Internally grateful: Meet two construction interns

Matt Stafford, a 26-year-old quantity surveying graduate with a 2:1 from Kingston university, had almost given up hope of working in construction. He had been looking for a job since leaving university last summer, but without success. Meanwhile, his part-time job at electrical retailer Currys had evolved into a full-time role and he was starting to consider a career in retail. Then, in the first week of January, he began a three-month internship with consultant John Rowan & Partners – and everything changed.

He says: “This placement has made me feel completely different about a construction career. Failing to find a job left me disillusioned with the industry but now I’m excited about it and feeling increasingly confident about my ability to work as a QS.”

Stafford’s experience will resonate with those concerned that swaths of the talented graduates we tried so hard to attract a few years ago are feeling jilted. The fear is that those that don’t find jobs quickly will drift off into other industries permanently. This could result in a repeat of the skills shortage we were grappling with before the recession and a gap at middle management level 10 years from now. Stafford’s story suggests that by giving unemployed graduates internships, we may be able to keep them committed to construction, and avoid a skills deficit in the future.

Internships are easier to put into place than you might think. They needn’t cost the employer much and can bring immediate benefits to the business. The government has even set up a website where you can advertise internships for free.

Why, then, are so few firms taking them on? And what are they missing out on? Here we explain why Building is backing a campaign to get interns into the industry.

Why internships?

The problem of unemployed construction graduates is widely acknowledged.

About 36,000 people graduated in construction-related subjects in 2009. But when Building surveyed a sample of 600 in September, we found that 60% were unemployed, and a third were already considering working outside the industry.

Evidently we don’t need more employees right now, but the industry is predicted to grow by 3% a year between 2011 and 2013. To keep pace with that, we need to recruit 37,000 new entrants a year between 2009 and 2013, according to ConstructionSkills. This includes 3,770 “professional and technical” roles a year.

So how much of a difference could internships make in the battle to keep talented graduates? Stephen Gee, managing partner in John Rowan, has made an interesting calculation. He reckons that if every firm in the industry made up just 2% of their workforce from interns in 2010, this would be enough to give each currently unemployed graduate at least one placement. He says: “Given that the ‘professional and technical’ element of the industry accounts for about 300,000 jobs – excluding senior executives and construction managers – then that 2% will maintain skills slightly above the forecasted level, allowing for some losses along the way.”

What’s in it for us?

Leaving aside the need to do your bit for the industry as a whole, interns can bring benefits closer to home, too. Jonathan Brookes, corporate social responsibility manager at Lakehouse, an Essex-based contractor with 274 staff, has had several interns since the recession started. He says: “We’ve just taken on three sustainability interns and so far we are extremely impressed. We’re just paying their expenses at the moment but we’ll review that and hopefully offer at least one of them a full-time paid job.”

Naturally, Brookes is not motivated entirely by altrusim: he has found that interns are a perfect way to cope with a spike in workload. What’s more, “if you do decide you need to make the post full time, then you have effectively been able to interview someone for several months.” Employers also avoid spending on recruitment agents’ fees – which can be up to 15% of a new starter’s annual salary.

Meanwhile, the graduate gains, at the very least, work experience that could help them get a permanent job and, at best, a full-time job with their placement provider. Candice Homewood, who has just completed a masters degree in environmental engineering at University College London, is one of Brookes’ current interns. She sees internship as “win–win for employer and graduate. They get to test us out, at no cost, and we use the internship as a springboard for our career.”

She adds that although her qualifications would allow her to work in the energy industry, her internship means she’s set her sights on building. “I’m learning so much about construction now that I’d like to stick with the sector.”

How do internships work?

Internships are paid or unpaid stints of work experience that typically last between two weeks and nine months. They tend to be for people who have skills already, but the placement also involves an element of training. There is no obligation to consider an intern for a full-time role after the placement finishes.

Both John Rowan and Lakehouse advertised for interns using a government website launched in August 2009 (graduatetalentpool.direct.gov.uk). It is free, and under the scheme employers can choose whether to pay interns a salary or only expenses. Interns are also able to continue to claim jobseekers’ allowance for up to 13 weeks while on an unpaid placement secured through the website. Graduates from 2008 and 2009 are eligible to use the site, where they can search for vacancies without registering.

At the time of writing the website was advertising 5,829 vacancies, including 3,477 paid positions.

Surprisingly, perhaps, only five construction industry companies are using the service. There seems to be several reasons for this. One could be that larger firms already have links to universities and offer internships to undergraduates midway through their courses. Another is that the graduate talent pool doesn’t appear to have been marketed strongly to the industry. A straw poll of HR managers at 10 medium-sized firms revealed that only one had heard of the site.

A more troubling issue is that many HR heads are uncertain what an internship actually is. Gee says: “There’s no intern culture in our industry. I sat on a panel at Building’s Good Employers’ conference a few months ago and when I talked about internships it was clear that people were not familiar with the concept. It’s very different from other industries, like law, where internships are common. ”

Others are aware of the idea, but don’t support it. This is particularly the case with architects, who have been sensitive about accepting unpaid workers since the profession was criticised for exploiting unpaid labour. Susan Pasint-Magyar, director of architecture at Hunters, says: “We have made redundancies over the past few months, like most practices, and that means I would feel very uncomfortable taking on an unpaid intern now – I think anyone working in our office should be paid. As for paying an intern, if we needed the help why wouldn’t we offer something to one of the people we have made redundant?”

She adds that Hunters is supporting new entrants into the industry by joining other practices in backing a RIBA competition for Part II architecture students to design an area in Bethnal Green in east London. The winners will be offered a week’s work experience.

The Pledge

But competitions and work experience do not represent support on the same scale as the longer-term placements outlined above. And the latter no longer entails the long periods of unpaid work that practices have been criticised for in the past, as they tend to be three months long and involve payment, or at least the covering of expenses. Gee says if the industry understood the benefits of internships properly, they would become commonplace. “Once the message is out there it will be a no-brainer – most people will go for it.”

Gee is launching a campaign called The Pledge, aimed at getting the industry to create 1,500 internships in each quarter of 2010. He hopes to achieve this by convincing firms to make the equivalent of 2% of their staff interns, and advertise the vacancies on the Graduate Talent Pool website. He is in the process of securing support from the RICS, the RIBA, the CIOB, ConstructionSkills and all universities that offer built environment courses. Building is also backing the campaign.

The campaign aims to persuade the industry that internships can bring benefits for employers and graduates. Gee says, “As we come out of recession this is the ideal way to build up capacity again.” And if it succeeds, the initiative will serve the industry by boosting commitment to construction from graduates like Stafford.

He says: “I feel great about my internship. I’m doing a real variety of things:estimating work, snagging and working on a generic construction programme – I’m definitely not just making the tea. And I feel more determined to stay in construction.”

To add your firm to the list of those pledging to make 2% of their staff interns visit www.thepledge.org.uk