Built sector recruitment in the United Kingdom still leans on a habit that does not serve the people who actually run sites, contracts and buildings. A vacancy appears. A desk somewhere turns a job description into a Boolean string. Fifty CVs arrive. A hiring manager who already has a live programme then spends evenings discarding people who do not hold the ticket, cannot work the hours, or have never run the type of job that was described. That is volume. It is not a search.
VS Recruitment works the other way. Viktorija Sherriff headhunts. She opens a named search for a £450 engagement fee and works her own network — construction, facilities, site and project management, property. She does not scrape job boards. She does not spray CVs because a filter said a headline matched. It is slower than a same-day longlist. It is also how you avoid interviewing people who were never going to be allowed on site.
Why construction recruitment keeps wasting time
Construction and facilities are unforgiving of fiction. A project manager who cannot sit in a progress meeting without someone translating is not a “development opportunity”. A facilities lead who has run a helpdesk and now wants a multi-site contract is not interchangeable with someone who has already held the P&L. The built sector knows this. Recruitment processes often pretend otherwise, because it is easier to send volume than to pick up the telephone to someone you already know.
The pain is familiar. You need a site manager who will still be there at the back end of a programme, not a contractor shopping three roles. You need a facilities director who understands a client’s building as an operating asset. You need a property operations hire who can talk to both the board and the night porter. Those people are usually in post. They are not refreshing a job board at lunchtime. They move when someone they trust describes a brief that is real.
Credentials that actually matter on site
If the role needs a CSCS card, that is not a keyword — it is a condition of being on site. If you are hiring a manager who claims to run live works, SMSTS is the sort of ticket you check rather than admire on a PDF. None of this is a substitute for judgement. It is the floor.
Health and safety duties on a construction project sit with the client and the other dutyholders. They are not outsourced to a recruiter. The Health and Safety Executive publishes the construction pages employers actually use, including the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015. See the HSE construction guidance and the CDM 2015 text on legislation.gov.uk. VS Recruitment will not pretend to be your CDM adviser. What Viktorija will do is refuse to treat a missing ticket as a paperwork detail to be “picked up later”.
Every UK employer also has to check that a successful applicant has the right to work. That duty is the employer’s. The process is on GOV.UK: check a job applicant’s right to work. A headhunter who has been in this market for a decade does not treat that as a surprise at offer stage.
Facilities and property are not a softer version of construction
Facilities management hiring has its own version of the same problem. The title “facilities manager” covers everything from a single building supervisor to a director running a national contract. Volume agencies flatten that. They send you people who have supervised a helpdesk and people who have held a hard-FM contract as if those were neighbouring rungs on one ladder. Property operations is similar: an asset that must stay open, safe and commercially useful is not a spreadsheet of reactive tickets.
The people who can run that work are usually already doing it for someone else. Construction recruitment language (“we have ten candidates”) is the wrong promise. You need one or two people who will still make sense after the first winter, the first audit, the first client meeting that goes badly.
What a construction brief should say before anyone is called
Most wasted construction searches fail before the first call, because the brief describes a title rather than the job. A site manager on a ground-up residential scheme, a site manager on an occupied school refurbishment and a site manager on a retail fit-out share a job title and very little else. The person who has run one of those well may be the wrong hire for the other two.
A useful brief answers a handful of plain questions:
- The work. New-build, refurbishment, fit-out, maintenance or work in an occupied building, and the stage the programme will be at when the hire joins.
- The scale. Roughly how many trades are on site on a normal day, how many packages the person will hold and who they report to.
- The constraints. Hours, travel, weekend working, and any client or contractor requirements for cards and training.
- The reason for the hire. Growth, a replacement, a new contract or a programme that is slipping. Each one changes who is right.
- What good looks like in six months. A handover achieved, a clean audit, fewer defects, a client who comes back.
That brief is not a job advert. It is the description Viktorija uses on the telephone. Strong people in construction can tell within a couple of minutes whether a job is theirs, and they respect a caller who already knows the answers.
How to interview for site judgement
An interview that asks a site manager to describe their strengths will hear the same answers from everyone. Scenarios taken from your own projects are more useful, because they force a sequence of decisions:
- A late design change arrives on a Thursday for work starting on Monday. What do they do first, who do they tell and how is the change recorded?
