92. Recruiting Onsite Staff With Erin Longmoon

When you're dealing with someone on site, labor position, like I mentioned earlier, the competition is so fierce that if you're not on top of it pretty much every moment to capture someone who potentially is a really good hire for you, then you're going to lose them in a matter of hours in some cases. So that process has to be very lightning fast.

Welcome to Professional Builder's 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 Erin Longmoon, the CEO of Zephi Connex. Erin, welcome to the show today.

Thank you very much, Will. I'm very excited to be here.

It is a pleasure to have you on. You've got a lot of great, valuable advice I believe you're going to share with our builders today about recruiting on site staff, but just recruiting best practices in general. But before we kind of get into all of that really exciting content, can you tell me a bit more about yourself?

Yeah, sure. So let's see here. I live in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States, and I started Zephyr in about 2017, but prior to that, I was actually an interior designer. So I have a connection into the building industry from the point of view of the design side of things. Of course, I did residential and commercial, and then, interestingly enough, I moved out of that and into being a business coach for a number of years prior to starting Zephyr. And I started Zephyr, you know, because of some things that I saw while I was a coach. So that's how I ended up here today.

Interesting. I think that kind of tells me why it looks so beautiful behind you.

Thank you very much.

You've set it up very nicely.

Thank you.

Well, that's a really interesting background. I think that's super relevant to, I guess, what APB does, but also the building audience. If you've worked in the industry before, what does Zephie do? Like if you had to summarize Zephia's proposition?

Yeah, absolutely. So our primary function is to be the recruiting department for our clients. And all of our clients are smaller employers, generally too small to have either a designated recruiter on their team or a designated HR person who would do that. So we take all of that load off of our clients and help them find really incredible team members that match their culture, their core values, as well as the needs of the role.

Yeah, that's amazing. And I know it's such a big challenge at the moment in construction industry, like finding good talent, holding on to good talent. Yeah, a lot of builders are struggling.

With it, yes, very much. And it's been going on for a long time. And of course, you know, things like the pandemic and some other real economic reasons and such are just making it even more complicated than it was even before. But it's been a struggle in the construction industry for a while.

So tell me more about how you got into recruitment. I mean, you had. You mentioned briefly that you were a business coach and then you were running your own business. You kind of noted, noticed these challenges. Can you go deeper into that?

Yeah, sure. So I, you know, as a business coach, one of the things that I primarily help my clients do was to help them create systems and processes and get all that institutional knowledge out of the. Either, like top employees or the owner's head, get it into some kind of a process so that other people could come in, be hired, and allow that company to scale, grow, and even eventually allow an owner to start stepping back. And as I was doing that, and we were getting ready to bring more members onto the team, this is where I started seeing this pretty incredible struggle that my clients had. And it is across industries, but certainly, as we talked about, like, in construction specifically, it's even harder. So it's hard for everybody, but then it's even harder for construction because the talent pool is so, you know, much smaller. And so I started looking for resources to try to find ways to help them, you know, by hiring recruiters or trying to find HR professionals that really focused well on h. On the recruiting piece. And we really struggled to find either recruiting services that were affordable and accessible to small employers. But also, once it really understood how critical it is to get that culture piece right when you hire in a small business. So I decided in 2017, I kind of had that aha moment of like, this is what I need to be providing for my clients. You know, you can find business coaches anywhere, but you really have a hard time finding a good recruiting solution for small business. So in 2017, Zephyr Connects was born.

Nice. Yeah, I mean, I think it's so specific. I mean, every industry, as you said, struggles with these challenges, but particularly in construction.

Definitely.

So what type of building companies are you typically working with?

So a little bit of everything. I mean, residential remodeling, design, build are probably our largest segment, I would say, of the construction space. But we also deal with trades, you know, painters, plumbing companies, H Vac, things like that. And we also deal with some commercial construction as well. Our biggest kind of like I was saying sort of stipulations that they're smaller employers that we work with directly, so usually under about 100 employees, but most of our clients have between 10 and 35 or 40 employees. So really smaller teams is kind of our space. But we kind of COVID anything within.

Construction that sounds like a perfect fit for our audience in terms of residential design. Build companies with, with around those. Those staff members. So I'm sure there's going to be a ton of value there for them. What problems do you feel like most of those builders are coming to you with?

I think most of our clients are coming with us for a number of reasons. One is that recruiting takes so much time. It is such a time suck and they really need to be focusing on other things. Right. And it's the type of activity that you can't just put a little hour here and then another hour a few days later and another hour a few days later and, and expect results. You have to be on top of it. Which brings us to the second challenge, right. Which is that the talent pool is so small, there's a major labor shortage. And now, of course, I'm in the United States. I know your listeners are in a variety of countries. Every country might be a little different, but I do think the sentiment is pretty similar everywhere, is that, you know, construction is really seeing a big drop in people going into that field as a career choice. So. So, you know, and then there's the aging out and unfortunately those two things are not equal. So it becomes really highly competitive to find good workers. So you need a service like ours or just someone on your team is another option, of course, but who can be on top of it all the time? So those are some of the main reasons why, you know, people come and talk to us and try to get some of our help.

