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Welcome to builder nuggets hosted by Dwayne Johns and Dave young. Hey, our mission is simple, build freedom. We are a couple of entrepreneurs turned business coaches who have dedicated ourselves to helping our builder remodeler clients create the most rewarding businesses in the industry. My co-host Dwayne has been a successful builder and remodeler for over 30 years. He's seen the highs and the lows. From the beginning though, Dwayne has been on a quest to find a better way to run a contracting business. In 2016, he found that better way. That's how I met Dave, a lifelong entrepreneur and visionary who measures his success by the success of those around him. He reached out one day with a formula on how to transform my business and the rest is history. Since then, we've teamed up to help hundreds of contractors like you build better businesses and better lives. Now we've decided to open up our network and share our secrets so we can start moving the needle with you. It's collaboration over competition. Each week, we bring together industry peers and experts who share their stories so that we can all build freedom together.

We are halfway through our biggest series yet we gave you a little break over the holidays, but are right back to recruiting this week with Paul and ed from contractor staffing source. Here we go with episode four of six. So far, we've learned that you should always be recruiting that your people earn an investment, not a cost. And that it's probably a good idea to outsource at least some of your recruiting today, we bus submit that your talent has to come from within the industry. Hey, welcome back guys. Thanks Dave.

(00:01:37): Yeah, it's good to be back.

(00:01:39): Yeah. So we're, we're going to raise some eyebrows today, especially with respect to project managers. Ed, why do you think it is that we constantly see must have construction experience in job postings?

(00:01:56): Yeah, well, I think for, you know, the obvious reason that, that there are some specific skillsets that are required in construction. And so it seems obvious that someone has to have experience in the construction industry in order to be able to perform those, those tasks and duties. And what we found is, especially during the pandemic, we have found that that's not the case as at least for certain positions within construction.

(00:02:23): I'd like to have that, you know, who people are, is more important than what they know. Cause you can always keep somebody something new. That's not that hard to do, but you can't change who they are. Are they honest? Are they smart? Do they have integrity? Those are qualities that you can't change, but how much, how do they know? You know, do they know how to run software? And they run, you know, co-construct do they know some certain project things you can teach people that, so in recruiting, we've learned who they are is more important than what they

(00:02:50): Know. Have you identified people or roles or other industry categories or people coming from a certain discipline that translate really well that maybe you didn't think of before the pandemic, like what's emerged that you've

(00:03:04): Noticed. Yeah. I think the first thing is to set the context of what's happened during the pandemic, right? Certain industries have been impacted in different ways. So fortunately the residential construction industry has been impacted in a positive way, right? With everyone working at home as, as Paul likes to say, everyone's either feathering their nest or building a new one. So residential construction has shot up during the pandemic and our industry has, has done really well, but that's not the case in other industries such as hospitality or entertainment and those industries. And so there are people in those in industries that have been negatively impacted and as this pandemic drags on longer and longer, they start to think, well, geez, you know, maybe it's time for me to, to do a career change and get out of this industry because who knows when I'm gonna be able to be able to work in my industry in that way.

(00:03:56): Unfortunately, construction is not one of the first thing, things that pops to mind for these folks, but that's what we're all, you know, that's what we're all trying to change and, and laying the groundwork for some of that, that, and, and there, there are some, you know, we're starting to see it in, in some other areas. We've talked about it in, in some past episodes, you know, some of the younger generations, some people are beginning to start to look at some of the skilled traits and these other things as a viable source. So it's a it's is a good time to take it. One

(00:04:21): Of my favorites is the office manager role. Now, when you think about it, we've been recruiting. You gonna laugh with this wedding planners to the office

(00:04:30): Manager, the office managers was we've got two good examples. Let me, I'll tell you. The first one really is a wedding planner as a selections coordinator. So we had a client that was looking for a selections coordinator. All right. And you think about what a selections coordinator does. They're helping couples to select all the decisions that are gonna go into their new home. And when we were advertising for that, we got the idea of looking outside of the industry and we found a wedding planner. So again, if you look at this way, wedding planner, that she had been impacted by the pandemic. She hadn't planned a wedding in over a year and who knows when she was gonna plan her next wedding. So she was like, look, I've had it with wedding planning, but I wanna do something different. But we were able to transfer her skillset seamlessly from being a wedding planner, to being a selections coordinator.

(00:05:21): So if you can about it, what did she do as a wedding planner? Well, she was helping stressed out couples, making big selections for their, their big day, right? What color, you know, what color tablecloths they're gonna have and what band that they're gonna get. And, and you know, what, what flavor of cake and she went from that to helping homeowners selecting what kind of granite they're gonna have on their kitchen, countertops, her what the back splash tile design's gonna be in their bathrooms. And so it's a very transferable skillset. Again, she didn't know anything about construction, but she knew how to work with with stressed out couples, making emotionally important decisions. And so it was just perfectly transferable from being a wedding coordinator, to being a selections

(00:06:03): Coordinator. And there's also the issue of like maybe an office manager, because you think about it. A wedding planner has to get a bunch of, I, but say difficult people on the right place at the right time. But, and the crater, the flower person, and as a rule, these people are not the most dependable people in the world. And they have to all be at the right place at the right time. They gotta do their job. They're supposed to do it, the client, or has to be happy with that. They've done. And it's all gotta look at, but that sounds a lot like a remodel, right? You gotta get all these people at the same place at the same time, they have to be do what they said they were gonna do. And the client has to be happy. And the good news is these people chose this as a career. It isn't like they just, you know, one day was forced to be a wedding planner of all the things they did. They have a desire to do that, a real passion for things together, making them work. So we found them excellent. And they're also a lot less expensive than the people of construction industry

(00:07:05): And more available

(00:07:07): Absolutely way more available.

(00:07:08): Yeah. So Dwayne, what does your gut tell you? I mean, we hear, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of people listening to this right now going. Yeah. But when you get to the job site is completely different scenario. So we probably need to talk about which problem you're actually solving. And what's really going down on there or going down in this scenario. And how do you bring somebody into your team that doesn't have the boots on the ground, construction knowledge. If you do choose to bring that per in, what do you have to have to supplement and support them? So you're not hanging them out to

(00:07:43): Dry. Yeah. I think the training is obviously it's huge having training the systems to process all the things we talk about for being able to bring somebody on onboard them and elevate 'em, but it, it really does. A lot of it is gonna revolve around the role you're looking for. I mean, obviously if you're trying to bring in somebody to do through hands on skilled part of construction, that's gonna be really difficult, bringing them from outside the industry, you know, without a ton of hands on training. But when we get into some more of these management type roles, supervisors, project managers, office managers, that's, I think where there's probably some of the biggest opportunity because, and I think you guys would agree, you know, when you look at someone that is really a professional manager, professional project manager, that person can move between industries because they're really, you know, their strong skillset is gonna be the soft skills of people's skills. Being able to manage resources, manpower, they can move from industry to industry.

(00:08:36): But one of the things that you go higher up the scale, I mean, if the guy's a carpenter in need needs to know how to, you know, do a trust, you're not gonna transfer that, but the higher you go up to scale, the easier is to find. And if you're looking for, let's say a CEO or general manager, you can go from being a general manager of a, of a, you know, restaurants to a construction company. And you're right. The skills are just the same.

(00:08:59): It really comes down to, is your role managing people or is it performing construction related tasks? And if it's a hybrid role and you have somebody else on your team who is very, very strong at the boots, a on the ground construction stuff, then there is opportunity to bring in somebody who can manage the people and the relationships with the eyes and ears on the construction side and, and learn that. But what we're really talking about are people leading other people, that's the majority of it here and executing any type of product from, from there on down. Yes. But at the end of the day, you still need somebody somebody's eyes on that job site who understands those things. And I think there's a lot of people out there right now who are saying, you cannot have a project management scenario where there isn't at least somebody who can walk that site, check on things, understand the, and be a go-to resource for that people manager.

(00:10:00): So I agree with you guys, what you're saying, that there are great people managers out there, there are great executors. How do you get the construction knowledge to them? Some of it can be trained, but other, I think more often than not, we we're probably be go going to be looking at who, who do you surround them with? You know, if they have unbelievable trades, the trades are the ones who are the experts in their discipline. If you have an unbelievable site person, they're going to be the expert in what's going on with the site. And this person becomes sort of the center of all this knowledge and is managing all those logistics and relying on all of them and absorbing it and learning with some oversight. Then I think it becomes possible, but there's a bunch of moving parts that I think need to be figured out. And Dwayne, you touched on it as well, too, with the systems and processes, it needs to be repeatable. It needs to be recurring. There, there needs to be predictable and have all these things mapped out that everybody's working from the same playbook and using the same tools. Other wise, you are throwing that person right to the wolves.

