At Classic, helping all new employees, especially those from outside the industry, assimilate to their jobs is a team effort. “Everybody in the office interviews them,” Fleming says of potential hires, “and everyone has to have a good feeling about them. If we bring them on, we’re all there working to make them a success.”
Prepare Your Team That’s not the only role that employees play in hiring someone from outside the industry. Like all management decisions, a new hire isn’t made in a vacuum, and the incoming employee — particularly if they’re in a management position — must be accepted by your current employees for the transition to be as smooth as possible.
Tim and Janeen Welsh, owners of Welsh Construction, Lexington, Va., hired Brian Kave, a former corporate employee with McDonald’s, to be the company’s general manager. In addition to his being an “outsider,” he was also the first person ever to hold such a position at the company. “Tim and I were excited about the move,” Janeen says. “We talked with our employees about it, and no one said anything [negative].”
Once Kave started, however, employees quit at an alarming rate. Janeen Welsh said the company lost 100% of its 10-person field staff, along with their designer and estimator. “We totally misread their feelings,” she says. “They were resentful.” She says that if she had it to do over again, she’d make more effort to ask employees specific instead of general questions about how they felt — a technique she learned, incidentally, from Kave. (She does not regret hiring him, however. Quite the contrary; Kave put together the new team of employees. Janeen says the company is “more professional than ever. He handles situations in a way that Tim and I never would have thought of.”)
The Price is Right Undoubtedly, some remodelers have dismissed the notion of hiring people from the corporate world because they don’t think they can pay the going rate. The Welshes got lucky; they recruited Kave from his position as the director of the special education department at a local school (he had retired from the corporate world), and could comfortably give him the compensation he sought. But if that’s not the case, and you think the person is right for your company, the advice is unanimous: pay up. “If you’re recruiting top talent, then you need to pay for it,” Platt says.
Stephens says that he’s had to change the mindsets of many of the companies he has consulted for. “There’s this feeling that you can’t make $120,000 a year as a production manager,” he says. But that’s not going to be a good enough reason for an employee who thinks he’s worth that much. Stephens suggests setting a “target compensation,” making the base salary an amount that is proportionate to the industry standard, and then tacking the rest on as performance-based incentives. Melton used this strategy to convince Johnson to sign on with his company. In addition to paying him a base salary, Melton also set up a profit-sharing plan. “Now my key man is splitting any profits over 5% [net] with me,” he says, “whereas before I hired him, I struggled to get my profits even that high.”
Reap the Rewards Once you make the decision to hire someone with a corporate or a business background for a management position at your remodeling company, it’s important to let them do their thing. Discuss ideas with them, keep tabs on how they’re affecting your bottom line, and monitor employee morale, but cramping their style will lessen — if not destroy — the positive effect they can have on your company. “If you hire that level of talent and don’t let them run with it, there will be problems,” says Platt, who hired three of his five senior staff members from outside the industry. “You have to be willing to let them make the decisions you hired them to make.”
Owning From Outside
If hearing about the positive experiences that remodelers have had hiring people from outside the industry isn’t enough to convince you that it’s a risk you should at least consider taking, maybe hearing from remodeling company owners who have other backgrounds will.
Nina Marinkovich started MAK Design+Build with her business partner, Ken Kirsch, less than three years ago. Kirsch is an industry veteran, but Marinkovich’s professional background is in housing finance and development. She cites the “many skills that fall under communication,” including writing and giving presentations, as valuable to her in her new career. Her previous work also had a customer service aspect, a real boon to remodeling.
Karen Dowd, who due to a pending divorce now finds herself sole owner of Potomac Builders, has an extensive background in event planning; she was vice president at a large firm before planning events for associations. She has some recent experience in the industry, but as she takes on all management responsibilities, she says she’s “approaching each remodeling project like it’s a big event.” The two jobs are not dissimilar, actually, and the detail-oriented nature that makes someone a successful event planner should translate well to remodeling.
Ben DePrenger isn’t the owner of John Kiernan Construction, but as general manager, he plays an owner’s role. John and Nancy Kiernan took a gamble hiring DePrenger — who they knew through one of their sons — from his job in corporate finance, and it has paid off big-time. The company has once again taken on someone new to the industry: Kelly Merino, a project manager who formerly worked for Pepsi. Says DePrenger, “My hire [and subsequent success] was probably a catalyst toward being open to bringing on another newbie.”
Help!
Employees share their biggest challenges.
Remodelers have a tendency to forget that most people don’t know nearly as much about home renovation as they do. While it should always be a goal to communicate with clients on a level they can understand, it’s absolutely vital that you communicate so that employees who are new to the industry fully understand. Listen to what some newbies had to say about their biggest obstacles along the learning curve:
“Deciding which problems can be fixed with a better system, and which just need to be worked around. Learning to be realistic about the systems I’ve implemented.”
Sabrina Blowers, business manager, Fisher Group
“Absorbing the tremendous amount of information and planning that goes into a successful remodeling project. There’s an enormous amount to learn about construction and the design/build process.”
Andy Shealy, designer, Classic Remodeling & Construction
“Customer service. There’s so much of it. It’s like I’m their personal secretary.”
Sonia Swain, office manager, Talmadge Construction
“Learning how we do things here. At Pepsi, everyone did certain things a certain way. Here, not everything is set.”
Kelly Merino, project coordinator, John Kiernan Construction
“The multitasking. There are many different things that need to happen at once. It’s taken a while to develop a system that keeps me organized and gives me time to get everything done.”
Cava Riley, project manager, Classic Remodeling & Construction
“Learning the jargon. Not just technical terms, but what expressions and words are used on jobsites and by trade contractors.”
Juliana Tadano, project and administrative coordinator, MAK Design+Build