Yeah, interesting. And builders primarily, are they coming to you to look for on site staff or what type of, what type of jobs are you placing most predominantly?

Yeah, we're familiar with all roles actually within a small construction company. So we definitely do the labor positions. So the on site staff, we also deal with estimators, project managers, even marketing people, bookkeepers and office managers. Like we consider ourselves position agnostic, which means, like our goal is to be the recruiting department, which means we should be able to come up with a solution for every role you have. Now you know how to hire an on site staff. Like the process for that is very different than the process for like a marketing person or a bookkeeper, you know, so we do have different ways that we would go about recruiting for the roles, depending on what that role is. But, you know, they come to us for all of them.

Yeah. Interesting. What are the key differences between like the different hiring processes there? Like, because I imagine like some people might not understand that they need to approach it differently.

Yeah. And I, you know, I know at some point we'll probably talk about this sort of more globally, but in terms of the different types of positions. So when you're dealing with someone on site, labor position there, the, like I mentioned earlier, the competition is so fierce that if you're not on top of it pretty much every moment to capture someone who's a, who potentially is a really good hire for you, then you're gonna lose them in, in a matter of hours in some cases. So that process has to be very lightning fast. You have to get on the, you know, get, get in front of them quickly, invite them into either, you know, whether you're gonna do an on job site interview, in a phone interview, zoom interview, however you're going to do it, you need to do it very quickly. Once they've either, you know, presented themselves, whether that's through job boards, whether it's through an introduction from someone in your network, like, however they come to you, you have to be on it and you don't get as much time to vet them because of that. So you kind of have to figure out in a very short period of time how do I vet them for everything that I need for my company, my role, you know, who's going to present well for my clients, that kind of thing, you have to determine that quickly and get an offer to them fast. Whereas the other positions, estimators, project managers, salespeople, production managers, you know, any office staff, you can take more time and you should take more time to vet their skills more thoroughly and to get to know them better and things like that, because you generally will have a little bit, a little bit more time. You don't have all the, all the days and all the weeks you want, but you know, you do get to get deeper with them. And that's what we do here too, is we go deeper with the interviewing process with them. We want to understand more about what makes them tick, what culture fit is going to be the right fit for them, what are their core values, like how do they live their life and what inspires them, what motivates them, you know, those kinds of things to make sure that they're the right match. And so you got to take a little more time with them.

Is that because, and I'm just guessing here, maybe I'm wrong, but is that because there's a bigger pool of people on that, the business administration side of things compared to the specialization of the labor side?

Yes, that is, that is generally our experience, you know, and so, so yes, I mean, anecdotally that is true. A lot of people who even were in the labor pool at one point, maybe have been doing it for 10 years, are ready to move into those administrative roles as well as people who've gotten things like construction degrees, maybe have even come from sort of a related industry can, can somehow apply those skills fairly easily. Whereas labor roles are very specialized. I mean, you need to know what you're doing, right? When you're doing specialized millwork or cabinetry or installing a staircase, you know, whatever it is that you're doing, it's extremely specialized. So you do get a narrower labor pool. Plus, like we talked about, there's less people going into the labor side of construction than even in the, I guess you say the more professional positions in construction, you know, so you have that, that disparity there as well.

Is that a trend that we're seeing at the moment, less people going into the labor side, or has that always been a bit of a challenge?

Well, no, I think it shifted. And you know, I honestly don't know the exact date. I'm not a true expert in the labor history of construction, but I do think that it shifted, I know, significantly in 2008, 2009 here in the United States in particular, because our entire construction industry really almost collapsed during our Great Recession. And so so many people, you know, high school kids, even middle school kids, college kids, started looking at that as not really a viable instead of stable career choice, unfortunately, because it couldn't be further from the truth. Right. It just was this anomaly that happened in our economy that gave the wrong message. And so plus, you know, there's, there is a big push too, that, you know, right or wrong, you know, that, that kids should go in to get a college degree, that they will be better off if they go get a college degree. And there is sort of this, well, if I'm going to go spend that kind of money on a college degree, maybe I shouldn't be in a labor position. And these disconnections are something that the, has to work through. And I think is, is truly working on that. But we saw trade schools closing down, you know, pro, like trade programs within universities and colleges closing down. So there's also not as many educational Opportunities for these people coming into that workforce to really learn how to do this job and go into it. So it is an ongoing challenge. I do think that, you know, it's being faced head on in a lot of ways. It's just, it's like turning a big ship, which takes a really long time. You. But I am noticing a shift happening, actually, where more people are being more truly aligned. Like, I'm thinking of college kids, high school kids wanting to do things that are more in line with their true interests. And so I do think we'll see an uptick over the years, but it's going to take some time.

