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This paper discusses the well-publicized labor shortages in the building trades, reviews the causes for the deficiencies, and presents prescriptions for how career counselors and schools can play a critical role in encouraging young adults to consider construction occupations.

Using data from government agencies, trade organizations, and scholarly publications, this paper describes the categories of the building trades as well as their employment trends and compensation prospects. It also reviews the personal and environmental factors that could lead to the “construction of a construction career.”

This article documents the reasons for the labor shortages in the construction industry and then offers recommendation on how younger adults could be encouraged to consider the building trades as viable career alternatives.

Labor shortages in the construction industry have a direct and indirect deleterious effect on the economic well-being of every country. This article provides suggestions on how to inspire young adults to consider the building trades as worthwhile career pursuits.

There is a limited amount of scholarly attention given to career decision making related to occupations that do not require a college degree, including the building trades. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by focusing on the individual characteristics and environmental factors that might prompt consideration of a career in the building trades. It also describes the educational, governmental, and corporate initiatives that work to encourage individuals, working in conjunction with their career counselors, to consider careers in the construction industry.

Construction managers must focus on effective job design to develop and harness employee talent and achieve organizational goals. Because psychological needs and key motivators vary by career stage, a differentiated employee value proposition is crucial for a firm’s retention strategy. This study aims to examine how job crafting (JC) affects job embeddedness (JE) at different career stages.

In this investigation, a quantitative methodology was used. In total, 272 construction industry professionals from 25 construction firms in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, provided the data. Through the use of structural equation modeling, hypotheses were evaluated.

The results show that JC enhances construction professionals’ JE (β = 0.60, p < 0.000). Moreover, the relationship between JC and JE is moderated by career stages. The impact of JC on JE is greater among longer tenured (late-career stages, β = 0.61, p < 0.000) than shorter tenured construction professionals (early-career stages, β = 0.60, p < 0.000 and mid-career stages, β = 0.58, p < 0.000).

Limited research shows how JC can improve JE. At the time of this research, there was no published work on JC and JE relationship in the construction industry. This research found that JC has a positive impact on JE and JC behavior applies at both individual and team levels. This could imply that construction professionals with longer organizational tenure are more likely to challenge the status quo and identify problems or opportunities for improvement, hence contributes to JE theory.

There are significantly fewer women than men in managerial positions, mainly project management. This problem is noticeable in the construction and engineering sectors, traditionally male-dominated industries with leadership much dependent on masculine qualities. This study examines the obstacles to the career progression of professional female project managers (PFPMs) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Twenty potential obstacles to women's career progression in the construction industry were identified from a comprehensive review of the literature. A questionnaire was prepared and administered among eighty project managers who work in large construction firms in Ghana. Data obtained were analysed using one sample t-test, Kendall's concordance test, Chi-square test and exploratory factor analysis.

The findings suggest the significance of all the twenty factors as potential obstacles to the career progression of PFPMs. The exploratory factor analysis identified five underlying grouped obstacles: “leadership and human capital related issues”, “issues related to discrimination of all forms”, “career aspiration and planning issues”, “female related role conflicts”, and “recruitment and selection issues”.

The subjective nature of the views of the respondents could influence the evaluation of the obstacles. With this study only exploring the dimensions underlying the significant obstacles, future studies could examine the interrelationships between the various obstacles and move on to determine their impacts on the career progression of professional female PMs as well.

Having an in-depth understanding of these obstacles, stakeholders and other industry practitioners in Ghana could make informed decisions on measures to put in place to address some of these critical issues to raise the standard of professional female PMs in the construction industry. Policymakers and gender advocates in Ghana could also take up some of the critical obstacles identified and provide suitable strategies to educate and create the needed awareness of the industry on those obstacles. Practically, the findings from this study can be valuable for informing decision-making at different management levels in the construction industry.

With country-specific (Ghana) obstacles identified, the findings significantly contribute to the literature on the career advancement of females in the construction sector.

The aim of this paper is to explore the support that project managers receive from construction project-based organisations (PBOs) in their early careers.

Fifty-seven semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with four key stakeholder groups including early career project managers (ECPMs) and employers from Australian construction PBOs, project management professional bodies, and university educators to ascertain (1) what organizations are currently doing and (2) what organizations can do better to support project managers in their early careers.

