From bricklayer to boardroom

Building on its reputation as the leading trade brand for the new homes market, Show House is launching a recruitment website and job board.

Show House magazine, which celebrates 25 years covering the new homes market in 2020, has always billed itself as ‘where the housebuilding community meets’.

Over the years the meeting places have evolved as the community has grown, especially the online space with showhouse.co.uk complementing the print brand, which has been crowned Magazine of the Year at the last three Property Press Awards – an unprecedented achievement, cementing its place as the best and most popular title for housebuilders and the industry’s supply chain.

Now Show House is launching an online jobs site for housebuilders and suppliers, giving the industry the most targeted and relevant platform to recruit staff across the skill sets and disciplines.

“It is clear to me this specialist recruitment site is what the industry needs and what better brand to be launching it. We want the housebuilders and the suppliers to support this venture. It will see Show House deliver a top-quality platform to allow the industry to recruit the best possible candidates for the jobs available, as well as encourage new talent to consider a career in new homes,” said Daniel Hill, managing director of Globespan Media, publisher of Show House magazine and www.showhouse.co.uk.

Housebuilding is rarely out of the news these days and the first few days of 2017 alone saw the government announce two major initiatives, unveiling new garden villages and towns with the potential, according to housing and planning minister Gavin Barwell, to provide nearly 200,000 homes and also the first wave of local authority partnerships to build starter homes backed by the £1.2bn Starter Homes Land Fund with the aim of starting up to 15,000 homes on surplus public sector land this parliament.

As Show House went to press this month the government was due to publish its much-anticipated Housing White Paper, with further big announcements to drive new homes supply expected.

These announcements come on the back of increased planning permissions, but the figures are, as ever, tempered by the number of conditions attached by local authorities, preventing builders from legally starting construction onsite. Also permissions are mainly going to large strategic sites, rather than a bigger number of smaller schemes, which in turn would allow more SME contributions to housing delivery.

Yet even if every planning and economic barrier to building is removed, there is still the huge problem of the skills shortage and the urgent need to recruit the labour needed to deliver current levels of supply, yet alone an increased rate. The crisis is further exacerbated by how Brexit will play out and the current reliance on foreign labour on building sites across the UK.

Show House regularly covers careers news and views as part of its award-winning editorial content and last year co-hosted a Future Builder event at the Houses of Parliament with a panel of leading housebuilders joined by the housing and planning minister Gavin Barwell to debate arguably the industry’s most important and time-critical issue.

As well as the latest jobs, the recruitment platform will inform and engage the next generation of industry talent, encouraging young people into housebuilding and highlighting the wealth of opportunities in the sector, be it for apprentices, school-leavers, graduates, or as a career change.

“In addition to editorial and sales staff to drive the recruitment site, we have invaluable SEO, marketing and social media experience gained from our sister portal WhatHouse.com and we will create a platform with the ability to have a new job live within 15 minutes of being posted by the advertiser,” said Hill.

Another initiative being launched by Show House this year is a programmatic trading desk for both the B2B and B2C markets for new homes suppliers.

“We have spent six months testing all our platforms for a B2C programmatic offering on WhatHouse.com and have developed some groundbreaking media formats and targeted advertising and data technology, right up there with the top five agencies in the UK,” said Hill.

“We feel it is a natural next step to help deliver Show House advertisers new customers and a better digital offering and we look forward to working with clients who have been engaging with and supporting our brand for many years.”