Recruitment Strategy | Blending the Best Local and International Talent

Here I look at the value and balance that can be achieved from employing a mixture of local and international staff – wherever your construction business is located in the world.

When Maxim Recruitment opened in London in 2003, we mostly recruited Professional Quantity Surveyors and construction dispute professionals for the London market. However, we quickly realised that with a well optimised website and a global outlook, we could reach employers and candidate jobseekers all around the world and match them together.

Suriname, Jamaica, Dubai and other exotic locations became core business locations for ambitious QS, Senior Quantity Surveyors and Commercial Managers that we recruited for grateful clients.  Before long, we found a job for someone based in Jamaica to relocate to Hong Kong for, and from then onwards we realised that international recruitment from any location relocating to any other location was a serious and important element of our construction recruitment business operations.

But where is working “overseas”?

Clearly “overseas” is abroad from your own home country – but in 2024, Maxim has business operations and partner companies operating in many international locations including England, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and Dubai – each of which serve many other locations and countries within that region or continent, so we are a very international organisation.

Market Trends

Canada

We established our office in Toronto, Canada in 2018 and began finding work for British “expats” with client organisations, cost consultants, general contractors and specialist subcontractors. Initially the requirement some of our new instructing clients gave us was to find British expertise within the NEC form of contract specialism to help grow their partnering offering rather than continue with adversarial contracting models.  With this strategic objective, local Canadian experience was not what the Canadian employer was looking for and specialist international experience, in this case most likely from the UK, was desired to add to the knowledge base of the organisation.

More recently, Hong Kong candidates have been well received in Canada with a perception that a good education system and strong technical skills make Hong Kong educated QS, PQS and Estimators attractive for cost consultancies to employ.

In terms of where Hong Kong construction candidates find work, at the current time, Canada is experiencing a boom in civil engineering infrastructure works, including a major railway building programme.  The building / condominium market is steady rather than booming currently but expected to grow much faster in 2025 if interest rates come down further.

When thinking about our favourite clients in Canada, and the premium workforce they employ, we envisage  a  blend of local Canadians, British, Hong Kong and a range of other nationalities of construction professionals all working together highly effectively.

Hong Kong

One of the reasons Maxim established in Hong Kong in 2011, was to satisfy the demand from British companies such as Laing O’Rourke, Kier and Hong Kong subsidiaries of Balfour Beatty for UK experienced construction professionals to work on major projects there.

In 2024, the construction market is more localised and inward looking in Hong Kong and local staff are generally favoured over (often) more expensive international candidates from other countries.

The UK

Employers in the UK market have been experiencing construction recruitment talent shortages for a very long time. However, we still often encounter the mindset amongst many employers that they should only fish in the limited local talent pool rather than employ internationally experienced candidates – whether or not candidates already have the right to work in the UK.

The recruiters at Maxim encourage the UK construction industry to draw from the widest talent pool possible to be able to employ the most suitable and capable candidate for the job.

It’s worth remembering that waiting for the perfect candidate could mean waiting forever – and there are pros and cons of recruiting locally versus recruiting from the international construction market that are worth weighing up; and it is this that we now move to consider.

Pros and Cons

There are of course pros and cons to recruiting locally versus recruiting international talent and as hinted at above, this can change over time due to a range of causes including economic and political factors.  However, assuming an employer’s objective is to achieve the best balance of skills and capabilities possible to get a construction project completed on time, on budget and to the required standard while also making a profit, the following considerations should perhaps be evaluated:

• Can new ways of working be learned, fast-tracked and embedded from employing staff from overseas? What can international construction professionals teach you that you or your organisation doesn’t yet know?
• How innovative is the employing country and its construction methods compared to the country where candidates could be employed from?
• How important is having local knowledge and a local network compared to the transferrable skills and strong capabilities of international candidates that can be unlocked?
• Would training someone inexperienced but highly capable be a better bet than fighting your competitors for the same small talent pool of local skills?
• Contrast the possibility of an overseas worker leaving and going home after a few years V not being able to recruit anyone at all during all that time? (But consider also that not all overseas workers leave and not all local workers stay with their employer either)
• Is getting an international worker a visa and paying for mobilisation costs more expensive than repeatedly counter offering a local candidate a higher salary to persuade them to leave a local competitor to join you? Probably not?
• It is an obvious but often overlooked point that there is a bigger pool of candidates all over the rest of the world than in your own country or regional area. The question is surely where to look and how to find quality candidates?
• International candidates are happy to relocate and may be more flexible with project based work or further relocation when needed than local candidates

In Summary

Unless there is a striking and specific reason why international experience isn’t comparable or desirable to employ from overseas, it seems that building a construction team comprising a mix of nationalities, types of experience and ways of working and thinking about a problem can only be a good thing.

No one is proposing that a whole team should lack local experience, and of course international candidates will need to learn the specifics of their new market, the ways of working and build up a new network of contacts - but international candidates can offer exciting fresh perspectives and experience and add expertise and innovation to an already good team.

If this blog has been food for thought, please speak to your local Maxim Recruitment office to discuss how we can help optimise your construction team by adding in some exciting new expertise – whether its from up the street or the other side of the world.

Steve Thomas
Construction Recruitment Director, UK & Canada
Maxim Recruitment
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Steve is responsible for Maxim Recruitment in the UK and Canada. He is based in the Maxim head office in Leicester, UK and the Toronto office in Canada. He regularly travels to meet employers and job seekers and attend construction industry networking events in the UK, Canada and worldwide. Steve has over 25 years of experience in construction and property recruitment and enjoys working with many repeat clients. He manages dedicated search and headhunting assignments for a range of premium UK, Canadian and international clients.