Employee Recruiting for Landscape Contractors: The Secret to Attracting & Hiring Great Talent
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD x CrewRecruiter.
The landscaping industry is changing. Can you feel it? Customers are expecting ever more bold and visionary outdoor living projects and the demand on the maintenance and lawn care sides is exploding.
Meanwhile, a tightened labor market is making it harder and harder for companies to attract and hold onto key talent. It’s natural for employers to feel pressure at both ends. That’s why leading landscaping companies are turning to recruitment marketing as a way to nurture happy, productive, and innovative workforces.
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Nowadays, recruitment marketing is just as important as marketing to your target consumer. It’s easier to get frustrated with the lack of skilled workers than it is to dig in and authentically evaluate the causes. After all, if you don’t know what’s behind the problem, it’s harder to address it properly.
A crisis snapshot will serve as a foundation for understanding how to move forward with your recruitment marketing, in today’s changing world.
Ultimately, successful business owners prioritize recruiting—working to strategically attract new talent, and retain their best workers.
Why There’s An Employee Shortage in the Landscaping Industry
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THE GREAT RECESSION
The skilled trades took a huge hit during and after the Great Recession. The collapse of the housing market forced a lot of small and mid-sized contracting businesses to close their doors, while home- and property-owners pulled back on spending. Countless skilled workers abandoned their trades and struck fear into the hearts of the next generation of workers.
The construction sector—including landscaping, hardscaping, pool building, and others—began to rebound in 2016, with spending reaching a record $1.3 trillion in 2018. This year the industry is expected to grow by more than 15%.
A lack of enough workers, though, has led to serious backlogs in operations.
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COVID
Since the beginning of the pandemic, homeowners have been skipping going out in favor of investing in their homes. After an initial drought, the industry is now enjoying a dramatic uptick in demand. One survey found more than three-quarters of homeowners have carried out at least one home improvement project since the pandemic began.
Contractors everywhere are feeling it. A simultaneous boom in the housing market has builders in the enviable position of being able to choose the kinds of jobs they want to undertake. However, the pandemic has also forced a cultural attitude shift toward the nature of work itself, with many low-skilled and entry-level workers spurning job opportunities that, previously, they felt obligated to accept. Call it the “Great Resignation” or the “antiwork movement,” people are fed up with jobs that offer little more than subsistence—and the landscaping industry is not exempt. That leaves companies in the awkward position of having unprecedented demand with a precarious workforce.
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AGING WORKERS
The average age of a landscape contractor today is just over 40 years old. Finding younger, new workers is challenging because today’s employers have been slow to embrace the things that matter most to Millennials (the largest workforce in history) and Gen Z employees. Eventually, that wellspring of experience and know-how will retire, passing their wisdom off to a generation that may not be prepared.
Careers in landscaping are also physically taxing, which generally leads to shorter tenures at companies as workers are eventually forced to consider their health.
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LACK OF TRAINING AND EDUCATION
As older generations leave the field, so, too, does their decades of experience and knowledge and, thus, their ability to train new hires. Further, skilled trades have been removed from most school curriculums for years, creating a lack of exposure to these job opportunities and benefits.
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SEASONALITY
In some parts of the country, outdoor living industry jobs are seasonal careers. This can cause challenges in retaining workers year-round. More than focusing on high-end landscaping clients, successful outdoor living companies diversify their services, so they can continue working during the off season. Services like snow removal or indoor stone work are examples.
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UNDERVALUED WORK
We’ve all heard it before at least once: “Go to school, so you don’t end up having to dig ditches.”
Unfortunately, this mentality has permeated a lot of our workforce culture. Consequently, many parents encourage their children to go to college, so they can “be someone,” essentially denigrating the essential work done by landscape and pool building professionals.
Many young folks entering the workforce falsely believe myths around the construction and trade industries, such as the work is unskilled or unsafe. This causes them to turn towards higher education to avoid these valuable jobs.
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RESISTANT LEADERSHIP AND LACKING RECRUITING POLICIES
Being a boss or owning a business is not the same as being a leader. Poor leadership and failure to evolve are huge barriers to retaining talent. Thought leaders throughout the past two decades have suggested we revisit the ways we have led our businesses and how we treat our employees.
