Construction needs more people – badly. But a stubborn myth persists that you need a trade background or technical degree to have a real career in the industry. Women at BELL Construction are pushing back on that. Their message: the skills you already have – communication, organization, problem-solving, emotional intelligence – are exactly what construction is short of. Here’s what they’ve learned, and why it matters for the executives and founders trying to build better teams.
The US construction industry needs to hire more than 439,000 additional workers just to keep up with current demand. The UK workforce has dropped to a 25-year low. And 53% of the current construction workforce is expected to retire by 2036. Leaders are burning through budgets on recruitment campaigns, automation pilots, and training programs – while a massive, underutilized talent pool sits largely untapped.
Women currently make up around 10-14% of the construction workforce in the US. Not because they can’t do the work – but because the industry has, for decades, failed to communicate that there’s more than one way in. The assumption that every construction career starts with a hard hat and a pair of steel-toed boots has quietly locked out an enormous share of capable professionals who bring exactly the skills the industry says it’s desperate for.
For Women in Construction Week 2026, the women of BELL Construction in Tennessee shared an honest account of how they broke in, what it took to build credibility, and the underrated skills that actually drive project success. Their perspectives aren’t just inspiring – they’re operationally useful for anyone trying to figure out how to widen the talent funnel without lowering the bar.
BELL Construction’s women leaders say communication, organization, a growth mindset, and emotional intelligence were more valuable career entry points than technical knowledge. For executives facing a labor shortage with no easy fix, that’s worth sitting with.
The Skills Gap Nobody Talks About
It’s not technical expertise that’s in short supply
When you ask construction leaders what’s missing from their teams, the list rarely starts with “more people who understand rebar.” More often, it’s communication breakdowns, poor document control, missed follow-ups, and the inability to manage relationships under pressure. These are organizational and interpersonal failures – and they’re expensive. Rework alone costs the US construction industry an estimated $177 billion annually.
Tara Runion, a senior project manager at BELL, puts it plainly: the ability to learn quickly, stay organized, communicate clearly, and be dependable earned her trust on every team she joined. Not a particular credential. Not years on the tools. Eva James, a project engineer, adds that her mindset – believing in herself and treating every challenge as a chance to get better – was what actually opened doors. That sounds simple. In practice, it’s genuinely rare.
Jenny Hassel, who came to construction with 30 years of experience from outside the industry, makes the operational case directly: “Construction is fast-moving and full of interconnected parts. Being able to manage documents, track commitments and anticipate issues before they arise is critical.” That’s a job description that could apply to someone who’s never set foot on a site – and that’s the point.
Breaking In From the Outside
Non-traditional backgrounds that translate directly to construction value
Braissy Canizales, HR manager at BELL, came in through fluency in Spanish – a skill that in many US markets is operationally critical given the composition of the construction workforce. Her ability to communicate, translate, and build trust across language barriers made her immediately valuable. Sarah Baylor entered through customer service, where she developed active listening and relationship skills. Neither route is the one the industry typically advertises. Both produced capable, credible professionals.
This is the pattern worth paying attention to. Construction companies that limit their talent search to people who already know the industry are fishing in a shrinking pond. The firms seeing the most traction with workforce expansion – whether through micro-factory models, apprenticeship programs, or non-traditional pipelines – are the ones willing to ask: “What skills do we actually need here, and where else do people learn them?” Cuby’s approach to tackling the skilled labor shortage is a strong example of rethinking what “skilled” actually means.
The implication for hiring managers is real and practical. If your preconstruction team needs someone who can track RFIs, manage subcontractor correspondence, and keep timelines honest – that person might be a former legal assistant, a project coordinator from logistics, or an HR professional who’s spent a decade managing complex people processes. They just need a firm willing to meet them halfway on the technical vocabulary.
“I build credibility by being a straight-shooter and delivering real value. When the people around you see your impact, gender becomes secondary to the value you bring to the project.”Alexzondra Fleetwood, HR Director, BELL Construction
Building Credibility in a High-Pressure Environment
What actually earns respect on construction teams
One of the more persistent myths about working in construction – particularly for women entering male-dominated teams – is that you need to be loud, assertive in a specific way, or willing to adopt a persona that doesn’t fit. The BELL women push back on this clearly. Alexzondra Fleetwood, HR director, describes her approach as being a straight-shooter who delivers solutions that make the team’s life easier. Follow-through. Reliability. Demonstrated impact. That’s what builds credibility, across gender lines.
Sarah Baylor makes a point that’s worth underscoring for anyone building or managing construction teams: confidence isn’t a personality trait. It’s built through experience – through showing up, putting in the effort, and following through consistently. That has implications for how firms design onboarding and early-career development. The managers who create environments where new hires (of any background) can build that track record quickly are the ones retaining talent in a market where retention is everything.
Tara Runion adds another layer: active participation in organizations like AGC and ABC, mentoring junior team members, and pursuing leadership opportunities outside day-to-day project work. That kind of deliberate career investment builds both personal credibility and organizational depth – the succession pipeline that the industry desperately needs. Katie Coulson’s story of leading Skanska Advanced Technology at 100% is a good reference point for what that kind of energy looks like in practice.
The Office Is Part of the Project Too
Dismantling the myth that construction is only field work
Jenny Hassel’s take on the biggest misconception in construction is worth reading twice: “Projects succeed or fail just as much in the office as they do on the jobsite.” Contracts, change orders, compliance, coordination across departments – these aren’t support functions. They’re core delivery functions. And they require exactly the kind of precision, communication, and organizational discipline that people from administrative, legal, HR, and finance backgrounds often bring in abundance.
