Are you hiring for the person you need or the person who left?

When someone leaves a construction claims and disputes team, the immediate reaction is often straightforward:

“We need to replace them.”

The same job title is approved. A similar job description is dusted off. The search begins for someone with roughly the same number of years’ experience, qualifications and technical background.It makes sense.

But is that really the person the business needs now?

In a market as specialist and fast-changing as construction claims and disputes, hiring a direct replacement is not always the best answer. The vacancy created by someone leaving can actually be a useful opportunity to reconsider the structure of the team, the workload coming through and where the business wants to develop next.

Has the role changed since they joined?

A Senior Consultant who joined three years ago may have originally been hired to support senior experts with analysis and report preparation.

Since then, the team may have grown. Clients may have changed. The consultancy may now be handling larger international arbitrations, more adjudications or a different mix of quantum and delay work.

Perhaps the team now needs someone who can take greater ownership of assignments.

Perhaps they need stronger client-facing skills.

Perhaps the gap is actually at Associate Director level rather than Senior Consultant level.

Or perhaps there is enough senior resource already and what is really missing is someone more junior who can support delivery.

Simply replacing the person who left assumes the role itself has remained unchanged. Often, it has not.

 Look at the team you have now

One of the most useful questions to ask before opening a vacancy is:

What skills are already well covered within the team, and where are the genuine gaps?

Claims and disputes teams are rarely made up of people with identical backgrounds.

One Delay Consultant may be exceptionally strong technically but have limited client-facing experience.

Another may be highly confident in meetings but need more exposure to formal expert work.

A Quantum team may already have several commercially strong Quantity Surveyors but lack people with experience of arbitration or expert report preparation.

This is why hiring solely against the profile of the person who left can lead to duplication rather than improvement.

A new hire should ideally complement the existing team rather than simply recreate it.

Think about where the work is coming from

The type of work entering the business should also influence the person you hire.

If the pipeline is moving towards larger international disputes, you may need someone with arbitration experience.

If the team is seeing more adjudication work, a candidate with strong UK contractual knowledge and the ability to work quickly under tight deadlines may be more valuable.

If experts are spending too much time on detailed analysis, the priority may be finding somebody who can take more responsibility for report preparation and underlying technical work.

Equally, if senior people are delivering the work well but the business wants to grow, the next hire may need stronger networking and business development capability.

The best replacement is not always the closest CV match.

Consider whether you should hire up or down

A resignation can also expose whether the existing team structure is actually right.

For example, if an Associate Director leaves, replacing them with another Associate Director may seem obvious.

But perhaps the Directors are capable of handling the senior client relationships and what the team really needs is two strong Consultants or Senior Consultants underneath them.

Alternatively, if a Senior Consultant leaves and the Directors are already stretched, replacing that individual with someone at Associate or Associate Director level may provide greater leverage.

There is no rule that says a vacancy has to be replaced at exactly the same level.

The important question is what structure will make the team stronger.

What was missing before they left?

Another useful exercise is to think about what the departing employee did not do.

• Were there assignments they could not lead independently?
• Did senior colleagues have to provide more support than expected?
• Was there a particular technical area where the team regularly relied on somebody else?
• Did the individual have limited interest in business development, mentoring or expert work?

This is not about criticising the person who left. It is about using the vacancy to improve the shape of the team.

Every hire is an opportunity to add something that was previously missing.

Do not ignore why they left?

It is also worth understanding whether the reasons behind the departure should influence the next hire.

If somebody left because they felt there was limited progression, hiring another ambitious candidate into exactly the same structure may simply recreate the problem.

If they wanted more expert exposure, consider whether the role genuinely provides it before presenting it that way to the market.

If the workload was consistently unsustainable, replacing the individual without reviewing resourcing may only delay the same issue.

Retention and recruitment should not be treated as completely separate conversations.

Sometimes the best hiring decisions come from understanding why the previous hire did not stay.

Start with the problem, not just job title

Before launching a search, it can be useful to forget the previous employee for a moment and ask:

• What work does the team need help delivering?
• Where are the current capability gaps?
• What level of person would give the team the greatest leverage?
• What experience will be most valuable over the next two to three years?
• Does the role need to be delivery focused, client facing, business development focused or a combination?
• What could a new person bring that the previous team structure did not have?

Once those questions are answered, the job title and candidate profile normally become much clearer.

Conclusion

Replacing somebody quickly can feel like the priority when a claims and disputes team is already busy.

But moving too quickly to find a like-for-like replacement can result in hiring for yesterday’s requirement rather than tomorrow’s.

The strongest teams I work with tend to use departures as an opportunity to reassess.

• Sometimes the answer is a direct replacement.
• Sometimes it is somebody more senior.
• Sometimes it is somebody more junior.

And sometimes the best candidate looks very different from the person who left.

At Maxim Recruitment, we work closely with construction claims and disputes consultancies to understand not only the vacancy they want to fill, but also the wider team structure, upcoming workload and longer-term hiring strategy.

If you are reviewing your claims or disputes team and would like to discuss what the market currently looks like, or whether your next hire should really be a direct replacement, please feel free to get in touch. 

Nilam Modhwadia
Senior Recruitment Consultant
Maxim Recruitment
LinkedIn

Nilam is a Senior Recruitment Consultant based at our head office in Leicester, where she leads the UK and international Construction Disputes division. She specialises in recruiting top-tier professionals across the construction disputes sector; including claims consultants, quantum experts, delay analysts, and dispute resolution specialists. Nilam partners with premium, and often exclusive, employer clients, connecting them with exceptional talent to drive project success.