黑洞社区

Sophie Campbell didn鈥檛 pull any punches. 鈥淭he first thing that attracted me to Sheppard Robson was the salary,鈥� she said. A roomful of HR people sighed wistfully, hopes dashed, fears confirmed.

Yes, young people are the same as the rest of us and when it comes to choosing a job, they don鈥檛 care how many bicycle loans or structured training programmes you promise them.

Campbell was speaking at the launch of 黑洞社区鈥檚 Good Employer Guide in London yesterday, one of four recent recruits to the industry who were there to explain exactly how the assembled employers could hope to attract a bright young thing like them.

Graduates are a rare sight in construction these days 鈥� the HR types eyed them hungrily like a pride of starving lions encountering a very small colony of wildebeest.

黑洞社区 editor Denise Chevin had asked them why they chose their current employers. It was a bit reminiscent of comedy old lady Mrs Merton asking Debbie McGee 鈥渨hat she saw in the multimillionaire Paul Daniels鈥�. After all, when you鈥檝e spent three/four/seven years living on baked beans and amassing enough student debt to crash a subprime lender, starting salaries are, well, quite likely to be a consideration.

But it wasn鈥檛 all about the money. Cost manager Tom Wallbank said he chose Turner & Townsend for its high chartership exam pass rate, graduate engineer Aaron Wall said he took immediately to his future line manager in WSP鈥檚 Manchester office and Campbell added that she liked Sheppard Robson鈥檚 range of projects and all the restaurants near its Regent鈥檚 Park office. For sports science graduate-turned building surveyor Alistair Lloyd, Tuffin Ferraby Taylor clinched the deal by bothering to talk to him at all.

It turns out that so-called 鈥渘on-cognates鈥� 鈥� anyone foolish enough to choose a degree unrelated to construction 鈥� receive a surprisingly poor reception from employers in construction. Four enterprising HR types took to the stage to explain how actually, once trapped, they tasted, sorry worked, almost the same as normal wildebeest.

A tenth of Mace鈥檚 graduate intake didn鈥檛 study construction, at Davis Langdon, it鈥檚 a quarter. DL partner Jill Pett said her star performer was a former psychiatric nurse: 鈥淚 was thinking of using a line saying 鈥榠f you鈥檝e done psychiatry, come and work for Davis Langdon鈥︹��

In fact, non-cognates were consistently the highest performing recruits 鈥� they don鈥檛 have too much trouble picking up the techy stuff (albeit within a heavy duty catch-up training regime) and they can even hold conversations with other people.

One man tried a non-cognate once but it didn鈥檛 work and now he鈥檚 run off to Spain. 鈥淒on鈥檛 give up,鈥� exhorted the panel.

How was the industry going to attract more of these bizarre animals?, someone asked. Should it be individual companies or a more linked up industry wide effort? Everyone believed there should be more collaboration and working together. Just don鈥檛 ask them to send their staff out anywhere where those recruitment consultant jackals might be lying in wait.

And with that, they stampeded to the back to pick up their copy of the Good Employer Guide to find out exactly how they measured up to the competition.