For commercial leaders
Everyone has told you it is the market.
The role has been open four months. The reports are late, the events are not going in, and nobody has put a number on what it is costing the live contract.
It is the part nobody asks you about.
Forty-two thousand Quantity Surveying adverts went out on one job board last year. Twenty thousand for site managers.
The people you actually want read none of them.
CV-Library, 2025
The problem never was finding them.
Your own people can find them. That was never the hard part.
So we spend most of our time on the first step. The Road to Commercial Director, built from more than forty interviews with commercial directors. The Commercial Consultant Handbook, for QSs weighing up contract. Field Notes on what we are seeing in the market.
Most of the people who read it will never move.
Plenty will never hire us. They still know who we are.
Anyone can find them. We are the call they take.
Ainsworth Akhtar Ashcroft Bainbridge Barlow Beckett Bhatti Braithwaite Calvert Cartmell Chowdhury Clarkson Coulthard Crowther Dalgleish Dawnay Dixon Duffield Eastwood Ellwood Farrimond Fildes Gallagher Garnett Greenhalgh Hardisty Haworth Hennessy Hodgson Holliday Iqbal Ivison Jardine Kilpatrick Kirkbride Lawlor Littlewood Mahmood Marchbank Metcalfe Moffat Nixon Ogilvie Parkinson Pattinson Quayle Ramsden Rigg Rowntree Sandhu Satterthwaite Sowerby Stalker Tempest Thwaites Tyson Unsworth Walmsley Whitehead Yeadon
Five of them would answer the phone
The next step is a conversation, not a shortlist.
If you have an internal team, we work through them.
Not around them. Everything goes via your team, including anything a hiring manager says to us directly.
The role that sits is not a failure of theirs. It was never going to come from an advert. We will give them the evidence to say so.
QS is one line on a list of twelve, and the people worth having answer the phone to someone they already know.
How it works with your team.
One contact, and everything goes through your team.
The first conversations are off the record. Someone joins your process when they are ready to be named, not before.
You get the evidence in writing to take to the hiring manager.
We ring the people we place. You hear the patterns, not the confidences.
So we are the exception, not the process. The right one is always the hard part.
The search does not end when they start.
Eighty per cent of Quantity Surveyors who resign are offered something to stay. Seventy-six per cent leave inside a year anyway.
clearnorth and LinkedIn, 2025
A hire who leaves at eight months does not go back to the market. It goes back to your team.
A counter-offer buys time. It does not buy back eighteen months of small things nobody was listening to.
We ring everyone who has taken a job through us, regularly. We need to know whether the move worked. We are the only ones in it who are not their employer, not their manager and not trying to move them again. So they tell us the truth. You find out at eighteen months, when they resign. We find out at six weeks, while it is still fixable.
The Navigation Call
Forty-five minutes on the state of the Quantity Surveying market in your sector, and what the commercial leaders you are competing with for the same people are doing about it.
You get it on a page afterwards, written so whoever runs the hire can act on it.
Some of the people who ring us about hiring end up asking about themselves instead. That is a separate conversation. It stays separate, and we have it more often than you would think.
What people have said · Google reviews
Matt helped us place a freelance QS whilst we had an opening for a new full time position.
Andy Pickering · June 2026
Matt sourced the freelance position at the company I wanted to work for, and negotiated terms perfectly.
James Hughes · May 2026
They came highly recommended from a close friend. When I was ready for my next commission, I reached out.
Matthew B · August 2026
How long does it take to hire a Quantity Surveyor?
Four to six months for a senior QS, most of it before anyone has been interviewed. The ones worth having are in a job already, with notice to serve. Start before the seat is empty, not after.
Should I hire a freelance or a permanent Quantity Surveyor?
If there is a named piece of work that needs doing, freelance. If you need someone to run projects and still be there in four years, permanent. Often it is both: a freelancer on the work now, and the permanent search run without the pressure.
What should a Quantity Surveyor job description include?
What the job is on day one, what it pays, why it is open, and what would rule someone out. Most job descriptions are written to get through approval. A good QS reads past that to the work.
Why do Quantity Surveyors turn down offers?
Usually because money was the only argument, and their current employer matched it. Or the process dragged and they stopped believing you meant it. Or the job described at interview was not the job in the offer.