Rather than a patriarchal dynamic where employees do what they’re told, today’s workforce is increasingly concerned with a healthy work-life balance. Younger workers also want to believe in the company they work for, to feel like their time spent as an employee is about more than just a paycheck. This is crucial to understanding the whole antiwork movement and the Great Resignation. It’s not about a resistance to work in and of itself; it’s about a resistance to demeaning and insignificant forms of work—feelings that can emerge in any job in any industry.
For great landscaping companies, that need for significance will only be viewed as an opportunity to lead. Training and career development opportunities offer the dual benefit of upskilling workers while also building their confidence and sense of purpose.
Today’s leaders have to evolve with the workforce if they want to find and keep their best workers. This means understanding what matters most to them and adjusting your mindset to accommodate their needs, from company culture and growth opportunities to compensation and benefits.
Why Company Culture Matters for Landscapers
Before technology came along, it was hard to gauge what it would be like to work for a specific company. But now, all that has changed. Your company culture is not just about how your prospects or clients see your company. It’s also a critical part of attracting and retaining the right talent.
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HIGH ACHIEVERS SEEK GREAT CULTURE FIT
According to research from G2, 75 percent of job-seekers research a company before applying for a job, and having a strong employee brand reduces employer turnover by 28 percent. This indicates today’s high-achieving workers aren’t satisfied just taking any job.
Rather, they want to know what it’s like to work for that company before they apply. Consequently, those who do apply, are more likely to be better candidates for the position.
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TESTIMONIALS/REVIEWS
Today, employees can (and do) go to websites like Glassdoor, Indeed, and others, to leave employee reviews about their experience working for a company. If your culture is not inclusive and dynamic, you’re more likely to get negative reviews and employee scores.
Conversely, a great company culture will increase your chances of getting raving reviews and attracting better talent.
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GREAT CULTURE CREATES LOYALTY
When your employees are eager to get to work because they enjoy every day, you have a loyal worker. Aside from reducing the cost of employee turnover, employee loyalty also creates ambassadors who are more likely to tout the benefits of working for you.
This will bleed into the types of applicants you get in the future. Friends and family members of your existing workforce will hear about how great it is to work for you because your loyal workers are singing the praises of doing it.
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YOUR CULTURE IMPACTS YOUR COMPANY’S IMAGE
Today’s consumers can tell the difference between a great and not-so-great employee culture. Since your crews are the face of your company, they are representing your brand’s culture and mission.
Bringing your employees on board with a clear understanding of what your brand means, helps them embrace your mission and work to achieve the overall organizational goals. Incorporate your corporate culture into your everyday operations to improve customer experience and enhance your reputation as a company overall.
Mastering Recruitment Marketing for the Landscape Industry
You have to look at recruitment marketing as an investment, but there are some critical differences in how you market to prospective customers versus how you market to prospective employees.
The push for employer branding was a budding theme already, with giants like Google and Microsoft providing a different kind of work environment, complete with dog-friendly workplaces and in-house gyms. With the pandemic, the changing landscape of the workforce - including telecommuting, remote work, gig work, and other creative solutions - prompted an unprecedented shift in what employees want from their employers.
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WHAT IS EMPLOYER BRANDING FOR LANDSCAPERS
In short, employer branding is the picture of what it’s like to work for your company, that candidates see when seeking employment. It’s your reputation in the eyes of existing and future employees.
When you’re trying to attract the best talent, your employer brand is what drives them to look at your company. Unfortunately, many of today’s organizations use HR professionals to do their employer branding, but doing so frequently underestimates the marketing needs involved in employer branding and marketing.
HR managers might be skilled in recruiting, but not in recruitment marketing. Perks of working for your company like free coffee in the morning, paid holidays, and fringe benefits - while important - are just small bonuses, and don’t capture the essence of why they should join your team.
Your employer brand is what makes today’s employees want to be a part of your organization in a meaningful, long-term way. If you’re not building your employer brand, you’re missing out on attracting the best people.
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KNOW YOUR MISSION AND VISION
In the outdoor living space, you might envision your company leaving behind a legacy of jaw-dropping, magazine-worthy projects that have new clients banging on your door.
This is a worthy enough cause - and one your employees can rally around - but is it enough to build an employer brand on?
Craftsmen and women have long taken pride in the work they provide in the lives of home and property owners but today’s employees want to be a part of something bigger.
