Your Surveying Career Needs a Strategy, Not Just a CV

Speaker 2: 00:00
If you think about two people going forward for a role, both got the same technical skills, communication skills are everything. Because if you’re not able to communicate that technical knowledge to people at all levels, all different stakeholders in a project, you know, it could be a homeowner, it could be a director of a company, it could be an architect or or a civil engineer, it could be anyone. If you haven’t got the ability to have that communication, what’s the point in the technical knowledge?

Speaker: 00:33
Hello and welcome. You’re listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I’m Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let’s dive into our latest episode.

Speaker: 01:01
Hello everybody, and welcome to This Is Surveying. Today’s guest, I’m very pleased to welcome, is Roger Dunning. Roger Dunning is a recruiter for HD surveyors, and his areas of specialism are building surveyors, quantity surveyors, and project managers. Now, I’m very keen to talk to Roger today. Roger has extensive experience across the profession, and I believe he’s going to be bringing a lot of insights and interesting uh information to our listeners. Um, but without further ado, welcome, Roger. Glad to have you on here.

Speaker 2: 01:37
Thank you. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Speaker: 01:39
Yeah, super. So, as I always do with everybody, all I guess, you know, tell me a bit about yourself. You know, how did you get into recruitment, that kind of thing? And, you know, how’s it been in your your career, I guess?

Speaker 2: 01:52
Yeah, so 20, it’s about 24 years in total in recruitment. Wow, that’s amazing. Um, I actually started off because I totally random. I worked for a company that we built theming for theme parks and stuff like that. The guy who owned it stitched me up. I lost quite a bit of money. I ended up, as a young lad, it was a lot of money, ended up having to go to a recruiter to find a job. And the recruiter turned around and said, actually, could you come and work for my husband’s recruitment company? So that’s how I got into recruitment. 22 years of having my own business. So I started Hunter Dunning app 22 years ago, and then 12 years ago started HD surveyors. So that’s exclusive focus on building a survey and conscious survey and recruitment. Yeah, thousands of conversations with surveyors of all levels. But I think my main, my main passion that’s come out of it, more so in the last couple of years, is all about strategy. It’s all about career strategy for people and helping them just make really good choices. So I’m conscious of the reputation that recruiters have, and I do everything I can to dispel those ideas and just prove that actually there are people out there who want to really help people.

Speaker: 03:01
What do you think is it that makes what is a good recruiter in this kind of space, would you say?

Speaker 2: 03:08
I think it’s about really thinking about what the job is actually meant to be. So if someone comes to me and they’re looking for a job, you know, I need to really understand them, understand what has brought them to this decision. What are they, what are they, where are they trying to get to? But also, as far as what makes a good recruiter, in my opinion, it’s someone who then goes that extra stage and and helps someone to see that this isn’t just about looking for your next job. This is about forming a strategy for your career so you can actually build that strength, resilience, flexibility into your career from day one, you know, from from your first role all the way through to the dizzy heights that they might get to.

Speaker: 03:51
So I guess for you, especially running your own business for such a long time, the important thing, one of the important areas must be because you know, a lot of the time with recruitment, it could be maybe scatter gun, you know, post a job, you know, off you go, try and get as many candidates, all that kind of thing. How do you sort of find it with relationships? As in, you know, do you have a lot of people on your books that have been there a long time? You know, what’s what’s that kind of side of it like for you?

Speaker 2: 04:18
It’s the bit I enjoy the most. I love talking. So I love talking with people, I love building relationships. And I think when you actually can really help someone, you know, that’s how you build a relationship. Everyone, when they first speak to you, typically, I’ll give you an example. There was a lady I’m working with, or was working with, sorry, who I’m now friends with, who’s probably one of the most impressive building surveyors I’ve worked with. And when she approached me, she said, you know, the typical kind of like, I’m not really looking, but happy to have a chat. We had a chat, the chat went on and on and on, and we spoke for about an hour in that initial conversation. And by the end of it, she said, Oh, I really want you to represent me. It then continued. So it was just building that relationship for me was really good fun, but also just really rewarding in the sense that when I could then go out to clients for her, I knew exactly what she wanted. I knew exactly her requirements on every level, so that I could really approach people and just give a real, really honest and educated understanding of who this candidate is, rather than I’ve got a building surveyor who’s a senior and wants a new job. So the relationship side for me is massive. Obviously, having been in the industry for a long time is also part of that. But I think you know, with clients as well, I try and be an information source. So, you know, I spoke to a client this morning and they were telling me about how the fact that the industry has kind of come to terms with what’s happening over in the Middle East has actually started to level out how things are working. So beginning of the year, well, Trump invades, TDDs all drop off, no one wants to invest their money, understandably, because they don’t know what’s going to happen. Now you’ve got that um leveling out of things, you’re now in a situation where people feel a bit more comfortable to invest again. So TDDs and things like that are getting a hell of a lot busier, certainly according to this client. So it’s really building relationships is the thing that actually I think I enjoy most, but also is why people work with me and why people come back. You know, I’ve had people I’ve placed three times over 22 years, so it’s that’s really rewarding.

