Lechley Community is free, and there is more on it than most people find on their first visit. This guide is the short tour: where everything is, what it is for, and the few habits that get the most out of it.

Start by picking your door

There are two ways in, and either one opens the whole site. You can switch later.

  • [Setting Out](https://community.lechley.com/setting-out) is for your first ten years in the industry: apprentices, graduates, trainees, people in their first discipline role, and anyone leading a team for the first time. It starts with the Early Careers Pathway and a mentor a few rungs ahead.
  • [Critical Path](https://community.lechley.com/critical-path) is for the people running the job: a project, a region or a business, the step to director or board, and the later years when what you know is worth handing on. It leads with the market: who is moving, who is hiring at the top, and the Mentoring Pathway.

Press Join free on either page, enter your email, and press Send my sign-in link. There is no password. Every time you come back, the same form sends a fresh link to your inbox. Once you are in, the button in the top bar becomes My pathway, with Account beside it.

Find your way round

The top bar has two menus and two links.

  • News & Views holds the reading: News, Insights, Movers, Thoughts, Where I stand and Guides.
  • Pathways is the learning.
  • Community holds everything you take part in: the two doors, the weekly question, mentoring, the Exchange, Ask anything and the letters to government.
  • Book a call puts 15 minutes in my diary.

On a phone, the same links sit behind the menu button at the top right.

Read the market in ten minutes a week

  • [News](https://community.lechley.com/news) is the daily feed of UK construction stories, each with a short note on what it means for careers and hiring. The top of the page carries the week in numbers and, each Friday, the week in five minutes. Use the sector bar to narrow it to water, rail, nuclear, healthcare, highways, data centres or housing.
  • [Insights](https://community.lechley.com/insights) is the longer analysis: senior hiring, pay, and where the work is going. It also holds two running trackers, construction insolvencies and AMP8 contractors.
  • [Movers](https://community.lechley.com/movers) is the regular list of senior appointments: who has gone where, and why it matters.
  • [Thoughts](https://community.lechley.com/thoughts) are my opinion pieces on careers and leadership, grouped by theme.

Follow the companies and sectors you care about

This is the single most useful setting on the site. Under many stories there is a Keep up with this block with a Follow button for the company or sector it is about, and every sector page in News has one too.

Follow a company you work for, one you would like to work for, and the sector you are in. You get one email on the mornings there is something new, and nothing on the mornings there is not. Manage what you follow from Account, under Following, and every alert carries a one-click stop link.

Have your say

  • [The weekly question](https://community.lechley.com/question) goes up every Monday. Vote with one tap, on the site or straight from the email, and add a line under your name if you want to. Voting closes at 5pm on Friday, and my take on the answers follows. Past weeks stay on the page.
  • [Where I stand](https://community.lechley.com/where-i-stand) sets out my position on the things that come up on every search: counter-offers, references, the CV and more. Read the argument, then press Agree or Disagree. If you think I am wrong, tell me; I read every reply.
  • [Ask anything](https://community.lechley.com/ask) is for the question you would not ask your manager. Pick a topic, choose to stay anonymous if you like, and the answer is published for everyone. There genuinely are no silly questions.

Learn something with a certificate at the end

[Pathways](https://community.lechley.com/pathways) are free courses written by people who have done the job. There are twelve, from the Early Careers Pathway through commercial, planning, estimating, operations and the rest to the Mentoring Pathway. Each has four modules of four lessons, a short exam on every module (eight out of ten to pass), and a certificate at the end that carries our research partner, Lancaster University Management School.

Press Start the pathway, and the site remembers where you got to. Twenty minutes a week finishes a pathway in a couple of months.

Meet the right people

  • [Mentoring](https://community.lechley.com/mentoring): press Find me a mentor or Offer to mentor. Pairs are matched by a person who reads what you wrote, not by an algorithm.
  • [The Exchange](https://community.lechley.com/exchange): write down three things you could teach someone from a different generation in construction and three you would like to learn. You are offered up to five people whose answers fit yours, and you book half an hour over coffee or a call.
  • [Book a call](https://community.lechley.com/book): 15 minutes with me, at a time that suits you, about your career, a hire, or the market.

Still at school or college, or know someone who is? Send them to [Get into construction](https://community.lechley.com/get-into-construction).

The case we are making

[Letters to government](https://community.lechley.com/letters) publishes the letters we have sent to ministers and departments about the industry's skills problem, exactly as sent, with every reply. [An open invitation](https://community.lechley.com/open-invitation) explains why the community exists and how employers, educators and initiatives can join in.

Your first fifteen minutes

1. Join through the door that fits, and confirm the email link. 2. Follow your own company, one you admire, and your sector. 3. Vote on this week's question. 4. Start a pathway, or open the Exchange and write your three and three. 5. Bookmark News and come back on Friday for the week in five minutes.

Five minutes a week after that

  • Monday: vote on the weekly question, from the email or the site.
  • Any morning: read the follow alerts that arrive, and nothing else needs checking.
  • Friday: the week in five minutes on News, and my take on the question.
  • Once a week: one pathway lesson.

Where Lechley fits

The community is free and stays that way. Lechley is my executive search business for construction and infrastructure, at lechley.com. The live roles I am working on are at lechley.com/jobs, and The Lechley Brief, my Monday email, can be had from the footer of any page on either site.

If something here does not work as described, or you think something is missing, reply to any email from me or use Book a call. I would rather hear it.