The infrastructure sector, whilst experiencing a surge in demand due to ongoing and upcoming projects, is also experiencing an increasingly prevalent situation of skills shortages – posing significant challenges for companies hoping to deliver projects on time and within budget.  

As industries like rail, construction, and energy expand, the demand for skilled professionals continues to outweigh supply, making it essential for businesses to partner with recruitment specialists who understand these unique challenges. At Advance TRS, we leverage our expertise and extensive network to help clients source the right talent in this tight market. 

Understanding the Challenge of Skills Shortages 

With the projects there and ready to be manned, the growth is hampered by a critical shortage of skilled professionals across various disciplines, including engineering, project management, and technical roles. The challenge is particularly acute in specialised fields such as signalling and telecommunications, civil engineering, and construction management, where qualified candidates are becoming increasingly difficult to find. 

Many companies are facing the realities of an aging workforce, coupled with a lack of new entrants into the industry. This creates a perfect storm, resulting in heightened competition for talent and delays in project delivery. To map out these turbulent waters, organisations need a recruitment partner that not only understands the nuances of the infrastructure landscape but also has the capability to tap into a broad talent pool. 

How Advance TRS Stands Out 

At Advance TRS, our deep industry knowledge and extensive professional network allows us to effectively bridge the gap between talent supply and demand. We take a consultative approach to recruitment, understanding each client’s specific needs and challenges, and tailoring our strategies accordingly. 

Leveraging Industry Expertise 

Our team consists of professionals with extensive experience in the built environment and infrastructure sectors – enabling us to identify candidates with the right skills and experience quickly. We focus not just on qualifications but also on cultural fit, ensuring that the talent we source aligns with our clients’ values and work environments. 

Sourcing Hard-to-Find Talent 

In recent projects, we have successfully sourced candidates for roles that are hard to fill, demonstrating our ability to navigate the skills shortage effectively. For instance, when a client in the rail sector needed a signalling design engineer, we leveraged our specialised network to identify a top candidate who had previously worked on major infrastructure projects. This individual possessed not only the technical skills required but also the experience necessary to integrate seamlessly into the client’s team. 

By approaching recruitment with a proactive mindset, we can often uncover talent that isn’t actively seeking new opportunities but is open to engaging in conversations about their next career move. 

Building a Sustainable Talent Pipeline 

Advance TRS is committed to not just filling immediate vacancies but also building sustainable talent pipelines for our clients. We work closely with educational institutions and industry bodies to promote careers in the built environment, aiming to attract new entrants into the workforce. Our initiatives include partnerships with universities and training programs, where we help nurture the next generation of skilled professionals. 

Our candidate engagement strategies ensure that we maintain strong relationships with potential candidates, keeping them up to date with industry trends and opportunities.  

As skills shortages continue to challenge the infrastructure sectors, Advance TRS remains dedicated to sourcing the right talent in a tight market. By combining our industry expertise with an extensive network and proactive recruitment strategies, we empower our clients to overcome these obstacles and achieve their project goals.

Partner with us to navigate the complexities of talent acquisition in today’s demanding environment and secure the skilled professionals you need to thrive, here!

Women In Rail was a strong topic at our recent visit to Infrarail 2018 at ExCel London. The skills gap is an increasingly important issue worldwide and it is particularly noticeable in the rail industry, as we heard from Adeline Ginn at Infrarail in her presentation to us about Women In Rail. Here are a few facts and information highlighted from the Women In Rail talk.

Adeline started off her presentation with a quote from Sharmaine Lovegrove ‘If you don’t have a diverse workforce or product, sooner or later you won’t exist’ which really ties in nicely with Advance TRS’s core values as a recruitment company, and also goes with our internal recruitment beliefs.

It is proven that diverse teams work better and give greater innovation and creativity. UK statistics are as follows with women on the Board of Directors:

  • 42% higher return on sales in the UK
  • 66% higher return on invested capital
  • 53% higher return on equity

The perception of rail as a masculine industry has been identified as a big impact factor preventing women from joining the sector. Women seem to fall into rail by accident rather than by choice. Engineering is often a misunderstood role and girls as young as 7 years old have an unconscious bias misconception of rail. This is where Women In Rail are keen to make a change, helping children at a young age understand the sector fully before misconception sets in.

Here are some more surprising figures we gained from Adeline:

  • 16.4% of the workforce are women
  • 78% of this number are in non-manager roles
  • 2% are senior managers
  • 4% are engineers

Some challenges that Women In Rail have noticed and want to help change are Working practices (women might need flexible working and not long days) and recruitment targeting men.

Women In Rail have already started many initiatives to help with this, including a mentoring programme, networking events, networking platform, campaigns, an online hub for women and many others.

This year, they celebrated their first Women In Rail Awards which was a great success with over 130 attendees from across the rail industry. It showcased individuals, teams and companies (large or small) who in the last 5 years have done amazing work to improve gender balance, diversity and inclusion in the UK railway industry. We look forward to seeing the continued growth and success of this!

Advance TRS are committed to supporting diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We are careful to check for bias in our job adverts to ensure that women are not excluded. Within the recruitment sector, we realise that women and men even look at job adverts differently. If a job advert is published, sometimes it can be directed towards men just by the simple wording, which could put a woman off straight away and they may disregard it.

We believe in delivering the very best candidates for our clients. By excluding 50% of the workforce, you may miss out on the best person for the job. So it is our job to make sure we are including absolutely everyone possible into our candidate searches.

Explore our latest jobs here.