How Do You Solve a Problem Like Recruitment?

The employment market in civils and construction is changing and will continue to do so.? ?

Hiring is tougher than ever. And it won't get easier any time soon.?

"The current status quo...is 'hard but not impossible'"

Simon Harris, Managing Director of Randstad Construction, Property and Engineering, is concerned. He accepts the current status quo in terms of recruiting staff is 'hard but not impossible'. He also added, 'The perfect storm will hit in 2026, when the Lower Thames Crossing finally kicks off. Construction employers without a bullet-proof long-term workforce plan will find the going very hard indeed. It will make the 2007 war for talent look like a water fight' ?

How about some numbers for context: the construction labour force was approximately 2.6m strong in 2008. By the end of 2023, the sector employed just 2.1m people.

So we're massively down on where we should be in terms of numbers of people and now we've got a lot more work on the ground. According to the CITB we'll need an additional 250,000 workers just to stand still in terms of meeting existing needs.

It sounds trite to say it but we are genuinely going to be looking at a war for talent the likes of which we haven't seen.?

So what does all of this mean for those who need to recruit staff. How I see it, there are a number of areas businesses need to address but I'll start with something which might seem counterintuitive from a Recruiter:?

I've written in depth about this before in the article Love the Ones Your With . If we're in the midst of a massive skills shortage which is about to get a whole lot worse - spoiler alert, we are - the first thing you should do is keep your best people. To summarise, here are some key points from the aforementioned article:

• Provide opportunities for development - In over 25 years in recruitment I've never spoken to anyone who wanted to leave because they had too much opportunity to develop in front of them.
• Get the work-life balance right for employees -Most sensible people accept now and again they'll have to do the extra to get things over the line, but if that extra becomes the norm that becomes a problem and people will vote with their feet.
• All animals are equal but some are more equal than others - star players need to be treated slightly differently. This means having autonomy, a different kind and line of communication and understanding how their career ties in with the overall development of the business.

If you're recruiting you are going need to need to show flexibility in your requirements, or you can wait for God to create the 'perfect' candidate - while the problems from not having recruited continue in your team. Here are some of the areas you could be flexible on which might enable you to access more candidates:

• Salary/package - more money nearly always buys a better candidate.
• Location - this won't work for every position but if you need to add an Estimator to your work-winning function and you have various locations, why not consider basing the person in one of your other offices to widen the potential candidate pool?
• Numbers of years experience - this can be flexed up as well as down. Whilst you should absolutely consider someone who is more junior than what you might have initially had in mind, don't rule someone who is very experienced and may be happy and indeed excel in a 'lesser' role at a certain point in their career.?A 'less experienced person' may be hungry with something to prove, keen for recognition and promotions as they build their career. A seasoned veteran may add gravitas with clients, vast industry knowledge and the ability to mentor/develop other people. Whilst most people recognise the merits of young hungry professionals not everyone is valuing the veterans in our industry in the right way. We CANNOT afford to ignore this group of people. Again I've written about this previously in Aging Like Fine Wine .
• Technical background - this is a biggie - increasingly I'm seeing companies recruit people outside the technical discipline or workstream they're in. Which was more commonplace in 2006/7. This won't work for every role but can for some. Think of it this way: how much of a role could be learned by someone who has done a similar one in a related space? Could the business benefit from fresh ideas, eyes and ways of doing things? What does it say about someone's character when they open to learning and new challenges??

For some roles, particularly in the commercial and pre-construction fields, they are so difficult to recruit that the best approach is to be ALWAYS looking for them. You should always be primed to hire good people in those disciplines, or at the very least meet them for a coffee with a view to something happening further down the line. The deal might not come together at that point for various reasons, so put them in the fridge for later.? ? ? ?

Take a long cold hard look at your recruitment process. Time kills deals and your recruitment process needs to be streamlined as much as possible or you'll lose people. Do you really need to interview a Project Surveyor three times? If you have a multi-stage process with different interviewers can they be done on the same day? The longer you take the more chance there is for one of your competitors to swoop in and take your star candidate(s).

You need to sell your job role and company as a bare minimum, but you also need to build out an Employer Value Proposition (EVP). What is an EVP? It's the value your employees get, in addition to the monetary package, from working for you. Think about it - why DO people stay in your business? If you're struggling to attract candidates for your roles or consistently have people counteroffered, this is an area you really need to look at.?

So there you have it - that's the current state of the union and whilst it isn't fantastic news there ARE things you can do to best position your business to win or at the very least not lose the war for talent.