Talk to just about any contracting firm these days and they’ll tell you the No. 1 challenge to continued growth is simply finding good people who can do the work.
After a protracted recession that hollowed out the skilled labor market, owners and managers are realizing they need to find new ways to attract qualified workers, especially for high volume jobs. “Our biggest challenge is that help, period, is hard to find,” said Devan Kaufman, president of Kaufman Construction.
In the face of that hiring reality, Kaufman and others are discovering new ways to find and recruit help. “We have to find a more nontraditional approach to finding these people,” said Cody Miller, general manager and sales manager for Packerland Home Improvement. “You get lucky here and there, but for some positions we’re not getting applicants.”
Here are five ideas from some top contracting companies to fill the labor gap:
1. Train from within. Hunts End Remodeling was discovering that some promising hires ended up not fitting with the company’s culture. So it decided that rather than finding people from outside, it would hire and train from within. The company brings everyone into the office to learn skills such as how to read drawings and what a lead carpenter needs to know. They also train on skills such as drywalling and door installation. Now employees are coming to the company telling them what they need to learn. “It took us a while to understand that we’re just not finding people outside of the company,” said Mike Birner, the firm’s architect and owner. “They’re going to have to be brought up through our processes and then we get someone who understands how we want it done and the level of quality we’re looking for.”
2. Hire based on personality, not skill. Many contractors are finding that it’s much easier to teach skills than values. So they’re focusing on applicants’ personality and investing in skills training. “We recognize talent regardless of where it comes from,” said Amie Sevrin, public relations director for Homefix Custom Remodeling. “We’re not specifically looking for the most seasoned professional. We will identify and recognize talent in someone who doesn’t have the experience and teach them what they need to know.”
3. Recruit college students. Miller said colleges are great places to target the “passive” applicant — those who might be a good fit for working at Packerland but wouldn’t otherwise consider it. He sits in on sales classes and identifies students who he thinks would be a good fit and then personally recruits them. He also goes to college job fairs to make a hiring pitch, complete with sign-on bonuses. “It puts us in front of people who are not only not going to reply to our posting, but are also in the upper echelon of that college.”
4. Use the power of Facebook. Kaufman has noticed that hiring standbys such as Craigslist have all but dried up. So he’s turned to the big guns of social media: Facebook. To tap into that giant social network’s capacity, he created a Facebook hiring page and then boosted it with an ad to get more reach. “We’ve been happy with the response we’re getting that from that so far,” he said.
5. Try hiring services and technology. K&P Enterprises, a high volume contracting firm, uses “reverse look up” on hiring sites that allows employers to search applicants using key words. When the company finds a potential hire, it uses a learning management service to send them a quick one-and-half-minute video. If they’re interested after watching the video, they set up an online appointment to be interviewed over the phone. Those who pass the phone interview move on to a five-step training class in which they must score 80% or higher on each step. “We think outside the box,” said Ken Baer, the firm’s vice president.
