118. Avoiding Bad Hires With Paul Sanneman

People are hard to find. It's not easy. And so you've got to be really on it. And if you're not, you're not going to find good people.

Welcome to Professional Builder Secrets, the podcast for building company owners wanting to grow safely and securely. I'm your host, Will Blunt, and today I'm joined by Paul Sanneman from Contractor Staffing Source. Now, Paul, we welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me. I appreciate being here.

Fantastic to have you on. So, Contractor Staffing Source, we were just chatting before we jumped on air, is the biggest recruiting company for contractors in the world, I believe.

Is that right? This little. I'm a big, big fish in a little pond, right?

That's all right.

We just do contractors. That's all we do. We have about 30 people on staff. We have about four noble positions any given day. We go through 3,000 resumes a week or so. We hire 10 or 15 a week, which makes us the biggest at just contractors. All the other recruiting companies do everybody else, right? But all we do as contractors, that's it. And we've hired, I think, I don't know, over a thousand people or so this year. So we're really good at what we do. That's good.

That's why we've got you on the show today. And it's our kind of pond as well, because all the listeners out there are builders and contractors across Australia, New Zealand, the US And Canada. So I feel like you're going to provide a ton of value today.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Do you want to start by telling me a bit of a background about your, I guess, your experience in the construction industry and how it all started?

Well, I'm an old guy, right? So I hate to admit this. I've been in this industry for 50 years, right? And I've worked over like, something like 2,000 contractors, some crazy number, right? I did the math. I've earned, what is it, $10 million an hour at a time, the hard way, right? So over 50 years of doing this. And so that gave me a lot of experience in construction, mostly all contracts between a million and 20 million. That's all I've worked with over these 50 years. And what happened about four years ago, I could get companies from like, you know, a million to 10 million like you guys. I was really good at that part. But the problem was they couldn't find people. And so growing a company without finding the people doesn't do much good. You may have run into that, right? So I went, okay, so My first idea, Will, is that, well, I'll give them all the software. So I found some really good recruiting software, some applicant tracking systems. I found some really good, you know, assessments and all that kind of stuff. So I gave them all the stuff, right. And they totally screwed it up because, you know, the best practice is you got to get back to somebody in an hour of the time they apply. You've got to send them an assessment. You have to get. You've got to do all this stuff. And there's a real sense of immediate sort of like a sales call. Right. You can't have somebody call your business and call them back a week later. Most contractors just put an ad in Indeed or something, and they call them back in three or four days or a week, which doesn't work very well. So I started this company in my garage to help my clients out. And then it's grown to what it is now, which is, I think, with large company in the world that does what it does was specifically for contractors. Great. What problem?

I guess the problem you were solving back then is that the same problem you're solving today. And what's the. What's the major challenge that builders are facing?

Well, the major challenge is there's way more jobs than there are people. Right. That's. And the other thing is if somebody's not working, you don't want to hire. Right. These days. Right. So you've got to attract people that have another job that decide they want to change their job. And the traditional headhunter will charge you 10 to 20% of the first year of salary, which is something contractors not want to pay for. They just don't want to pay the bill, so they try to do it themselves, which is a problem. And, and the problem I think we've solved by using offshore labor and AI, I can do all the recruiting for a company for like 1200 bucks a month, which makes it affordable to the average guy. And I think that's a big difference. But it is. It's difficult to find people because they've already got another job. And they may look on Indeed and they may go like, we can actually search the databases of Indeed and LinkedIn, those kind of things. They can't do that. But the honesty is people are hard to find. It's not easy. And. And so you've got to be really on it. And if you're not, you're not going to find good people.

What mistakes are builders making? I mean, it sounds like trying to do that, do it themselves, is a mistake.

