Private housebuilders - The young ones

The cost of buying a house may be going up but if you’re starting out in your career and looking to get on the property ladder you could do much worse than work for a housebuilder. This is not because you might have a better chance at getting in early to snap up the less expensive new properties – although you might – but because competition to attract you among potential employers in the sector has never been more fierce.

“Age used to play a big factor in who we would be able to place in relatively senior positions, but it certainly doesn’t now,” says Halim Cholmely, an associate at recruitment consultancy Macdonald and Company.

This is echoed by Valerie Hughes, senior recruitment consultant at Cobalt, who says: “We are seeing very strong competition for youngsters at the moment who are just starting to do the bigger things like buying sites and developing them. They are expecting really strong salaries and bonuses for their first year [in a new job] which they wouldn’t necessarily have had a few years ago. We are even being asked to headhunt younger staff for the first time due to increased competition. It used to only be people at senior levels that we did this for but not any more.”

Cholmely says the situation for the next generation of managers reflects what is happening throughout the housebuilding industry. “Housebuilders are offering uncapped bonuses, a car, pension, private healthcare as well as higher salaries. The offers and counter-offers are going through the roof – they are cracking offers, sometimes bordering on the ridiculous. This is all purely down to the lack of good, talented staff across most positions in the sector.”

Cholmely gives the example of a land manager who just two years ago would have expected to be on a total package of around £60-£70,000 and who was recently offered a package of £120,000. He also points to construction directors who are now on salaries of £130,000, up from £80-90,000 in the last couple of years.

We are even headhunting younger staff for the first time. It used to only be people at senior levels that we did this for

Valerie Hughes, Cobalt

According to Hughes, the skills that are most in demand are in planning and affordable housing. “This is particularly from the traditional ‘box bashers’ who have moved to get more involved in urban regeneration projects who need these skills to be able to deliver,” she says, referring to volume housebuilders. Cholmely adds that there is also growing demand in these organisations for people able to “help understand the whole green agenda and what opportunities there are”.

Although things are looking rosy at the moment for most candidates in the housebuilding industry, Lynn Crowe, head of regional permanent recruitment for Hays, says that in future people will be faced with much less choice of who to work for. “With all of the housebuilders buying each other at the moment, there are only going to be five or six main housebuilders to choose from. Candidates who may not want to go to a particular company due to a previous bad experience may be faced with little other choice.

“What they are having to do is decide whether they are willing to risk going back or perhaps looking at smaller companies and taking a cut in pay,” she adds.

Perhaps those benefiting from “cracking offers” at the moment should get their housing deposits down quickly before the jobs market turns from being a seller’s to a buyer’s.