The roles construction employers are struggling to fill haven't changed much this quarter - quantity surveying, architectural technologists, tradesmen, and building services remain the persistent pressure points. What has changed is how employers are responding: rather than continuing to wait for a perfect match, more are hiring adjacent talent and training it up.
A Market With Almost No Slack Anywhere
Architectural technologists, site engineers, and maintenance technicians are the three hottest roles this quarter, sitting alongside ongoing, unresolved shortages in quantity surveying, tradesmen, and building services.
Unlike sectors where certain functions are genuinely oversupplied, construction doesn't have a clear equivalent this quarter, the closest thing to a cooler category is admin-type and site administrator roles, and even there, candidates are still finding jobs readily and have plenty of options. For hiring managers, that's a meaningful signal in itself: there is no reliably easy corner of this market to hire into right now, which makes search strategy and candidate experience matter across the board, not just for the headline-scarce roles.
Premiums, Not Percentages, Are Setting the Pace of Pay
Salaries are rising at a steady rate, but the driver behind that increase is worth understanding precisely: it isn't a flat, planned annual uplift - it's candidates demanding a specific premium to move, and that demand is what's pushing overall pay upward. In practice, this means benchmarking against last year's market rate, or applying a standard percentage increase to an existing band, is likely to undershoot what it actually takes to attract a candidate who's currently employed and not desperate to leave.
Sign-on bonuses remain relatively rare in this market, but performance-related bonuses are becoming noticeably more common. That shift suggests employers are choosing to link reward to output rather than compete purely on guaranteed upfront cash - a structure that can be a genuine differentiator for candidates who are confident in their own delivery, without requiring employers to inflate fixed salary costs to match a competitor's headline number.
Security and Flexibility Are Deciding Factors and Employers Are Widening the Funnel to Compensate
Candidates are prioritising two things above most else: job security and flexibility. Employers able to offer both flexibility and a genuine progression path have a clear edge over competitors who can only compete on salary. This lines up directly with the pressure described above, if candidates already have leverage to demand a premium, the employers winning them are the ones adding security and progression into the offer, not just chasing the number.
The clearest evidence of how employers are adapting came from hiring behaviour itself. Rather than holding out for the ideal, fully-qualified candidate, more companies are now hiring people with relevant but adjacent industry experience and training them into the role, mechanical project engineers being developed into junior project managers is one concrete example playing out this quarter. This is happening across the sector generally, but is most visible in residential and commercial projects, currently the busiest parts of the market. The trade-off is a deliberate one: employers accept a few months of reduced output while someone trains up, rather than leaving a role unfilled indefinitely waiting for a candidate who checks every box.
The Takeaway
With almost no part of the construction talent pool currently easy to hire into, the employers winning this quarter are pairing a realistic premium with genuine flexibility and progression, and increasingly building the candidate they need rather than waiting to find one ready-made. Get in touch with our team for custom benchmarking on the roles proving hardest to fill in your business.
