Be smart, be intelligent and be informed

Through the building and maintenance of services and property, construction supports all industries and our way of life. And with that great responsibility comes a market that reacts to, and is reliant on, multiple factors.

World news. Political agendas. War. Currency. Weather. Sports events. Global and/or national finance. National disasters. The price of oil. Overseas spending. Time of the year. Global Pandemics. Competition.

And those are just to name a few.

These factors, many of which are all interrelated, can make the market volatile and unpredictable. And it is this volatility and unpredictability that has catapulted ‘informed’ into being one of our four core values.

Informed essentially means that we consistently aim to be one step ahead of the news and be true specialists in our fields. Each of our consultants specialises in a defined sector of the industry. (For details of our sectors, visit the ‘About’ page on our website: About.) They have made it their business to know their industry inside and out. To be informed about the key companies, the key people, the key roles and the key projects taking place in their specific slice of the industry. This knowledge helps them to better inform the construction professionals who come to us for new opportunities, and clients who want to grow their teams with the best talent available. Better information always results in better outcomes – and for us, that means career-enhancing outcomes for professionals and team-enhancing candidates for our clients.

The importance of better information can be illustrated if we look at how construction professionals work with our consultants. These professionals are highly trained, qualified people and they tend to be very busy. As explored in our Collaboration blog (Alone we are smart, together we are brilliant), they need to put their trust in us to “do the work for them.” Working as a team is key to developing this, but it also depends on the information our consultants provide. They rely on this information to make the best-informed decision (and arguably, a very big decision) on the next step in their career. This is sometimes viewed with an air of scepticism. Due to the many well-known recruitment consultant stereotypes, we sometimes must work that bit harder to gain confidence from the people we work with and prove our worth. And knowing what we are talking about is a sure-fire way to increase and solidify their confidence in us. (Luckily, we also work with integrity (more on that soon!) and are always aiming to change the sentiments of these common misrepresentations.) Having confidence in the information that’s provided, will help us to introduce and guide construction professionals into companies that best suit their desired career aspirations and personal goals. And a fully informed candidate that has been guided throughout the process of making their next career move, is more likely to be committed to the opportunity they take. Therefore, resulting in a career-enhancing move.

The same is also true for our clients. Due to our role in the supply chain, we tend to have wide coverage of the industry. As recruitment consultants, we spend our time talking to people. (A wide range of different people from all corners of the industry and all levels of companies.) And people know things. They can be much more insightful as to the state of a market, the status of a project, or the performance of a company than any news bulletin. We learn from our days spent talking and our clients tap us up for that information. Again, they need to have confidence in the details we provide them, so the intel needs to be more than hearsay, but it’s a good place to start.

To be informed doesn’t ever stop. Our consultants are always striving to know more and build on their knowledge base. Be that learning from the clients and candidates they speak to – remember people talk – every conversation is a learning tool and can offer an insight they haven’t appreciated before. Reading a relevant industry journal or an online industry magazine. Visiting a site or shadowing a client to truly understand the daily tasks of an opportunity they are trying to fill. Learning from their colleagues – what have they experienced about the industry? It’s also worth noting, that several of our team are degree qualified in the built environment and have moved into recruitment after spending many years being construction professionals themselves. They are always fonts of knowledge that the team look to pick their brains when the need presents itself.

Being informed in 2020 and 2021 (and now in 2022) proved more important than ever. All those factors that affect the construction industry continue to be in hyper-drive (for the third year in a row…!). The world is more volatile and more unpredictable than it has been for several years. We need to keep our level of knowledge up so that we can remain adaptable and flexible to how the construction market reacts to this and the atrocities of 2022. (And let’s not forget the continuing effects of Brexit… and COVID-19…)

If there was ever a time to keep our ears to the ground, it is now. Luckily our culture has prepared us for this – being informed is second nature to our team. And although being informed over the last few years (and now) was more about survival than simply staying informed, it can only be beneficial for us and the professionals we work with, to keep knowing what we are talking about.