Speaker: 06:24
Yeah, I can imagine it’s really rewarding because you you you’re watching people’s careers, which is such a huge part of people’s lives, yeah, and how they’re evolving things. And it’s interesting that career strategy, and you’ve touched upon that that point around things that impact the recruitment, the job market, which are outside, completely outside anyone’s control, like the Trump invasion, and they knock on impact. And the point is by you building relationships and and being in the know, you can help inform both candidates and clients because candidates are like, oh, I’m struggling to find a job, I can’t find it. But well, actually, this is happening at the moment, and you know what’s happening out there. And I think it’s a two-way, there’s this always expectation, it’s just to fill a job and it’s just you know, it’s transactional. Whereas actually, there’s a lot to be said by recruiters that really know the market. You can really inform someone and explain why it might be difficult at the moment, or why your career strategies point that we we we discussed before we started recording, which was interesting, was the specialism area. Really interested to hear, I think people will be interested to hear a bit more about that. That was interesting.

Speaker 2: 07:35
So, this is something that I’ve seen over a relatively long period of time, I suppose, but it it came into focus most after COVID. So prior to COVID, we quite often worked with people who wanted specialists. So there might be a TDD specialist or a Delapse specialist or whatever. Uh, and there was much more demand. When we came out of COVID, I think people just really understood that you know, someone can start sneezing over in China and the whole global market shifts. Suddenly, everything changes. And again, you know, looking at Trump invading the Middle East, that’s a situation where that’s happened. Suddenly, okay, well, loads of loads of investors are pulling back money on on new purchases they might have made. That’s having a huge impact. So if you’re a TDD specialist only, then hang on a minute, that’s really restricting. So I think it’s two sides to it. I think the there’s the side that the clients have basically turned around and you know, much more now since COVID. People want a broad, a breadth of experience in all ways. So it covers the sectors that you’ve worked in, the types of work that you do within that. It in some ways, also the the exposure you’ve had to the market. So another thing that changed actually, this probably changed back in 2008. So after the 2008 recession, which for my little company and done it, it almost destroyed us. But the big thing, big learning curve that came out of that was just how the the requirement for breadth across different companies has value. So you kind of you always used to look at it and used to think to yourself, okay, this guy’s been at this company for 10 years or 20 years, that’s a golden candidate. You know, now it’s not like that. They want to know why that bloke stayed there? Is he not ambitious? Is he not uh, you know, why hasn’t he moved on? And if you think about it, I like to tie everything back where possible to how to the viewpoint of either the candidate or the client. And if you think about it from a client perspective and what they’re looking for, they’re looking for maximum value, maximum information uh information and breadth of knowledge. If you look at it from a candidate perspective, they should be looking at it, thinking to themselves, hang on, every single company does things a little bit different. If I can get as many different examples of how to do a certain thing, then I can actually add more value by developing a process that works even better or takes the best parts from each one. So you quickly get to that stage of thinking, you know, you never want a job hold. But if you’re, you know, if I look at some of the most successful candidates I’ve worked with, there’s a there’s a chap I’ve worked with whose name I won’t mention, but I absolutely love the guy. And he he has just nailed every section of his career. So he got for to start with, he got charted in two years. He’s got a spread across all different sectors, all different types of work. He’s now a very young director within a company, and he’s now at a stage where he can he can now specialise because he’s kind of the ability to all that value.

Speaker: 10:50
So that’s really so that’s the advice you would you would give to like the graduates is you know, don’t just like like I like I mentioned earlier, you know, there’s some that have gone really early in and they’re maybe just in the rail sector.

Speaker 2: 11:02
And yeah, that’s painful. I feel I genuinely feel for people in that situation. Rail is a particular one, education is another one.

Speaker: 11:11
When you say education, is that literally a buildings like current schools, stuff like that?