- A subcontractor is found working outside the agreed method statement. How do they stop the work, and what has to be true before it restarts?
- Two deliveries are booked into a constrained site at the same time as a crane lift. What is the logistics plan, and who owns it?
- The client’s representative asks on site for an extra that is not in the contract. How do they respond on the day?
Good answers share a shape: make safe, inform the right people, record it, re-plan. Weak answers jump to blame, or promise to “sort it” without saying how. Ask candidates how they run the daily briefing and what they hand over when they leave a job. People who have genuinely held a site describe the boring disciplines with some pride, because they know that is where programmes are won and lost.
Red flags in construction CVs
- Every project is described as “managed”, with no indication of the scale, the trades held or the person’s place in the team.
- Tickets are listed without dates, or the card type does not match the role being discussed.
- A run of very short contracts that each end before handover, with no clear explanation.
- No mention of who they reported to or which client they served, which makes references hard to take.
- Fluent language about “stakeholders” with very little about subcontractors, deliveries, permits or snagging.
None of these rules a person out on its own. They are prompts for the questions to ask on the telephone, before anyone loses a day to an interview that was never going to work.
Why the shortlist should be short
A list of ten “possibles” hands the work of searching back to the hiring manager. A good shortlist is two or three people, each with a clear reason to be on it: comparable work, the right tickets checked rather than assumed, a known notice period and a reason to move that will survive a counter-offer. Viktorija would rather present two people she would stand behind than pad the list to look busy.
The same discipline applies to facilities and property searches. A facilities manager running an integrated contract, a hard-FM lead responsible for planned maintenance and a property operations manager looking after a mixed-use asset each need a different shortlist. The site manager recruitment and facilities manager recruitment pages set out what gets checked for each, and the built sector recruitment page covers the wider market.
Notice periods and counter-offers
People who run live sites and contracts are, by definition, tied to live work. Many have contractual notice periods, and a good site manager will not walk off a programme a fortnight before handover. Build that into the timetable rather than treating it as an obstacle. Ask early what would make a candidate stay if their current employer made a counter-offer. If the honest answer is “more money”, the move may not last. If it is the type of work, the travel or the way the business treats its site teams, you can usually tell whether your brief answers it.
What a network-only search is for
A network is not a secret list of unemployed people. It is a set of relationships built over a decade in the built sector, plus the newer digital and AI work Viktorija now takes on. When a search opens, she calls people she can already reach. She describes the brief without turning it into an advertisement. She listens for the person who is actually movable, not the person who is always “open to opportunities” because they are always on the market.
That is why the fee is upfront and modest. £450 is not a placement invoice. It is the cost of starting a proper search instead of a broadcast. If the brief is not a fit — wrong sector, a role she cannot honestly reach, a process that only wants volume — she will say so before anyone pays.
If you are hiring in construction, FM, site or project management, or property, and you are tired of sorting other people’s databases, that is the conversation. Start a search with a plain note: the role, the site or contract, and what “good” looks like on a Tuesday. Built sector recruitment is not a numbers game. It is a named search, done by someone who has sat on this side of the industry long enough to know the difference.
Frequently asked questions
What is network-only construction recruitment?
The role is not advertised and CVs are not pulled from job boards. Viktorija approaches people she can already reach through her built sector network, describes the brief and only introduces those who fit and want to talk.
Do you check CSCS and SMSTS cards?
Where the role needs them, yes. The card type and the training are checked against the brief rather than taken from a CV line. A card is the floor, not proof of judgement, so interviews still need site scenarios.
Who is responsible for health and safety when I hire a site manager?
The legal duties under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 sit with the client, designers and contractors as dutyholders. Hiring a capable site manager helps a contractor meet those duties; it does not move them to the recruiter. HSE construction guidance is the reference point.
How many candidates will I see?
Usually a short list of people who fit the brief, not a long one. The aim is two or three people you would be comfortable offering, each with a clear reason to be on the list.
Can a construction search stay confidential?
Yes. Your company name is shared only when you agree it, which suits replacing an incumbent or planning for a contract that has not yet been announced.
What does it cost to start?
A £450 engagement fee opens the named search. It is not a listing charge, and if the brief is not a fit Viktorija will say so before anyone pays. How it works sets out the process.