Yeah. And that just adds to the pressure of running a building company. Right. If that pool is smaller and it's already hard anyway to find great staff and you're short on time and all of that kind of stuff.

Just.

I can imagine it builds up.

Yeah, absolutely. It gets to the point of, you know, for some, for some clients, I mean, they come to us at the point where they're like, if I can't figure this problem out, I'm going to have to either close my business or significantly downsize. And these are people who really want to grow their business, have a bigger impact on their community. They love what they do, they're passionate about the work they're providing. You know, so it can be very stressful. I mean, really, it. I mean, my understanding, from both articles I read, I'm sure you read them too, that that the staffing shortage and staffing challenges is probably the number one stressor and concern that people in the building industry have today. You know, and profit margins are probably the two. Right?

Well, 100%. Like if you look at the data of the people that come to APB looking for coaching or resources to better their business. Yeah, those two things are trending at the moment, for sure. Over the last six months especially. So.

Yeah, yeah.

And margins are always. Margins are always a challenge. Profits and margins are always a challenge for any business, especially in construction. Yeah. But staffing is certainly on top of mind at the moment.

Yep. But we've also seen, honestly, we have stories and we have seen stories of when it is done well, you know, which we could go into what that means if you'd like to. But like, when it is done well, it can have an enormous impact on the business. Profit margins go up, revenue goes up, owners can actually take vacations. I mean, we have one client, I. He's probably getting sick of hearing me talk about him, but he took 12 weeks out off in 2022. Because, you know, over the course of the last three years we helped him up, level his team, find the right people to put in the right seats. Not just bodies, but the ones that really resonated with his mission and what his company was about and those things. And you know, so last year he took 12 weeks off because they pretty much can run the show without him, you know, so if you get it right, it can be life changing for everybody. Your clients, you know, your community, yourself, your family. I mean, it resonates pretty far.

Well, that's what it's about. Right. And that's what a lot of our aspirational members and people in the community are really looking to do. They, they've got that future vision of not being on the tools, not being like always working in the business. And a huge part of that is finding the right people that can, you can trust to do the things you used to do.

Right, right, definitely. I think that's a key. It's a key. I mean you do need processes, you need the other components. But probably of all of that, the hardest one is going to be the people part.

Well, because they're very unpredictable. Yeah, no, very unpredictable. Yeah. And I'm sure we'll get to, maybe we'll get to retention a little bit later, but let's just focus in on I guess, finding those people first and getting them in. Because you mentioned especially with the on site labor, your processes are so important because if you've got to move from like interest to offer as quickly as possible to land that good talent, you've got to have really tight systems in place.

Right, right. Yes. That would be the ideal situation for sure. Yeah. You know, I understand the reality.

I won't even just say builders. I think most companies, especially when they're small and they're just start to grow, hiring systems are not as, as good as they could be.

Right. I mean they're probably even an afterthought when you're really new. Which, you know, honestly when you look at the, the life cycle of a business, that kind of makes sense. But at a certain point, you know, you, as whoever the business owner is, wakes up one day and you realize you're truly an employer at this point. You're not just a business owner and you have to start shifting your focus and, and what you spend your time on, on fine tuning whatever that is, whether it's your hiring processes, your onboarding, your retention, your just your leadership and the style of your leadership culture becomes very important as well. Especially with Retention. But also with hiring, we'll talk about, I mean, culture and how you can differentiate yourself from your competitors as a place to work is a key to getting people to pick you over them. So can I just dive into that a little bit more?

Yeah, let's go through the hiring process, like, end to end, like what?