Elizabeth Craig, an estimator working in BELL’s Special Projects Division on contracts under $15 million, makes the same point from a different angle. Multiple priorities, tight timelines, close attention to detail – her day-to-day sounds more like a project management consultancy than a construction firm. The skills that make someone good at it aren’t unique to construction. They’re transferable in, which is the whole point.
For construction executives, this reframing has direct strategic value. The bottleneck in most firms isn’t field capacity – it’s the administrative, preconstruction, and coordination infrastructure that allows field teams to operate efficiently. Investing in that layer, and being willing to recruit for it from outside the industry, is a lever that most firms haven’t pulled nearly hard enough.
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Personal initiative, not just institutional support
Melissa Higginbotham, a senior recruiter at BELL, stays current through AGC and SHRM – keeping one foot in the construction world and one in broader workforce trends. Braissy Canizales earned an HR certification and a master’s degree while also asking questions directly of superintendents and project managers. Ellie Quinn puts it most directly: professional growth is a personal responsibility. If you want to learn a new skill, take the course. Want to get involved in an industry group? Join it. The opportunities exist. The initiative has to come from you.
That ethos – curious, self-directed, willing to go beyond the job description – is what firms should be screening for, regardless of what’s on a candidate’s CV. It’s also what leaders need to model. The firms building genuine succession depth are the ones where senior people actively mentor, share what they’ve learned from failure, and create space for junior staff to stretch. Construction’s succession cliff isn’t just a numbers problem. It’s a culture problem, and it starts at the top.
| Transferable Skill | Where It Comes From | Construction Application | Relevant Role | Impact on Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organization and time management | Administration, legal, finance, logistics | RFI tracking, change order management, deadline control | Project administrator, estimator, preconstruction | Fewer missed deadlines; tighter document control |
| Communication and active listening | Customer service, HR, sales | Subcontractor coordination, client management, internal alignment | Project manager, PM administrator, HR | Reduced rework from miscommunication |
| Bilingual or multilingual ability | Any background where a second language was developed | Site communication, safety briefings, subcontractor relationships | HR, site coordination, field supervision support | Safer sites; stronger workforce trust |
| Growth mindset and learning agility | Any field with fast change cycles (tech, healthcare, law) | Adapting to new software, changing regulations, project-specific challenges | Any role | Faster onboarding; stronger team resilience |
| Emotional intelligence and empathy | HR, social work, teaching, customer-facing roles | Conflict resolution, retention, team culture | HR manager, recruiter, people operations | Lower turnover; stronger team cohesion |
| Attention to detail | Finance, auditing, quality assurance, legal | Contract review, compliance checking, cost control | Estimator, QA, project controls | Fewer costly errors; better margin protection |
No – and that’s the central point of what the BELL Construction team is saying. Backgrounds in customer service, human resources, administration, and bilingual communication all translated into real construction careers for the women profiled here. The industry needs project administrators, estimators, HR managers, recruiters, and preconstruction coordinators – roles where the core competencies are organizational, communicative, and relational rather than purely technical. Technical knowledge is learnable on the job. Good judgment, communication discipline, and follow-through are harder to teach. (Source)
Several factors compound each other. The industry has historically communicated itself as a field-first, trade-first profession, which immediately filters out people who don’t see themselves in that frame. Recruitment marketing tends to feature hard hats and heavy equipment rather than the administrative, commercial, and leadership roles that make up a large share of construction employment. Cultural dynamics on site and in offices have also historically been unwelcoming, though that’s changing at a growing number of firms. The structural result is that women currently represent around 10-14% of the US construction workforce – a number that’s moved slowly despite the labor pressure the industry is under.
Project administration, preconstruction coordination, HR and recruitment, estimating support, document control, client-facing project management, and safety administration are all roles where transferable skills carry significant weight. People with backgrounds in legal, finance, customer service, logistics, HR, and languages frequently find their competencies map directly onto what these roles require. The technical vocabulary is learnable. The organizational and interpersonal discipline those backgrounds produce is exactly what construction firms say they’re short of. (Source)
The key shift is moving from credential-based filtering to competency-based filtering. Instead of screening for construction experience as a prerequisite, firms that are making progress with non-traditional hiring are defining the actual skills a role requires – organizational discipline, communication, attention to detail, learning agility – and then looking for evidence of those skills wherever candidates may have developed them. Structured onboarding, mentorship, and early-career stretch assignments then close the technical gap quickly. This isn’t lowering the bar; it’s relocating it to where it actually belongs.
Beyond the ethical and cultural case, the business case is straightforward: the industry faces a structural labor shortage with no quick fix. Firms that widen their talent pools – by recruiting from non-traditional backgrounds, investing in career pathways for people who wouldn’t previously have considered construction, and building cultures where those hires can stay and grow – are competing for a larger slice of available talent. Given that the US needs 439,000+ additional construction workers just to meet current demand, limiting recruitment to people who already have construction credentials is a strategy that makes the problem worse, not better.
The consistent advice from BELL Construction’s team: follow through consistently, be direct and solutions-oriented, understand the details of your role rather than staying at a surface level, and engage with the industry beyond your immediate job. Participating in organizations like AGC or ABC, seeking mentors, and actively developing the next generation around you are all credibility multipliers over time. Confidence is built through repetition and demonstrated impact – not through personality or projection. (Source)
They’re the same problem viewed from different angles. With 53% of the current construction workforce expected to retire by 2036, the industry needs to replace an enormous volume of institutional knowledge and leadership capacity. That pipeline cannot be filled by fishing in the same traditional talent pool – there simply aren’t enough people. Widening the entry points, building genuine career pathways for people coming from non-traditional backgrounds, and creating cultures where diverse talent wants to stay long enough to grow into leadership roles is one of the more concrete strategies available to firms facing this challenge.
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