First published in The Hardware Journal, December 2025.
Hiring in hardware and building materials hasn’t just got harder for a while. It has changed. Roles that used to fill in weeks now take months, and merchants still recruiting the old way are feeling it.
What’s working now
- Publish the salary band. “Competitive salary” no longer moves anyone. Clear bands bring better engagement and fewer drop-outs.
- Describe the actual job. Being a good family business isn’t enough. Say what a normal day looks like, how big the team is and what success means in the first six months.
- Look past the CV. Reps undersell their wins, counter and yard staff undersell their product knowledge, and buyers undersell their commercial impact. A structured screening call finds what the CV misses.
- Use one specialist recruiter. Spreading a role across agencies brings duplicate CVs, rushed submissions and patchy candidate care, and the market notices.
- Keep the process short. Set a timeline and stick to it.
Count the cost of an empty seat
An unfilled counter role costs customers. An empty territory costs market share. A team covering a gap for months gets tired and less productive. Some merchants now put a figure on each vacancy, which makes the case for moving quickly.
Candidates don’t expect perfection. They expect honesty and consistent communication. And the fastest hires usually come from relationships built before the vacancy existed. Merchants who treat recruitment as a planned, ongoing process will secure the best people in this market.
Read the full article in The Hardware Journal
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