Thematic analysis revealed that construction PBOs' responsibilities to ECPMs entailed: (1) providing mentoring, (2) offering training, (3) collaborating with universities, (4) giving time and feedback and (5) assigning manageable workloads. However, the findings revealed inconsistencies in companies enacting these responsibilities.

This research is limited to the context of the Australian construction industry, yet the findings shed valuable insights into the current practices of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs. From a strategic resource-based view perspective, ECPMs have the potential to serve as long-term valuable organizational resources. Failure to invest in new professional entrants constitutes an area of untapped competitive advantage.

Construction PBOs looking to better support their ECPMs may use the results of this research as a guide to tailor their early career professional development initiatives.

The study adopts a holistic, multi-vocal approach by interviewing four key stakeholder groups. The findings contribute new insights into the role of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs and the implications this has on the sustainability of their project management talent pool.

This paper aims to examine the factors that drive the career progression of construction project managers (CPM) in the Ghanaian construction industry.

Based on the quantitative approach, the views of 80 CPMs working with D1 building construction firms were elicited using a structured questionnaire. Data was analysed using one-sample t-test, which was used to examine the relative significance of the variables. The mean scores, standard deviations and significance values (p-values) of each variable were used to examine the outcome of the survey.

The findings suggest that “existence of organizational support systems”, “ability to create identity”, “having an influential mentor and coach”, “accepting complicated and high visibility assignments” and “ability to gain managerial or leadership experience” are the key factors that drive the career progression of CPMs in Ghana.

Findings from this study is limited to CPMs, specifically within the Ghanaian construction industry. This implies that with the fragmented nature of the construction industry, adopting these findings in construction settings within other countries may not yield the desired results, especially, if those countries do not share similar characteristics and context with Ghana.

Practically, this study highlights for the benefits of project managers (PM) (especially those in the construction industry) the key factors that drive their career progressions. Identification of these drivers offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers in the construction industry.

Empirical research on the factors that drive the career progression of CPMs has not been fully examined in previous studies, though such studies in other sectors aside construction are prevalent. Hence, the identification of the drivers for career progression of construction PMs advances literature in the area and offers the professionals with those factors to be prioritized when seeking to progress their careers.

This paper aims to explore and investigate the career success of professional women in the UK construction industry.

The aim of the research was set following the literature review and synthesis, after which a multiple case study approach is adopted to conduct exploratory case studies among professional women in the UK construction industry. A mixed method design was used for data collection, whereby qualitative data were collected in the first study and quantitative data were collected in the second study. The researcher adopted this sequence in order to gather qualitative data and analysis of a relatively unexplored area of career success factors of professional women in the UK construction industry. The results from the qualitative method were used, along with a relevant literature review, to develop the focus and questions in the quantitative phase of the study. The individuals in the first stage of data collection were not the same participants as those in the second stage, because the purpose of the quantitative study was to generalise the results to a population.

The results indicated that soft skills are very important for career success, while hard skills are essential thereafter for professional women in the UK construction industry. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop soft skills in order to advance the women's professional careers. Further, the results indicated that age and gender are the least important career success factors for women in construction. The ability to work with people, taking opportunities, confidence, adaptability, communication skills, dedication, competence, focus, supportive line management, integrity, leadership skills, ability to bring teams together, good mix of skills, honesty, networking, intelligence and logically approaching business problems identified as the critical career success factors.

The construction industry is limited to organisations that construct buildings and infrastructure, and those involved in property development. These organisations comprise client, contractor and consultancy organisations.

The findings of the paper are useful to human resource development managers to understand and improve organisational training and development plans, which help to advance the career of professional women. By doing so, organisations could recruit and retain more professional women in the construction industry. Therefore, recruiting and retaining more professional women in the organisation helps to enhance productivity in the industry and to enhance their health and well being in society at large.

