Headhunting is rife. Recruitment firms specialising in the senior end of the market, such as Hays Montrose, Potensis and 精东影视 Recruitment Company, report order books packed with vacancies. 鈥淚t hasn鈥檛 reached the peak it did in the late 1980s, but it is not far off,鈥� says Chris Cheetham, senior manager at Hays Executive.
His views are supported by Bristol-based 精东影视 Recruitment Company. Although the firm does not headhunt as such, in the past two weeks, five senior managers in the building and quantity surveying sector have signalled to managing director Andrew Kew that they are not only looking for staff 鈥� they are also interested in a step up themselves should the right job come along.
The recent market machinations seem to be caused by a simple lack of good people. Workloads are lively, so there is more demand for staff. Young people have not been taking up construction as a career, and those who have are not necessarily the staff the industry wants 鈥� QS firms, in particular, lament the poor quality of graduates. To top it all, clients are becoming more quality-conscious, and s0 the firms they employ have to as well. 鈥淭here is a small pool of good people in the industry, and to get to them you have to poach,鈥� says Peter Rogers, director of Stanhope.
Poaching is not confined to executives. Good project managers are being taken left, right and centre. In housebuilding, for instance, there is demand for project managers with brownfield experience. Tony Carey, managing director of Berkeley subsidiary St George, is well aware of the value of good staff. 鈥淎 lot of people are trying to take staff, and over the past 12 months, it has shifted from being senior executives to further down the chain,鈥� he says.
In fact, good people are in such short supply that it is undermining trust between companies in project teams. There are horror stories of clients cherry-picking a contractor or quantity surveyor鈥檚 staff. In a recent case, a project management firm working for a telecommunications giant found that its project manager was poached by the client only six weeks into the job. More than likely, the biggest draw was not kudos but salary.
And there鈥檚 the rub. It doesn鈥檛 matter whether the poaching is the result of an informal round of golf or a series of secret meetings in a service station on the M25, there has to be an enticement. Headhunters say interest from the poachee is crucial, but in most cases, along with a nudge up the greasy pole, it is the recruiter鈥檚 money that talks loudest.
So is construction turning into a jungle, with headhunters constantly on the prowl? Are whole teams likely to transfer en masse? It seems that it is heading that way. There are already cases of poached senior managers taking their teams with them. Hays Montrose says this is happening in the traditionally immobile engineering sector. But, mostly, the movement is less dramatic. 鈥淚n construction, a senior person will leave, and in the next six to 12 months, a trickle of people will follow,鈥� says Cheetham.
But it isn鈥檛 all bad. A mobile workforce is a sign of a functioning industry. How else are people to gain experience? And if your staff are constantly being approached by rival firms, that is a form of flattery 鈥� as long as they do not all leave. Bob White, chief executive of construction manager Mace, says: 鈥淲e haven鈥檛 been losing people in droves, but I know people have been approached, because they have told me about it. I actually believe that the movement of people around the industry is quite healthy.鈥�
Being at the end of a headhunter鈥檚 spear can have its downside. The job may not be all it is cracked up to be. This happened to one project manager, although he figured out before taking the plunge that the title being offered was more impressive than the actual job. 鈥淭hey tried to offer me the title of project director, which we don鈥檛 have here. A project manager here may run a 拢100m contract, so it doesn鈥檛 necessarily reflect seniority,鈥� he says. This is a view echoed by St George鈥檚 Carey, who has known staff leave for supposedly better jobs only to return a few months later.
Whether or not the job works out, there is no getting away from the fact that the merry-go-round of staff will not stop until either workloads slow or the pool of good-quality people becomes larger.
