Hi all, 

I'm having real trouble recruiting candidates who are interested in a career path as a Principal Design Advisor / etc in Nottingham. Ideally, I'm looking for someone quite early on in their H&S career, with some construction experience, but the company will pay for training etc. My main issue is advertising locally has had little to no response, and candidates coming through from consultancies are overly qualified / too expensive, and dedicated advertising in trade magazines is quite expensive. Could anyone let me know where they saw adverts for their jobs? Whats the best way to recruit? Is Linked In Jobs any good? 

Any tips etc would be gratefully received. 

I think you will struggle in this to be honest. Although as someone who came into this area of work from being a Chef a long time ago, I would say the right candidate without any experience will be caught up and just as good within 12 months or less. so don't be afraid to speak to your local network of Clients and friends who may have someone looking for a new career. 

Another angle that has been successful in my last organisation was to hire people coming out of the army, again although actual experience is a limiting factor, wage costs are lower and they will be very keen to learn etc. 

Having studied a little bit on CDM during my MSc and having done quite a background research myself, I can honeslty say that after one good year looking for early level opportunities in CDM I have only came across a few, less than 10. All the other roles that might have been anywhere close to the early stage professional required previous construction experience.

Which leads to, how do you start on construction without experience? Which is the most typical requirement in any given construction related role these days. Furthermore, if you have construction experience but had nothing to do with CDM, does this qualify you as experienced?

I was expecting a rise in early stage CDM roles due to the 2015 Regs, however, there has been a dramatic decline as the experienced ones jumped on the train and increased their salary demands, betting on the little supply. I can only see this gap getting bigger over the next few years. Someone refered to high salary demands, well imagine then.

Might be a good business to try and source young CDM professionals into the market.

I think what I neglected to say was that this role would be within an architectural practice / design consultancy, with other experienced and competent CDM and design professionals. 

Due to the workload, we have an opportunity for someone who wants to gain experience (and hence competency) whilst being mentored and managed by competent professionals - and I'm struggling to find the right person for this role. In no way would they be a comptent Principal Designer, but this would start them on the career path to eventually becoming one. 

I was honestly just surprised by the lack of applicants / interest...and wanted to find out how others have approached their recruitment problems. 

Thanks for the replies though - food for thought.