(00:11:00): One transfer of skills is easier. If a person would say in commercial and commercials, not doing this commercial, commercial, construction, just screens a bit, you know, sure that if you're building buildings and you're building high rises and whatever, and then they decide to build houses, a lot of of skills are transfer because you're still building stuff, right. You're still looking at plans. So the basic skillset of, you know, building a school versus building a house is not that far removed. Now, admittedly, if you were running a restaurant, it's a different kinda deal. So we've also found some of these people that have a, a background in commercial construction, and that seems to work pretty well.

(00:11:40): Yeah. You can see how that's pretty readily transferable. We know we have many business owners that we coach that have that, that background or made the transition Blair McDaniel as an example, who we've had on the show before started an entire network coming from that background. So absolutely that is that's transferable for sure. I think the good news here or the real opportunity that exists here is that there are a whole bunch of people out there that could be trained to do this job to workforce out there. The good news is that there's a workforce out there that could be trained to do this job that have the people skills and the organization skills and the communication skills to do it. Couple things happen. Where do you find them? And then how do you attract them to this industry? Because that's the really exciting opportunity here right now is how do you find them? How do you support them? How do you get them interested? How do you make them want to come to this industry? Because we need these resources. And if we can borrow from those other industries, man, that's a great opportunity for, for contractors. Well, there's

(00:12:47): Two things you can do. They're key. One is you put no construction experience necessary in the yeah. Right. As opposed to construction and experience mandatory. The second one is you put the salary because the construction industry pays way better. A lot of industry, maybe not the financial industry, which pays construction industry, the hospitality industry, and a lot of industries in general, retail don't pay near as well as construction. So no experience, necessary construction experience necessary in advertising the salary of your house.

(00:13:19): That makes that makes sense. What kind of conversations are you guys having with the business owners that aren't there yet? What, like walk us through what that conversation looks like when you sit down with a business owner and you say, Hey, we think you should consider somebody without construction experience. What's their response, ed, do they, do they think you're crazy?

(00:13:41): Well, I mean, they're, they're definitely much more open to it now, Dave, because the labor I can imagine, right. So, you know, most of our clients are just so desperate trying to find help. They're, they're definitely willing to consider people without out construction experience, especially when we share, you know, our previous experiences like we did with the wedding planner, or we had a hotel manager at a closed hotel that moved over to become a general manager and did a great job there. So they're definitely much more open to it. You know, I say that, you know, right now for every every one candidate, there's, there's three position that are open. So it really is a, a candidate's market right now. And so employers are really having to be creative and to be much more open-minded to find people. And again, it's depends on the positions that they're looking for, right?

(00:14:28): If it's obviously something that needs a specific skillset, then they've gotta have some cut, direct construction experience. But again, for, and some of those roles as well, you know, going back to the wedding planner, I think some construction business owners might argue, oh no, you can't do that. If they don't understand, you know, finishes and selections and all of that. And, but that's information that can be taught. What, what can't be taught was that invaluable skill that that wedding planner already had, which was how to communicate and coordinate and, and help emotionally charge couples, making decisions.

(00:15:02): So

(00:15:02): Also sometimes you for what is that? I had a friend once knew a guy who had an employee. Usually they don't have any substantial evidence. It's more like urban myth that they're basing

(00:15:15): Their decision. I'm kind of looking at it through the lens of opportunity. And Dwayne, I'll be interested in your take on this as well. It makes sense to me that in a situation like this in a market like this, we go back to our previous episode where we talked about golden retriever puppies, somebody who doesn't have the skillset, but is the right person. It's just timing. They don't have the skillset yet. They don't have the amount of construction knowledge today, but is there opportunity in your organization to create entry level roles or parallel roles are these entry points where somebody can come in and develop more of that skill or enough of the skill to be more effective on their own. And that's just, it ends up being a different type of investment. You're investing a little bit more and you may feel it as you know, I'm taking a chance, but we've all as business owners felt like when we found a great person, we hire them and figured out where we would be able to use them after.

(00:16:14): And if they're taking something off somebody else's plate, maybe that is freeing up somebody with construction experience to do less of the other things. And I think that's where you were going with the, you know, the office manager type scenario, but is there an opportunity Dwayne, to create entry level roles where there's a little bit more, there's a little bit more mentorship. There's specific things that this person can take off somebody else's plate and get the more hands on experience or, you know, absorb over the next six to 12 months and grow into a more refined role. To me, it seems like there's, this could be a lab for that.

(00:16:52): Well, it certainly, and we've, we've talked about this a bit. I remember Joe STO, when we look back at the episode with Joe STO, you know, training is central to what he feels is probably one of the weakest things most builders have in, in their businesses. And it's gonna be a complete shift across the industry. We're going to have to put time and resources into training. It's rethinking, it's, it's allocating and where you're gonna be spending some of your time and resources. It's a big cultural shift too, within a lot of these small businesses, because you know, you're gonna have folks now that are, I'm looking at some senior level, maybe carpenters, lead carpenters, those type of people, they get up, they come to work, they wanna do their job. And now you're gonna expect them to be a mentor or a, you know, a coach to some degree. And you probably would be surprised. A lot of them will be willing to do that, but they're gonna need the tools as well. You know, you, you can't just throw these people into that environment, expect that there's gonna be some sort of through osmosis. These people are gonna get it. It really has to be structured, but yeah, it's, it's a challenge for the industry. But I, I mean, it's a challenge that look at the reward on the other side, when you, when you do pour some money and time into this, it's really gonna

(00:17:54): Work. It's what we talk about with, you know, under, under EOS lingo. And we do a lot of work with that. It's the phenomenon of or the strategy of delegate and elevate and, and in our own thinking, we flip that or on to elevate then delegate. It's the opportunity to elevate somebody, to get them the education, the training that they need, the consistency that they need. So then you can go and delegate more to them with, with confidence. And I think probably the biggest risk here is bringing somebody in and without having a plan, just throwing them, throwing the 'em into the scenario. And I bet, you know, Paul, your had a contractor buddy who had a friend one time, probably didn't have much of a plan for supporting that person, a dedicated plan with intention coming in and shepherding them to a spot where they could be elevated and succeed. It was probably plugging a hole and they use the wrong resource to plug a hole. That's not what that wasn't the right time.

(00:18:57): Well, one of the things at large production builders, usually they will not hire anybody with construction experience because they want teach them the Dr. Gordon way or whatever. They do not want to have to educate somebody. . So a lot, a lot of the large production builders will literally not hire anybody that has construction students. Cause they wouldn't teach 'em their corporate culture, their way they wanna bring with them, the bad habits they've earned before. And obviously the larger builders have better resources, but the concepts

(00:19:28): I can see custom builder listeners are out their eyes rolling because they're thinking that's exactly one of my challenges. I'm gonna have to face that I have to bring in somebody with no knowledge and teach them how to build a house from the ground up. So, I mean, right there, there's your challenge. I mean, I'd be interested to hear what you guys are. What are you guys seeing? I guess since our listeners, for the most part are on the custom builder side, what kind of specific challenges? I mean, when, when you bring the him in, there's gotta be some setup. It can't just be, Hey, we found this person outside the industry. I think they're a good fit. There's gotta be more to it than

(00:19:57): That. Well, you have to have a plan. That's really what it boils down to is if you're going to try this, if you, if you wanna take a crack at it, if you wanna be an early adopter of a strategy like this, you need to have that rock solid training plan. You need to have leaders on your team who are willing to bring somebody under their wing and show them how to do it and grow them and raise them and elevate them as a group. But you need the rails for all that to run onto the system. You need the documentation, you need the, the repetition. So,

(00:20:28): So ed and Paul, how are you, how are you helping to set folks up like that when you, you approach them and, and try to get them to understand that, you know, you can start to go outside the industry. What kind of things are you doing? Well, in some

(00:20:37): Cases, there's outside resources. Like, you know, how to, we a set of plans, how to use co-construct or pro something. So there's outside training courses and resources. They don't have to be an expert in everything. So you can put together a, an semblance of outside resources that can teach. 'em Some basic skills. If you don't wanna take the time to do it, corporate culture, that's your thing. You have to teach em. But if you need to teach somebody how to read a set of plans, or how do use software, there's lots of outside resources you can use to do that. And you can just, you know, outsource that for most of

(00:21:10): I'm, I'm thinking about the unsolvable problem episode that we've had before, where it's like, everybody's looking for the magic bullet. They're hoping, well, maybe, you know, can I bring somebody in from another industry? Can I bring them in and do it? Yes, you can. But the reality is there's work and effort that is going and strategy and support that is going to have to get put into that. If it's going to work and most builders right now are saying, I don't have the time to do that. I need somebody right now. And we'll talk about that in our next episode too. But it seems like if you want to be able to cultivate and grow people from other industries, you just need to have a plan to do it, and you need to carve out the time and you need to believe that it's important enough. And that it's, that it's an element you want to put in. Otherwise don't try it because if you do try it and you don't have that in place, I think that's probably ed, where you would say that you will see people setting up people for failure.