And that'll take a lot. Okay, so. And a lot of this, obviously, is, like, our philosophy. And now I'm going to start geeking out. But, yeah, you know, you have to really start by understanding your company. You need to know your own core values. You really need to be able to articulate your culture. Every company has a culture, whether you know it or not, or whether you've intentionally created it or not. Every culture or every company has a culture. So be able to use words to articulate what that culture is to describe it. And, you know, you can go to your employees, ask them, how would you describe what it's like to work here? You know, obviously the owner themselves, you can ask even clients, just, like, what do they see? You can get feedback to help you understand what that. What your culture really is, but you need to understand those things. And the reason is that is because that is sort of your barometer or your compass for who you want to bring into your organization. Now, we don't want carbon copies. We don't want, you know, 10 Joes that are exactly the same. But you do want core values and culture alignment. So, you know, you need to know what those are in order to. To be able to find people who will align. And one of the reasons for that is that. Well, a number of reasons. One, it differentiates you, like I said, from other employers, and it will become your selling proposition. And we'll talk about that, but in a few minutes. But it also will help with your retention because people will be choosing you for more than just a paycheck. Right? Like, it's not just the dollar, it's because more of what you have to offer in a bigger, more holistic way. So you need to understand that first, then to understand, well, okay, if I have this kind of culture, what kind of person really works well in my culture? So you take a few minutes and just kind of reflect on who have been your best employees and why, and go beyond just their skills. What was their attitude, their belief system, what drove them? What motivated them? What was their personality? Just really try to understand, like, who some of your best employees have been and kind of use that as sort of a. A profile or a Persona. That's what we call it at Zephyr, it's your employee Persona and it's really similar to like your client Persona, right? You want to understand who your key ideal kind of employee is. And we call it your unique fit because you're a unique company versus, you know, the next design build company down the road. You've got a unique culture, so that's what sets you apart. So you want to focus on that. Then you have to step back for a moment and think about, okay, now I've got to go recruit. What do I do? Well, here at Zephyr, we really like the, to push the idea of get your mindset away from HR and from dry business or job posts. You want to think about marketing, use marketing tactics. Recruiting is strict, is truly marketing and sales. So the marketing piece is what you do when you're trying to attract your people to you and the sales is what you're going to do once you've got someone in front of you, right, that you really like. So you, so think about it from a marketing perspective. What is going to entice that, let's say elite carpenter to want to come and apply for my job and to actually stick with me while I interview them before popping over to the next person, you know, the next company. So you want to think about that from their perspective. Put yourself in their shoes for a minute. What matters? Certainly dollars matter, but more tends to matter. So going back to your culture, you're like, okay, I want to pull in people who want career advancement or family oriented people, or a company that's going to treat them fairly or company that's going to listen to their cool ideas because they're in the field all the time. Maybe they actually have some really cool idea of how to build something that our design team, you know, could learn from, right? So that synergy or that collaboration, let's say you've got, so these are just some examples, but you want to hone in on those things and then you want to highlight them in your job post. You know, you want to put them up at the top. You want to do front and center. This is what it's like to work here. This is who we are, this is who we're looking for. You know, and then you can get into the nitty gritty of like the day to day tasks and the, you know, all the like HR speak, you can do that on the same job post. But, but do something more enticing and exciting up at the top because that's the first thing they'll see and that's what'll draw them to apply. And that's the same, honestly, Will, whether you're doing labor or whether you're doing office staff or administrative staff or salespeople or anybody. The other thing that we do here, and it takes a little time to play with, but if you can tell a story, you know, maybe not as much for your labor people, but when you do start to do the more office, professional level, try to tell a little bit of a story in your job post if you can, like, what is it truly like? And don't be afraid to use unusual kind of tactics to get attention, because that's the other thing is you've got to stand out and you've got to get attention, you know, of the people you're interested in attracting. So that's just. That's just the beginning right now. You gotta launch it. Right? Do you see what I mean?

Oh, no, I know. Like, I love the way that you've. You're looking at it from a different point of view. It's not like, oh, let's just get a job out and just post it on a board. It's about creating an experience for the people that are exposed to that and also understanding. I think one of the most important things you said there was just understanding your culture and being able to convey that to someone else is probably one of the most critical things. Right.

Especially today because of this competitive market. It is. It is very. I think it's going to always be important from this point moving forward, you know, and it's been important over the last, like, so many years. But we're kind of in a new wave of understanding it and really understanding what employees want from a whole new perspective, which I also like to. You know, we really believe this firmly at Zephyr, and we also try to coach our clients around this is. Think about it, even all the way down to your labor, as these people, people are your partners, right? You can't do what you want to do. You can't achieve what you want to achieve without your people. So, like, shift your mind if you're not already there, but shift your mind out of. These are employees or, you know, people who just report to you and, and those kinds of things and move them into. These are my partners that are actually going to help me fulfill my dreams, which will also help them fulfill theirs. Right. And so when you shift that mindset, too, I think that's also where you end up creating a experience. Like you said in that whole recruiting journey for a job Seeker, whether it's a one day journey or a four week journey, it's going to be a really different experience. If you approach it from that perspective, you're going to pull them in in a different way in the conversation. Which kind of gets us to the interviewing part. Right. So post your job. You know, and depending on where you are, you, you have to use the most popular job boards, at least one for one reason. The primary reason is SEO. So these big job boards like Indeed, ZipRecruiter, you know, whatever job boards you guys have in your different regions that are the biggest ones, they may not always get you the best hires. That's not always what you're going for. Sometimes you do it just because there is an SEO game that has to be played. Nowadays, most workers are actually just typing in Google what they want. Right. Like they're not going necessarily directly to an Indeed or a Zip recruiter. Some are, don't get me wrong, but many just Google it. You know, carpenter roles in whatever Chicago, Illinois. And so you want to be on job boards so that your job will come up. So there's, that's the other side of recruiting gets very complicated or it can get complicated and probably more so than we want to go into today. But there is a game of like playing that marketing piece.

Yeah. For builders out there that aren't familiar with the term SEO, it means search engine optimization. And that just means that, that the big job sites, when someone searches in Google, they're going to show up early in the, in the search on the first page or something like that. So to get the most visibility from your job ad, you need to be on those big job boards, basically.