I'll give you. I have some myths I go over, but I like to. You know, one myth is you, you only need to recruit when you need someone. That is not true. You need to recruit all the time. And most contractors are rather frugal, as you may know, and they go, oh, I'm just going to recruit till I need the guy and quit. All right. The other one is, employees are expensive. They go, wow, I can't afford this guy. I can't afford to hire somebody until I get the project. And then they get the project and they have to hire the first guy on the street and he's the world's worst employee. Not bad enough to fire, good enough to keep. I have a rule of thumb, Will, that you should look at all your employees, figure you're going to start your business over tomorrow. Everybody's gone, right? You have to hire them all back. Anybody that you wouldn't hire back, you should fire. And I know a lot of people listening to this podcast, just think, oh, there's Susan, there's Frank. The other way to tell when the phone rings and you go, oh, my God, it's Sean John. Probably shouldn't be there. Right? So that world's worst employee, the reason you have them is you haven't got any other choice. Yes. And so the other one is they can do it themselves. I mean, for some reason, they don't do their own plumbing. They don't do it on electrical. They generally probably do their own accounting. Right. Why do they think they can do recruiting? I have no idea. But they do. So they generally do a very poor job of it. They put an ad. Indeed. And they do their own thing. If not us, hire somebody that knows what they're doing because it'll be way better. Another one is I have to recruit within the construction industry. That is not true. For example, we have found. Think about this, Will, a wedding planner. Right now, wedding planner has to put a bunch of fairly flaky people together. No offense, the band, the flower person, the venue. They've all got to show up at the same place at the right time. It's got to look good and everybody has to be happy. Doesn't it's like a remodel to you?

Yeah, well, that's the thing. It's a lot of the skills are applicable across multiple industries.

So what happens is we've hired hire some wedding planners. That may kill our selection coordinators. So it's a myth you don't have to hire within industry. The other ones, you can hire people and train them. Because a lot of people, you know, I need a guide, has five years experience and blah, blah, blah. I think you should have some kind of apprentice program so you can bring people up and teach them the way you want to teach them. Because otherwise you've got to get rid of their bad habits. Another thing that gets in the way for contractors is hire fast, fire slow. And that means they need the typical model for contractor is, oh, my God, I got this project. I just got the. I just closed it. I need a project manager. I need a whatever carpenter. And they go out, they put in N and D and hire the first foreign bodies to show up. Boom, right? They have to hire fast. Then unfortunately, this becomes the world's worst employ. Again, not bad enough to fire, good enough to keep, and they'll kill the organization. This is really important, Will. If you have employees out there that only lie occasionally, only steal occasionally, just. Just show up late once in a while, what do they do to your culture and your company? They're going, wow, this guy's 15 minutes late. I guess that's a new culture. Oh, he only stole one nail gun. I guess that's okay. He only lied once yesterday. I think that's okay. So what happens is you just kill your corporate culture by putting somebody in it that doesn't match. And so the person doesn't match. You know, the truth is you should hire slow. Take a long time to get the right people. Always be recruiting. And then when the person's wrong, fire fast. Do not wait, get rid of them right away. And the other one is the contractors look at recruiting like a project, right? So they look at recruiting like building a house. You have the beginning, you have a middle, and you have an end. So I need a project manager. It's a project. I put an ad. Indeed, I screen some people. I hire the guy, I'm done. It is not a project that ends. And I've been trying to get that across to people ever since. I've been doing this with mixed success. That's why I changed my pricing from 3000amonth to 1200 for a year commitment. Because it's just hard to get these guys to do that.

I think they, many business owners, builders included, think about marketing like, I want to switch it on when I need leads, I want to switch it off when I don't need leads. Whereas it just doesn't work like that.

It doesn't work like that. And recruiting is the same thing. I mean, well, the hardest thing about this industry is not clients that aren't great and employees that aren't great. Right. If you have great clients because your marketing really works, and you have great employees because your recruiting really works, this is a great industry. But what happens is you don't market all the time, so you take clients you shouldn't take, and they become all the problems. And then you don't recruit all the time, so you take employees you shouldn't take. And then pretty soon you've got clients you really don't want, employees you really don't like. That makes this a really tough industry to be in.

