Recruitment News
Recruitment News: Calling Construction Workers
Recruitment News Article Series: Since the international recession hit most of the industries that make up New Zealand’s economy have been negatively impacted and construction and engineering are no exception. While most industries are slowly getting back on track at this stage there are still certain areas within which they struggle to recover.
For construction the impact lingers on in the lack of graduates within the industry which leads to a lack of qualified intermediates, which leads to a lack of skilled seniors and so on. According to experienced industry professionals a junior would constitute someone fresh out of their 4 year apprenticeship and an intermediate tradesman would have up to 7 years experience, or 3 years on top of their apprenticeship.
As indicated by Mike Westbury, the Beyond Recruitment Manager of Construction, Property and Engineering, the lack of graduates entering into the industry is causing juniors to be prematurely pushed into intermediate/senior roles out of necessity. This can cause issues for companies; not least of which is the fact that junior tradesmen have begun to overvalue their monetary worth within an industry short of workers.
Values differ in various areas of the country according to the cost of living, the amount of work to be found, and whether it is a steady stream of work or the boom and bust of demand that thrives and then dwindles.
However hard to pin down, long time industry professional Steve Hirst, General Manager of Colspec Construction, indicates a wide-ranging guideline of graduate starting rates would be: $18-19 p/hr depending on which part of the country they are based in. Steve adds that you could include anything up to $10.00 p/h for Auckland jobs and anything up to $5.00 p/h in Wellington.
The fact is that the industry is calling out for more skilled workers. Graduates simply don’t have enough experience and knowledge to make the quality decisions expected of industry seniors and they often encounter trouble managing more experienced and seasoned workers.
Are you skilled, experienced and looking for work in construction or engineering?
Contact Beyond Recruitment now, we can help!