Speaker 2: 11:16
Yeah. So if you have, I’ve had people come across who are sort of like they’ve started in a company specializing in education and never left, they’ve been there for maybe five years, they’re just they’re they’re attractive to people in education projects. And yes, everything is, you know, you can the skill, there’s loads of crossover skills, but from the perspective of someone hiring, if you look at someone hiring and they’ve got someone who’s got solely education experience, and someone who’s got education, commercial, resi, healthcare, you know, all those different areas, who are you gonna choose unless you’re solely so it kind of means that you’re like setting up your career to mean that you’ve got your best value is only in one sector. Whereas if you’re working within a company, there was there was a QS I was chat to yesterday, again, super lovely chat at chat, and really bought into the whole idea of my idea of strategy when you’re developing your career. So he’s a he’s a quantisfer, it’s got a great degree in in quantity. He’s then gone into main contracting. The idea there was that he wanted to really get close to the buildings, get close to the as close to the delivery as he could, so that his understanding of the trade was as deep as possible. He’s now in a position where his his kind of long-term goal was to then move into consultancy. So we’re now looking at that and kind of assessing that idea and saying, okay, so when should the move be? So we’ve talked about both sides to it, and it it’s massive because if he stays too long in the the main contracting area, he’s gonna be less and less attractive to the consultancies. So there’s so many different things that come into play. And if you’ve my opinion for him, he’s just got chartered, which is pretty rare for people in main contractors, they don’t always bother with chartership, but so it’s the prime time to get into consultancy and build that experience. And then later on in his career, if he turns around and says, Oh, actually, I prefer main contracting. Well, no worries, you’ve got the experience, go back to it. So it’s it’s there’s a lot of different elements that can come into it.

Speaker: 13:22
Interesting. What’s the kind of the job market like at the moment? I mean, is it candidate-led, client-led? Or is it does it vary across the disciplines?

Speaker 2: 13:32
It doesn’t vary. It’s fully client, uh fully candidate-led, sorry.

Speaker: 13:36
Okay. Which means for the listeners, what does that mean?

Speaker 2: 13:40
Okay, sorry, for the listeners, that means it’s all about you. It’s all about the surveyors. It’s all about, you know, there’s a shortage of surveyors. I was listening to another podcast that you did with Adrian Tagg, yes, uh professor. He was talking about the shortage of people in building surveying, quantity surveying. You know, it’s right across the board. So there’s a shortage of people. You know, when I spoke to my client this morning talking about TDDs, he was like, Oh, Johnny, TDD specialists, get me someone. They’re really hard to find, but they need to be really good quality. So it’s kind of the market is very much candidate-led, but you need to have good quality skills and experience. You need to be working with good quality companies, and you really need to be trying to just develop that breadth. Because, for example, with that client, he wants people with really strong TDD experience. If you’ve got that and Trump does something else, quite likely, then TDD might drop off a cliff again. So, actually, where can you deliver value? Can you deliver me projects? Can you deliver dilapidations? You know, what can you actually deliver? So it’s it’s different.

Speaker: 14:47
Yeah. Sorry to interrupt you there, Roger.

Speaker: 14:49
Just as a matter of interest, with regards to because one of the things I’ve noticed on the podcast, speaking to lots of surveyors, is you know, surveying is obviously a very technical profession. But a huge part of it is also the communication skills, uh the emotional intelligence, dealing with people. How much does that come up with with clients, you know, like post-interviews, feedback, that kind of thing? How much of obviously there is the technical side, and I understand getting the experience breadth and specialisms come later. How much does the actual that side of it do you do you hear?

Speaker 2: 15:25
Yeah, huge. It’s a huge element of it, and it can it absolutely is the thing that will secure you the role. So if you think about two people going forward for a role, both got the same technical skills, communication skills are everything. Because if you’re not able to communicate that technical knowledge to people at all levels, all different stakeholders in a project, you know, it could be a homeowner, it could be, you know, a director of a company, it could be an architect or a civil engineer, it could be anyone. If you haven’t got the ability to have that communication, what’s the point in the technical knowledge? Because you’re not going to be able to communicate with people. The other side of the communication is as you move through the stages of your career, it becomes more and more important. So as you become a senior, you’re going to be responsible for communicating with and being responsible for the people beneath you. You also have a bigger responsibility for communication with your clients. As you get to associate, you need to be doing business development. That’s probably the biggest differentiator between a senior and an associate, is business development. So if you haven’t got the it’s not just all about uh going to shows or dinners or stuff like that. It’s just about having that raw inquisitive communication ability to be able to be on site and go for a coffee with the architect and say, What else are you working on? Relationships, yeah. Build relationships, develop your personal network, but also just not be scared to turn around to your client at the second where they’re saying, That’s bloody good. I like that, you’ve done really well there. What else have you got? Ask that question. What else have you got that we could be involved with? Or what other problems have you got that I could solve? And that’s that’s where communication is absolutely gold. So if you’re getting to that, I mean, even from a junior level, you need to have it, but if you’re getting to that senior level, it’s it’s essential to develop open.

Speaker: 17:21
Now that’s really good. That’s really good for people to know, I think, because I think it is something that is underestimated and not talked about a lot, you know, across some people stop.

