GTM job postings jumped nearly 20% in July, says Pointer Index founder Ricky Pearl. He explains what’s really behind the spike.
Job postings across the go-to-market sector, spanning sales, marketing, customer success and related roles, jumped sharply in July, according to the latest figures from the Pointer Index.
Daily job postings rose from an average of 766 in June to 917 in July, an increase of 19.7 percent, and up 17.9 percent on the top end of the April to June range. The index also recorded the highest total monthly postings on record, with 25,031 roles advertised in July, up 32.5 percent from June’s 18,886, though June had two fewer days.
Pointer Strategy founder Ricky Pearl said the timing points clearly to one cause. “The lift is everywhere. No capital city sat outside the range of 1.20 to 1.39 times its June volume,” Pearl said. “The obvious rationale is the Australian financial year turning over on 1 July and headcount budgets opening at once.”
The increase played out fairly consistently across major cities. Sydney’s postings rose to 1.33 times its June volume, Melbourne to 1.36, Brisbane to 1.32, Perth to 1.34 and Auckland to 1.26.
Pearl argued this kind of data offers a more grounded read on hiring conditions than sentiment-based measures. “Importantly, these results show how the market is actually performing,” he said. “A survey captures what people think. A job ad is a company putting its money where its mouth is.”
Where the roles are
As of the index’s most recent count, active job postings included 2,570 in Sales, 1,476 in Marketing, 880 in Account Management, 263 in Presales, 258 in Customer Success, 226 in Partnerships, 177 in Growth, 116 in RevOps, 48 in Enablement, 30 in Product Marketing and 17 in GTM Engineering.
Despite widespread talk of AI reshaping sales and marketing work, the index suggests it’s not yet showing up heavily in job ad language. The share of ads mentioning AI sat at 18.4 percent overall. Within sales and account management roles, which made up 57 percent of all job ads, AI was mentioned in just 13.5 percent of postings, compared to 13.1 percent in June and 13.2 percent in May. AI featured in Marketing-specific roles 18.3 percent of the time.
Pearl noted the trend has been largely static. “Neither group has moved by more than sampling noise in three months, and the gap between them has not closed,” he said, referring to technical functions, which sat at 37.5 percent AI mentions, against 39.2 percent and 38.5 percent in the prior two months.
The clearest exception was GTM Engineering, where AI was mentioned in 81 percent of job ads, the highest of any role tracked. Sales sat at the opposite end, with AI mentioned in just 14 percent of ads.
Other findings from the index
The index recorded several other trends across July. Communication was the most in-demand skill, appearing in more than 800 live ads. More than 10,600 companies advertised roles during the month, with AWS the most active single poster at 184 roles in the past 30 days.
In terms of role seniority and work arrangements, 16.1 percent of roles advertised were entry-level and 6.5 percent were director level or above. Hybrid work was offered in 18.8 percent of roles, fully remote in 4.2 percent, and fully office-based in 22.9 percent. Brisbane was the most flexible city, with 4.8 percent of roles fully remote compared to 4.1 percent in Sydney. Sales was the most office-bound role tracked, with 26.5 percent of postings requiring full-time office attendance. On pay transparency, Seek listed salary information more often than LinkedIn, in 23.5 percent of ads compared to 8.4 percent.
Is this a trend or a spike?
Pearl was upfront that July’s numbers alone don’t settle the question of whether this reflects a genuine market shift or a one-off effect of new financial year budgets. He’s treating August as the real test. “If August holds above 850 jobs the financial-year reading stands and the market has genuinely stepped up,” Pearl said. “If it falls back to the high 700s, July was a budget-cycle spike.”
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