After years of industry layoffs and a dearth of projects to go around, construction firms have finally built up their backlogs with so much work that they have kicked recruiting into high gear, and some are finding that talent doesn’t grow on trees.
The surge in commercial construction projects in the last year or so has pushed general contractors and builders across the Greater Boston region to increase their ranks with project and assistant project managers, superintendents and business development professionals.
Corporate office and lab users that stopped hiring or laid off workers during the Great Recession have accumulated cash in the process, and now that the economy has rebounded somewhat, those users are hiring and in some cases expanding their operations. And that translates into work for general contractors that coordinate renovation and expansion projects.
But corporate clients aren’t the only ones that shed jobs during the downturn. Those same general contractors that are now so busy are also scrambling to fill their own dugouts with players after employees were laid off or left the company. And in many cases, those former employees have left the industry altogether since there was no work to be found there. Now, the ones that are still working in the industry are mostly already employed, and if they’re not, they most likely will be.
“Assistant project managers are the people that do a lot of the work around here, and it’s hard to find good assistant project managers right now,” said Jay Dacey, president of Integrated Builders of Rockland. “There’s just so much business right now that [prospective employees] are getting scooped up left and right. There are only so many experienced project managers out there.”
Dacey said his firm has long developed young talent through the usual recent college grad hires. But you don’t just walk down the street and stumble over experienced project managers and superintendents. Many times the best hires are friendly referrals, but many times firms are forced to rely on recruitment firms to fill vacant or newly created positions, Dacey told Banker & Tradesman.
College Recruiting
Another local firm, Woburn-based Tocci Building Cos., goes about their recruiting a little differently. The firm actually goes directly to colleges and universities like Yale and Harvard to both lecture and network with talent from top-tier design programs. The company is currently seeking to fill about 12 openings from virtual design engineers to finance people, said Bud LaRosa, Tocci’s chief business performance officer. He said the industry is reaching a point where there will soon be a shortage of project and assistant project managers, mainly caused by the exodus away from the industry over the last five years.
The problem with hiring project managers and similar positions is timing. You don’t want to bring someone in too early because they could just wind up sitting with a lot of time on their hands, according to Mark David, president of Newton’s BayPoint Builders. The good thing is that now is the right time to hire them – but that’s also a problem, because now everyone is busy and wants to hire, David said.
One of the keys is holding on to young project managers that come to a company. People in those positions tend to move around a lot early in their careers because they are often underpaid and trying to rack up notches on their career belts, “So you try to hold onto them tightly as you develop them,” David added.
David, who sits on the board of the Associated General Contractors of Massachusetts trade group, said now is a prime time for construction firms to diversify their business. As companies are looking for new team members, they should be looking for those that can help them broaden their business, something that’s part of the strategic plans for many firms, he said.
Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com