It is easier said than done, though, because I. I can see the mentality of the builders out there that are thinking, I don't have the cash flow right now to hire, so how do I. How am I always hiring to find the right person? It needs to. You want to do the project because that's when the cash comes in.

Well, I mean, what would you say to them? Well, I would say to them, I mean, if you're a company, let's. You're doing a million dollars a year, right? Okay. And we charge 1200 bucks a month. That's not much money to have the right people. Because the most important assets you've got is your employees. I mean, getting them to buy a tractor is not tough, Right. Or a physical thing. But look at it this way. They're using a shovel and we're using a backhoe to dig a ditch. It's not going to be the same. Right? Because we have all this technology. We have a way of, you know, placing all the ads. They don't have, like a tracking systems. We have assessments. I'll know more about you than your mom. We do background checks. We follow breast procedures. You would not build a home and not follow the breast procedures. Right. That's why you have inspections and all that kind of stuff. Otherwise the thing's going to fall down. So when you're building a business, the most important thing that you have as a. As a quality is ability to build a team. Sometimes. Well, I use an example. Elon Musk is a really smart guy. What do you think? Is Elon Musk magic that allows him to be the richest guy in the world?

I feel like that's a rhetorical question you're about to tell me.

No, go ahead. It's the ability to build awesome teams.

Okay. I would have said he's, like, very cutthroat, but, well.

But he still can build teams whether you like him or not. He has the ability to build a team. Right. And so as a contractor, you don't go, I'm going to be a contractor because I'm a great team builder. Right. And that with anything else, because if you have a great team, this is an easy industry. And then if you have a great team, somebody do your marketing. Hire marketing. Done. But I would contend that contractors aren't willing to invest in finding the right people. They think it's, oh, it's a no brainer. It's sort of like I'm choosing the contractor. Well, I have a great reputation. The business comes to me, I don't need to market.

Yeah, yeah. Until the market dips and then all of a sudden that dries up, right?

They go, oh. I mean, if you look at any successful company, at least in the western culture, they're marketing all the time and they're recruiting all the time. I mean, why do successful companies keep marketing? Why do they build brands? Because you've got to keep doing that same thing as recruiting. So it's just the basics. I think a lot of contractors are tradespeople, for lack of a better term, that become entrepreneurs. And making that shift from a great carpenter to a great. Whatever, plumber, whatever, to becoming an entrepreneur requires a change in your mindset, right? Now, software guys, they're going to drop a million bucks before they make a nickel. And they're okay with that, right? No problem.

But industry is a different.

Contractor is used to going to work and getting paid, right? So this really short vision of what they need to do, right? They're, they're, when they're, I call it their, you know, their window of the world is three weeks long, not a year long. So they want to say, okay, I want to get immediately reinforced. They do not do delayed reinforcement. Well, for example, I help a lot of contractors get work from architects, right? Well, architects already have a girlfriend and it's not you. So it takes like a year to develop a relationship with an architect. A lot of contractors give up in a month. They go, I went there. Same with marketing. I'm sure some of your clients do that, right? They go, I've tried this marketing system for three weeks and haven't got any leads. It doesn't work.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so. So contractors in generally do not deal well with delayed reinforcement. They want immediate gratification and they're used to it in their trade. Like, I put up a wall today. There's the wall, right? But in this industry, those kind of people, the people that succeed are the people that make that transition from a tradesperson to an entrepreneur, which means you have a longer window. You look at what's going to do this year, what am I get, who am I going to hire this year? You look out a year in advance. I'm sure you help counsel people that don't you in your company.

Of course. Of course. How do you go about shifting that mindset? Because if you only know one way and you need to open your mind to this new way of doing business because it's not what you used to, how would you encourage builders to open their mind to that?