(00:22:08): You know, I think Dave, you hit it right on the head with the training aspect. You know, training has to be an ongoing part of the business, an ongoing process, just like we've said, you know, recruiting as well. Part of that ongoing process that a successful builder has is not only an ongoing recruiting process, but an training process and recognize that, you know, while we're in a challenging employment market, now it's never gonna be as good as it probably was in the past. And we're always gonna have to be training people in skills. We're not gonna be able to find the can enough candidates that have the perfect experience. So I think that training an ongoing training and skills development program should also be a, be a part of, of every successful builder's ongoing process.

(00:22:58): One of the good things about that is once you do it, you don't have to do it over again, 15, right? Once you set up the system and the say the training program for a superintendent to project manager that is documented, right? And so the next one's a lot easier than one after that's easier. So you've got an ongoing process. It doesn't like you have to start from scratch every time. Once you get the system set up, you can use it for years, but you gotta take the time to set it up. As we know, a lot of small contractors don't have lot issues. It sort of takes that

(00:23:29): Well, I've started thinking that when it comes to talent, the most important thing is getting them on your team. If they're the right person, if they're the right fit for your culture, if they have the right mindset, if they mesh well with the rest of your team and they have some talent and ability, get them onto your team and you can work on the role stuff later, like people will always surprise you in where they flourish, to what role they rise to once you re reinvest in them. But if you feel like they're the right fit and they're showing tendencies towards part of what you do, and you think that there's more there, then make the investment and they will tell you based on their skills, what their path about where they're thriving, how they're learning, give them more opportunity to grow into that. The real challenges is that that takes time. But I, I would take a team full of passionate, committed, excellent people over technicians that, you know, didn't have didn't fit because you you'll be able to grow and, and thrive. And I think you have to decide who you're looking for, not what you're looking for. Right? And most,

(00:24:29): Most larger industries, they have the training programs that, that they've proven that it works right.

(00:24:34): That's true, but our audience, I mean, they don't have that. They're really searching for that. This is why you have builder 20 groups and groups like remodelers advantage and another home builders association groups that are trying to figure out how do we leverage our mind power to come up with these philosophies that we can share with each other and not every small builder has that. This is why we've created this show and are bringing guests on like you so that we can get this level of thinking shared. And we can identify where do these resources exist so that you know, that that company that's, that's growing right now, doesn't have to figure it all out on their own. They know that there's other people out there working with them on it and solving it. So, yeah, it, it is solved in a lot of those big companies, but we could take away that mindset. It's just, it's realizing that you need to make that investment. It's just really hard to know how to do it right now. And I think you're right,

(00:25:27): The outside resources, the builder, 20 groups, the NA, and that kinda stuff, lots of times they put together programs, which are accessible the entire membership. Yeah. And you can, if anybody's going to IBS this, you're assuming it happens. There's lots of people there who they can get come in contact with who will help train in specific skillsets.

(00:25:45): So for our audience out there that maybe wants to have this conversation with you guys directly like a one-on-one to say, Hey, you know what? I would like to learn more about this. I want some help with this. All the things that you've talked about are resonating. Do you guys do that? Do you have a one-on-one where you will spend some time with them and find out about their business individually? Like is something you're open to?

(00:26:09): I would say certainly in the room of recruitment, like if they go, how do we find the people? You know, we sort of offer recruiting, coaching as part of what we do and to find out if it's a good match between our recruiting company and them will obviously interview them or running through an assessment and show 'em what they need to do. So that doesn't cost anybody. We gotta find out if they're a good fit, if they're willing to make some of those changes. And we're happy to have that discussion. If anybody wants to give us a call going

(00:26:36): After myth, number four, maybe just end here real quickly with a couple of pros and a couple of cons on recruiting from within the construction

(00:26:43): Industry.

(00:26:44): I would say the con is, if you don't have a training program, you don't have a way of way of getting the skills to the people that have the passion and the right, you know, who they are as a person. I wouldn't give it a shot because you're setting yourself up with disaster. And the other thing I would say is be open when you're recruiting people to find out who they are before you find out what they

(00:27:09): Know. And on the pro side, recognize that by dropping that line about construction experience required, it expands the, the candidate pool significantly in a currently challenging labor market. And so that's the real, the real benefit of that. And then second pro is that by getting someone from outside of the construction industry, you might find a fresh perspective and some new approaches that could be effective and give you some new, effective ways to, to improve your, your business,

(00:27:42): Give it a shot. You know, maybe I'll start with your, you know, senior project manager, start with your selections Gordon, start with a low risk position and take that leap of faith for that lower position and go outside the industry and see how it works

(00:27:58): And start to develop your own strategy and your own approach to how to do this and map it out and kid, and, and really listen to that person and, and see if it's, if it can be amplified. And if, if you could make it exponential in your business, because if you're one of the businesses that gets it and can, you've just opened up a whole new pool and, you know, that's the exciting piece to think about is can we attract other nontraditional what we would think of as nontraditional pools of talent to our industry. That would be great, where everybody's concerned about how do we grow the next generation? Well, that the next generation could already be out there right now. They're just doing something else.

(00:28:39): It brings it. You're only as good as your people. And that's paramount right

(00:28:42): In this environment. And as tight as the lay market is, this is more than, you know, thinking it's a myth that you must recruit from within the construction industry. It actually probably will become a flaw if that's the way you're gonna

(00:28:53): Think. Yeah. We're flipping the script. Okay. So in our next episode, we're hitting myth number five. And we're gonna take a look at if you should hire fast and we're in a market where you wanna just that person. So looking forward to, to that one next guys.

(00:29:10): So Dwayne, the best way for listeners to find us is to really book a call directly on our calendar. So we will provide a link in the show notes to our calendar so that they can book an appointment directly with us, or if they prefer they can read chat to Allie, our sales manager, and she'd be happy to book an appointment with them.

(00:29:34): Wanna level up, connect with us to share your stories, ideas, challenges, and successes.

(00:29:39): The builder nuggets community is built on your experiences. It takes less than a minute to connect with us@buildingnuggets.com, Facebook or Instagram, want

(00:29:47): Access to the resources that can take you and your team to the next level. One call could change everything well, we're onto myth. Five hire fast and fire slow. We're in the home stretch. Now. Welcome to the penultimate app episode. Seriously, Dave pen,

(00:30:02): Ultimate. I know it's almost as bad as using bespoke in a sentence.

(00:30:07): Okay. It's our second to last episode on the miss of recruiting with Paul and ed from contractor staffing source, we've covered a ton of ground. If you haven't checked out the previous four, go back after this and get yourself caught up.

(00:30:18): Thanks for joining us again, guys, ed, it's still slim Pickens out there as a good idea right now to grab any decent candidate that comes your way.

(00:30:28): Well, it's not necessarily a good idea, Dave. Actually it is it it's, it's not a good idea, but unfortunately it is a reality for many of the builders out there today in the super tight job market that we're in right now, trying to find good candidates. It's hard. And so, and it's a very competitive market where every candidate has several different options available. And so when a builder finds someone, they, they wanna hire them fast because they're afraid that they're gonna lose them to someone else if they don't respond quickly. But the fact is that you don't wanna hire them fast. You wanna hire them effectively. You wanna engage them fast. You wanna make sure that you're responding to those initial inquiries quickly, but then you need to take your time to really evaluate the candidate and make sure that they're gonna be a good fit for your company culture. And that they're gonna be able to address the position and the skills that are needed for that position. There's

(00:31:24): Also, this is the symptom of contractors that maybe done some cover before they, they just put one ad in indeed and they're done, right? Like we, we do, we, you know, spread a big net over lots and lots of resources, but because their resources are so limited, their choices are so limited. So they have to make a decision on that one person or three people that showed up. They're not choosing from 30 or 40 or 50.

(00:31:50): We learned that from you in the earlier episodes that you need to always be recruiting and that you need to actually have a plan so that you can avoid this problem in the first place. But the reality is, is even with that, there's been attrition in the workforce and people who had a, a pretty decent plan may have lost people due to circumstances in the marketplace or, or competition or, or whatever. And that, and that has dried up. But I would say for the most part, probably 90% of the, of builders or more, a very high percentage in any event, don't have that strategy. And now they're sitting at the table trying to interview somebody and the temptation has got to be there. So ed, what you said makes a lot of sense. If, if you've got somebody at the table, what's the strategy to take the time to say, all right, we're fortunate enough to get them here. They're talking to other people, how do I quickly do my due diligence? How do I effectively do this? Like I, I start thinking, what are the strategies and tactics that you can use when you've got it? When you've got one on here and you know, it's, the line could be broken at any second. How do you retain that? It's a delicate balance. Us probably, but what are some of the strategies?