Right. Thank you for explaining that. I appreciate that. I do make assumptions. Yes. So jump in anytime you need to do that.

Just before we move to interviewing, I was interested to understand a little bit more about what your advice is for beyond the job board. Because I know when I'm looking for a job and in the past when I've looked for jobs, it's not just the job board I'm looking at. I'm going to the website, I'll look at their social media pages, I'll see if they've got any employee reviews and those types of things. So how much do all of those elements play into it as well?

Well, it does play a lot, especially if you're in a highly competitive area. Those are really especially also because even though the pool is smaller, we are getting younger people and more tech savvy people entering into the field. So you're right, they're going to look at your website, they're gonna look at your social, they're gonna read reviews about you. Not just client reviews, they're gonna go to places that might also have reviews on you as an employer. You know, here there's Glassdoor, there are others. And so you wanna, if you can think about it from that full holistic point of view. So definitely the things that we recommend our clients to do. And this is like the long game, it's called employment brand marketing. And it's really similar to your marketing to your clients. You're marketing to your future workforce. So you want to spend a little bit of your time, maybe about 20% of your time with marketing that you do. Whatever that is, social posts, advertising, whatever you want to have it be pointing to you as an employer. So things like, you know, show photos of your, of your team, your crew working out in the field with, you know, some kind of, hey, our team, you know, killed it today, finishing up this great, beautiful kitchen. Check it out. But, but highlight the team, not just the kitchen or not just that the client's happy, right? Like talk about the team and how they rocked it, how they did such a great job. If you do any social things, always put your social stuff out on, onto your social, onto your website, other places that you can, because those kinds of things start to paint a picture for future employees what it's like to work for you. You mentioned employee quotes and websites. So website is key if you can. You want to have a careers page, some type of a careers page. And ideally you need a video on it. Video really does rain these days. So having some type of a video, it doesn't have to be perfect and you know, highly, highly professional. If that's out of reach even, just take your iPhone, go around, show people, you know, do a little day in the life, get some quotes from your employees, what it's like to work there, show your culture through that video, put that on your website. That's really important. And then those quotes don't just stop quotes on your website, put them out in social, but also put them on your job post. So tell this little story, then put some quotes from your employees of what it's like to work there in the job post. What do they love about it? What's so awesome? Do they feel supported? You know, whatever it may be, put a few of those in there too. So utilizing all those channels to paint the picture of what's like to work for you is key these days.

Well, the other thing as well, it's not just about recruitment when. When builders are doing that. So by having those types of things on their social media and their website, it actually builds trust with their potential clients as well because they see a great team, a great business that's being run in happy employees. They're like, okay, they're going to build me a great home because they've got all those things lined up. So it actually does help with that. So it's not like it's only a recruitment thing.

No, that's so true. Do you know that actually our most visited page on our website is our team page. So you know, and I know in the industry we're in, there's a lot unfortunately of like scam recruiters. Unfortunately. Right. We're not in the cleanest industry. So I know that's a part of it. Like, even job seekers come to see, like, are we real people? Do we really exist? You know, who are we? Where are we? And so you are right though. It gives a credibility and a lot of trust building with your clients when they see your team, you know, and I really do love employers that put their team on their website too. Like, this is us. And they put photos, maybe a little bit of information about each one, humanizing everybody. It can take a little work if you've got attrition, but it really helps people to know who you are as a company and who all is a part of your company. So I. Yes, you're. I'm totally on board with what you're saying about that.

Very good. Okay, I'll let you know. I cut you off before, before you jumped into the interview process now. But. Okay, so we've posted the job, we've got some candidates coming in. What happens next?

