It’s hard to underestimate the value of adequate construction recruitment. Considering the kinds of projects that define the industry, if you don’t have the right talent, you could be putting the ingredients together for a disaster.
Not only does that mean negative implications for whatever structure is being built, but it also means putting the reputation of your construction company on the line since it stands to fall into a negative light.
To prevent any of this and ensure that your construction projects are being undertaken by skilled employees, you need to take the right steps to find the top talent. A construction manager needs the right team, after all. The insights below should help you do this appropriately.
Steps to Enlist Top Construction Talent
1. Leverage Current Construction Workers for Referrals
This is probably one of the more underrated ones but it could seriously contribute to the business development you likely want to see. If your current construction workers are trustworthy people who are good at what they do, it’s not farfetched to believe that they may know others who would make great new employees.
Referrals have long been a part of how many global employment opportunities are discovered, and there’s no need to stop the trend now. It is recommended to streamline the system though by announcing roles properly and keeping track of the referrals.
2. Make Construction Job Training a Part of the Mix
The interview process is meant to ensure that people are coming into the construction industry via your company with the right attitude and base of skills. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a training plan developed.
Proper training is essential to developing your new employees in a way that’s beneficial for both them and the company. You can even have programs meant to train current employees to make them more suited for whatever desired career path they may have.
3. Use Unique Construction Management Elements to Position Yourself Well
The construction industry has a lot of companies operating within it meaning top candidates will often use areas of differentiation to determine their potential workplaces of interest. Businesses will often use their competitive advantages to attract customers, but doing the same to attract quality candidates is not a bad idea.
How do you operate differently during construction projects? Are there modern technologies used in your process? Perhaps the approach you use is unique. Maybe the structure of your construction company makes upward mobility a clear and realistic possibility.
The construction recruiting process needs to be as optimal as possible if you want the right person in each job so use every advantage you can to ensure that happens.
4. Use Apprenticeship Programs to Develop Construction Talent
Considering your goal is to have great candidates in the construction roles you have available, this one may seem a bit counterintuitive. Why would you go the extra mile to hire someone who is not even in construction yet?
The idea here is not to train people who have no interest in or experience with construction. It’s more to focus on recent graduates. Sure, they may be green and lack certain skills that only come with experience.
However, training them and treating them well means that you develop your pool of top talent for the long term. This works even better because the principles and operational style of your company are ingrained into the way they work.
5. Hire a Recruitment Firm That Works within the Construction Industry
This is perhaps the best way to go about the hiring process. Construction recruiters are professionals at the one thing you need if you’re trying to build a strong team. That is having the experience, tools, and access to the network required to find the top candidates.
Sure, you could rely on the standard HR process, but that requires your company to get a lot right that it may not always do. In some cases, construction recruitment partners already have a pool of talent that they can call on.
Since they use a methodology that involves understanding your business objectives and culture before matching candidates with you, it means you are a lot more likely to be hiring people who are assets to your team instead of detractors.
Wrapping It Up
Hiring in the construction industry is not the easiest thing to do. You must be able to trust your team to do the job that has been assigned while making provisions for safety and efficiency. This will often mean that any candidate you hire must be ethical and a great fit for your team, even before concerns about qualifications are raised.
Using the five tips above is bound to lead to a favorable outcome, especially if you allow recruitment firms to help you identify top talent whenever there are new opportunities for employment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Benefit of Using a Construction Staffing Agency?
A construction staffing agency has expertise in candidate searches and recommendations because that is the extent of its model. They have spent time learning how to match people to position profiles so well that they can often do so with minimal screening time.
Additionally, they aren’t just putting up ads and hoping someone is interested. There is often a network of people that they can plug into when they need to find someone for a particular job.
What Are Some of the Positions That Construction Recruitment Firms Can Help Companies Fill?
It’s not just the positions that need to prioritize safety and construction experience. While you can get assistance finding foremen, civil engineers, field inspectors, etc., other functional areas are also covered. Positions such as accounting managers, executive assistants, CEOs, etc., can also be filled this way.
What Strategies Do Recruitment Firms Employ to Help Construction Companies?
Staffing agency strategies to help construction firms are not set in stone. That’s because they need to understand different needs and how to respond to them to get the right candidates into the right positions.
For a free consultation on your construction hiring strategy, contact us at info@questorg.com or 212-971-0033.
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