Well, first you need. I have an action that says you only can stay in business as long as you can afford to pay for your mistakes. Right. And so sometimes the wrong employee can do it. And the other is what? Wise people, smart people learn from their own mistakes. Wise people learn from mistakes of others. So if you're going to do this, you know, hire a company like yours, get help, because unless they have that outside influence with a coach or somebody like your, they'll tend to do that sort of like, you know, the membership to the gym does not get you in shape. Yeah, right. And that's why, that's why people hire coaches or personal trainers, because they know they're not going to go and do the workout they need to do. That's why they hire a company like yours, because they know on their own, as Dr. Phil said, how's that working for you? Right. It's like it doesn't go anywhere. So I would say hire somebody like you for coaching or you have to have an outside influence to change that mindset, because your employees aren't going to do it. Your wife's probably not going to do it. Your friends aren't going to do it. So unless you have that input, you'll probably just stay the same.

To be fair, I think the people listening to this show probably already have the right mindset for learning and wanting to improve their business. So it might be a, it might be a null and void question. All right, so what do you, what's your process for assessing candidates when you're, when you're trying to place them at contracting companies?

Well, our. We have an assessment we've sort of developed ourselves. I mean, I'll know more about you than your mom if you'll take this thing. Well, it's. We have like 40 different assessments depending on the position. There's the warm body assessment. Do you have a green card? And can you speak English? And then there's the, you know, sophisticated project manager assessment. And we do what's called a predictive disk profile. You know what disc profile is, Will?

Yes, we all do one when we start at the association of Professional Builders, actually.

Okay.

We've all. We've got our whole team mapped out on the disc circle.

Okay. So. So what are you.

Will, please explain it to. To the listeners, though. Be great.

So, Will, what are you?

Good question. I'm. You put me on the spot. I can't even remember. I think I'm an S. You're steady, right?

S is for steady. Solid steady. That's that kind of guy. Right. So I wouldn't probably want you to be a sales guy, because that takes a D. You know, a driver and influencer.

I'm not a sales guy.

So, so what happens? We have what's called predictive disc. So we analyze your personality between driver, influencer, steady, you know, comprehensive, conscientious. And then we match your profile against people that have succeeded at that position. Because a project manager might need to be highly conscientious and steady, whereas a sales guy needs to be driven and an influencer. Right? So we look at your disc profile, and then we compare it against thousands that we've done that says this guy is going to be. Has at least the right personality to see the sales or project manager or carpenter, whatever. The other thing that's really important about what we assess is your. I'm going to call it integrity. Um, do you lie, cheat, and steal or not? And when do you do it? Right? I mean, one of the typical questions I'm going to ask you, I'm going to put you on the spot here, Will. Okay, so here's the question. Okay? So your boss comes to you and says, will, tell the client this, this stuff, whatever, the cabinets, kitchen cabinets are going. Going to be delivered in two weeks. Don't go tell the client that. All right? Now, you know it's going to be four weeks. The boss knows it's going to be four weeks. So what do you do? Do you support your boss and lie or do you tell the truth?

Me, personally, I would challenge the boss and say that if you want to tell them the wrong thing, then, then that's up to you, but it's not something that I'm open to.

Okay, that's an interesting question, right? Yeah.

I mean, what's. What's the right response to show?

There is no right response. But what happens is some companies, the intent, they would be okay with lying and saying two weeks or saying two to four weeks. Other companies would say, come to the Boston, he has to do it himself. They. So different companies have different values. Right. So we can get at the values of this values assessment icing kind of questions. Are you, Are you critical? Are you negative? Are you honest? And those kind of values have to match the values of the company. Yeah. Because if they don't, it's going to be a mess. I mean, and if you hire somebody that only lies occasionally and you don't lie, that's not going to work. Right. If you hire somebody who doesn't show up all the time, and you show up all the time, you hire somebody who's really negative and your company is all positive. So we assess for who you are as a person and make sure that matches the personality of the corporate culture.

Yeah, we also, like that example isn't necessarily the perfect question for every company, but if your values are integrity and honesty, then obviously that would be an important question.

