Your business focuses mainly on building new things, but you can’t do that without employees. Though you need people to do the grunt work, you’ll also require subcontractors, a vice president, a construction manager, general contractors, human resources, financing, accounting companies, and many others.
Construction management isn’t something many people focus on, but these professionals will make everything run smoothly. You may have to work with engineering firms, estimators, and everything else. Therefore, construction recruitment is crucial for construction companies.
Today, you will learn how a bad hire can have hidden costs and how construction recruiters can help you avoid them. Let’s get started!
Hidden Costs of a Bad Hire in the Construction Industry
If you hire the wrong person for the construction job, you’ll use up tons of resources and money on someone not qualified or suitable for the position. This doesn’t just involve the physical laborers; you will also need project managers, engineers, human resources, accounting, and much more.
Here are five ways that a bad hire could cost you money:
Lower Employee Morale
Employee morale is crucial, regardless of your business size. However, it’s even worse for smaller companies with few employees.
Bad hires can affect employee morale in various ways. If they have a poor attitude, it might create a hostile working environment. Therefore, your top talent will not want to come to work. Likewise, your inaction of firing them could demoralize the rest of the team.
High employee turnover is a common result of low morale in the workplace. You could risk losing good employees because of the one bad one.
Drain Resources
Construction firms understand the need for training. However, you expect them to know the basics. If you get a bad hire, they will need more attention, coaching, and education. This means that your staff will be putting in more effort and may never see the fruit of their labor.
Negatively Affect Performance and Productivity
Productivity isn’t easy to quantify, but bad hires will impact performance and productivity negatively. If they don’t have a good personality or aren’t fit for the job, others will think they aren’t pulling their weight. This affects everyone else who relies on that person to do their work well.
Hurt the Company’s Reputation
Bad hires can also hurt your reputation with clients and employees. The team might experience a more negative culture, which demoralizes them and leads to higher turnover rates. Likewise, it might make construction talent acquisition harder in the future; professionals won’t want to work for you because you tolerate bad behavior.
When the clients must work with the bad hire, they will think poorly of your business. This is especially true if they’re first-time customers.
Lost Revenue
Overall, bad hires will hurt your bottom line. Whether they’re slacking off, causing you to lose good employees, or taking resources away from other areas of the business, they’re no good.
The Department of Labor claims that one bad hire could cost a company 30 percent of that person’s earnings within the first year. That’s a significant amount!
Avoiding Bad Hires (Construction Professionals)
Understanding the problems that bad hires can bring is the first step. Now, you must learn how to avoid them. Though using construction recruitment services is one of the best things you can do, there are other options. You’ll learn about them all below:
Know If You Should Hire Someone
You know how many people perform a job search each day, but your main goal should be whether you really need someone for the position. For example, you might be able to pay a current employee a little more to perform those extra duties, outsource to someone, or do it yourself.
Clarify the Job Description
To find qualified candidates, you should list the project objectives clearly and completely. Otherwise, you’re wasting everyone’s time.
It’s important to know the requirements and skill level of your ideal candidate for that position. Then, list them out and include salary expectations, as well.
Attract Appropriate Construction Talent
When the top construction talent doesn’t know about your job openings, you will only see wrong fits or bad hires. Here are a few ways to avoid that:
- Cast a wide net to get as many candidates as you can. Post your job opportunities on various job boards and advertise in the community. Alternatively, you may use recruiters for construction industry needs, which will help you locate the best people for the job.
- Target more specific candidates who have specialty skills. Though you can use industry-specific sites and industry fairs, construction recruiting services might be ideal.
Hire Construction Recruitment Specialists
Typically, recruiting for construction industry needs isn’t as easy as you think. It might be challenging to find management positions and jobs with specific skill sets. Therefore, you need a construction recruiter with a deep understanding of your requirements.
Construction recruiters will often find the best candidates based on your needs and get a commission for the work. Though it’s not the most affordable solution, you can guarantee a good fit if you have the budget. Whether you require project management knowledge or engineering help, these professionals can ensure you acquire talent that works for you.
Final Thoughts on Construction Recruitment and Where to Find a Recruiting Firm
There are countless job seekers out there, but making bad hiring decisions will be costly for your business. Thankfully, you learned about the expenses that entails and found ways to avoid the wrong candidates.
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