Effective hiring planning in construction - without burning your brand
Client-side, but especially within consultancies these past months, many organisations have been going to market to hire for projects that either haven’t been signed off yet, or that have gone on to fall through. This has been the case for those who have advertised job opportunities themselves, or who have gone through a construction recruitment agency like ours.
We get it – there’s a scarcity of talent available at the moment in the construction and development space, and you want to make sure that you’re engaging with - and landing - the brightest talent in perfect time for your project to go live.
Below, we break down the typical cases of what’s happening in the market at the moment, the pitfalls for organisations that are getting their searches wrong, and how to best mitigate the conflicts that come with proactively recruiting for a new position.
SCENARIO 1 – Needing a new construction hire for a job that starts….yesterday!
Thankfully, we’re seeing this less and less than we did during the construction recruitment boom in 2021 and 2022, where organisations would go to market or approach us with a job that they wanted to fill for a project that had already begun. There’s a growing understanding that processes take time – from creating a job spec, marketing it out, mapping out viable candidates at that time, interviewing them, waiting for their notice period, and then onboarding them.
A construction recruitment specialist will have a network of those who are readily available and who are coming to the end of contract assignments, but if you’re looking to get a hire in for a specific project, it’s always best to partner with an agency far in advance. Just be careful you don’t…
SCENARIO 2 – Benchmark and go
The market is on an edge at the moment – with some sub-sectors of construction and development rushing through with projects, and others stalling.
A smart idea when looking into the feasibility of a project is to benchmark salaries for different job titles – but because of the way the market is at the moment, these tend to only last a finite period of time as they’re based on the volume of projects being undertaken and the availability of talent when conducted.
Regular contact with your trusted recruitment partner after those initial benchmarking conversations will help protect you from last-minute budget issues, and problems with the availability of talent as your project nears.
SCENARIO 3 - Building pipelines for future projects
You have a project scheduled in your pipeline this year, that demands the recruitment of key project-critical talent to ensure successful delivery. This may be in residential developments like Build to Rent (BtR) and Purpose-Built Student Accommodation (PBSA), commercial schemes such as office fit-outs or cut-and-carve refurbishments, or specialist sectors like life sciences, nuclear, or other alternative assets.
With a typical notice period for design managers, project managers, site engineers, and other construction roles around 3 months, understanding the talent available and their interest in your vacancies in advance is great. But, if a project has key confidentiality clauses with it, questions still surrounding its feasibility and dates, or whether it is definitively signed off to be completed at all, does your organisation have the ability to keep these candidates warm after the initial outreach until such a time you can employ them?
Protect your pipeline and reputation
We’re finding quite a few organisations are coming to us having already gone to market and stalled with candidates for an extended period, where these candidates are now actively not wanting to pursue an opportunity with that employer. It’s a limited candidate pool at the moment in roles like Quantity Surveyors, Building Surveyors, and Estimators - and guess what? They all know each other. From RICS memberships to those who work at/with the same consultancies or across the network of tier one contractors, most of those with careers in the construction space know each other.
Worse yet, some roles have been offered to multiple construction recruitment agencies at this stage, meaning that these candidates are being approached multiple times – running the risk of your brand (and project!) being sprayed across the industry.
Best practice is to engage with a trusted, specialist consultancy that can advise on the salaries you’ll need to pay and the map of appropriate candidates for your role, based on the salary, location, career paths, and more, as your project develops. They will know when to go to market with your role – and may already have a shortlist of people they’d approach on beginning recruitment for that role. Working with one specialist agency exclusively will also make sure that these often project-critical roles get the full attention that they deserve, as this Tier 1 contractor found in their search for a Senior MEP Planner or HOH Capital Partners saw in their search for a Delivery Development Manager.
Contact me or our other construction recruitment specialists below to help get you started:
Mitch Butler – Construction & Development – Project Management, Cost and Commercial – mbutler@cobaltrecruitment.com
Luke Kinsey – Project Planning & Controls, BIM & Digital Construction and Risk Management – lkinsey@cobaltrecruitment.com
Ashleigh Pearce - Site & Construction Engineering/Management, Health & Safety and Temporary Works – apearce@cobaltrecruitment.com
Simran Sidar – Design Management, Technical & Architecture – ssidar@cobaltrecruitment.com
Cobalt is the leading white-collar construction recruitment agency in the UK, specialising in construction recruitment since its inception in 2001. From professional roles such as Building Surveyors, Quantity Surveyors and Project Managers, through to a variety of construction disciplines including Construction Managers, Site Managers and Project Planning specialists, our team of recruiters have over 20 years of experience recruiting exclusively for these positions with 90% of the construction market in the UK, including as the preferred supplier for the majority of tier 1 contractors.