Right. And so you can't get that stuff out of an interview. Right. And that's why this assessment is important, because unless you assess somebody for their attitude, integrity, how they're critical, they're negative, and that kind of stuff, you don't find out until it's too late, and then they become the world's worst employee. Not bad enough to fire, good enough to keep. Because I've done a lot of coaching in my life. And there's always, you know, there's John for like, John, one week, John's great. Next week, John sucks. And so, you know, and a year later, it's still all about John. Right. Oh, my God, John. I know John. And then, oh, John. And those people just kill a company. And you don't want those people. But to not get those people, you have to have the right assessment in the beginning to make sure you don't hire them. Because it's, you know, hiring sort of like marriage. It's really easy to get marriage and really married. And it's really expensive to get divorced. Right. So when people hire people easily, it's like, they get married, no problem. Now they're going to get divorced. Oh, my God. It's really hard to do. It's going to cost me money.

Good comparison. I'm just going to challenge you for one second on the integrity test. How do you like? I imagine there'd be people that understand what integrity looks like and could answer the question appropriately. So it looked like they were. They showed integrity. But that doesn't necessarily mean when it came to the crunch, they would show integrity, if that makes sense.

Well, how do you. This test has Been given to thousands of people over many, many years. The test uses artificial intelligence, and it can tell whether you're lying about lying. Right. So that's one of the critical things, assessment. I mean, I just did this testing with the other guy. The guy is very successful. He's a venture capitalist. He's starting this big company, doesn't matter what it is. And his came back and his dishonesty score was off the chart. Everything else was brilliant. He said, yeah, at least I'm honest about lying. So if the assessment's right, it can discern whether that's true or not.

So while we're talking about the disc profile, I know that you do this for all your clients. Is that right? You help them with assessing their clients, their candidates.

Their candidates. Yeah, we'll do as a. What we will do. We'll do disc on all your employees. If you want us to do that, we'll do any kind of assessment along with our monthly fee. We do all that stuff because it's important in building a team. Like, you take those profiles that unfortunately a lot of contracts and other resources or the people that can do it. So we'll do all that stuff for you.

Yeah, perfect. So a bit of a shift in gears. How have you seen the recruitment landscape change in the construction industry over the. Over the recent years?

Short answer, it's getting harder because what happened was. I mean, the only good thing that's happened, Will, is remote work has become much more like. We have people all over the world that work for us, and it works really well. Now there's such thing as a remote project manager, because that had to happen. And now they're going, oh, my God. My project manager can live in wherever, you know, Mexico, and he can manage my project. And in Anaheim. Right. So that's better. Because remote work has become much more accepted, which is a good thing. The problem is the. The statistics show that the average worker, at least in the US is about 45 years old, which is sad. The new kids aren't coming in because they want to be youtubers, they don't want to be plumbers. And we're getting some influence from, you know, other countries, but that can't meet the demand. And a lot of times they don't fit culturally. And so the bottom line is getting harder, which means you need to get better at recruiting. Now, that's the good news and the bad news, because if you use, like, marketing, if there's less people out there to buy stuff, but you're better at selling stuff, you're going to get a bigger share of the market that's left. Right. So it's the same thing. So if you're, if you've got best procedures and practices, you're doing a lot of stuff the other contractors aren't doing. You're going to get those people that nobody else is getting because they're not following the right protocol. But in general, it's just getting harder. We hardly ever fail unless somebody's in middle of North Dakota somewhere. There's nobody for like, you know, 500 miles. But the good news is most other comp, most contractors, especially between a million and ten million, really suck at recruiting. So if you implement good procedures, then you can kill that market. Right. It's the same thing with marketing. You know, I just talked to a guy, it doesn't matter where, he's starting a roofing company someplace in the United States. But he's going in with a bunch of capital. He goes, well, first place, a lot of the roofers are two guys in a truck and they know what they're doing. The other roofers are these big old established guys that are just taking everything for granted. We're going to be a disruptor because we're going to come in and we're going to do everything right fast and better. So we're better than the old guys because they're too old and lazy to do what they do. Better than the new guys because they're not actually following best practices. They're going to kill the market.

Yeah.