In order to achieve this, it’s important to revisit and study your organization’s mission and vision, and ensure these important business tools are saturating your organization throughout. From the receptionist who answers the phone to the forepersons and project managers, research has repeatedly shown that employees who embrace a company’s mission and vision are more engaged and productive, and less likely to leave.
Make sure everyone in your company feels the purpose of their work and they’re aligned around your vision and mission.
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BUILD AN EMPLOYEE BRAND AROUND MISSION, VISION, AND VALUES
You use your company’s mission and vision to guide where you’re going. In the same way, your mission, vision, and values are like roadmaps for every individual within the organization, using it to push forward in the right direction, collectively.
Today’s consumers are more informed than ever before, and authenticity is a key factor - not just for your company’s brand - but your employer brand, too. Like your clients, your employees want to know what your company really stands for.
Aside from the benefit of being authentic, having a true employer brand means you’ll be more likely to attract candidates whose principles align with your company’s mission, while also deterring those who might not be the best fit.
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IDENTIFY YOUR IDEAL EMPLOYEE
The time you spend investing in research will save you time when amping up your employer branding and finding the right candidates.
If you’re still posting job positions on Craigslist and hoping for the best, you’re probably not getting the best candidates. Those job postings are as generic as the kinds of people who respond to them. They don’t adequately reflect why job seekers should consider you, nor do they properly illustrate your company culture.
By the same token, they do little to filter applicants into a pool of candidates who you would like to see apply for your open positions. Identifying your ideal candidate goes both ways—you need to advertise and identify yourself in order to sift out those workers who aren’t a good fit.
The next step in finding the kind of talent you’re looking for is to research the local job market. Depending on your location, you may have trade schools nearby with soon-to-be graduates looking for a place to start their careers. Perhaps there are military services nearby with ideal candidates. Take time to research your area (or the areas you have work available), to find the best places to advertise for workers.
Get to know the people you already have. Ask questions about what they love about working for your company and see if you can find out what areas might need some attention. These are great insights to give you ideas for your recruitment marketing.
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SOLICIT EMPLOYEE REVIEWS/TESTIMONIALS
Just like the coach of a winning sports team, you will accomplish more by encouraging them to work together, as a unit, heading in a winning direction. Since so many of today’s candidates are looking at employer reviews, it’s a valuable thing to ask your employees to do.
Sending out occasional reminders to ask your employees to leave reviews on popular career sites is a great way to not only develop your online reputation, but get a good feel of any issues you might not be aware of, within your organization.
Since one in three job seekers will abandon applying for a job with a bad employee review, it’s a good idea to ask your employees to come and talk with you - or management - if they have any issues with their work, before they leave a bad review.
This opens the lines of communication, promotes a healthy workplace, improves morale, and gives you the opportunity to solve problems before they result in turnover.
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PROVIDE VIDEOS/PHOTOS
According to research from Monster, 80 percent “of Americans agree that a video of a recruiter talking about a role as part of a job ad would help them better understand a job opportunity,” and Gen Z and Millennials are even more receptive to video content.
When it comes to outdoor living construction professionals, photos serve not just as showpieces for potential new clients. Photos of work your company does give your candidates a visual idea of the kinds of work you do and, thus, the kinds of projects they will be involved in.
These realistic representations of your company are excellent ways to show job seekers how your company is providing great things in the community.
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UTILIZE SOCIAL MEDIA
The largest workforce in history, millennials, job-hunt differently than their predecessors. Likewise, Gen Z is entering an increasingly digital workforce, complete with things like teleconferencing, gig working, augmented reality, and sophisticated automation.
Job-seekers today, don’t pick up a newspaper and circle wanted ads. Rather, they scour the internet for job boards and careers pages. In fact, 90 percent of adults in the U.S. between 18 and 29 use social media, followed by 82 percent 30 to 49.
Further research found 79 percent of job applicants use social media in their employment search, and one in 10 found jobs through it.
However, not all job-seekers use the same social media channels. Pew Research found the majority of social media users on Facebook are between 30 and 49 years of age but slightly more - 71 percent - of those aged 18 to 29 use Instagram.
With hyper-targeted job ads on Facebook and Linkedin, you can dial in on specific job markets, skill sets, and experience levels. You can also use advertising, copy, and strong design to further target candidates based on the role. Social media advertising strengthens your employer brand and is critical to harnessing a recruitment machine that passively serves to attract and retain the top talent in your market.
