Build a Proactive Plan to Find Good Help!

by Jonathan McGaha | 30 June 2016 12:00 am

I am tired of hearing contractors say they can’t find any good or trained help. I get calls and emails all the time from contractors asking how to find help. When people don’t apply, you can’t hire them. And when you don’t take out a help wanted ad, they won’t apply. And yes, it costs money and a proactive plan to recruit good people!

First, you must realize there aren’t any readily available professional, competent, trained field trade workers, foremen, superintendents, project managers or estimators sitting in front of your office begging you to hire them! Second, if you aren’t being proactive about finding people and keeping your pipeline full of potential candidates, you’ll never find anyone to hire. Third, if you don’t have someone in your company accountable to continuously seeking and finding applicants to apply and interview, you’ll never have enough people. Fourth, if you don’t offer a great pay, fringe and benefit package, potential employees won’t work for your company. Fifth, if you don’t place an ad, people won’t know you need people or apply for work.

To attract and retain good people, you must be proactive about implementing a program to find and keep great people working for your company. Attracting and keeping people is a result of building a great place where good people want to work. They are empowered, have a future, feel part of a team, are trained, inspired, recognized, praised, thanked, and participate in decisions and encouraged to perform at a higher level.

Be Proactive!

1. Assign a hiring director. Put someone in charge of attracting people to apply for current and future positions. This hiring director is accountable to manage, monitor, encourage and keep applicants applying, ranking and sorting them, and setting interviews with key managers or field team leaders to interview and hire. Assign this part-time responsibility to an administrator, project assistant, engineer or human resource manager. Give them the task and goal to keep your pipeline full of applicants for your immediate needs and people on the bench for when you need them. Give them a budget for ads, website pages, brochures and incentives to attract people to apply for jobs on an ongoing regular monthly basis.

2. Offer hiring incentives. Provide referral incentives to encourage employees to refer candidates to apply for work. The best people often come from referrals. Most people have relatives, friends or friends of friends they know who have the same values and work ethic as they do and would likely do well at your company. The minimum referral incentive bonus that works well is a minimum of
$250 to $500 depending on the position someone applied for, interviewed, hired and lasts at least three months working. Also consider offering a hiring referral reward to suppliers and subcontractors for help filling your company positions.

3. Offer a hiring bonus. Offer a signing bonus or special perk to new employees who last at least three months with your company.

4. Offer great pay packages. To compete for good people, you must offer more pay, benefits, education, perks and extras than your competition. Remember, you’re also competing with full-time job opportunities at major companies, utilities and the government who offer reasonable pay for a guaranteed 40 hours per week plus a full package of benefits including retirement, sick pay, family health insurance, stock options, vacation and other perks. In a tight hiring market, you have to offer the right total pay package and top benefits to attract good people. I often hear contractors who don’t offer health insurance, vacation pay, holiday pay or full-time work continue to have a hard time getting new people to take a job with them.

5. Develop a hiring webpage. Add a “We Want You” hiring page on your website which explains why your company is a great place to work and how well you treat your employees as family and teammates. Have testimonials and pictures of your team smiling and working together. Talk about the benefits you offer, your training program and brag about how long your people stay with your company. Post a simple application easily downloadable as well. Also, put the website address on all of your job signs and in your hiring ads.

6. Make it easy to apply. Have a “Now Hiring” sign or sticker posted on your office, trucks and job signs. Include the direct phone number to the hiring director and your hiring webpage link. Have regular interview times at the same time every week or month. Give everyone in your company “Now Hiring” business cards to hand out with the phone number and regular interview times shown.

7. Always be looking. Run hiring ads every month looking for positions you currently need filled and might require in the future. The goal is to fill the empty slots now plus develop a list of potential hires ready to join your company when needed. Too many contractors don’t have enough lead crew leaders, foremen or superintendents. They try to only have barely what they need to get by with their workload. This doesn’t allow for growth, emergencies, accelerated schedules or new project opportunities that might come up quickly. Always have an extra foreman, superintendent, upcoming leader and crew ready to fill in at anytime.

8. Offer summer intern jobs. Often the best employees are those who work part time for your company during the summer months and now are in need of a full-time job. Create a program where interns can move around and do fill-in work for different crews, estimators, mechanics and project managers. Let them assist and learn about your company and the future opportunities available.

9. Hold career days. Start relationships with your local high school and vocational school teachers and counselors. Develop a program to get young people out to your company to see what you do and how they can build a career as construction professionals.

By being proactive, you can find and attract good people to work for your company. Follow and implement these proven ideas and I guarantee your company will not have a people shortage problem in the future.

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George Hedley is a professional construction BIZCOACH and popular industry speaker who helps contractors increase profits, grow and get their companies to work. To learn more, visit www.hardhatpresentations.com[1].

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