(00:33:01): Yeah, well, engaging them as quickly as possible is, is the first and most important thing. So if you are running ads and indeed, and checking 'em once a week, that's not gonna work. You need to be several times a day looking and evaluating and making sure. And the, the, as soon as someone applies for your position, you need to engage them and reach out to them and then start on the next step of the process. And the next step should be some type of evaluation or assessment. We have a pretty comprehensive assessment test that we ask our candidates to complete. And it's an investment. It's a time and investment on their part. I mean, they're not gonna do that unless they've been engaged first. And someone has contacted them and had an initial conversation with them expressed that, that their, their skillset and their, their background looks like a good fit. And that they're very interested in really selling the company on that. So once you've made that initial contact and you've kind of sold your company to that potential candidate, then you can engage them to start through the assessment and, and screening process that you need to do in order to really be thorough before you offer someone a position

(00:34:16): It's analogy the hook. So you start off with, I was really impressed with your me. Resume looks like you'd be a great match for the company and try to get them be enthusiastic about them working for your company. Cause again, you don't have to hire, but you have to engage and you got them. You need to get them interested in your company and you, and the best way, way to do that is compliment them, say they're awesome. Their resume was really great. Looks like a good fit and get them to come to wanna work for you. And then that buys you the time to do a deeper due diligence to find out if they're the right person. But if you don't start off with that setting the hook like, man, you're amazing. Like, well, you might work out, there's gonna be looking for the job. So it's important that you meet with passion, how much you want them to work for you, you get set the hook, get 'em committed, and then you can keep 'em on the line for a couple weeks while you're doing your due diligence.

(00:35:13): Yeah. Genuine enthusiasm is contagious. So that makes sense to make sure that they feel that, that they feel your interest. I think it's a good, gonna be important to do it in a genuine and relatable way. But, and then I guess, so the next step in the process, ed is the, you know, encouraging them to take an assessment to me that shows me that you're willing to invest in them, that you want them to take this and you're investing what a great way to start. But the first thing you do is invest in them, but you're also asking them for them to make a time investment too, but let, probably letting them know what they're going to get from the report and sharing that information and why you're why you're doing it. So what happens next after that ed,

(00:35:58): After the assessment, then also there needs to be some initial contact obviously before the assessment and then after the assessment, there needs to be a follow up screening kind of based on the assessment results. And what you find in the assessment then is when you confirm and verify those results by having a, another discussion with the candidate and be able to, to confirm whether that's you know, the assessment results are, are accurate or not. And at that point, then I think you're having a, a face to face interview, either an in-person interview or over zoom. But at that point, you really want, once you've done the initial screening and reviewed the resume and done the assessment, then that's when you really need to have the, the face to face interactions. OK.

(00:36:47): And I think the, the idea of higher slow is probably in this number because it's higher with the appropriate due diligence and the right information. And that slow might take over week. It might take week and a half, but it's not about slow. It's about with the right information, the due diligence to ensure that it's a good fit before you make the

(00:37:07): Commitment higher intentionally or methodically, instead of just, it's not about the speed it's about covering everything. And I think that's a really good distinction to make here. It's not higher, fast or higher or slow it's. How do you speed up, you know, in a market like this, how do you accelerate these multiple steps that you're walking us through here, ed, what are some ways to keep momentum and to accelerate that and to keep your foot on the gas so that you can get to your mutual decision with this candidate faster than you normally would've. You don't wanna just blast through it. But I suspect that you've probably been in scenarios where under normal market circumstances, people are, you know, waiting. They're gonna see if more come in, you drag this thing out over weeks. Now there's the opportunity to just eliminate those gaps and apply the same best practices that you're gonna share with us just in a, in a Staca pace instead of a, you know, a slow pace,

(00:38:04): Right? And you know, the thing is in, in residential construction, there's always a crisis of the day. There's always something that's urgent that has to be addressed right away. And oftentimes the hiring, which is really more important gets overshadowed by the, and so it's a real again, making sure that you, you don't say, oh, well, you know, God, I just don't have time to call that candidate back today. I'll talk to him tomorrow. You can't do that. You wanna make sure that you've prioritized and allocated your time so that each and every day you can consistently spend the time that you need to be able to continue to move forward with that candidate and determine if they're gonna be a good

(00:38:45): Hired for you. Well, ed, well, I mean, what you said right there is probably the biggest nugget we've we've talked about here. And I, I think it's the time element. We're all up against the time El element and back to the myth of hiring fast. People think you must hire fast or fire slow. I want you guys to go into a little bit of the pain, talk about the pain that's suffered when people hire fast without having a plan. Like we talked about. Yeah. In, in the very first myth, you know, I mean, it's so important. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about the pain that comes from hiring fast. So

(00:39:14): I, I use the marriage analogy, right? It's really easy to get married and it's a lot more difficult to get divorced, right? So if you look at an employee like I'm gonna marry this person, I'm, I'm making a long term relationship commitment with this person. It's easy to get into. Cause all you have to do is go. I do right. We're done. But getting out that is a little more time consuming and financially disruptive because then, I mean, if you hire the wrong person, I can't tell you how often we have that classic employee. You're not bad enough to fire. Good enough to keep. And they just bring down the entire organization. We had a recent client where the person was a negative, but that's hard to qualify. So it drug on for months. And she brought down the entire corporate culture to her level, which was a disaster. But there wasn't a classic reason to let her go. She was just spreading distraught throughout the, the company. And so the wrong employee, I mean, it only takes one to really mess things up. so there's a lot of pain. And I think Dwayne, the most painful thing is, you know, they're hurting the organization, but you can't come up with enough reasons to fire them. But every day you're sad when they come to work, it's extended enduring ,

(00:40:37): You know, in a lot of cases, it's, it's way worse than if you would've never hired anybody in the first place. Cuz not, you know, a lot of this comes from people getting in that position where they they're just forced, they gotta fill a seat, you know, their backs against the wall. They got projects lining up and they've just gotta get somebody in. They get that person in. So now they're gonna be a little bit more tolerant, put up with some stuff. And then six months later, 12 months later, you're you're, you're like, wow, you know, look at all the, the mess I'm cleaning up the time I've lost the money I've lost. Now you're scared. You don't even wanna go out and hire the next person. Cause you just,

(00:41:11): The common thing that happens when they finally let somebody go and they go to clean up the mess, the mess is always way more. They thought was gonna, they thought it was $10,000. It was like a hundred thousand. Cause they don't realize they did this wrong and they did that wrong. And so it's better to not hire anybody at all than hire the wrong

(00:41:30): Person. That's a really good point. Yeah.

(00:41:32): And you know, to actually quantify that cost, there's a great book it's called who w H O it's by Jeff smart and Randy street. And we recommend it to all of our clients, any of the listeners that wanna get more educated on the recruiting process. And this book is New York times best seller. And it talks about how to find the right people in and interview them and, and all of that. And in the introduction they say, according to the studies we've done with our clients,

(00:41:59): The average hiring mistake costs 15 times an employee's base salary in both hard costs and productivity loss. Think about that. A single hiring BL on a hundred thousand dollars employee, can the company 1.5 million or more? So if you kind of use that factor of 15, you can see what the, the quantifiable costs are of, of a bad hire in a certain position. I don't think that's far off at all. I mean, I've, I've certainly experienced that similar situation. And as I said, just in the loss of time and the ability to not do the things that, you know, goals or things you had set out for the year, just, it can be

(00:42:37): Very toxic, right? And I think another cost to Dwayne is the impact that it has on the rest of your employees. And, you know, there's a great a great quote that says nothing will kill a great employee faster than watching you tolerate a bad one. The there's a real impact there on in a cost there to the rest of your employees when you've got your star performers and they're watching you tolerate a sub performer and continue to keep 'em on the team, it can drag the morale and the performance of, of your entire company down.

(00:43:12): As we were talking about earlier about the process that you go through and the steps and what happens next and what happens next, we've seen a great deal of success in involving your top teammates or the other employees in the interview process with the new candidate you want buy in, you give way in. And I, I think it's probably a great part of a culture that some of the other team members get to help pick and get and be your eyes and ears for that new person coming in. But it's also for the candidate, great to see that type of culture and proof of the organization that they're going to. So at what point do you guys say, all right, we're fast tracking through this. Yes. We're busy and there's gonna be business owners out there who say, I don't have time to pull people out of the field right now to sit down, just to talk to somebody. These are some of the most important discussions you could possibly have in a market like this. And these are the best people to have these discussions. How do you make time for it? And when do you do it? I think key,

(00:44:12): As you think about is, is when I said the pain of hiring the wrong, just go back in your mind and think about that employee who was a disaster in your company, you all have them and go, I do not wanna do that. And then also have them ride around with you for a week or a day or whatever, get to experience them. You can't, you know, know you can't marry somebody on the first date they'd wanna marry. You wouldn't wanna do it anyway. Right? I mean, so it's according process. It's getting to know them. I say, don't hire anybody who wouldn't have the dinner, get to know how let see how they eat a meal. Are they polite to the waiter? Do they open the door for people? You know, what does their car look like? Is it trash heat, or is it neatly kept?

