Recruitment Blog

How construction companies can invest in proactive talent acquisition

Mark McGreal
Recruitment Specialist
construction talent acquisition

Does your construction company rely on a reactive talent acquisition strategy where you post jobs and wait for the candidates to flow in? It’s time to make some big changes. 

Many construction companies are really struggling to adapt to more proactive ways of finding talent in the current candidate shortages we’re seeing across the ANZ region.

The Australian Financial Review reported that demand for construction workers on projects was “expected to be about 48% higher than supply over the next three years and that one-third of jobs advertised could remain unfilled”.

Many other industries use proactive sourcing like headhunting and talent pooling, alongside the traditional reactive approach of job posting, but I find that’s often not the case in the building sector. 

The construction and infrastructure talent acquisition professionals I speak to are all snowed under, there’s loads of work to do but they’re struggling to find talent and having to pay over the odds for average candidates. 

Talent pooling is a crucial component of any construction company’s talent acquisition strategy and those that do it well are giving themselves a distinct advantage. 

This proactive talent acquisition approach will help construction and property development companies to move quickly when sourcing and securing talent. 

By building and nurturing a strong blue-collar talent pool in your applicant tracking system (ATS), you can source candidates immediately, rather than waiting for responses from job ads.

In our recent global industry report, we found that our in-house users saw significant differences in their days to place when sourcing candidates through external sources versus their JobAdder database. 

Our Australian in-house users were taking an average of 41.2 days to place using external sources and 26.8 days to place when using the JobAdder database. When comparing year on year, the average days to place was higher than 2020, reflecting the tight talent market dominating Australia in 2021. 

Our in-house users in New Zealand were seeing similar results, taking an average of 36.9 days to place using external sources, compared to 27.0 days to place when using the JobAdder database.

By utilising their talent pools within their JobAdder databases, in-house users were able to see significantly lower days to place. 

It’s also important to note that our exclusive integration with SEEK allows talent acquisition professionals to access SEEK’s extensive candidate pool and discover great property and construction talent, empowering our users to add quality blue-collar candidates to their open jobs with just one click. 

In the construction and building sector, fast turnaround times are crucial when sourcing and securing skilled talent. With the skills shortages seen across the ANZ construction industry, the construction companies that will survive and thrive are the ones that have a strong talent pool and proactive talent acquisition.

To find out more about how JobAdder can help construction companies implement proactive talent acquisition, click here.

Our 2021 global industry report and webinar detail all the data and insights you’ll need in 2022…

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