A regular follower asked me this question recently, and it's a good one: when it comes to sectors, should you be a specialist or a generalist?

The answer depends on four key elements: your job satisfaction and motivation, where in the country you work, what stage you're at in your career, and your earning potential. Let's take them in turn.

Job Satisfaction and Motivation

Some individuals genuinely enjoy the variety of working across different projects and sectors. The idea of working purely within one sector, on the same type of scheme continually, would drive them insane. If that's you, you've probably answered your own question: you'll prefer life as a generalist.

On the flip side, some individuals love a particular sector, whether that's residential, healthcare, retail, rail or anything else, and derive real value from it. Some even feel a sense of civic duty working in areas like the public sector or healthcare, where they feel their work genuinely gives back to society. For this element, it truly is individual choice: know yourself, and know what will keep you motivated and getting out of bed in the morning.

Where You Work

Keeping this to the UK, though it applies in most developed construction markets: if you're in London, there's a natural gravitation towards specialising in one sector, simply because the market is large enough to allow it. Move out of London, even into other major cities, and by default people tend to work as generalists.

That said, it's not absolute. I can think of plenty of individuals in major cities or covering large regions who've become genuine specialists in retail, healthcare, rail, wider infrastructure, commercial or residential. It's more prevalent in London, but it exists outside it too.

The Stage of Your Career

Anyone who's followed my advice before will know I'm a massive evangelist for young professionals gaining real breadth and depth of experience across multiple sectors and projects early on, ideally running their own projects from cradle to grave as soon as possible. The one thing I absolutely advise against is getting stuck on one mega project, playing a small part in a very defined role, without exposure to the entire project lifecycle. Even a £30k retail fit out is worth more to your development if it's yours from start to finish, with all the tussles with contractors that come with it.

As you develop further, that's when the argument for specialising kicks in, particularly in London. Why? Because many organisations, especially in London but also in some regional offices, are structured into individual work streams: a commercial team, a residential team, a health team, a public sector team. In those environments, specialists tend to progress more rapidly, and in some organisations you physically have no choice; the business is built around sector streams, so you must pick one. Of course, you can choose instead to work somewhere more fluid that lets you move between teams and keep your variety.

Where the generalist path gets trickier is in the management ranks: associate and director level. In London especially, at that level you're expected to be a specialist, fronting the business for a particular sector, attending the networking events and conferences in that niche, owning clients within it and actively developing new ones. That's simply easier to do brilliantly in one sector than across many. Cover a diverse spread of sectors and you're managing a sporadic range of clients and dragging yourself to events in completely different spaces; doing all of it incredibly well becomes draining.

I see this constantly in my own recruitment work. For senior hires in London, at director and even associate grade, the vast majority of my clients want a sector specialist, ideally one who brings a little black book of client contacts and a recognised standing in the industry: "the commercial developer expert in London, the person to go to." It's very rare that anyone asks me for a director who's worked across everything with no key focus.

In the regions the requirement softens slightly, but even there, you may not be a single sector specialist, yet you should be credible in two or three connected sectors. Perhaps you're the private sector person, working with developers across commercial, residential and mixed use. Perhaps you're the public sector person, working with health trusts and higher education clients. The key question is always the same: do you have clients who would absolutely follow you?

Earning Potential

This flows directly from the above. The vast majority of senior hires I make, even in the regions, are either sector specialists or specialists across a connected group of sectors like private or public. The same concept applies in infrastructure: are you a rail specialist, or a genuine infrastructure specialist, rather than someone doing bits of infrastructure here and bits of property there?

Businesses pay for genuine value. You'll typically only be offered that director or senior director level role if you bring something real to the party: clients who'll come with you, or a niche skill set that helps them grow a particular sector in a particular region. Otherwise you're an expensive overhead. Most firms already have enough people who know a few bits about a few things.

There's one irony worth noting: at the very senior executive level, you often become a generalist again, because you step so far up the ranks that you're overseeing multiple directors or partners who each manage their own sectors. But the quickest route up the ladder to get there is, in the first instance, to specialise.

The Summary

Early in your career, get as much exposure as you possibly can across different sectors; if nothing else, it helps you discover what actually gives you enjoyment and satisfaction. Later on, the quickest route up the ranks, based on my 20 years of doing this, is specialisation, whether very niche (the residential specialist, the developer market expert) or focused (the education specialist across schools, higher education and research).

You can absolutely remain a generalist if that's what keeps you motivated, and that's a legitimate choice. Just be clear eyed about the trade off: the path to managing a larger P&L, owning more clients and having clients you can take with you becomes more difficult the more general you stay.