(00:44:52): What is their purse? Like? I mean, all this observation can happen when you're like with this person, you can't do it in an interview in an hour. You gotta spend time with them. Date them, get to know them. You may be speed dating, but you still gotta get to know 'em before you're making a decision. Cuz it's, you're entering a serious relationship with this person and you gotta take it seriously when they need to find something, do they open it and find it? Do they have a, when you ask them something, do they look on their phone? You know, they're all clues on. Are we hiring an intelligent, organized, committed kind of person? And you get to know that by hanging out with them, you don't get to know that in an interview, right? You can't do in an hour interview,

(00:45:36): Everybody's putting on their, their interview display or most of the time they know that environment. And, and that's right. You wanna get to know them as, as people, but bringing in the rest of your other members, other trusted members of your team, that's the extra set of eyes and years. That's somebody who's going to notice something that you're not in tune with. And they may pick up on things good or bad that you might have just plain notice. And, and it's also interesting to see how people interact in more of a group setting, a setting of their peers. Like you're setting up these different scenarios. It, it real, it really keeps coming back to what is the cadence for this? How do you set the expectation for this, with the candidate to say, you know, we have a five step process. If this is where can we go on to the next one or however many steps you have, and this is what's going to happen. And these are the investments that we're gonna make with you. And they see that you're bringing people out of the field to sit down with them. I mean, that candidate is going to feel something they're going to feel that you're serious. It is a display of your culture in itself that you value your people enough to invest them into this process. Is that how people win? Like I think, I think people are looking for every advantage they can get right now. Well,

(00:46:50): I, I would say the first process is your gut, right? If you meet this person and some part of your intuition or something says, I don't think this's gonna work out, just stop. Right? Because your gut is your intuition is your most invaluable tool. When hiring a person, if your intuition said, Hey, they're a great person. They might work out. If they don't understand AutoCAD or whatever, then you can proceed. So number step number one is your gut. I think step number two is some kind of very accurate assessment instrument that you have faith in that you go through, you look at it, you have somebody interpret that knows what the heck they're doing. And so you've got a good assessment to work with. So, you know, more than your gut also is the assessment well done. And now we also do something in our recruiting, which you've recently indicated, which is video interviews.

(00:47:46): So they can do the interview on the phone. So you can actually not in real time, look at the person. So you have to have some kind of either in person video or, you know, zoom or something. So you actually see the person, you see how they react. You can read their body language and that kinda thing. So that's like, you know, one, two and three, once those are done, I, I think the next step is, you know, if possible an in person interview. And then if that works out and the next step would be meeting with your staff, finding out some culture, fit, making sure that they get along getting input from your staff or whoever, maybe your wife's the great of character to wonder to meet people first, whatever. And then after that's all done, I think there's a, a right around a day or two, you know, job shadowing where they see what you do. And they like what you do. And the relationship is there. And then the last ones you wanna make sure you do a background check and make sure that everything checks out sometimes a credit check and then AF, and you can do all that in five days. That's

(00:48:46): What I'm thinking. And, and looking back at our previous episode out, you know, and talking about how busy everybody is too, you don't have to do all of it yourself. I mean, that's why companies like yours exist because you can do some of that pre-do diligence. You can do the first half of that and, and weed out or elevate the ones that are, that are going to get to that. Sit down, interview stage. So opportunity you, they hear for a hybrid approach. If you're a builder, you know, listening to this right now and thinking that's a lot of steps to go through with a lot of people. I don't wanna do that, go back and listen to the previous episode on outsourcing. We wanna learn more about how to do it in the steps or what it looks like. Just give these guys a call and set up an appointment, you know, share your situation.

(00:49:30): And it could be a good fit for you to use a recruiting entity for that first piece. But the big piece that's resonating here is shorten the gap between the steps, communicate that you're enthusiastic and that you think that the person is a good fit and why, and be genuine about it. And you know, there's a business expression. Time kills deals, time kills, onboarding too. I am sure there's opportunity for somebody else to swoop in. If you let any grass grow on this process, it opens the door to somebody else coming in and you can get a lot done you five days if you're doing the right steps. So I, I like it. And they think some very good points you guys have made here today that it's not about hiring slow or hiring fast. It's making sure you follow the steps, but you gotta commit to speeding the steps up and don't leave the door open to time to mess it up.

(00:50:30): We get back when somebody applies to us, we get back to them within like 20 minutes, because you have a sit. We have an automatic system that does all that stuff, right? I mean, it's hard for a contractor, but he can go by its own system. We'll do it, but it's key to get back to them immediately. And so you're fishing analogy, set the hook, get them interested in your company right away. And that buys you the week to do your due diligence, but don't take a month. It's not gonna work.

(00:50:56): It's kind of like, how important is it to you? Like when you get a text on your phone, how many of them do you respond to instantly that thing, whatever it was was important enough to get than instant response typically, you know, with a client, if you get something special that comes in like you know, an inquiry for a $4 million custom home or your phone dings. And it's, you know, it's an architect that says I've got somebody that wants to build a $5.5 million beach house. What are you gonna do? Are you gonna sit on it? No. It's sudden became a priority. What bigger priority do you have right now, if you've got holes in your roster and somebody's raising their hand to say, you know, I'm interested in learning more about your company. You gotta just make it, it's all about making it a priority, but

(00:51:42): It's also goes all the way back to the first myth, talking about having a plan. It takes time to get the plan put together. And if you have a plan put together, it's gonna take you through all these steps, without it being painful. I just look at all the things that you guys, when you meet with a, you know, builder or Mueller client in the early days, when you take people through, there's also, you know, there's some responsibility on the part of, of the business owner here. There's gotta be the connections. You gotta make sure that these people are fitting your or your cultural style. If you're maybe your company's running on something like EOS, well, you need to make sure that all of these candidates are, are gonna, are they, do they fit into your core values? You know, there's so many things to do to set this up before you just say, I'm gonna hire. And I think that's, it is, is, is having the plan. And once you get that plan, you probably not gonna be forced into that sensation of like, man, I just, I just have to hire because I have to hire for the

(00:52:32): Sake of it. I would say to me, after being in industry for 40 years, which is a long time, there's no more important thing in any construction company than who you, that is the number one most important thing. It's even more the client she did. The second is the client she did. But it's interesting if it's the most important thing in any company, how many resources do you actually allocate to

(00:52:59): Going back to your, your point, Dwayne too, about having that plan and Paul, what you're saying there is it's worth it to invest the time it's so important. You have invest the time. You have to develop your plan. But when you do a comparison now between a builder who is running everything well, has that plan when it comes time to a market like this, or an environment like this, because they've been using that plan, they're able to speed it up nearly effortlessly. They're not under the same duress. And that's such a huge advantage going into your next hiring situation. Even if you don't need somebody right now, get that plan in place. Because when this scenario hits you and you need somebody and you need someone quickly, you don't wanna hire fast. You wanna hire smart. You need to be able to accelerate your plan and have had reps with it and have everybody on your team. Understand it because we all know the first few times we do something, we fumble through it. It's not effortless do us.

(00:53:59): What's interesting how many contractors would go build a house without a set of plan. They think that's crazy, right? Why would I build a house and not have a set of plans? How I what's gonna happen yet? How many contractors go hire somebody without any set of funds, right? They just

(00:54:13): Wing. Right? And that's something that we talk about a lot. It's something that I will I say to folks often you've gotta look at hiring recruiting. It is just an ongoing process. It's not something that, you know, you're just gonna do it. When you have to do it, it needs to be baked into everything that you do. You've gotta have time and resources set aside. So

(00:54:31): We, we gotta get to the fire. Fast part, firing fast is way harder to do than hiring because firing fast is an emotional kind of thing. It, it's not a head thing. It's a hard thing. So what happens? And we hear of this over every day, when we talk to recruiting people and helping clients, whatever is, I should have let go of that person six months early or three months or four years or whatever. And if I go, well, why didn't you do it? You knew six months ago. It wasn't gonna work out. They go, well, it's a bottom line. They don't wanna be a bad guy. And I call it being co dependent. They don't wanna move forward cuz they don't wanna take the emotional hit or emotional stress of actually firing or letting somebody go. So they take that. They don't wanna feel that pain.

