Top Recruitment Strategies for Construction Companies in 2022
The construction industry is one of the most affected by high employee turnover especially in late 2021 and into 2022. The US Chamber of Commerce Q1 report in 2021 shows that over 88% of construction contractors are having moderate to high difficulty hiring skilled labor.
The increasing decline in skilled construction workers on the labor market is worrisome, but experts believe that implementing the right recruitment strategies can help companies navigate the challenges successfully.
Indeed, having the right hiring strategies can help employers in construction to attract and retain the best talents for the long haul. But as more employers begin to realize this, the hiring market gets even more competitive and it can be quite challenging to discover and hire qualified candidates for your team.
Fortunately, there are several strategies you can implement in your recruitment process to attract and retain skilled workers in your company. This way, you will be able to meet construction deadlines to ensure projects are completed as scheduled. Here are some top construction recruiting strategies for construction companies in 2022.
1. Build Your Brand to Attract Talents
This is actually the first and most important recruitment strategy, which in most cases, cuts across all kinds of organizations. Until your organization becomes attractive enough to prospective employees, attracting new hires may remain a very difficult task. Considering the growing lack of interest in young graduates in construction, employers in the industry need to do more work to attract new talents.
Prioritize Workers’ Safety
In construction, workers’ safety is a major concern. Many job seekers will check out your safety policies, worksite safety protocols, and other factors that contribute to employee safety at sites. The first and most important point in ensuring workers’ safety at the construction site is providing adequate safety equipment. So you want to be pretty vocal about this.
Make Workers’ Well-Being a Priority
How encouraging is your company’s policy on employee welfare? Do employees feel prioritized or are made to work long hours with minimal benefits? These and many more constitute the criteria for considering a new place. Given the situation today, where employees put job satisfaction above wages, employers in construction will have to do more to attract more employees.
Leverage Technology to Reach a Larger Audience
Construction companies should consider driving engagements on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Twitter. They can use an Applicants Tracking System (ATS) software to review a high volume of resumes, and adopt cutting-edge solutions like robots, drones, 3D printers, GPS-guided machinery, etc.
Create Clear Career Paths to Attract Ambitious Employees
To attract and retain top talents, you must build a clear career path for all employees at all levels. Employees leaving other organizations to join yours want to be sure that they have ample room for growth. If this is in place, you will attract employees who are ready to add to your company’s growth.
Ensure Workers Satisfaction
Another fundamental way to make your company attractive to prospective employees is to ensure that those currently working with you are treated right. Great employee experience is an important factor in the growth of any organization. Starting from when an employee walks through your door to when they go through the exit, their experience will ultimately impact the perception of your company by both talents and the competition.
Offer Great Benefits Packages
Spice up your offers with great benefits to attract more talents. Studies have shown that employers who offer great employee benefits have higher chances of retaining their workers than employers who offer poor benefits or none at all. In fact, providing basic benefits, such as workplace protection, workers’ compensation, health plan, and paid time off, should top the list of benefits any construction firm should consider providing to its employees.
Include an Attractive Career Page on Your Website
This is where you have the best opportunity to market your firm to potential employees. Let them see the growth journey, career prospects, and opportunities to learn exciting new things when they join the company. Also, consider adding testimonials from existing employees to give more credibility to the company.
2. Source the Most Qualified Candidates
One factor that has severely bedeviled the progress of many construction companies is hiring less-skilled labor into their workforce. Instead of hiring workers with inadequate skills — which will likely cause the company loss — endeavor to intensify your talent sourcing strategies to ensure you bring on the best candidates.
Here are some places where you can start your search for the best candidates:
Use Job Boards
Job boards play a critical role in today’s hiring market. One good thing about job boards is that they also play a part in screening candidates. Most job boards help to direct applicants to specific job ads based on their resumes. This means that random applicants are not applying to your job posts. Employers in construction can also try niche-specific job boards, such as ConstructionJobForce, ConstructionJobs, and iHireConstruction.com. These niche job boards often do not have a lot of traffic, but they can help to reduce your hiring time and advertising costs.
Find Employees With LinkedIn Recruiting
As of 2022, 87% of recruiters use LinkedIn to find workers. The number is imposing, and that’s because lots of people join LinkedIn for only one reason: to use the Job Search feature. But before starting, you want to make sure that our company’s LinkedIn page is highly optimized for attracting the kind of employees you want — top shots in the industry, whether entry-level candidates or construction superintendents.
Reach Out To Universities and Students
Reaching out to students is also an effective way to market your company to potential employees. Consider offering summer jobs, internships, or apprenticeships to students. This will engage and give them an idea of the construction industry.
Use Construction Recruiting Firms
These companies understand the construction hiring market better than you do. Their focus is solely on finding qualified talents and matching them with suitable job placements. Construction recruitment firms are just general staffing firms. They can also help you screen employees and train them before sending them to you.
Luckily, there are many construction recruiting companies around today. Ensure that you let them understand your expectations and budget. That way, you can be sure that you’re getting customized hiring solutions for your company.
3. Interview Candidates the Right Way
After attracting the right people, you want to ensure that you interview them the way. Here are best practices in the industry that employers can use to interview prospective employees:
Keep the Hiring Process Simple and Swift
The simpler and less strenuous an interview process is, the more enthusiastic the candidates are to participate in the process. A lot of leading construction companies now use evidence-based recruiting processes to make it less cumbersome for job seekers.
They should also be carried along as the process proceeds. Make the process fun and interesting also. But if all these sound like too much for your team, your first best alternative is to outsource your hiring process to construction recruiting companies. They understand the job and are often equipped with the best tools for successful recruitment.
Keep the Hiring Process Transparent
Ensuring a transparent hiring process is one way to boost your company’s image. Make sure that all candidates are updated about every step you take. In the long run, upholding transparency is in the best interest of the firm.
Right from the job ad, let applicants know when they are due for invites. They should have an idea of how long the entire process will last, starting from application to interview, hiring, and onboarding. Candidates should also know when they will get a reply after the application and interview.
Use Post-Interview Surveys to Improve Your Hiring Process
You are likely not going to hire every applicant you interview. Nonetheless, you can still learn a thing or two from them — and that can help you improve your interview process. Conducting a post-interview survey is a non-conventional approach, which may not give you an accurate 100% result. However, the feedback you get from those who participate can help you improve your recruitment process.
4. Offer Continuous Training for Your Newly Hired Employees
Most new employees have very low productivity in the first two weeks of employment, so you have a very good chance of harnessing this period to your benefit. Instead of expecting them — especially when they are fresh graduates — to hit the ground running immediately, consider brushing them up with the right training and have them understudy older employees before starting.
By the end of two-three weeks, a bright candidate would have picked up most of what they need to start delivering on the job. But after the onboarding stage, employees should be encouraged to keep up with trends in the industry by taking more courses or participating in on-the-job training programs.
Wrapping Up
The challenges in recruitment mostly center around the lack of effective recruitment strategies, how long it takes to find good people, and how seamless the onboarding process is. For employers in construction, the best recruitment strategies for construction start with building an attractive brand that job seekers want to identify with. It then goes beyond this to include interviewing applicants the right way and providing continuous training to new employees. But most importantly, all of this must be performed in a budget-friendly manner.
TradeLink Solution is a staffing firm that offers talent acquisition services to businesses in the engineering and construction sectors. We have put in a lot of effort for more than 15 years to match people with the best opportunities and companies. Contact us today for more information.
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