Your site manager decides your promotion, not your boss
The QS who wins every argument with the site team is building a reputation that caps them. Promotion to director is decided sideways, not upwards.
Opinion
Opinions with skin in the game.
Careers, hiring, leadership and the habits that get people promoted, including the ones nobody spells out for you, and the positions I will defend.
Start with these four
- Getting promotedThe fastest route to promotion is a problem nobody assigned youAsk most QSs what gets someone promoted and they'll describe doing their own job brilliantly. That's rarely the reason someone gets the tap on the shoulder.
- Becoming a directorThe instinct that got you promoted will wreck you as a directorThe skill that got you promoted, giving fast right answers, is the same skill that keeps your team dependent on you. Here's what to do instead.
- How hiring worksI have never been taken through a bad reference. That should worry you.Reference checks at senior level have become a ritual that confirms decisions instead of testing them. Here is how to take one properly.
- The industryConstruction isn't short of applicants. It loses them.Early careers teams are drowning in requests they cannot answer, while the people the industry says it wants never reach the door.
Where I stand
The positions I will defend, and the ones I have changed
Short answers to the questions that come up again and again in conversations with the people who run UK construction. Each links to the full argument. When someone changes my mind, the old position stays here with what changed it.
- Counter-offers
Take a counter-offer only if the thing that made you start looking has moved too. Money is the only thing an employer can fix by Friday.
Most people who resign were never really leaving over salary. A counter-offer treats the symptom, and the reason you looked is usually still there six months later.
- References
A reference taken the usual way confirms a decision rather than testing it. Ask for evidence of specific situations, not a verdict on the person.
A referee chosen by the candidate and asked "any concerns?" will give a warm answer, because it is the only polite one. The questions are the problem, not the referees.
- Internal or external hire
Going external for a director role is not automatically the stronger move. Too often it is a way of avoiding telling the internal candidate why they lost.
There are honest reasons to look outside: a business that has stagnated, or a first appointment in a function that has never had one. Those are specific diagnoses, not a default.
- The first year of a senior hire
When a senior hire fails in year one it is usually the landing that failed, not the person. Resource the first ninety days as seriously as the search.
Boards run careful six-month searches and then switch the care off the day the contract is signed. The capability was usually there; nobody turned an outsider into an insider.
- Interviews
Most panels have decided by minute five and spend the rest of the hour confirming it. Structure the interview so the first impression has to earn its place.
- The CV
The CV rules senior candidates out well and rules them in badly. Hire senior people on evidence of what they have done, not on the names of their employers.
- Getting promoted
You get promoted for the problems nobody assigned you and the things you finish, not for doing your job description brilliantly.
Directors inherit every unclosed file below them, so they remember who closed one. They also remember who picked up the gap nobody owned.
- Being indispensable
Make yourself replaceable. If a business cannot move you without a problem, it will not move you.
- Mentors and sponsors
A mentor will make you better. Only a sponsor, someone who says your name in the room where the decision is made, will get you promoted.
- Becoming a director
The instinct that got you promoted, having the fast right answer, is the one to drop first. A director's job is to make other people good at the work.
Expect to disappoint people you like, and build a route for bad news to reach you, because the title quietly stops it arriving.
- Staying in one seat
A long stint in one role is only a red flag when the job stopped changing years before you left. Loyalty and inertia look the same on a CV.
Disagree with one of these? Every argument has a verdict button under it, or tell me by email.
Skip the subbie packages, stall as a director
The step most ambitious QSs skip isn't a stretch project. It's running an ordinary subcontract package start to finish.
Sector experience is the weakest test for a director hire
Contractors fill director roles from their own lane. The supply side runs bigger P&Ls on thinner margins, and almost never gets the call.
Hinkley's fish protection: what does each fish saved actually cost?
£700m on fish protection at Hinkley Point C. So what is the cost per fish saved?
Why does my CV not get past the sift for director roles?
I have run large schemes but I do not get shortlisted for director roles. Is it my CV?
Should I make myself indispensable to protect my job?
With restructures everywhere, should I hold on to the knowledge only I have?
Nine years in one role. Will it count against me?
I have been with one contractor in one role for nearly a decade. Do recruiters see that as a red flag?
How do I get promoted when I already do my job well?
I hit every target and my reviews are good, but the promotion keeps being next year. What am I missing?
My employer has made a counter-offer. Should I take it?
I have resigned and my employer has come back with more money. Should I take it?
The year we didn't hire anyone
Nobody remembers cutting the trainees in 2009. Ten years on, it is who is missing from every senior shortlist. The long read on downturns and the people we never hired.
Every project starts with setting out
Why the first ten years and the last ten need different front doors to the same industry.
Waiting until you feel ready costs you a year
The QSs who wait to feel fully ready before applying move a year later than the ones who don't, and it shows over a career.
Who tells your chief executive they are wrong?
Most growing contractors have a chair or a non-executive. Far fewer have anyone whose actual job is to challenge them.
Construction isn't short of applicants. It loses them.
Early careers teams are drowning in requests they cannot answer, while the people the industry says it wants never reach the door.
External hires aren't braver. They're just easier to justify.
Boards go outside for a director role far more often than the market justifies. It usually isn't because the external candidate is better. It's because promoting from within means someone has to explain, out loud, why the internal favourite lost.
Gordon Brown is still at the table. Your retired directors are not
Two Prime Ministers in a row have kept a former one advising on the G20. Construction retires its best commercial brains at 60 and never rings them again.
Being indispensable is why you're still doing the same job in five years
Everyone tells you to make yourself indispensable. It is exactly backwards, and it is why so many good QSs plateau at the level where they became essential.
The hiring decision is usually made by minute five
Panels believe they are weighing the whole interview. Most have already decided, and spend the rest of the hour confirming it.
The first thing you lose when you become a director is bad news.
The moment you have authority over someone's pay or their next role, the account you get from them changes. Building a route for the truth to reach you is a director's job, not a personality trait.
You don't get promoted for starting things. You get promoted for finishing them.
The QSs who get the tap on the shoulder are rarely the ones who launch the most initiatives. They're the ones who chase the retention nobody else will chase, and actually close it out.
The CV is the wrong document
The CV rules senior candidates out well and rules them in badly. Three calls in one week showed why executive search should be built on evidence, not employers.
The instinct that got you promoted will wreck you as a director
The skill that got you promoted, giving fast right answers, is the same skill that keeps your team dependent on you. Here's what to do instead.
You spent six months hiring them and six days landing them.
Boards run immaculate six-month searches and then abandon the hire on day one. Senior placements rarely fail on capability. They fail on the landing, and almost nobody resources it.
I have never been taken through a bad reference. That should worry you.
Reference checks at senior level have become a ritual that confirms decisions instead of testing them. Here is how to take one properly.