We launched The Careers in Housebuilding Recruitment Survey earlier this year and already have some very interesting data on the job market, much of it pointing to changes in the way in which people look for career opportunities.  This is of particular interest in the current economic climate with developers facing a depressed housing market yet still reporting some encouraging results. This has prompted the green shoots of a recovery in the housebuilding job market but it is still early days.  The headlines from our research so far are:

85% of housebuilding professionals surveyed so far prefer applying directly to employers than through recruitment agencies

89% of respondents so far prefer specialist job boards like www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk to the leading generalist job boards

Over 70% find social media like Facebook & Twitter helpful to keep up to date with job news

We plan to publish all the findings from our research early in the new year so if you haven’t contributed yet, please find 5 minutes to complete the 11 multiple choice questions here.

Figures released from www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk today provide evidence that the housebuilding job market is beginning to recover as residential developers expand production on new sites.

The new homes industry was hit harder than most in the recession as many leading builders suffered large financial losses and were forced to drastically cut both staff and production.

Having restructured in order to create much leaner operations in the last 2-3 yrs the major builders are now able to be profitable on smaller production volumes. Furthermore when key staff leave, builders now want to replace them rather than seeing it as another reduction in overhead and these factors appear to have stimulated the new homes job market.

www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk only features jobs with builders in the new homes sector and advertisers in the past 12 months have included Taylor Wimpey , Persimmon Homes, Barratt Developments, David Wilson Homes, Redrow Homes, Miller Homes and McCarthy & Stone.

Their figures make for encouraging reading:

Site traffic increased by 106% in the 3 months leading up to Feb 2011

47% of all traffic were new visitors to the site

65% of roles advertised were site based e.g. Site Managers

45% of all vacancies advertised are for new homes sales roles

Specialist housebuilding recruiters www.edburydaley.com are the people behind www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk

With many years of experience in the housing job market, they understood that the new homes builders were reluctant to pay recruitment fees and therefore needed a low cost advertising option.  They noted the lack of a reliable online job board specifically dedicated to the needs of the housebuilders where employers could target candidates with experience in the new homes industry.

Director Andrew Daley commented “It will take some time before the market is really strong again but we are seeing evidence of the recovery through our advertising patterns. As more and more builders discover the value the site delivers we are confident that we can play a major part in helping the industry grow to be a major employer again without stretching their recruitment budgets.”

Everyone involved in the housebuilding industry continues to experience very challenging market conditions for a variety of reasons, primarily the restricted availability of mortgage finance, but there has been some evidence of slight improvements in the past quarter.

Using data from www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk and http://www.zed-sales.co.uk/ supported by evidence from our extensive network of housebuilding professionals, we have observed the following trends:

The most encouraging trend in the recruitment market is the increase in advertising for site based roles. E.g. Sales, Site Management and to a lesser extent Quantity Surveyors.  There is evidence of this on www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk

This reflects an increase in the number of new sites and overall production from builders of all sizes.

There is little evidence that builders are moving away from the lean approach to regional and head office staffing which many adopted at the beginning of the recession.

Recruitment at Manager and Director level appears to be mainly replacements rather than an increase in head count.

The strongest area of temporary recruitment in the housebuilding market is for site based sales staff as builders seek to utilize the availability of experienced Sales staff to cover holidays, new sites and increased visitors to site.  There are examples of such jobs here: http://www.zed-sales.co.uk/?cat=7

Most builders appear reluctant to employ head office or non-sales site based staff on an interim or contract basis, preferring to wait until they can justify recruiting a permanent member of staff.  This is in contrast to other industries where the temporary market is busy due to the need for flexible resource in areas like IT, finance, construction and sales.

Suppliers to the housing market (particularly building materials) have increased their advertising in 2011 signalling their optimism that this year will be one of recovery for the industry.

Senior management within the housebuilders have told us that they expect the 2011 market to be relatively flat with no significant improvement before 2012 or in some views 2013.

The restricted availability of mortgage finance remains the major factor in the challenging market conditions.

Budgets remain very tight for most organisations in the sector.  From a recruitment perspective builders remain keen to avoid paying fees if it all possible.  We built our model for www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk around the need for builders to have a quick, inexpensive online advertising resource solely dedicated to the industry.

Past seasonal trends were bucked in 2010. For example several builders we work with experienced stronger sales in August and December 2010 than the autumn which is usually viewed as a busier period.

Many builders are now actively seeking new sites as their land banks dwindle, but land values are increasingly volatile in an uncertain marketplace.

Whilst some of the larger builders have restructured their debt and are in a much healthier state as a result, there remain some smaller builders that are reliant on the banks view that they are of more value as going concern for their continued existence.

Larger housebuilders have completed significant restructuring to allow them to be profitable operating with much lower production volumes.

What do you think will happen in the industry this year?  Here are some of the discussion points that we are investigating at present:

Would an interest rate rise kick start the market? Historical trends suggest it may do.

Regional variations. Is the South East fairing better? Will there be a ripple effect further north?

The mortgage guarantee schemes recently launched by Barratt and Taylor Wimpey. Could they be the answer to lack of finance to first time buyers?

What do you think of the points raised here?  Are they consistent with your experience?  Why not comment here http://www.edburydaley.com/wp/2011/02/24/housebuilding-market-update-q1-2011/

We are pleased to announce that we are launching our new research project into The Importance of Supplier Relationship Management.  The questionnaire will be available for much of the summer to ensure we can attract the greatest number of participants so if you want to comment or prompt a discussion before the results are published, please feel free to contribute to this blog.

Vendor Management & Supplier Relationship Management – A Recruiter’s perspective

There’s no doubt we’ve seen a noticeable increase in the number of specialist roles in this area that we have been asked to recruit for.  This has been a trend for the last three years particularly, and we have experienced this most in services sectors like banking, consultancy and particularly IT services. 

Recruiting managers usually want a specialist in supplier management to fill their jobs rather than someone who has done some work in this area as part of a broader procurement or sourcing remit, whilst job seekers who enjoy the vendor management element of purchasing will seek specialist roles in this area.   

There is of course only a finite pool of vendor management specialists, so if demand grows further, we will have some very interesting market conditions.   This could possibly be reminiscent of the strong demand for high calibre indirect spend specialists in the City which drove up salaries, particularly between 2003 and 2007.