(00:55:18): So they'd rather have long during pain of a bad marriage for seven years than going through the pain of, of week of a bad divorce of an divorce. Yeah. And it's really hard for people. And I can't tell you how many are of our coaching sessions are involved with, why didn't you just let them go? What you don't understand. I mean, they've got a wife and three kids or, you know, well, whatever story of the week is it's a heartfelt emotional thing. And most contractors just don't wanna experience emotional pain of firing somebody. So they avoid it. And it's kind of

(00:55:53): A vicious cycle. I mean, think of, think of it. If you've, if you do have a really good plan in place, if you're recruiting on a regular basis and have a pipeline of good candidates, , it's gonna make it easier to fire that person. That's not full of their weight. You know exactly. If you've got some, some good candidates lined up and I think that's something that factors into that is a lot of folks they're not putting effort in. They don't have that next good person to go to. So they're gonna be likely to hold on to a underperformer for a lot

(00:56:19): Longer. It, it, it also avoids what I call race by back meal. And that happens in this kind of environment where a guy who's a project manager, a carpenter comes in and goes, you know, it wasn't me. It was my wife. And I know you're paying me 30 an hour, but I really need 35 an hour. I'm gonna have to leave, which it just basically blackmail. Right. And then, but you haven't got anybody to replace it. So you got the project that to be done in six weeks. And so you succumb to blackmail and say, okay, fine. You can have five bucks an hour. What does that do to your corporate culture? It teaches everybody else. That the way you get a raise here is you blackmail the owner. That is not a good culture.

(00:56:57): Well, the right culture is you're out in front of that and rewarding people with the proper salaries to start with. If somebody's coming and, and doing that, it's probably not, not the right either not the right cultural fit or you're behind the time. So there's two, there's two scenarios there, there too. But it, you know, Dwayne and I are always working on what's the most proactive solution to this stuff. And, and it's very clear from talking with you guys. It is having that plan and avoiding the situation more often, where you have to fire somebody at all, put it being disciplined and committing to the mindset that who's on. My team is the most important decisions I'm going to make and start planning for that and custom design, what you want your culture to look like, what your vision is, how you're going to attract these people and then have a plan and constantly deliver.

(00:57:53): And a lot of these things fall to the wayside. Yes, there's still gonna be incidents where this happens, but when you do get it wrong, when you do have that wrong candidate, the rest of your culture, it's going to be very easy to identify that person that's knock through the rest of your team is going to let you know it. They're not going to accept it. You're going to have the support of a whole bunch of people and make, and probably some pressure in making a move. And that's a culture that you wanna have. And that's a, you know, you avoid that. You avoid being in so many of the dead ends scenarios that we, that we talked about here, it's like be methodical in your plan, right?

(00:58:29): So during a chair, you're a business owner, Wayne. So have you gone through the suffering of having the wrong employee, not being able to fire them?

(00:58:37): Oh, absolutely. There's no doubt about it. I can look back at, at several times. It's fortunately I think it was, you know, quite a while ago, you, you learn you as you go through this, we've gotten much, much better. I would say much more disciplined is probably the word, you know, as to understanding who are the right people, what what's expected, but it's, it's painful, you know? And, and you do, you come up with excuses as to why you should hold onto that person. And, and they're all there. Oh, I can't find anybody else. There's nobody else available. I, I need this. And at this time and well, they've got some good qualities and, and that's just, again, I think the reason, the reason you resign yourself to saying those things is cuz you haven't really put the effort into finding the next good person.

(00:59:18): Right. And I would say that a culture misfit is worse than a skill misfit. Absolutely.

(00:59:23): That's where I said toxic is the word I

(00:59:25): Bring up toxic a lot because culture misfit, it, it isn't so black and white. It isn't, they don't know how to re set of plans or they messed up on the truses or they pour the account foundation, you know, two foot, whatever. It's just that it doesn't feel good around and contractors don't deal good with the fee. Right. So bring everybody down around them. Right. And so that when I would say a culture fit is way more important than a skill fit. Yeah. And so when people hire people, they don't know what culture fit is or how to test for it. So it's important that the culture fits there that's primary, the skill fits the skill fits secondary. That comes back to our last one. We talked about, well, they don't have the experience in your industry. The culture fit is, you know, who they are is way more important than what they know. So you gotta make sure that the culture fit is there and firing people just cuz they don't have a culture. Fit is hard. Cause I can, well, she does a good job. She does everything right. Or he does everything, right. He know he duh, duh, da, I just can't standing around him. right. And that's tough. So really the firing for not a culture fit is one of the hardest things to do.

(01:00:33): All right. That's good. I think that's a wrap on miss

(01:00:36): Number five, Dwayne, you can tell your listeners that if they're interested in knowing how the process works, we're happy to do an assessment with them at no charge so they can understand it. And whether they wanna do this on their own or use this as matter, they should at least have an understanding of assessments and how they work. And we're happy to do that for no cost. It's something that everybody in this industry should

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(01:01:15): Want access to the resources that can take you and your team to the next level. One call could change everything. So this is it folks, episode six of six on recruiting with our experts, Paul and ed from contractors, staffing source. How are you holding up ed? Well, so far so good. I'm, I'm excited to, to tie it all up here and the, our final episode. Well we're told all good things must come to an end. That's true for this series, but I'm not sure, so sure. It's true for recruiting. What do you think about

(01:01:45): That, Paul? Well, to say that the most important thing you have is your team, right? And I've been, I've been in this business for 40 years and I'm still fighting the battles. And the problem I see is people don't treat that as their high priority, right. That they, they see as, I mean, you, you got no problem with spending money on marketing sometimes, right. But say, okay, what is your allocation for recruiting this year? What's in your budget to find all the right people. Their answer is, well, wait until somebody leaves and then we'll figure it out.

(01:02:16): How many folks that you talk to actually do have it allocated in their annual budget?

(01:02:21): Not enough. I would say, cause we've changed our pricing to try to do incentivize that. So, you know, it's sort of like when you go in amusement park and they say, OK, it's 50. If you buy the ticket for today and it's 60 bucks, if you buy a year pass, right. I try do same things. So I'm making it, you know, like hundred a year versus a month, which is a inexpensive price. The idea is I wanna get a change the way the construction industry is looking at this as an ongoing process. And it's fighting a mindset which is ingrained over the last hundred years or whatever, right. So it's not,

(01:02:56): It's finite. And, and that's the title of the episode. And, and the myth itself is that like a project recruiting comes to an end. And you know, we've talked about this a little bit internally before, but episode one that you always need to be recruiting. How is this different? What are the subtleties of how this is different from always be recruiting?

(01:03:17): Well, we have a client, we have a, I'm not gonna climb point, but he's built an organization from, you know, 5 million to 30 million. He's gone from five employees to 20 employees and everything is just going really well. Right. And we just amazing. And so we get this notice, everything is going so well. I think I'm gonna stop recruiting. Oh no. What right. Where did I miss? Right. And we've been incredibly successful this guy. And he, we found him like, I don't know how many, I like eight or nine people and they're all work. A couple didn't work out. A couple did work out. And I read that email. I went, where did I go wrong?

(01:03:57): That's that's back to the mindset thing that he said earlier. It's just not, you know, it's not something that people think that they should be doing on a recurring basis, 12 months

(01:04:05): A year. Yeah. And I think too part of it, and as we, you know, scratch our heads sometimes trying to explain this, I think part of it is, has to do with the nature of the business of residential construction, which is that it's all project based and tractors are used to working on a, on a project that has a definitive beginning, middle and an end. And so they start to treat all the other parts of their business as projects as well. And that's where I think that, that, that they get themselves in trouble is they really look at recruiting as a project. And it's like, okay, we need to hire for this one position. I'm gonna do everything I need. Like I do in managing my construction project to take care of that project. But then, you know, at some point the construction project's built and it's done and they approach the recruiting the same way. Okay. Well we hired that guy. Great. we can stop. We're done with that project. Let's move on to something else. And it's just at project mentality. Doesn't work when you're looking at, at, at a critical ongoing process like recruiting. So well,

(01:05:10): Let's talk about that mindset shift for a second, because from what you're saying here, guys, the end goal is making recruiting a part of your culture. And in order to do that, you've gotta move it from being something that's an, a needed on demand service. That's transactional to an ongoing relationship that you have with the community. And that's through your marketing. It also with whoever is the market in general, through whoever is performing your recruiting, whether it's somebody on your team that is an expert at that, or working with a company like you guys, where you can, you can handle a whole bunch of the, of that stuff. And it's just an ongoing basis. So what's your guidance to builders who you wanna make this part of their culture and embed it in their DNA. How do they do that?

(01:06:03): Well, the hardest part is it's a mindset, right? It's you know, they feel that, why should I recruit anybody? I've got this great team. They're doing a great job. Why should I? And they don't even get it. Why should I recruit anybody? And the idea, well,

(01:06:17): If you know, if you don't want to grow, if you don't want to expand, if you don't wanna open additional offices, if you want to be exposed if somebody leaves, then if you're fine with all that, then you don't right. You don't need to. But the reality is, is like the builders we work with, they're looking at, at it, like, what's next? Where, where are we going? They've got all this horsepower of infrastructure that they've invested in and resources and, and they're ready to scale. And they want to create opportunity for people. If you're not creating opportunity for other people, the people you have, aren't going to stay, cuz there's no growth plan for them either.

