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Most senior professionals in UK construction stay in roles too long. Not always, but often enough that the pattern is worth talking about.

If you are a senior professional in UK construction and you believe your CV is what gets you your next role, I need to break some news. It is not.

The single biggest predictor of whether a senior search will succeed has nothing to do with the recruiter you pick. It has nothing to do with the salary you offer. It has nothing to do with the state of the candidate market.

You have just been offered a new role. Senior position, better package, a programme you are genuinely excited about. You hand in your resignation. Your current employer sits you down and makes you an offer to stay.

If you are hiring for a senior commercial or operational role in UK construction and you are relying on job boards to find candidates, you are fishing in a pond where the fish you want have never swum.

There is a conversation I have at least twice a month. A senior construction leader tells me they have a critical role to fill. Commercial Director. Project Director. Operations Director. Something that will decide whether a programme worth hundreds of millions of pounds delivers or derails.

There are two UK construction industries right now. They use the same trade press, the same industry bodies, and the same pool of professionals. They look, on the surface, like one sector. But they are experiencing the current market in completely different ways, and the divergence is widening.

Every senior leader in UK construction eventually faces the same question. A critical role opens up. You have someone internal who is close to ready. Do you promote them, or do you run an external search?

Nobody in construction underestimates the cost of a failed project. We have all seen the post-mortems. The change orders. The disputes. The programmes that slipped by a year and burned through margin.