Speaker 2: 17:32
It’s all technical, yeah, all taught, you know, it’s not taught either. And I think there’s a lot that, you know, as a society, there’s a lot of things that don’t get taught throughout your whole career. So, like little kids not tech getting taught about money, I do because I’m I’m all over it. But you know, there’s all those different elements. And I think when people come out of, I’ve just placed a graduate building cler, possibly two, and they were amazing. And the reason they were amazing was not they they got first class honours degrees, so they’d obviously worked really, really hard, and that that has huge value. If you’re doing your degree and you can work extra hard to get that first class honors, it really pays dividends. But if you’re what really stood out for me was the communication skills, because if they hadn’t had that, I wouldn’t have even put them forward to my client. I need, you know, you don’t get taught that at school, college, necessarily, and don’t point you in that direction. And I think there’s a lot that actually universities should be teaching you. And I think, you know, whether that’s with regard to strategy, how to put together a CV, God, I see some awful ones for people who haven’t been taught. That’s fine, they don’t know. So we help them. But you know, all these things for the graduates, what absolutely won the client over was their communication skills. Good questions, confidence.

Speaker: 18:53
Has regards to one of the things, you know, you’ve got graduates, has graduate expectations changed? Has firms’ expectations changed, obviously, over this long you know, decades of experience that you’ve seen, what’s it like now? Because you know, you hear lots of things about you know younger people’s expectations, so X, Y, and Z. And is it has it changed? Like what’s it like?

Speaker 2: 19:18
Interesting point. So I think it’s kind of sad. It bleeds into some other things. So so, first of all, quite often if someone’s looking for someone at a graduate level, all they’re interested in, there’s two things have they got a decent degree, so ID two, one, or first, and have they got communication skills. That’s pretty much it. Sometimes you literally would get a client saying, just send me someone who’s got the degree, knows how to talk to people and isn’t an idiot. The other thing is I want them to want to work hard. And and the difference between, you know, if I can go forward to a client and be truly this this young lady that I I placed into this graduate role, is with an amazing company. Like this is gonna set her career up so well strategically. And if, you know, I didn’t have to give her any information on that, she just had that skill through her parents or or or whatever it is. But I think if you can, the that that’s all people can look for. You haven’t got the technical knowledge, you’ve got an element of technical knowledge, but it’s all theoretical. You haven’t got any practical knowledge. It’s quite helpful if you’ve got knowledge in a job which is maybe an office-based job, so you just understand the culture and how things work. But there’s not much you can bring to the table, you know, and then as that develops, it becomes definitely the communication element is super important, but it becomes more about the obviously the technical knowledge, the experience, the exposure to different sectors and understanding of different sectors as you grow, that obviously becomes more and more important. But you never lose the importance of that element of communication.

Speaker: 20:54
Yeah, no, really good, good points there.

Speaker: 20:57
One of the things I would like to ask about, as uh a lot of people listening will know, AI. One of the things I’m really interested to understand from your experience is with regards to both sort of candidate expectations, the side of our candidates starting to ask the question of does this firm use AI or have they brought put AI skills on their CV? And then from the firm side, is there firms that are also starting to or even ask that question? What’s happening like out there at the moment?

Speaker 2: 21:34
Nothing so far. That I’m seeing right. Nothing that I’m seeing. So no major conversations with clients about it fob from a hiring perspective. I’ve heard anecdotally about people whose CVs have been put together by AI, and that’s become obvious. And people have looked at it, clients have looked at it and said, that’s lazy, or or or thought that’s lazy, or some of the information sounds a bit too. I don’t know if this person’s actually got this experience because I think you can smell AI for a relatively short distance. But I think it’s something that will become a lot bigger. I mean, I think it’s definitely a lot bigger anyway, but I think it it’s there’s a lot of the the only exposure I’ve got from a client perspective at the moment is a slight nervousness of people who are too quick to be forward about AI. Okay. And I think it’s just which is really weird because like AI is super useful. It’s going to take over so many elements of our work that it can take over. But I think the risk is you hear these horror stories of kind of like kind of like the legal ones where someone’s mentioned a case that actually didn’t exist, or AI’s made something up and someone hasn’t fact-checked it. So I think there’s there’s an element of concern there. From my perspective, I’m really interested. I use it a lot. I I’ve heard actually people just popped into my mind, people, someone the other day I was chatting to a guy and he said, I think that my CV has been turned down by companies because it’s been vetted by AI. Yes. I haven’t heard of that. I mean, I’ve heard of it, but not specifically within my industry, within the clients I work with, it’s very much uh they wouldn’t want that.

Speaker: 23:16
They want it’s kind of like early, it’s really way too early to even consider that. Right, interesting. That doesn’t surprise me in surveying, actually.

Speaker 2: 23:24
Yeah, and people, you know, they want my input because they know I’ve got the experience, they want my input on someone, but but also that almost like the emotion, the EQ understanding of a candidate as well. So for them to try and understand a candidate, if I spend hours talking to them, I’ve got a much better ability to be able to deliver information on that side of it as well. Yeah, uh, but yeah, AI undoubtedly is going to impact so many different elements of the industry, and you’ll know that a lot better than myself. I know you’re a bit of a specialist in it, but we’ve kind of we’ve just put out a salary and well-being survey. Okay. Um, all about company, you know, how satisfied people are in their companies. We’re looking at packages and all those sort of things, but also looking at how is AI starting to impact or is it starting to get impact their career and in what way? And I think that’s gonna certainly throw up, I’ll share it with you, that’s certainly gonna throw up some great interesting answers because it’s specifically looking at are there elements of AI you’re using, what what can you foresee as as coming in as as being the next element that that you’re gonna need to really succeed? So, yeah, I mean, like everything, it’s gonna have a massive impact.