(01:06:57): Right. And it it's, it's a way of looking at me. It's like Mo marketing some contractors right now because they're so busy are stopping marketing, right? They're going well, I'm booked, you know, all year, why would I wanna disappoint somebody and tell 'em I can't do their job. And I go raise your price. You know? Price is a function of supply and demand. So if you can get instead of 50% margin in 25% margin, then why not? Right. Well, and every team has the lowest person on the team. I don't care if you've got five people or 50 people, there's still always the bottom 10% in performance or attitude or something. And if you look at, I'm always interested in improving that team, then if somebody else comes along, who's way better than the person you've got. You need to have the, the, whatever it takes to be able to keep improving the team. It's sort of like, you have a sports team. You don't say, okay, we're here forever. And until somebody, you know, leaves, we're not gonna recruit new people. You always build a bench. You're always cause that's part of the culture thing of building a team. Now, ed, you can talk about that cuz you're a big sports fan and I'm not. Yeah. Well we,

(01:08:04): You know, again, that's what I, I love this final episode here because it really ties together and reflects back on the, the previous five that we had. And yeah, in the very first episode we talked about the importance of always recruiting and comparing a construction company to a professional sports team and a professional sports team always has different levels of players, right? You've got your first string quarterback and your second string and third string quarterback. And that's because you have to be prepared. You never know when your first string air is gonna be injured or unfortunately right now, a test positive for COVID . So, you know, now again, a project manager is not, not as as volatile as a professional athlete, but the fact is that if you wait until your project manager comes to you and says, you know my wife and I have decided where, you know, we've just had enough of this and we're, we're gonna change and leave town. I'm giving you my two week notice. If you wait until that point, you're gonna be in a, a really tough spot. But if you have an ongoing recruiting process, if you're actively out there in the market talking to candidates, even if you're not actively hiring, at least if you're engaged in the market and you're talking to candidates, then when something unforeseen and unexpected shows up on the recruiting side, you can be much more

(01:09:24): Prepared. You're you're always, always looking for good people because you never know I'm gonna be hopeful here. Let's say you're a residential construction guy and you build new beautiful houses and you're, and you're always recruiting. So what happens is one of your competitors, chief number one project manager who has connections with every architect in town decides that he doesn't wanna work there anymore because he finds out his boss is cheating or whatever he's doing. And so he wants to the lead right now. You don't actually have physician open for a new project manager. But if this guy says, I wanna come to work for you, I know every architect in town, I could bring 10 million worth of work with me. I'm asking for a hundred grand a year. Are you interested? I just got the market for project manager. I wasn't yesterday, but I am today. Right? And so employees are opportunities just like marketing opportunities. And you never know who's out there and who's gonna show up. And sometimes you have to modify your team a little bit if the right person shows up, but you never that, right. Person's never gonna show up if you're not looking for them. And when that right person does show up, you'll make the opportunity because it's a no brainer that you need to hire this.

(01:10:38): Well, the other thing is, is that right? Right. Person is not going to show up to you if you're not the right company. So it comes back to what are you doing day after day to tell your story, to show your core values, to be the avatar that they want to come work for so that you get the opportunity to have that conversation. And, and that brings me back to what are you doing? How are you, how do you go about creating this culture? Because there's something that we haven't talked about here yet. You know, I, I think that one of the key things here obviously is just like your marketing. You're gonna have your marketing going all the time, get your marketing going around your team culture so that you are constantly attracting talent. Then the next thing you need to do is have a strategy and a plan for when somebody does raise their hand or extra things that you can do to go out and say, Hey, we're looking for somebody right now.

(01:11:33): And that's a company. Like if you don't have it yourself, a third party company like yourself that can provide you leadership and expertise around that. And don't look at it as just a, I'm only going to go out and develop a relationship with a recruiting company when I need somebody, because you're behind the eight ball. How do I develop this type of relationship with a company like you guys, where it's an ongoing thing, we're working on it together and checking in on it. So I would love to hear you guys expand more on the right way to do that. But the one piece that we haven't really talked about as a group, if you've got that culture, it's the role of your team and their voices or anybody else who's affiliated with your company. How do you get other people recruiting for you and telling others what a great place this is to work? Because it seems like a no brainer that inspiring your employees to tell, or having inspired employees who are telling their story to other project managers who are out actively recruiting and that mindset or architects who see another project manager hear that, that project manager is not happy. And they're saying, you've gotta go and talk to Dwayne. He's got a fantastic thing going on over there. The whole big picture philosophy that we haven't got into yet is this culture and getting everybody else on your team has recruiting mindset. I would

(01:12:56): Say the biggest problem is if your culture is based on fear, everybody's afraid of losing their job, right? So they don't wanna bring anybody in cuz they might get replaced. So if your culture is sort of based on fear and based on lack, nobody wants to let anybody know, cause they're all afraid of losing their child, right? So it backfires on you. You build a culture based on love. Everybody wants to support each other. They wanna bring new people on the team. They wanna grow the company. There's always a place for the right person. If not, we can get enough to hire them. It's a different kind of feeling, right? But unfortunately, a lot of construction companies are built on lack as opposed to abundance. So everybody in the culture sort of coming, they're covering their job. Right? And that's why a lot of people don't wanna build a waiting list.

(01:13:40): Like, you know, and that's why in some companies, they go, well, let's stop recruiting. I don't wanna find somebody replacing me. They don't say that out loud, but it's sort of in the culture that the culture is based on, get your job and keep it. We don't want anybody else come in the door cuz I don't wanna lose my job. And that's hard at change in a company because it's really a core value. Are we always looking for good people, always growing or we afraid that if we don't get the next job, we're gonna lose our own job.

(01:14:06): Well, yeah, you, you touched on it. The word is, you know, it's abundance versus scarcity. If you're worried about people coming in, because you may get pushed down, then you've got, you've got the wrong culture. If you like the idea of more people coming in, because it creates more freedom for you. It's taking something off the, off your plate. It's allowing you to focus or be elevated. It's the rising tide sinks, ailing ships. So that's probably the mindset. And you gotta, if you're a business owner, you gotta ask yourself is my ship. You know, when it comes to my people and my culture, is it floating? Or is it sink? Is it taking on water? Cuz when that tide comes in, you're either going into the bottom or you're going to the top, which way do you want to go?

(01:14:54): And we've had actually instances where we're recruiting with a larger company, maybe have like 30 employees or something and the person in charge of recruiting, no matter we who we gave this person, they weren't perfect because she was afraid of losing your job. So nobody qualified. I mean we sent them like a hundred candidate and everybody was like, there was always something wrong with somebody. And until we changed the person in the company who was in charge of recruiting, we couldn't find anybody

(01:15:19): Didn't want a bogie. Didn't want a bogie on her scorecard. Right. So she didn't never took a swing. Right, right.

(01:15:26): And that happens in some companies. So this whole thing of recruiting is core to the, and, and stopping recruiting is core to the corporate culture or the company culture. And you're right. If you're coming from abundance, there's always room for good people. If not, there's a list of people that wanna come to work for you, that you can hardly wait for the opportunity to employ them as you get a bigger project or things, move forward. If you're built on lack, then everybody's afraid and they're going in fear and you really don't wanna a list of people waiting there. Cause they're just, you know, if you don't perform, they're gonna take your job. And

(01:15:57): I think being fluid, you know, I mean, if you guys look at this again from a true, you've got a strategy in place for why you're doing this. If you're doing this on a monthly recurring basis, communicating with your team, it's gonna constantly change. You could be looking for a project manager in three months and then maybe you're switching it. You're looking for an office admin. Maybe you're looking for a general carpenter. You know, it's not like you're gonna run the same ad all the time or let's face it. There's gonna be times where you, you don't need anybody. You, you, you do have who you need in place. But to your point, if you're just the least bit growth minded, the next person is always around the corner. You're gonna need that spot filled and what better way than to have it in place. And you guys can constantly, you know, the communication thing, working back and forth, developing that plan, that strategy for constant recruiting, right? You

(01:16:43): Just think to me the ideal, you know, contractor has a list of projects waiting to take on, right? His marketing has worked so he can be very picky on the projects. He takes the margin he takes because his market's created demand. So he has a lot more choices because his marketing is effective or his brand is effective out there. And people want him to do the work so he can pick and choose the kind of projects he wants. The same thing is true for recruiting. If you're constantly recruiting and you're you wanna be the company everybody wants to work for, then you've got this constant flow of candidates you can pick and choose the people you want to have work for you. And to me, the ideal construction business has both of those. As a list of ideal projects are picking and the ones that are good culture fits that are good, financial fits. They wanna work with, have a whole resource of, of potential employees. So can constantly pick the right people. They wanna work with, to me that makes the construction business easy. The hard of the construction business is when you don't have either.

