Carli Gallier, head of people at Burntwood-based Tara Group, discusses how the family-owned company attracts and nurtures talent to provide opportunities to excel in a career in the housebuilding and construction industry.
When people think about a career in this industry, they often think about being on-site, driving diggers, hard hats, and muddy boots but the career opportunities in this industry are huge.
Tara Group, founded in 1974 by Noel Sweeney, consists of Chasetown Civil Engineering, Cameron Homes, and Keon Homes. The Group is committed to addressing and focusing on the skills shortage in the construction industry through many initiatives including our graduate and apprenticeship programmes, as well as the Tara Academy.
Finding our future directors
When attracting talent and in turn, recruiting our future directors, we do a lot of outreach work in the community, particularly with local schools, which focuses on educating those mainly aged 15-years-old on what roles are available in construction. As part of this, we send quarterly newsletters to schools and run our annual Insights Day. This is an opportunity for teachers and students to visit us for a day and meet with our graduates and apprentices, and hear first-hand what the industry is like and learn all about the roles and routes into construction.
On the back of this, we offer 10 work experience places to those school students who were the most engaged, asked good questions, and have an interest in the industry. The selected students will then join us for a structured, one-week work experience placement. The hope is that at the end of the placement, the students will understand more about the industry and potentially an area they might want to make a career in. Furthermore, we will give them an opportunity to interview for an apprenticeship when they finish school.
Alongside this, we work with local universities including University of Wolverhampton, Aston University, University of Birmingham, and Oxford Brookes, as well as hosting networking events which are an ideal opportunity to showcase the career opportunities that the construction industry offers. Furthermore, Tara Group attends career fairs with our graduate students so they can talk first-hand about their experience of both the programme and the business itself.
Graduate programme
A graduate programme is a fantastic way of getting into the construction industry and learning the ropes of the business. Since we first developed our pilot graduate programme in 2019, we offer a two-year rotational programme which allows each person to experience three months in every part of the business from working on our development sites to IT, Finance, and People. We feel this allows for an all-encompassing experience of the business. On the back of the success of this programme, we recently increased the intake so that it takes place annually rather than bi-annually.
As well as receiving guidance throughout the programme, each person is assigned a mentor who is a director in the business, and sometimes, this may even be the managing director, who will then sit in on review meetings after every rotation. It is at this point where you really start to understand what their strengths are and where their career path might be. We often find that the graduates begin the programme with their mind set on a particular area of focus but often end up somewhere completely different. For example, we had one graduate who was set on being on-site in Production, however having experienced different parts of the business they opted to pursue a career as a quantity surveyor, as this role offers the interaction of being on-site whilst using commercial acumen as well.
Work-ready and career-ready programmes
A graduate programme is just one route into the industry. At Tara Group we also offer a work-ready apprenticeship programme, which is aimed at 16-year-olds who decide they would like to learn on the job. This programme offers different ways to work in construction, including groundwork roles to office-based positions such as engineering or business admin.
Similarly to our graduate scheme, our career-ready programme allows those looking to come and join the Tara Group the opportunity to spend time in key areas before they decide what they want to do. At this stage, we would then look to employ them on a degree apprenticeship.
Learning culture
In 2023 we launched the Tara Academy. This provides all our employees with a learning culture to suit individual needs whether that’s e-learning, face-to-face training or even audiobooks. For us, it’s crucial that we give our employees flexible ways of learning that can be completed whenever suits them. We also offer bite-sized learning, such as podcasts.
We’ve recently partnered with Cranfield Business School to further nurture our talent and provide them with the necessary tools be our future directors. A great example of this is Elliott who initially joined Tara Group on our pilot graduate programme. Elliott, who has just achieved his third promotion in his new role as senior land manager, is about to embark on a 12-month Cranfield Business School leadership course, which is funded by Tara Group.
Tara Group has a strong belief that people are its most valuable asset, operating the business with people-centric values. By offering progression and active learning opportunities to further nurture and grow our talent, we can build a skilled, happy, and engaged team that will drive the business forward, and in turn help in closing the skills gap in the industry.