Okay, so now this does differ again, depending on labor or whether it's a professional position in your office. So with labor, we have found, you know, this is our experience and people can have different ones. It also depends on your market and what's going on in your market. But we have found that we immediately, if somebody, you know, know, submit something or comes to us through a connection, an introduction, we find them online through a database, whatever channels we're using, we immediately pick up the phone and call that person, like right away. We don't wait very long because like I said, we can call three hours later and they've got another job. Like, it can move that fast. So you really want to post these and go into this recruiting phase when you can block out a chunk of time every Single day to look at this. And I recommend the end of the day versus the beginning of the day because you'll get things coming through and then you'll hit them first thing in the morning when they wake up. Right? So. So if you actually. I lie. That's. I'm sorry, I would sandwich it. Sorry. Check in the morning, check at the end of the day, that's when you want to do it. Because you need to capture them quickly. So call them really quick, get on the phone, do a screening call, you know, do your deal breaker questions, the kinds of things where it's like, it's not even worth you coming in if you don't check these boxes, whatever those are for you. But get on the phone as soon as you can and then of course bring them in for an interview. Now there's different ways to do that. I think when you're testing, when you're trying to vet someone's manual skills, like you are in labor positions if you can, and if it is compliant in your area, which does vary as well, it would be best to bring them on the job site if you can. And you don't have to have them swing the hammer because that can get into a lot of liability. But you can walk them around, say, hey, you know what, like here we're installing these. What would you do? How would you go about doing that? And have them explain and walk through a job site and explain to you, like how they would approach different things on the actual job site is a really great way of knowing. Do they really know what they're talking about? You know, do they really have the skills that you need? You know, so that's a really great way of understanding that. And while you're doing that, pay attention, do that. How they interact with the rest of the team members, are they saying hello? Are they not? Like how are they doing just interacting with you? How are they presenting themselves? Those kind of like non verbal cues. That's where you start understanding a little about culture and how they're gonna like mesh and intertwine or interact with your team. So pay attention to those things. If you can bring in other team members to have a chat, you know, like, hey, you know, come on over, let's talk a little bit about. So tell them what you're doing and see if they make a connection of any kind. You know, it doesn't have to be like we're buddies today because this, it's an interview and people tend to be a little reserved in interviews. But you usually can get A sense for whether or not there's a back and forth dialogue. You know, does somebody just not say anything at all? Like, these are the things you want to pay attention to in that process. And then if you like them and you think that they could be a good fit again, a lot of our clients will do sort of like a test. So they're like, hey, we want to hire you, we want to bring you on. You know, they don't want to, they don't want to lose somebody. So they immediately say, we'd like to make you an offer. But this is going to be like a 30 day test, you know, like we're going to be here, we're going to start you at this rate. We're going to, you know, this is for both of us. We want us to be the right fit for you and we want you to be the right fit for us. So let's test each other out for about 30 days and you know, give it a shot. And if it doesn't work, then we'll shake hands. We will. No bridge is burned. I can even potentially help you get another role somewhere else that might be a better fit. Otherwise, we'll, we'll be golden and we'll just soar and then we'll give you this potential, like maybe a performance raise or a, you know, maybe then that's when they actually make like the rate that you want them to make. You know, as an incentive, things like that. You can do all sorts of things to incentivize them. But you know, if you can test them, that would be awesome. Not every place you can, not every situation, but that's ideal.

Yeah, I love that. I love that process. It's, as you said earlier, it's kind of like, it's like a sales process. So the marketing gets them in and then as you said, the quicker you can call them and start engaging them, it's the same as a sales process. And then you kind of having an in person conversation if possible, to build rapport and get to know them better. There's a lot of overlaps there.

Yeah, there is. And going back to that sales piece, like again, when you bring them on, I mean, you want to do a little bit on the phone, but the phone is really to determine if they're, if they're worth your time. Like, you know, that's really what I, it is. Do they have those basic skills, tools, a car, a driver's license, like whatever it is that you really need and you can give a little pitch about your company? Like, listen, you know, I think it's really worth taking you in, bringing you into the next step. And here's a few things about my company that I think is really could really be great for you. For example, we do career advancement or if it's somebody younger, we have an apprenticeship program to really help you elevate your skills or, you know, whatever it is that you think is your value proposition. You do want to let them know that so that they're going to hang out and wait to meet you. Right. You want to get them excited enough. But then when you get them on it is a two way selling street. They're selling you with their skills and all that. But as you introduce them to team members, maybe coach your team members on saying like, hey, you know, one of the things I really love about being a carpenter on this team is and then fill in the blank, you know, and so you've got opportunities all throughout the day in that kind of like on site visitation interview to have people be selling for you without it just having to be you or whoever's doing the actual interview. Right. So take advantage of those opportunities as well to pitch.

Yeah, exactly. It's just as much about selling the job to them as it is about, you know, figuring out if they're right for you. So.

Yes, yes. And that should be the case no matter the role, you know, because it needs to work for both parties, otherwise it doesn't work. Right.

Yeah. Are there any common mistakes that you see builders making during this process?

Well, there's a lot of mistakes that we see people make. One of them is, you know, not taking the time. And even though we're talking about make this fast, some people will literally hire on the phone, you know, and so it's like you still have to do a vetting process. Don't, don't get caught up. Like here I am talking about how fast you have to move and it is true. But don't get so caught up in that that you don't dot the eyes and cross the T's and vet the person. Take the moment to meet them, have them meet them, team, you know, do the due diligence, you know, even in a competitive market, do the due diligence. Because we see more hiring mistakes happen when people just move too fast. You know, they just make quick decisions on the spot and they don't really take the time. The other one that I really do believe in and my team really believes in is check references. And I know it takes a beat to do that. If you can get someone on your team to do it. That's great because people won't call you back right away. I mean, it's a little bit of a headache. But if you ask the right questions, which is really important, you gotta ask the right questions. Reference checks really can be very valuable. And at times when we've seen, again, hiring mistakes, we'll say, well, did you ever check the references? And the answer is almost always no, you know, because it does take a little time. So if you can do it, it really could pay off. But you have to write, like I said, ask the right questions. So ask really thoughtful, like, revealing yes and no questions. So make it easy for the person on the other end of the phone to give you the information you need without needing a big narrative because they feel uncomfortable giving narratives. People are a little worried about compliance and this and that, right? So they're like, I don't want to say all the stories, but say yes or no questions. You know, like, did they always comply? Did they ever come late to work? Did they ever upset a client? Did they ever show up? You know, I don't know. Whatever. Whatever is important to you. But get those yes or no questions and be very specific. And that will help make it easy for the. For the person you're talking to.

