By Blayne Cahill, Director, Carrington West
The numbers behind the UK’s infrastructure ambitions are widely reported. The CITB’s latest Construction Workforce Outlook estimates the industry needs an average of 41,200 extra workers every year between 2026 and 2030, around 206,000 people, simply to meet forecast demand and replace those leaving. In highways specifically, an experienced generation is approaching retirement faster than the next one is arriving. After sixteen years recruiting in this sector, I no longer think the interesting question is whether there is a skills gap. It is why a sector with so much to offer finds it so hard to talk itself up?
Earlier this year I took part in a workshop session in South Wales with a next generation group: around twenty graduates and apprentices from across the sector, alongside a senior manager from a trunk road agent and a retired highway engineer. The conversation was one of the most useful I have had in years, and three findings stood out.
First, almost nobody in the room had chosen highways. They had fallen into it. We tested the comfortable assumption that people arrive through family or network connections, and it collapsed: nearly everyone had found their own way in, most commonly through a degree apprenticeship. Second, not one of them could remember highways being presented to them as a career option. The sector simply was not in the room when they were forming ideas about their future. Third, they described the process of actually applying for jobs as challenging and overwhelming. Long, complicated application processes were a genuine barrier, not a minor irritation.
Then came the finding that should make the whole sector sit up. Once in, they loved it. They talked about variety, about visible community impact, about the purpose that comes from improving how people move around and contributing to social value. Every bit of that satisfaction was discovered after they joined. None of it was part of why they applied.
That is the paradox we have to confront. Job satisfaction in highways is real, but it is a secret, and the public conversation runs the other way. People notice our sector when a road is closed or a pothole opens up, not when the network quietly works. Compare that with how the armed forces recruit: campaigns built on a clear, unified proposition about purpose and belonging. Highways has an honest claim to something similar. We connect people. We save lives. A well-designed junction or a resurfaced carriageway does more measurable good in a week than most jobs manage in a year. We just rarely say it.
The group I met proposed exactly the right response, and it’s easy to implement. Put early-careers professionals in front of the audiences we are missing. Online, that means honest day-in-the-life content made by the people actually doing the work, across the platforms teenagers and young adults use. In person, it means bringing local schools into industry events and exhibitions, with practical activities rather than leaflets, aimed at early-to-mid secondary students, before subject choices close doors. If we only talk to final-year civil engineering students, we could be too late. The perception/awareness opportunity starts at school. That is doubly true for the young women the sector keeps failing to reach. If we lead with “construction” we inherit every stereotype that word carries, and if we lead with net zero, transport and shaping the places people live, we get a rather different audience.
The recruitment process then has to stop leaking. In CV-Library's Candidate Behaviour Barometer 2026, 38 per cent of recruiters and employers described their application process as very streamlined and candidate friendly, and a further 58 per cent called it fairly efficient with room for improvement. Just 2 per cent admitted theirs was too long or complicated. Candidates in the same research told a rather different story: 70 per cent had abandoned an application precisely because it was too long or complicated, up from 65 per cent the year before. Almost nobody thinks they are the problem, yet seven in ten candidates have walked away a protracted application process in the past 12 months.
When articulate, motivated graduates describe applying for jobs as overwhelming, that is feedback employers should listen to. My advice is the same as it would be for anyone hiring, strip the application back to essentials and let the interview do more of the assessment.
An interview should then be a two-way conversation, not an interrogation, and it should be run by people trained to run it. Being excellent at managing a scheme does not automatically make someone good at interviewing, selling an opportunity or creating a positive candidate experience, yet we routinely hand hiring to untrained managers and hope. The test I give clients is simple. A candidate should not leave an interview thinking "I did OK, I answered all the questions." They should leave thinking "I really want to work there." Introduce them to the team. Show the culture rather than describing it. The same research found 80 per cent of candidates expect a decision within seven days of an interview, while only a third of hiring processes get from application to offer inside the two weeks most candidates now expect. Make the offer quickly and keep talking through the notice period. None of this costs money.
Attraction without retention just speeds up the treadmill. In my experience, two things matter most here. The first is mentoring. As experienced engineers retire, replacing the person does not replace what they know. Pairing them deliberately with early-careers staff transfers judgement and practical knowledge while building the resilience employers say new entrants lack, and it signals to a young professional that someone is invested in them, which is precisely what makes people stay.
The second is patience with the graduate investment. It is hard right now and it can be seen as expensive. Rising employment costs and stop-start workloads make it genuinely difficult, especially for SMEs, to carry a graduate who may take well over a year to become fully productive. But a graduate who takes two years to get there may deliver value for the following decade. If we stop bringing graduates into the industry now, we are storing up a far bigger problem for five or ten years’ time. Graduate recruitment is a long-term strategy, not a short-term transaction.
The encouraging part of the conversations I have had is that nothing proposed was expensive or complicated. So my challenge to fellow professionals is to pick one thing. Offer a talk at a local school. Volunteer as a mentor. Audit your own application form and time how long it takes to complete. Ask your last three new starters what nearly put them off. The next generation is not failing to choose highways. They have never been asked. Everything they need to fall in love with this sector is already here; our job is to stop keeping it a secret.
Sources
CITB, Construction Workforce Outlook 2026 to 2030
CV-Library Candidate Behaviour Barometer 2026 | CV-Library