So the answer to that is it's getting harder. But that could be the good news if you're good at it because your competitor will not be as good as you are.

Yeah. How do we go about encouraging more young people to come into the industry though? Obviously, you know, if you, the pool's smaller and you find the best candidates, great. But I think it's a greater industry challenge, isn't it?

Well, I mean, I would say the problem is the school system. I hate to blame the school system, but you know, they basically killed trade schools in the US they don't exist anymore. When I was going to school, you could, you know, there was trade schools, which is not good in general. Social media has not helped us. Right. Because people go, I want to become a YouTuber. I have a 13 year old son. He does not want to be a carpenter or an electrician. Right. He wants to be a YouTuber because he goes, guys are knocking down, you know, and his whole input is through social media, a lot of it. Right. And there's not much social media on how to become an electrician or a plumber. Right. So I think it's just going to get worse, unfortunately, and AI is not helping it because we're all becoming more. Well, they're becoming pickier, they're becoming. I want, I want something that's going to inspire me. I mean, back in the 50s, getting a job was a big good deal. Right. And a lot of these guys are in the industry. When I was a kid, I had to get a job. I came in, I worked hard, I, you know, proved myself. A dollar earned for a dollar's worth of work. And they have all these values that aren't around anymore. And you can't inflict those values on the young generation because they don't really care. Now sometimes the good news is immigrants that come in have closer value because they fought to get here right, from wherever in the world they came. And so they have a lot of those values that we had earlier. They're happy to get a job, they work hard, they have a heavy duty work ethic. But that's because they came to the US wherever they came to because they wanted to live here and they value it and they, they're not entitled, if you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah.

It's that hardworking mentality and appreciating what, what you've got.

Right, right. And I don't think social media encourages that very much. And if you spend. The average kid's probably spending six to seven hours a day on social media. What's he learning?

I mean, I think there'll have to be a shift in the sense that the government's realizing there's a problem in housing in terms of not having enough housing and also the challenges we're talking about here. So they'll have to be further education and investment from the governments. You'd have to think, well, I mean.

It may work in Australia, but the US is not too good at it. I'll tell you, in Canada may be a little better, but they're not starting trade schools. Now. What's interesting, one of the companies that's coming to help is Home Depot is now starting a trade school.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's a good example of, I guess like a big influence in the industry making a change to try and improve.

Right, right.

I mean, it's benefiting themselves, but they.

See this big market and they can, you know, they sell stuff to contractors and there's not enough contractors. So they're going to literally trade people to become Contractors because they'll buy their stuff.

I think it's probably an education piece around wealth creation and, you know, your future and all that kind of stuff.

Right.

I think there's. There's probably an assumption from some younger people that, oh, I'll make an easier buck on YouTube, like you said. Or.

The problem is it isn't money. It isn't money, Will, because, I mean, a good electrician, knock downs, $150,000 a year. I mean, electricians make way more than teachers, and they'll make them as much as a nurse. Right. But it's just, it's not cool.

But I think there's an assumption of, of having to work extremely hard for that, if that makes sense as well.

I mean, I had a. I mean, I tell kids when I meet kids, I say, look, it, become electrician, be a plumber, be contractor, do something. Because it's a great profession, it pays well, it's got a lot of attributes to it, but that isn't what they're getting from most, you know, kids at 13 go, I want to be an electrician when I grow up. In fact, one of my sons is an electrician. He's the one who's 48. He loves it, but. Or 42, but I had to sort of convince him to become an electrician because it's a great. It's a great profession. Or a plumber or a.

He's added six years onto his life. Hopefully he doesn't listen to this episode.

Yeah, he's only 44 right now. The son is 44 and his son, who's 13, which makes life interesting. Right. So I can sort of see the different generations. Right.

Very good. So to kind of wrap things up, what other tips do you have for professional builders out there about improving their hiring strategies?

Well, I'm going to give you a best. A real short version of best recruiting practices. Okay. Can I do that really quickly?

Sure, go for it.