The value of this paper is twofold. First, this study contributes to fill the knowledge gap in career success factors of professional women in the UK construction industry. Second, this empirical research will have implications in the identification of different training and development activities to advance the careers of women in the UK construction industry.

nvestigates whether career expectations of women in construction change once they begin working in the industry, in comparison to men. Focus group interviews and a literature review formed the basis for developing a survey questionnaire. The results revealed that professional women had higher expectations and were more committed to remaining in the construction industry than female students. Female students had significantly higher financial expectations than male students, while male students had significantly higher expectations in relation to the number of people they expect to supervise. Professional men were responsible for supervising significantly more people than professional women. The findings also suggest that there are fewer women in the construction industry over the age of 36 years, in comparison to men. It is recommended that this area of research should be developed further.

Construction managers face many work-related stressors induced by unrealistic schedule expectations, tight budgets, and long hours. Over time, these stressors can result in both mental and physical exhaustion, a condition referred to as burnout. Early-career managers are a key worker demographic, as they represent the near-term future of the construction industry, yet they have a high risk for burnout. The purpose of this study is to explore the prevalence of burnout in new construction managers, and to identify which individual or work-related factors are associated with feelings of burnout.

Using the Maslach Burnout Inventory General Survey (MBI-GS), data from 146 early-career professionals (less than 10 years of experience) with construction management degrees in the USA were collected and analyzed using correlational and best subset regression techniques.

The results show that the early-career demographic in the USA experiences both the Emotional Exhaustion and Cynicism dimensions of burnout at comparable levels to prior studies with more mid-to-late career respondents. However, the Professional Efficacy dimension was significantly higher in early-career professionals than any other sample. No individual factors, such as gender, marital status, or number of children, were predictive of any dimension of burnout. Instead, only work-related factors including co-worker friendliness, opportunities for personal development and promotion, and the ability to control the work pacing were strongly associated with one or more dimensions of burnout.

This study is the first to explore burnout in the key early-career demographic for construction managers in the United States construction industry. This work provides evidence that organizational policies and culture have a greater efficacy in alleviating burnout in this demographic, when compared to the work–life balance of the individual.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perception of high school students on the factors impacting their career decisions and whether gender and grade have an influence on the decision‐making process.

Literature review was used to identify relevant factors which were incorporated into the design of the survey instrument. The questionnaire was administered via a postal survey and information collected from 599 male and 491 female high school students in the Western Cape Province. Survey response data were subjected to descriptive statistics and subsequently parametric tests.

Salary, working conditions, opportunities for promotion and lifelong learning were reported by both male and female students as the most important factors, whereas family tradition and peers were the least important factors according to the male and female high school students, respectively. Grade had a significant impact on the process with students in Grade 11 scoring higher on salary, working conditions and lifelong learning opportunities whereas Grades 12 and 10 scored higher on skills shortage and family tradition, respectively.

The cross‐sectional data made it difficult to generalise the findings.

The findings are of particular importance to high school teachers and guidance counsellors who influence career choices amongst high school students. It is likely that teachers and counsellors themselves have been negatively influenced by the poor image of the construction industry. The identification of factors enables the development of viable strategies and balances the social dynamics of the male dominated environment.

There are few studies which try to investigate the career decision‐making process of high school students in an African environment. These results challenge the factors impacting career decision making among South African high school students and provide information rarely examined. Conclusively, the paper finds that control variables such as grade and gender are significant in the career decision‐making process of high school students. This paper contributes to bridging that gap.

This study aims to build a framework of the influencing factors of construction workers' career promotion and identifies the critical determinants so as to propose suggestions for the government and enterprises to offer construction workers a path for career promotion.

In line with the theory of human resources, such as Herzberg's two-factor theory, this study constructs a theoretical framework that affects the career promotion of construction workers. Using evidence from Guangzhou city, valid data provided by 464 workers from 50 sites were collected by a questionnaire survey, and the significance test on the influencing factors of construction workers' career promotion was taken by binary logistic regression.

The overall career development of construction workers in Guangzhou is worrying. The binary logistic regression indicates that age, working years, type of work, career development awareness, legal awareness, professional mentality, vocational psychological training and career development path are critical factors that affect construction workers' career promotion.

This study for the first time explores the career promotion of frontline construction workers. Specifically, it identifies the critical factors that affect the career promotion of workers and thus lays a foundation for further research and the promotion and continuous and healthy development of the construction industry. Thus, this study is original and has theoretical and practical significance.