Construction · site · CDM

Site manager recruitment UK: hire the person who can actually run the site.

Site manager recruitment through Viktorija Sherriff’s network — not a job-board scrape of people whose CV says “site manager” in a large font. £450 to start. Discreet. Credentials checked, not assumed.

Start a search Built sector

The hiring pain is real, and it is not a sourcing problem.

Most site manager recruitment in the UK still starts with an advert and a spreadsheet. A week later you have a folder of people who are “available”, and almost none of them would be allowed to run the job you actually have. A PDF can say site manager. It cannot tell you whether they have held a live new-build, a refurbishment in an occupied building, or a programme that still had to trade. Titles travel. Responsibility does not. Volume desks optimise for speed of CV. You then spend a fortnight sorting people who do not hold the ticket, cannot work the hours, or have never run this type of site.

Viktorija Sherriff headhunts site managers through her own network. She does not scrape job boards and she does not spray a vacancy at a database. If the last process produced a folder of people who would never be allowed to run the site, this is the other way of working. A named search starts for a £450 engagement fee.

Construction recruitment language (“we have ten candidates”) is the wrong promise here. You need one or two people who will still make sense after the first winter on the programme. That is a conversation, not a broadcast. If you want her to look at a site manager brief, use Contact. A short note is enough.

Credentials she vets

What actually gets checked.

CSCS where the role needs it — not a guess from a CV line
SMSTS (and related site tickets) for managers who claim to run live works
Whether they have actually held a site of this type — new-build, fit-out, occupied refurbishment — not only a title
Right to work in the UK, as every employer must check: gov.uk/check-job-applicant-right-to-work

Site safety duties sit with the employer and the dutyholders under CDM. See the HSE construction pages and the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 on legislation.gov.uk. VS Recruitment is a headhunter, not a health and safety adviser.

Typical searches

Roles she is asked to find.

Site managers on live construction programmes
Project managers who still know what a site looks like on a Tuesday
Construction managers and package leads who can hold subcontractors
Site leaders moving between main contractor and client-side roles

Also in this market: Fire risk assessor recruitment, Facilities manager recruitment, Built sector recruitment.

How the search runs

Getting site manager recruitment right.

What to put in a site manager brief

Describe the job, not the title. Say whether it is new-build, refurbishment, fit-out or work in an occupied building; the programme stage the hire will join; roughly how many trades are on site on a normal day; who the site manager reports to; the hours, travel and any weekend working; and which cards the contractor or client requires. A brief written this way filters people quickly, because a strong site manager can tell in two minutes whether they have run a job like yours.

What the interview should test

Use scenarios from your own projects: a late design change, a subcontractor working outside the agreed method statement, a delivery clash on a constrained site, a neighbour complaint on a Friday afternoon. Listen for the sequence — stop and make safe, inform the right people, record it, re-plan — and for how they keep the programme honest. Ask how they run the daily briefing, how they manage the construction phase plan and what they hand over when they leave a job.

What a good shortlist looks like

Small, and every name has a reason. Each candidate should have run comparable work, hold the tickets the role genuinely needs, and have a clear notice period and a clear reason to move. You should be able to read the shortlist and know why each person is on it before you meet them. If a shortlist needs a long covering note to justify it, it is not a shortlist.

Questions

FAQs

Do you advertise site manager roles on job boards?

No. Viktorija headhunts through her own network. The vacancy is not posted, which is why you can hire a site manager discreetly.

What tickets do you actually check?

Where the role needs them: CSCS, and SMSTS for managers who claim to run live works. Neither is assumed from a CV line. Health and safety duties on the project still sit with the employer and the CDM dutyholders, not with a recruiter.

Is SMSTS a legal requirement?

SMSTS is widely required by UK contractors as evidence of site-management safety training. It is not a substitute for the legal duties in CDM 2015. Those duties are in the regulations and in HSE construction guidance — VS Recruitment does not pretend to be your CDM adviser.

What does the £450 fee buy?

It opens a named search. It is not a listing charge and it is not payment for a batch of unsolicited CVs. If the brief is not a fit, she will say so before anyone pays.

Start a site manager recruitment search.

A short note is enough. If it is not a fit, she will say so.

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