Speaker: 24:36
Yeah, it’s like a moving, it’s a moving beast at the moment. And one of the things that speaking to say lecturers like Adrian Tag on on one of recent podcast episodes, it’s it’s the fact that students, all students now, all grads coming through are all have all been using AI all the way through university. Yeah. They’ve been using AI for the last three years. And there is, I I it makes sense kind of with the AI thing, because I think many may not want to talk about it because there is definitely still very much across the profession and others that AI is cheating, AI is a shortcut, AI is lazy, you know. I hear it. So it’s not always openly talked about. Even surveyors will not admit they use it publicly, but they they would talk to me about it because they don’t want to, because it’s got this perception that will change. Yeah. Um the thing is, it’s like I but I do know because I’ve actually you know spoken to some that have actually said that that are getting you know disappointed because they’re like, I’ve used AI for years. My like my phone won’t allow me to use it, and I want to use it. And I know where the surveyors that have, there was one recently, he said he walked around the office and he saw his is some of his team, three of them using three different AI tools. There’s all implications with the RACS AI standard for one thing. Shadow AI is a big issue where employees are using it without the employer knowing, because either one, they can’t, or two, it’s just really helps them. So all these issues are happening at the moment. That’s why I was interested in that question. Because it may be that there is expectations and it’s assumed, and you go in and go, Oh, great, we’ve got co-pilot in Microsoft, which is the common one because that’s what a lot of firms have, and that’s great. But I think it’s still early days. I think it’s like you say, but the vetting of people and CVs I’ve I’ve heard have come across that kind of software because there was one where a firm was using it, not a surveying firm, it’s in engineering, and they’d use it to vet for an engineering role. And the AI removed all the women immediately because it just assumed from what it’d been trained on that women weren’t typically in engineering historically, so it didn’t think they fit. And and so it’s getting better, but those automated tools I think are really dangerous at the moment. Like you cannot, you cannot, you know, you speak into a candidate, you know firsthand what that person is like, and then you relay that to the client.

Speaker 2: 26:59
And you could pick it up. This without a joke, the the girl I was talking about earlier, the graduate, in that in the first minute or two of the call, I had written on my pad, send to X-Client, because I knew she was amazing. And it was just, you know, you you can tell those things from a CV. I mean, to be honest, CVs are another really good topic because I don’t think when people are writing them, they write them from the right perspective. But going back to first to that bit about, you know, an AI looking at a CV, yeah, it’s kind of just keywords, you know, they’re looking for keywords, there’s nothing else. They’re not really going to be able to understand the nuances or depth of the experience that someone would have by virtue of the other information that’s in there, in my opinion.

Speaker: 27:43
I agree. And I think that’s it is really dangerous, but it’s it’s it’s good to see that that’s not being heavily used across surveying, because I think that’s you know, it’s got a way to go. I can see some case studies for it in sort of in certain types of roles, not necessarily surveying though, where it could vet out certain minimum criteria that it means, you know, you’ve got a visa, you know. The simple, you know, those black and white things. Yeah. So with regards to kind of the the market, you said it’s it’s candidate-led.

Speaker: 28:17
The other thing I wanted to touch on was around a lot of what I’m hearing is in building surveying, for example, we’ve got a very aging demographic.

Speaker 1: 28:27
Yeah.

Speaker: 28:28
And is that your kind of perception and understanding? And is that kind of leading to we’ve not got enough coming in?

Speaker 2: 28:35
We don’t have enough coming in. Right. And I think it’s I’ve honestly I don’t really know because I don’t massively see the weighting from young to old being an issue. And I don’t see that it doesn’t come up or hasn’t come up so far. I think definitely with regard to uh people in the in people coming into the industry, there’s a not not enough people coming into the industry. I think there’s been quite a bit of, you know, if you go back 10 years, surveyors weren’t paid for what they do. They’re like architects, they don’t get paid enough money for the job they do. And over the last 10 years, I would say there’s been a big leveling up from that perspective. But I think, you know, when you look at that, and when you look at what young people are looking for when they’re looking for a job, they want a job in which they can be successful in and be knowledgeable in. And I just don’t think it’s an industry that’s been maybe promoted as well as it could have been. Nowhere near.

Speaker: 29:31
Yeah, that’s kind of the reason is I’m doing what I’m doing. Yeah, it’s nowhere near being promoted enough. No. On on that, is there still a very big push for for chartership?