I like that. Because I think it's easy to assume that you're calling a reference. They're automatically going to give positive stories. So you're like, it's almost just a checkbox. Whereas if you ask. If you ask the right questions, I can see how you might get information that you didn't think you'd get it.

Yeah. And now. Okay, so that brings up another component that you actually can use in interviewing, too. But one of the things that we do is we listen for hesitation as well. So, you know, don't just listen for the answer yes or no. Listen for the quick hesitation, the little bit of a pause. And then we might. I might say, you know, hey, you know, like, I'm just checking in here. But it sounded like you were a little hesitant. Like, is that more of a maybe? Or is that more of a somewhat yes or a somewhat no? Like, can you tell me a little bit more about that? And that little question can then open them up to say, well, you know, mostly they were on time, but there were these four times, or, you know, something like that. And you might get a little bit more information. But. But. So listen for those little hesitations as, like, little open doors to go a little deeper with them. And this is true for interviewing as well. So both professional positions and your labor positions look for cues as you're interviewing to go deeper. So that's one of the keys to culture fit which again going to labor positions a little harder to focus too much on culture fit because you don't have a lot of time to vet them super deeply. But for all of your professional positions and you know, the estimators and project managers and all those people, you have time to really determine if they're a good culture fit. And one of the ways that we recommend you do that is we actually use coaching techniques weeks, which you guys at APV could probably teach a lot of your members about this. But go deeper. So like let's say you ask a behavior question, like tell me a time when you know, blah blah, and then don't just take the answer, go. Okay, cool. Tell me more about that. Like what were the results? How did that person feel? How did you feel? What, what about that? Frustrated? Did anything about that process frustrate you? Did anybody think about that process really make you feel proud? Like always ask more questions than just accepting the single answer and you will uncover more and more about them and what makes them tick.

We do have an action plan about hiring, hiring a team for members available at abb, which I'll include a link to in the show notes. But so how much are you taking builders through the process beyond just finding the candidate? Are you helping them with those reference checks and the interview process as well or.

Right, yeah, we're full service so we do reference checks, we do background checks if needed. We do, we can do assessments like some of our clients want either disc or strengths finder or you know, culture index or all these predictive index. So we can help facilitate those. We can also help facilitate, you know, kind of like these working interviews. So let's say you're hiring, I don't know, an estimator and you want to see if they really know their stuff. Stuff. You can give them a project estimate, right? Like before hiring them as a, as a project. Like listen, we're going to give you this, we're going to have you estimate it to the best of your ability. You know, you can kind of come up with a mock sort of estimate kind of exercise. For example, you can also do mock exercises for all different kinds of roles, marketing roles, whatever. We can help facilitate those. And then of course we do all the interviewing as well. So we, we take everything off of, of our clients plate until we find like the perfect person. Then we introduce Them, and then they get, you know, get to determine if they also love that person and hire them.

Yeah. Interesting. I mean, what would you say? How much does this recruitment process then play into retention of these staff that you find?

I think it's critical. So if you want retention, going back to that culture piece, if you do a really great job hiring the right people, right, for your team, your leadership style, all those pieces, we have eight pillars or eight attributes that we considered to make a holistic employee for you. Then if you can. If you can get all of those, then that right there is going to help retention because they're coming to you for more than just their resume. They're picking you because they want the culture you have to offer. They resonate with your core values. They resonate with your mission. They want to work with the kinds of clients that you work with. They really love your team. So there's so much more intrinsically motivating them to stay with you than just a paycheck. Right. So that's really key. But then, of course, retention goes beyond that. Like, just making a great hire does not ensure someone will stay. You have to obviously do a lot more than. Than just making good hire. As a matter of fact, I know a lot of people, like, I hired the best person. They didn't stick around. It's. Well, you know, there could be reasons for that that need to be investigated and worked on, too.

That's probably a whole podcast episode in itself. I had the question there, and I was like, that could. That could be a rabbit hole. So.

