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.