(01:17:43): You just made me think of something there about running an ad. And I, and I kind of cringe when, think of the thought of when I think of ads and what most job postings look like. And we could probably Dwayne do an episode on how you portray your company and what, and what goes in one of these things. But what popped into my head was don't run an ad, run a story. So much of this, what this comes down to is how are you presenting who you are and your, or core values. And why would you ever stop presenting that? Why would you ever stop having conversations with other people about who you are and what you're doing and why you're doing it? You should have that coming naturally to you so that you never feel like you're telling you're writing an ad and putting a job to description in there that you're just sharing stories about who you are and who you want to talk to or who you want to interact with and just change the nature of the conversation and feels like there's such opportunity for the most forward thinking builders out there to just completely flip the script on the narrative and tell the story of this industry in a different way and attract

(01:18:56): You should have as many testimonials on why you're great to work for is why you do a great job.

(01:19:03): If you've got people that are on your team. And we talked about this before, but I mean, if you've got folks on your team that realize this is just baked in, this is part of what you do. You guys are constantly recruiting. So one, they kind of know, man, I better keep my game up to speed because these guys are always looking for the next project manager, carpenter office manager, the, the top talent out there, but just getting your mindset around the fact that you're having these conversations all the time with qualified good people. I think that, I think that is the part we didn't really touch on that, but it, I think for a lot of builders, small business owners, it can become really exhausting because they spend a lot of time in this when they're doing it themselves, you know, talking to the wrong people, you know, and it does.

(01:19:46): It's exhausting. You know, I ran some ads. I did this, I talked to 25 candidates this way and none of 'em were, that's exhausting and that's enough to make you not wanna do it, you know? But I, I look at it as engaging with some folks like you and you know what, even in those times where I maybe necessarily don't need a project manager today, but you guys come to me and say, Hey, you know what? Talk to this guy. He's just knocked it out of the park. He's a, he's, you know, great talent. Why don't you have a conversation with him? And that's building my bench. You know, that's the kind of thing where I could build rapport with this person. And maybe that's not something that happens for another three to six months, but that again, that's a powerful conversation to have with someone versus the random, just going to the well, trying to find people randomly well, and

(01:20:28): You're coming from abundance, not desperation. Right. So right. But you have to change your mind first, right? Your mind is the first things that have to shift to where it's fun. It's not horrible. Like most contractors look at recruiting as a awful experience or not. It's not fun. It's not something they want to go do, cuz we're who would get the recruiting, right? They'll go, it's a necessary evil. I know I gotta find people. So I'll do that. But if they can shift that, so we're always looking for good people. We love recruiting. If fun thing, there's meeting all these people and then hoping we can build the organization big enough that they can have an opportunity to work for us. So it's a whole mindset of, we're gonna keep getting bigger. We have a whole bunch of wonderful people. And as soon as we find the next project, we can bring 'em on board. We've got a lot of big projects it and it's fun. But I think most contractors see as an arduous experience that they would like to avoid if at

(01:21:20): All possible it should definitely be something baked in to your annual plans. It's just part of other parts of your business that happened on a Rick. I mean, I'm, I'm a big proponent of it. The

(01:21:31): Perspective too, Paul ties right back into the second myth that we talked about, right? Where contractors see employees as an expense instead of an investment. And I think if you change your mindset and you really start to see your employees as an investment that that generate money then helps you to be more excited about the recruiting process and, and see it as a, as a great way to, to continue to, to build your investment in your business.

(01:21:57): Cause I think as a, as a contractor, your primary ex objective is to keep building a great team and then have work for them to do. Right. And I don't see that a lot of contractors see that as one of their primary duties.

(01:22:13): No, they don't. It's more, I have to get the work, then I'll worry about getting the resources in place to get the work done. So yeah,

(01:22:22): I agree. As far as changing that, it's not easy, but I think you, you, you, us, whatever you talk about, we're here to have the best team in pick, you know, Atlanta, the best people working for us and the best clients, you know, good people with good people. And yeah, that makes everybody happier because you're happy to be on the team cuz it's a great team and you're always recruiting because you want other people to join the team. And the same thing is true for business when you're always selling. Because I think everybody on the team should always be looking for new projects that are fun and new people they wanna work with. It's part of the fundamental culture that you're trying to create. Well, I

(01:22:58): Think it'll certainly resonate with our listeners. For the most part. They are a growth minded group. I mean, I think that's why people come here to listen and to collaborate is because they're, they're looking at ways to expand and better their business. So,

(01:23:08): And Dwayne, you're not, even if there's four people, you don't need 40 to do this, to change that mindset. Right? Exactly. It doesn't depend on the size of your company. If you're three guys in a truck, you can have that same mindset. So it isn't dependent upon size. You're we're gonna start a business from scratch zero. You should have that same mindset if you're the only person in the company,

(01:23:32): All right, guys, we're gonna hammer this home. I'm gonna hit each of the six myths that we've gone through over these several weeks and, and six episodes. And I'm gonna let each of you real quickly kind of give me one big takeaway. So let's start off with the first myth was only recruit when you need someone ed one big takeaway. Yep.

(01:23:50): I go back to my, my sports team analogy and to recognize that, that you always have to be, have, have backup players on your team or, or ready to, to join because you need to be prepared if, and when someone leaves your, your team,

(01:24:06): Paul, your primary function as a contract and the most important task you have is to build a great team

(01:24:13): Myth. Number two, employees are

(01:24:14): Expensive. I'll address that I have found out that the more employees you have, generally, the more money you make and the less you have to work. And I can say from serious example, the contractors that I make to make the most money, love their jobs the most and work have the best work BA you know, work home life balance have the most employees.

(01:24:38): Yep. The more employees you have, the less that you need to work. If you've done it correctly and you elevate and delegate is, as Dave has said several times, then that's how you can work less in your company is by having more employees

(01:24:52): Myth, number three, we can just do this ourselves. I don't need a recruiter.

(01:24:57): Okay. I would go to the, how many successful contractors self-perform these days do their own plumbing, do their own electrical, do their own everything else. They they've come to the conclusion that everything is a specialty. And my goal is to manage these specialties. They should look at recruiting as an other effective subcontractor that can do it better than they do.

(01:25:19): Recruiting is a very complex process that really takes a skillset and an expertise that most contractors don't have have. And oftentimes they underestimate just how, how important that skillset is and how challenging it is to do a really good job at recruiting.

(01:25:37): Number four, you must recruit from within the construction industry.

(01:25:41): Well, I can easily say that over the last year, the most talented people that we've recruited to do specific jobs for the least amount of, you know, compensation have come from other industries like you know, of office and that kinda thing we've proven, you know, we've probably hired, I dunno, pick a number four or 500 people a lot this year. And of those a significant number were from other industries and are doing really well. So we have proof that it works.

(01:26:13): The pandemic has shown us that, that people are willing to make changes, that they otherwise weren't in changing industries, changing locations. And the resident construction industry is in a perfect position to take advantage of those changes and the dynamics of the, the labor market in the us.

(01:26:31): Number five, hire fast fire slow.

(01:26:35): Well, I would say you don't hire slow and fire fast, but you hire diligently. That can happen in a week immediately. You've you've hooked the, you hook the people by being passionate about having come work for you. And you have an ongoing process you've already established that allows you go from the first phone call to bring onboarding them within a week. And you've done all your due diligence, cuz you've got an ongoing process that works. Now when you fire people, I use this saying that if you look at all your employees and you're gonna start a new company, anybody that you wouldn't hire over for your new company, you should fire.

(01:27:12): We have a definition of the worst employee, which is someone that's not good enough to keep, but they're not bad enough to fire. And that is a situation that probably most of your listeners can resonate with. And that's created by tolerating employees in your business that you shouldn't otherwise. And that comes from the, the myth of, of firing slow and hiring fast.

(01:27:35): And number six, like a project recruiting comes to an end. I would say

(01:27:39): The short answer is recruiting comes to an end when your company comes to an end that any, anybody who has done well in this industry is recruiting all the time and it's become a part of their corporate culture. They're always marketing, they're always recruiting. They're always building their internal and external brand. And it's just who they

(01:27:59): Are. I think ed, I think if your sports analogy, we set it in the very first episode, I can't think of any successful sports franchise that would not be recruiting all the time. Well guys, this has been great. Been a lot of fun. It's been very helpful. I think in this environment, as we said, where it's going to be a constant challenge, moving forward to find talent what a great thing to be able to get off your plate as a small business owner, hopefully listeners have found it insightful and thanks again for your time. Thank you. Appreciate

(01:28:26): It.

Hey, thanks for listening, Dwayne and I love hearing from you. Your stories are inspiring and your challenges can be overcome. Got a cool tip idea for a show problem that you haven't been able to solve, or maybe just struggling to figure out what you need next and where to get it. We can help hit us up@buildernuggets.com and start building freedom.