthcare, engineering, and sales see far lower applicant volumes, giving jobseekers a slightly better (though still challenging) prospect of success.

HR may be oversubscribed, but it is also mission-critical. For SMEs, lacking the right HR capability doesn’t just stall recruitment, it can choke the entire growth engine.

Small businesses often receive hundreds of CVs for a single HR vacancy, but without strong HR teams in place, sifting through mismatched applications becomes a major strain. In some cases, hiring for HR is now slowing down the hiring of everyone else.

Not all sectors face this kind of glut. Some are experiencing the opposite problem: a shortage of candidates.

Design roles, for example, attract just seven applicants per vacancy, giving jobseekers a one-in-seven chance of securing a position. Law and education roles are similarly in demand, with around 10–12 applicants per role, offering far higher success rates than HR, retail, or hospitality. IT jobs also remain relatively easy to land, with about 13 applicants per vacancy, as the digital skills gap continues to bite.

In these industries, employers must work hard to stand out. The best candidates can afford to be selective, and competitive pay, flexibility, and strong company culture have become non-negotiable.

 
The UK job market is now split between sectors flooded with candidates and those scrambling to find them. For SMEs, this means taking a more strategic approach; investing recruitment resources where they’ll have the greatest impact, offering an employment proposition that stands out, and ensuring HR itself doesn’t become the growth bottleneck.