The Ultimate Recruitment Guide to Roofers! How to Recruit Dozens in One Day?

Are you building a big roofing company? You won't get there alone. I'm Adam Sand, CEO of the roofing business Partner. Discover how to attract top talent, make your company irresistible to candidates, and scale your team faster than ever, all by hosting a high impact hiring fair in a single afternoon.

Just some quick math. If you want to get 200 teammates, assuming an 85% annual retention, if it takes 10 interviews to find each candidate and two and a half interviews to narrow them down, that's 2,515 interviews you're going to have to do to get 6,292 hours of candidate selection. One hundred and fifty teammates are going to quit you, abandon you, or get let go. Your goal might not be 200 employee company, but we're going to have to learn this stuff. That's where it comes down to, well, how do we actually go through the process of recruiting? What are the steps? Well, one of the things that has really helped me when I had a roofing company was the ability to host a hiring fair. When you're doing a hiring fair, you're going to have to do a bunch of interviews in one day. We had to post these ads in as many places as possible. We had to make this an event. You want to get a bunch of people to understand who you are as a business in a short period of time so that when you get to the point of now taking them into the interview process, they all want the job. And so how do you orchestrate this? One thing you have to get ready ahead of time is how do you explain the company? You want to be able to have something that compels all these people at the same time to want to work at your company. And there's a structure to how this works. So when they come in, you're going to have an open space where this is going to be up on a screen in the background and you're going to be playing a movie and people are going to come in and sit down and they're all going to get sitting in some open space. You can do this in a shop. You know what I mean? Like, you don't have to do this in a fancy hotel. You can do this literally in a shop with a bunch of chairs. And the first thing you want to do is tell us history of the company. This is a company that's been through some things. It doesn't matter if Your company started five years ago or 30 years ago, but you got to be able to tell the story, then share that this Story translates to happy customers. The way that we tell this is story for RBP companies is pretty consistent. We kind of say this is a roofing company that runs, thinks and runs like Uber. And we talk about how Uber had a problem, right, that hailing was done by hand or your phone. It wasn't great for the customers because you had lost or missed rides. There's no GPS communication. And it wasn't great for the taxi drivers because the medallion system was flawed. The drivers, you know, had to pay a lot of money to get a medallion and there's not much incentive or accountability. And the solution was one click car service. And this is the benefits of Uber kind of explains Uber. And this is the roofing experience has problems too. The, these are the problems in the roofing experience for the roofer and for the homeowner and also for the salespeople. They don't spend a lot of time selling. And this is the process of selling a roof. We explain how to sell a roof to people who've never sold one before and then we talk about how we change the game. We said, how do we bring an Uber like experience for roofing? Then we talk about the different rates of pay, right? So the field technicians can make more money than inside sales can. Then we kind of talk about the potential outcomes for these roles. So this is the job, this is the day in the life of the field technician. This is the day in the life of the customer success. And so what's next? Next is if you want to do this, do an interview, we call everybody back no matter what, and then maybe some of you can start a new future. Thanks for watching. If we know that that's the point that we have to get them to, we have to get as many people there as possible because we're going to sell our company to a number of people at the same time. And how we get that everything lined up is you have to run your ads, you have to change your mindset from, well, if they really want the job, they would remember they don't want the job, they have to get a job. Nobody wants the job. Everybody just wishes that the government gave us money for free. They have to get a job. They just want to get a job they like. The job they like is a job that wants them. So how do we create that environment? Well, in that hiring fair, you're going to have to tell them about the event. You're going to have to send them the link to your address, you're going to have to tell them the instructions on how to find their way to the backyard. Because usually roofing companies are not on the main street in a beautiful cube. They're on some warehouse. You have to make sure that you remind them the day before. You have to confirm that they're coming the day that they're coming. You have to understand some people are going to be five minutes late, and it has to be okay. They just missed the first five minutes of the presentation. You have to make sure that you're all set up. So the people in the company have to know that the hiring fair is happening. You want balloons on the fence, you want balloons on your trucks. You want the shop space to be tidy as people come in. They're usually going to start showing up at like 4:45 because people tend to show up early for job interviews. So you have to have that space ready for people. You don't want to be in front of them right away, so you have to have someone else being that concierge that brings them in. And you want to have some donuts and some canned soft drinks and water bottles. And then when those people come in, you check them in, you give them a name tag. Because the whole idea is that when you get up, you know, on stage in front of everybody, you want to make sure that you could say, hey, isn't that right, Jeremy? Isn't that right, Bobby? Isn't that right, tray? Isn't that right, Mat? And you put something on that's exciting on the tv. You don't want to be this, like, boring, quiet, awkward room. So you're going to have your laptop connected to this tv. The easiest way to do is just to put something exciting on something that's everybody likes, like Ford versus Ferrari and have this movie playing in the background, just so that it's exciting and it's keeping people entertained and they don't have to deal with the fact that they can engage with someone else. And when you come in, you're going to come in and jump into your Canva presentation. So then while you're presenting, you're going through and explaining your opportunity, and it's going to take you 20, 30 minutes. And then by the end, people should want to work there. They should be excited about the opportunity. You tell everybody, okay, we're going to go do interviews, and you have to have a separate place to go do interviews. As you go through these interviews, the first question that you ask is, hey, what did you find most interesting about the presentation? And they're going to say, oh, I like the part about how it's like a roofing company, like Uber, or. I like the part that you guys pay a flat fee for the inside salespeople. Right? Like, they're going to like something and so you can explain a little bit more about the position. And then you just. You go through it like a normal interview. It's a vibe check. You're just trying to figure out if they seem like the right fit. You want to keep these short because you got people waiting. And the cool thing about the people waiting is that, like, I've seen people wait two to three hours to get their interview. When they wait two hours to get their interview, and again, they're watching Ford versus Ferrari. It ain't that bad. What else were they going to do? They were going to go and watch Netflix on their couch. So they're not business owners where they just obsess about the company all day. They're going to be like an employee. And so when you're done, you tell people, no matter what, we call everyone back. No matter what, we're going to call you back. So you want to give them the feeling that you're going to treat them with dignity and respect and you're going to call them back no matter what. And the easy script, you know, you don't have to call people back and say, hey, so you actually kind of suck and probably shouldn't look at a career in this business. No, you just say, hey, I had to hire four people. There were eight there. If I could have hired five, you would be the fifth. But I had to hire four, and I just had to pick the best four. I'd encourage you to apply again because I don't know if these four are going to work out. I'm a human being, too. I make mistakes, too. So I could be getting it wrong, but I had to make that decision. So it's an easy way to call people back, the people that you think that there is a good chance with, and you call them back for a second interview. So you say, hey, you passed the first round. I just want another interview. We can actually talk a little bit more and I can answer more of your questions. And then you book like an hour to talk to them a little bit more. And then the second part is, how do you recruit and then retain those sales reps? Well, the retention really comes from two things. You need a sales leader, and that sales leader needs to focus on the sales team at least two hours a week in terms of having a presentation, training. This is how we set ourselves up. For the sale so that people will say yes, and then this is what you do, and they say no. And that's your objection training. So what is the pathway to success and what do you do when it doesn't work out? And that sales leader needs to know that pathway of success.