Speaker 2: 29:41
Yeah. Building Same, absolutely it’s absolutely key. You want to get chartered and you want to get chartered as quickly as you can. You know, what one of the jobs when I’m when I’m working with someone who’s, you know, say they’ve had five years experience but they’re not yet chartered. That’s the first question a client is going to ask me. Why? Why has that happened? And there’s a load of reasons that could be really reasonable reasons. Like they could have joined a company that just doesn’t support them. They could have had uh uh you know something go on their life that just means they haven’t been able to commit it to the commit the time. But the automatic, from a client perspective, the automatic thought is they don’t want to work hard, they don’t want to put the effort in, or they’re too lazy. That’s that’s honestly how it can come across. And it’s not always the case. I mean, it’s it’s seldom the case in my experience, but from a client’s perspective, charged ship is everything. You know, if I look at all the placements we did over the last year, um, in fact, last year was a was a particularly prominent one in this question, because I don’t think I got a single client ask me for someone who wasn’t chartered. Everything was chartered and up. That’s part of the cycle of the industry, but it’s also, you know, when when things are going well, you need to quickly capitalize on them. So my client who’s got this this surge of TDD work, he needs to capitalise on that. So if he takes a uh someone who’s not yet chartered on, he can’t yet give them full responsibility on those bits of work. So he can’t actually fully hand that off to someone.

Speaker: 31:16
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 31:17
So do we bad shit?

Speaker: 31:19
Do we? Yeah, that makes sense, but do we have enough? Because the thing I hear is that there are not not enough firms that are before that that provide that mentoring and pathway to chartership, and that has been a struggle. Is that the case?

Speaker 2: 31:32
Or that’s so it’s more a case that there are companies that don’t do it right and don’t do it or don’t actually commit to it. Right. So one of the biggest reasons you’ll see people moving when they’re in that kind of assistant level grab role is because they’re not, you know, their mentor doesn’t, you know, they’re never able to book an appointment in with their mentor or their counsellor, you know, they’re not able to get that exposure. And you know, I think there’s a real responsibility on employers to be part of that process. You look at some companies, I won’t name any, but there’s some companies who only have people from associate and upwards. It’s a real rarity, but there’s a lot of people who are turning around and saying, you’re not offering anything to the industry, you know, you you’re you’re not giving anything back to the industry, you’re not bringing anyone through. And, you know, for a lot of people, I think that’s uh it’s a it’s a problem. It’s a kind of, you know, if if you’re if you’re a grad, the most important thing is to, when you’re joining a company, feel the confidence to ask them about their APC process. You know, ask them the questions because you need to know that you’re gonna get proper support and training and guidance through that whole process. And also massively importantly, and this is where the breadth of experience comes in from a junior level, you really need to have a company that can genuinely offer you all the different elements that you’re looking that the APC is looking for. So if you get pigeonholed really early, you’re just not gonna have the full exposure. So, for example, if you haven’t got if you’re just doing uh professional work and you haven’t got any exposure to projects, how are you gonna get your case study? You know, and you find people who are in that position where they haven’t got, they join a company as their first company, you know, they’re excited to have their new job, they’re putting all the effort in, the company’s not. And I think it’s something you need to be massively cautious of. And we don’t work with company, you know. I I can’t be what’s the point in working with companies like that? They’re not gonna deliver for people. So it’s worth it’s definitely something worth researching.

Speaker: 33:36
Doing your homework on, I guess, with it with any kind of new role.

Speaker: 33:40
So it’s coming towards the end of our session. Is there anything else that you think would be you’d like to share or could be useful?

Speaker 2: 33:52
For me, the most important thing that people need to think about, the thing that I enjoy the most is strategy when you’re considering your career. You need to really, it needs to be the forefront of every decision. So you need to think what you’re optimizing your career for. So your career, it could be about I’ve helped many people who are in a situation where they’ve got young children and they need the time to be able to support their children and aren’t getting it. So that’s a great reason to move. So strategize around that. Make sure you’re going into a company that can offer that. You might be junior and trying to get that breadth of experience. You know, you’ve got to think of your within your career strategy, you’ve just got to think what’s going to actually move the needle, what’s going to get me to the next stage. Don’t just look for a new job. Look for a strategy that actually develops your career, makes you more valuable, more attractive to more people. Because the more attractive you are to more people within your career, the the better your career is going to move forward and the more options you’ll have. So when it comes to then wanting to specialise, oh, I really, you know, I’m drawn towards this type of project and you want to specialise. Well, I’ve got all the options because I’m so broad, you know, my my career capital is so broad and so valuable that everyone wants to employ me.

Speaker: 35:09
Yeah, career capital, I really like that. I like that, I like that phrase that you’ve you’ve termed. And I think also, you know, in a in a candidate-led market, you can you can leverage off that even more because literally you are in demand. So you can take that time to plan and and be discerning. Don’t just go for the whatever you’re given.