Okay. First, the art of the job ad. Chat GPT has made it way easier than it used to be. So make sure you write a killer ad. Go to ChatGPT and go, I want a job ad for a project manager. I'm a small remodeler in Connecticut. Because the prompt. Prompt engineering is important, so you have to ask the right questions. But if you're really specific, AI is going to write a way better job ad than you are. So use AI to write job ads and job descriptions. It's free or 20 bucks a month. You're not using. You're just crazy. Because it's going to change everything. Okay, next, where do you post the job ads? Everywhere. Don't. Don't put it in. Indeed, put it in. LinkedIn, Facebook every week and possibly put the ad. Put a poster in your supplier's thing. Put it everywhere. We put it on 150 job boards, plus length of. We put it like three or 400 places. When we place an ad, we just don't place an ad and even forget it. This next one's going to be critical and it's really hard to do. Will respond in hours, not days. We try to respond in 15 minutes. That's why we're good at what we do. But I'm telling you, selling, it's an internal thing versus an external sale, right. If you have a lead and they're going to buy a kitchen, you don't call them back a week later because they've already gone on to somebody else. Same thing. When I'm looking for a job, I'm looking through the whole list. I'm not just looking for you. Right. So if I'm going through five job ads, I apply three places and you get back to me in 10 minutes. I know. Wow. This company has their act together, right? And the guy doesn't call me for a week. Well, too late. Already got on the job, so that's crucial. Next, use. Use assessments. There's a lot of assessments out there. We've got great ones that use assessments. Use, you know, in depth interviews, do video interviews. You do everything you can to make sure you hire the right people. There's a lot of tools out there. If people give me a call, I can tell them what they are. But it's important that you assess the people because there's a lot of technology out there, especially now, that allows you to know way more about this person than one interview is going to give you. So make sure you use all the assessments you can and then do reference checks, do background checks, have an onboarding thing. So when you onboard them, you know, you do it right. Use key performance indicators, you document stuff, you set expectations, do employee reviews, and you sort of have them be the architects of their success. There's all this stuff. It's sort of like how you build a house. You have to follow the rules, right? Same thing in recruiting or marketing. So those are the ones that we follow. When I think of a person going to succeed, they should do the same thing.

I think one of the key takeaways I took from that is it doesn't stop once you've hired someone. I mean the most, probably the most important part is how you onboard them and also empower them to be the best in their job and give them the cultural fit there's right.

I mean, I heard a feedback how important feedback is. I think this is a good analogy. If you're given a Rubik's Cube, right, and you don't get feedback, you have to do it by chance. It takes over a thousand years to get it straight, right? If you can see what you're doing and get feedback, you can do it in an hour. So expecting people to be brilliant without giving them feedback is not fair.

Very good, Paul. Well, thanks so much for sharing all those tips about hiring strategies for contractors out there. I think there's been a ton of value in today's episode. Contractor Staffing Source is a rewards partner at apb. So for any members out there, they can get a cash rebate by signing up and using your services. But where's the best place for everyone else to go?

Well, I would say just go to contractorstaffingsource.com you can book an interview with me or you can email me@paul sandeman.com but I would just go to our website, contractorstaffingsource.com you can learn about the company and schedule an appointment with me and interview and I'll be happy to. Again, if you want to do it yourself, I'll spend an hour with you showing how to do it yourself. I'm fine with that because my experience is once you learn totally how to do it right, a certain percentage of those people are going to go, oh man, it's way too much work. You guys do it and some people do it themselves. It's up to them. But I'll show them what they need to do to do it right.

Sounds. Sounds like a pretty good deal. So an hour on a call with you, just head to contractorstaffingsource.com Sounds good.

Absolutely.

Awesome, Paul. Well, thanks so much for coming on Professional Builder Secrets today. I've really appreciated having you.

I appreciate being an APB partner.

Yes, it's great to have you and a big thanks to our listeners out there, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show today, please subscribe to Professional Builder Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you're feeling generous, leave us a review. But until next time, have a great day.

Thanks.