I will say I will speak to onboarding really quick because there's a few things that we notice pretty frequently and pretty consistently that's missed in onboarding. So there's a couple of key components to onboarding that are so important. You need to have a true structure to your onboarding. So just like you have to have a process for recruiting, your process for what you're doing in the field. You know, all of your whole model has a process, right? You need to have a process for onboarding, and it needs to be robust and thorough and detailed. So one of the things we tell people is pretend, literally pretend, that you're kind of like creating a training program for, like, an eighth grader, right. If you think about from that perspective, you're going to get down to more details and more minutiae than you think you should, because we tend to make assumptions about what people know. Like, you even said SEO. I made the assumption everybody here knew what that meant. And, you know, you had to stop and go, wait, wait a minute, not everybody here probably knows that. So you got to kind of assume. The other thing is people really miss frequent feedback. So have it built in. Very frequent feedback, daily feedback, weekly feedback. During the training process, employees want to know if they're doing a good job. They want to know when they're not. They want to. Most people want to feel fix it. You know, you get the outliers, but most people really do want to do a good job. So they need that feedback. So make it a part of the process to give very frequent and regular feedback. And then the really, the last part of it is the social emotional component of onboarding that we see is often missed. So we are all humans, every single one of us. And social emotional connection, no matter the kind of person we are, it matters. It is how we are wired. We are wired to be tribal. We are wired to be a part of a group or a part of something. Right? So if you completely miss this component of onboarding, oftentimes people will leave and they will cite because I didn't feel like I was a part of the team, I didn't feel like I was a part of the culture. I didn't feel like I was a part of the company. So you have to go above and beyond and think about ways to integrate them in on that social emotional piece. And one of the ways, simple ways you can do this is through a buddy system. So get one of your great employees who's awesome. It doesn't matter if they're in the field or out on the office, it doesn't matter. As a matter of fact, cross connecting people is a really great idea. So if you're hiring a carpenter, have the estimator be their buddy, you know, or have the marketing person be their buddy. But have a buddy and the buddy is the person who talks to them about the culture, who talks them about the core values, who's like, hey, in our meetings it's not okay to go to the restroom. You got to hold it it or in our meetings it is okay. You just say be right back and you go, you know, like everybody's culture is really different and those are the like non verbal like rules that really make a difference. So sign a buddy and that's their job, you know, during that onboarding process.

Yeah, that's great advice. That's great advice. So is there anything else you want to share about recruitment and onboarding? I guess now, yeah, we won't get retention, but I'll stop before we get to retention. But do you have any other advice for builders out there about this whole process?

Well, I mean, honestly, you know, this is biased advice. I, I remember I had a coach once who told me, aaron, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right. And it really was a light bulb for me because I was trying to do my own bookkeeping, I was trying to do my own marketing. I was trying to do, you know, I was trying to just like. But I can, I'm capable, you know, I'm highly capable. I can do these things. But it really was then became the bottleneck for growth. So I do tell people, whether it is assigning it to someone on your team, hiring someone to do this, hiring an internal person, an external service like ours, get help with it because like the results that somebody like our company is seeing is vastly better and different than our, than our clients were seeing before they came to us. Just because they couldn't focus on it. It's not because they're not good at interviewing or whatever. They just didn't have the bandwidth. And if you don't have the bandwidth, you really don't get great results. So that, that's my piece of advice. It's a little biased, but it's true.

Well, no, it's great advice because anyone out there that has aspirations to grow their business, they need to make choices around taking themselves out of these type of processes. I mean, they can be involved in the definition of their culture and all those kind of things, which is super important. But if they're doing everything, then they're not going to be growing the way they want to. Not safely and securely anyway.

Right, right, right, right. Yep.

So Zephi Connects is an APB preferred partner. So for any members listening to this episode, you can get a 12% cash rebate by going to the Z Connects APB Rewards page, which I'll include a link for in the podcast notes. But Aaron, for any non members out there, where's the best place they can go?

Yeah, so our website definitely is the best place for information. We also have some really great, great free tools on there, including things about employment, brand marketing, questions for culture Fit, also even just like free and really low cost benefits that can help with your retention. So our website's really great and that's at Zephyr, which is I know you'll put in the show notes but it is for those who aren't able to look at those at Z, E, P H Y r. So Zephyr connects.com.com.

Yeah, there's those three resources, the employment brand marketing checklist, the 20 interview questions to determine culture, fitness fit, and crafting your ideal fit benefits package, which are all available for free on the homepage. So great place to start, I think.

Yep, definitely.

Cool. Well, Erin, thank you so much for all the tips and advice you've given to our listeners today. You've provided so much value. My biggest takeaways were starting with your culture and values so that you can identify that ideal candidate Persona similar that you would do with a client Persona use. Like think differently about the recruiting process. It's, it's a similar to a marketing and sales approach. It's not just about posting on a job board and get all of your systems in place, from finding staff to onboarding them and then retaining them as well. It's all about systemizing your business. Is that a fair summary, do you think?

Absolutely. I can't believe you did that in only three lines. Bravo.

Well, I was, I had more and then I had to pull it back because I was like there's so much good advice here. But I mean they can just jump back to that part of the episode because you just gave so much really good tips.

So good. I'm glad.

Appreciate it. But also a big thank you to our listeners out there today, wherever you are in the world. If you like the show, please subscribe to Professional Builders Secrets on your platform of choice. And if you feeling generous, leave a review as well. But until next time, have a great day. Thanks, Jaren.

Thank you. Have a good one.