Speaker 2: 35:32
Yeah, a hundred percent. So there’s this new thing that we’re doing where we’re when we’re when we approach a client with regard to a candidate, we don’t send a C V in the first instance. Pretty rare in our industry, and but it it gives me the ability where I know the candidate inside out, I understand every different element of value that they can deliver, but I also understand exactly what they want going forward. So that might be hybrid working, so they can pick up their child from school, or you know, it could be anything, salary, whatever. But it means that you can change the narrative a little bit. So when I’m say if I’m approaching you and I’ve got this amazing charter building surveyor, and I can tell you all about why they’re amazing, the breadth of their experience and everything else. And actually, what we’re really looking for is a role that can deliver X, Y, and Z. So rather than just going forward saying we want a job, we’re saying we specifically want a job that can offer all of this. If you can’t offer us that, that’s fine. We’re gonna duck out of this one, we won’t be setting a C V three. So it if you’ve got that kind of strategic approach to it, you can definitely, you know, utilize the fact that you are in demand, there’s not enough of you in the market, so you know, leverage it.

Speaker: 36:42
And it makes it more a level playing field because I think sometimes it can be very much an employer who can put out a job advert, no salary details, and just you know, they expect maybe because they’re quite established or whatever, they just expect. You know, it’s all very one-way, and I guess in a candidate market, candidate has more power, so to speak, and can demand certain things. And I think maybe so it’s a case of like like firms, I’m sure, will say to you, we’re struggling to hire, we’re struggling to hire. And it’s like, well, maybe you need to up your game in these certain areas because otherwise. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:18
But that’s the kind of so what I try and get across to candidates, you know, when you’re creating your CV. Look at it, look through the eyes of a hiring manager. And likewise, when I’m talking to clients, look through the eyes of um the employees, a potential candidate. You know, what are you actually is what you’re offering them actually good? Have you actually thought about it? Would you be interested if you were just coming into the industry? Is this an attractive proposition? So it’s 100% a two-way street, but I think the people who do best, from my experience in their career, have had that strategic mindset, have understood that they’re a commodity, not in leveraging salaries and stuff like that. To a degree, it’s that, but you don’t ever want to be leveraging too hard because you’ve got to deliver to that level. It’s more about putting yourself in a position where you’re you’re just developing your career capital and just having making creating the best possible value for yourself so that you can leverage the market. You can turn around to people and say, This is why I’m best for this job, you know, and this is what I want from it. You know, what a lovely, in a way, a lovely position to be in for all the building surveyors and county surveyors out there, because there’s a shortage of both, and it’s what a wonderful world if you can turn around and have that bit more control in in choosing a company rather than taking a job.

Speaker: 38:39
And you, as a matchmaker in the middle, Roger, like what you were saying about not just sending the CV, that matchmaker in the middle, you’re saving time on both sides. Yeah. You’re not wasting people’s time by just firing off loads of CVs, then the employer has to sit there, trolfan. You’re you’re doing that pre because I think that’s such a valuable thing that’s under under misunderstood or not valued enough uh with with good recruiters such as yourself, is around the fact that you take the time to properly vet and match the culture, even the culture of a firm to the type of you know, some people will not fit, it will not be a right fit. And you’re doing that before the CV’s going, it’s that pre-vetting thing that is so valuable and it saves the employer so much time.

Speaker 2: 39:24
But the original title for a recruiter is a recruitment consultant. I consult, would be my client, a recruit consult with a with a candidate, and I think the massive thing that’s been lost by most recruiters is that element. They’re not a consultant, they’re a CV distributor. And you know, I’m not having to go at them. They’ve probably got a boss upon a boss upon a boss, and everyone’s basically saying, You’ve got to get out so many CVs this week. But I’m luxurious in the position I don’t have that. So I can enjoy that process and take people through that journey. And I think it’s super important. It also when it comes through term negotiations and all that sort of stuff. You know, some people are could be incredible at what they do, but negotiation on their own salary, you know, they might be negotiating with contractors on projects and stuff like that, but negotiating their own salary is way out of their comfort zone. And so that you know, that’s just another par the space.

Speaker: 40:20
Yeah, it’s another really value-added thing to put in put into the mix with having the recruiter in the middle. Because you’re you’re kind of the objective impartial, because the candidate has so much emotion as well.

Speaker 2: 40:32
Yeah.

Speaker: 40:33
And you’re you’re kind of coming in objectively and going, well, this and this and this. And I think that I always think that’s that’s really helpful as well. Because, like, imagine salary negotiations, a lot harder to negotiate it yourself. You will know the benchmarks, you’ll know the market, you’ll know what they were worth.

