Post and Pray is the traditional recruitment model: you write a job advert, post it on three major boards, and pray that the right person sees it. It’s a reactive, high-volume strategy that works fine for entry-level roles or admin staff. But for professional construction management? It’s a broken system that is costing firms time, money, and reputation.
When you post a "Project Manager" role on a general job board, you are virtually guaranteed to get 50 to 100 applications within 48 hours. On the surface, that looks like success. In reality, it’s a nightmare. Your HR team or your hiring managers now have to sift through dozens of CVs from people who have never set foot on a large-scale commercial site, or who don't have the right qualifications.
This "noise" hides the one or two decent candidates who might have applied. Even worse, it wastes hours of valuable management time. In the white-collar world, quality beats quantity every time. We’d rather provide a client with two perfect candidates than twenty "maybe" candidates who just happened to click a button on LinkedIn.
It’s a broken system that is costing firms time, money, and reputation.
There is a subtle but real branding risk when you rely solely on job boards. If a senior role (like a Commercial Manager for a major regional project) is advertised on every board for three months, the industry starts to talk. People start asking: Why can't they fill that role? Is there something wrong with the project? Is the culture toxic?
Elite talent is wary of roles that look like "evergreen" vacancies. They want to feel like they are being hand-picked for an exclusive opportunity, not just another applicant in a digital pile. High-spec recruitment should feel targeted and professional, not like a mass-market retail campaign.
As we’ve discussed in previous articles, the best people in construction simply aren't on job boards. They don't need to be. They get their roles through their network or through specialist search firms like Brixen.
By relying on job ads, you are effectively ignoring the top 10% of the market. You are limiting your hiring pool to people who are currently "between jobs" or who are unhappy enough to be actively searching every night. While there are sometimes good people in that group, you are essentially gambling with your project leadership. For a multi-million-pound build, that’s a risk you shouldn't be willing to take.
Switching to a search-led model might feel like it takes more effort upfront, but it’s the only way to ensure the person running your site is the best in the business, not just the best of the people who were looking that week.
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