Winning and keeping good people in a consolidating market

Winning and keeping good people in a consolidating market
Posted 21 July 2026 by Lydia Sinclair

There's a strange thing happening in public practice hiring right now. Almost every firm I speak to is recruiting, often at several levels at once. And yet hardly anyone genuinely good is actively looking. Both things are true at once, and it tells you how hard this market has become.

Underneath it is a bigger shift. Private equity has arrived in accountancy properly now, and it's changing the shape of who firms are and how they compete for people.

A market that split in two

For a long time there was roughly one path in practice. You worked your way up, you hoped to make partner, and you waited for the reward at the end. That's no longer the only story.

The numbers show how fast it's moved. ICAEW's own research found that 86% of mid-tier firms now rank private equity among the top three forces reshaping the profession, up from 57% just the year before. Nearly half of the mid-tier firms surveyed are already PE-backed. Across Europe, deals in the sector jumped from ten or twenty a year before 2022 to around 200 in 2024, with the UK leading the way.

So we now have two broad camps. Growing, PE-backed consolidators on one side, buying up smaller firms and building scale. Proudly independent firms on the other, choosing to stay that way. And I want to be really clear about this: neither is better. They're different, and they suit different people.

Who thrives where

The person who does well in a consolidator is usually there for the growth. They're ambitious, they want to learn quickly, they want to move up, and they know a well-known name on the CV opens doors later. These firms bring scale, structure, investment in training and technology, and a pace that suits people who want to get on. That's a real and valuable thing.

The person who thrives in a true independent wants something different, and it's every bit as valid. They value the team feel, the lack of red tape, the fact that a decision can be made in a corridor rather than a committee meeting. The work is often simpler to get done, and the focus is on people rather than process.

And then there are the ones who do well in either. They adapt, they read the room, they're there for the firm as much as themselves. Those people are rarer than you'd think, and worth their weight in gold.

The thing that actually decides it

None of that is the interesting part, though. The interesting part is what separates the firms who win and keep good people from the ones who lose them. In both camps, it's the same thing. It's honesty.

Let me give you two examples. The first is a candidate who left a firm not long after it was acquired. Not over the money, not even over the new owners. What tipped her over was an email that went round saying the firm no longer did birthday gifts under the new ownership rules. Tiny thing. But it wasn't about the gift. It was that a change landed with no warning and no explanation, and it made her wonder what else would change without a conversation. She started looking that week.

The second cuts the other way. I've had candidates take a job at a small independent, drawn to exactly that independent feel, only for a merger to be announced a few weeks after they started. And the part that does the real damage is this: the partners knew. They knew at interview, they knew when they made the offer, and they said nothing. Those candidates left almost immediately, not because they were against the deal, but because they felt they'd been sold something that wasn't true. Once trust goes in the first month, it rarely comes back.

The lesson is the same in both directions. Tell people the truth, and tell it early.

Why this makes retained search matter more

Here's the practical consequence for anyone hiring. When good people are scarce and the market moves this fast, a job advert and a bit of hope won't cut it for the roles that really matter.

The best candidates for senior positions are, almost by definition, not looking. They're happily employed, doing good work, not scrolling job boards. Reaching them takes a proper, mapped, market-wide search, done exclusively and with real care. That's exactly what our ProTalent Professional retained service is built for. When a role has to be right, a partner, a client manager, a key hire the team will be built around, that's when retained earns its place.

It isn't about spending more for the sake of it. It's about actually winning the person, rather than settling for whoever happened to be available.

What the firms getting it right actually do

If I distil it down, the firms who win in this market, independent or PE-backed, do a few simple things well. They're clear about what they are and they say so, rather than an independent pretending to be a scaled platform, or a consolidator pretending nothing has changed. They tell people about change before it happens, not after. They put real thought into the first few months of a new hire, because that's when most early leavers are actually lost. And they treat looking after their people as a steady, everyday habit rather than a fire drill when someone resigns.

A word on self-care

It feels apt to write this the same week as International Self-Care Day on 24 July, whose theme is healthy habits and prevention. The whole idea is that small, consistent actions protect you far better than a dramatic fix once you're already worn out.

That's true for people and it's true for firms. Looking after your team steadily and honestly is prevention. It's how you avoid the scramble of replacing good people you didn't need to lose.

Final thought

The market is candidate-led, and it has been for as long as I can remember. In that world, you don't win by having the flashiest offer. You win by being clear about who you are, being genuinely good at it, and being honest with your people from day one. The rest tends to follow.

If you've got a role coming up that really matters, and you'd like it handled properly rather than left to chance, that's exactly what we do. You can reach me at lydia@protalent.co, or read more about our retained search at protalent.eu/protalent-professional.

Lydia