Speaker 2: 40:50
And it’s so, you know, when if I look back on my career, which is going to be very different to a lot of surveyors out there, but I haven’t made the perfect career decisions. I didn’t get good advice. I never had anyone giving me this kind of knowledge and understanding of how strategy with your career can make a difference. And I’ve seen I see lots of people who’ve made decisions that have really set them back. There’s a lovely lad I’m working with at the moment. He is the most motivated person I’ve ever seen. He’s got the most incredible work ethic. But the company he’s working for, they’ve just that they haven’t given him any structure. So I put him in front of a client, and their their feedback was it’s evident that this guy is really good, but there’s so much unlearning that we’ve got to do before we can train him in how we do things or and how general most companies do things, that we’d rather have a grad. And this guy’s got like five years’ experience, and they’re saying we’d rather have a graduate that’s fresh, that we can start from scratch with than someone who’s got all this experience. So that’s why I think shaping your career from day one, if there’s one thing that people take away from this, and and this goes for every stage of your career, but especially if you can start it from the beginning, it’s better. Is have a strategy, think about how you’re approaching it, think about breadth, build everything else, build all the basics before you start specializing. Yeah.

Speaker: 42:15
And talk to you. And talk to you. Yeah. So what I’ll do is this has been brilliant.

Speaker: 42:20
I’ve really enjoyed this, Roger. It’s some great insights for for listeners. What I’ll do is uh show notes, I’ll include your LinkedIn, details to HD Surveyor. And you mentioned a survey as well.

Speaker 2: 42:33
Salary, career satisfaction survey. Yeah, it’s really good if people fill it in. They get a choice as to it’s all totally anonymized, it’s totally confidential. If they want to receive a copy of it, they can just leave their email. It’s super easy. It takes about five, six minutes, is what I’m seeing so far. But it just means that people can really understand benchmark and just make sure, get a good understanding of whether they’re being looked after in the market, really.

Speaker: 43:01
Yeah, okay. We’ll definitely share that as well in the show notes for you as well. But thank you, Roger. I’ve really, you know, I I which a lot of people don’t know, but I I I had a stint in in recruitment for for 10 years with a business with my brother, completely different industry. And I I know the challenges and the perceptions around recruiters and but also the good recruiters and the the importance of relationships and things which you demonstrate. And I think firms should not always be it’s difficult because there aren’t always good recruiters out there, but I don’t think firms should be too judgmental and they need, I think, listening to this, they’ll appreciate the value that a good recruiter brings because it isn’t just firing off CVs and firing people. There’s so much more to it. A good recruiter, so much more to it, people matching, matching people to the the the role and that career involvement and and that your knowledge of the market, because you’ve done it a long time. Yeah, you’ve seen what works, what doesn’t work, and also the macro challenges, such as the Trump thing, which is so important to understand. It’s like, why is like if you were a recruiter in a in a firm in-house recruiter and you put a job advert on and you couldn’t understand why you people weren’t getting these applications, you hadn’t put the link together with what’s happening out there, you’re like blind. You don’t there’s like, why are we getting any, you know, what’s going on?

Speaker 2: 44:26
Yeah, everyone needs information, and I personally I enjoy being a conduit for information. It’s also super useful, but it’s you know, it recruitment isn’t cheap. Um, and it’s really hard work and it’s an incredibly stressful job, but it’s you know, if you get it right, it could be so satisfying because you could really see people’s careers going, you know, a change of direction. I had a candidate the other day and she was on holiday and she sent me a picture of her kids and her on the beach, and she said, Look, no laptop inside. And it for her, it was an amazing thing. She said, I haven’t even taken my laptop with me on holiday. Whereas the company she worked for before, every year she’d been spending hours working whilst away. And that was her. That was the thing because she needed to optimize in her career. So if you you know, it’s if you’ve got someone who can give you the time to talk to you, understand you, and really build that proper knowledge of why you’re looking and everything else, it just adds value in every area and adds value to the client because again, like you said earlier, they’re not wasting time. No one wants to spend time looking at a job that’s not right for them or talking to a capital client that’s not right for them. It’s a waste of everyone’s time. Yeah, it’s fun when you get the good ones, though. It’s fun when you get the ones that uh where you get those little emails say, Thank you so much.

Speaker: 45:41
I know that must be so satisfying because it is people’s lives. It’s like it’s like it’s slightly different, but it’s like when I think about teachers and the importance teachers always have an impression on your life. If someone helps you, really helps you. You don’t a lot of people don’t get to see that side of it, but I’ve been at that side. And the happiness someone has when they land that job, it’s their dream job, and that’s very satisfying for you. It is. And that’s again the people’s side of recruitment. It’s not just all the commercials and the numbers, this is people’s lives, this is you know their livelihoods. But no, thank you very much. I’ll I shall wrap it up for now today, Roger. But thank you, and I appreciate you spending the time with me today.

Speaker 2: 46:18
Thanks so much. It was fun.

Speaker: 46:20
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