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CREATE A CAREERS PAGE WITH A CLEAR EVP
A Careers page on your website is essential, but too many companies settle for a simple applicant field and expect that to woo talent in a market as competitive as landscaping.
Take a look at the Careers page for one of our clients, Troy Clogg Landscape Associates. The Careers page, titled “Join Our Team,” is linked in the main navigation bar at the top of the page. The page itself welcomes you with reasons to work there, including workplace awards, detailed copy, benefits packages, press coverage, career development opportunities, and, of course, an application portal.
It takes some thought and time to develop a careers page that will give you - and your candidates - the best experiences. In fact, research found 61 percent of HR teams said their careers page is the best channel for building their employer brand.
Consider your careers page to be the same as any other page on your site: It is there to serve a particular purpose as honestly, consistently, and helpfully as possible. Here are some key components to a great careers page, and why they matter.
> Culture Video
Put in the time and effort to develop a killer recruiting/culture video. A cornerstone of the recruitment marketing strategy at Halstead, video is an incredibly powerful tool for telling the story of why someone should work for you. To work as intended, a good video needs a professional touch, complete with staff interviews, graphic design, and videography. This really isn’t an area where you want to cut corners, which is why the best course of action is to hire a creative service to render the culture of your company in video form. Take a look at this “Get to Know Us” video from Troy Clegg.
> Employee Value Proposition
Let’s say you have an open position available for the right person. What makes them want to work for you? Great pay is one incentive, but it’s not just about money.
Workers today find value in knowing any given job opportunity comes with the possibility of growth—either within the ranks of the company or within their own skill level and experience. People also find value in being a part of something that provides value to others.Your EVP should not merely highlight the compensation and benefits of an opening. Let applicants see benefits like bonuses and equal opportunity; pay raises and annual reviews; training and coaching opportunities; reasons why working for you is different and what is in it for them.
> Photos
There are thousands of landscaping and pool building contractors in the US, ranging from commercial and industrial to small- and mid-sized family-owned companies. That’s one way having photos on your careers page will help candidates visualize the kind of work they’ll be doing if they work for you.
Include photos that showcase the projects your company undertakes. Take this opportunity to show off your most stunning projects, because great talent wants to work for the best companies. Revealing just how inventive and sophisticated your projects are will go a long way to recruiting the best designers, builders, and other positions. You’ll also want to demonstrate the types of equipment and tools you use use, as well as how your workers work and what a given day might look like.
> Company story, values, and culture
According to research, 77 percent of applicants want to know what a company’s culture is like before applying, and over half say culture is more important than salary. Further, your story, according to experts, is a way to connect with candidates on a more human level. It’s an introduction to why your company exists and to your culture, as well, before you ever even meet.
> Testimonials
Existing employee testimonials are powerful ways to illustrate what it’s like working for your company and with their teams. If it’s done with video, your potential candidates will get a real feel for the authenticity of your employees’ levels of happiness and commitment. This serves to reinforce the culture and story you’ve already provided.
> Make it easy, but not too easy
You’ll want an application form that’s easy to fill out—something fairly detailed but also mobile-friendly and easy to fill out. Be smart about it. It’s one thing to solicit basic information about the candidate; it’s something else to use your applicant form as a filtering tool. How do you do that?
At Halstead, we offer the ability to create custom forms and questions. Then we link those questions to the backend of our Application Tracking System (ATS), so that if they answer a question wrong—for example, you’re looking for a CDL-licensed driver but the applicant checked “no” to that question—they get weeded out automatically. That means less time spent filtering and sifting through resumes and applications.
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OFFER CAREER ADVICE
It’s nerve-wracking to apply for a job, but you can make the process smoother for your applicants by giving them career advice. A handful of articles offering career advice on how to grow professionally can go a long way in showing a candidate that you care about their future.
You can also consider adding an explanation of what the interview process is like when applying for a position with your company, so your applicants are best prepared, when it comes time to interview.
Streamline and Automate Recruiting with an ATS (Application Tracking System) Built for the Landscape Industry
There is no shortage of project management software solutions out there. If you’re reaping the benefits of these technologies, you probably already know how much time and money (and headaches) they save.
The same goes for your recruiting and onboarding processes. Automation uses metrics and data to ensure you’re getting the right candidates and helps you manage them more efficiently and professionally as they go through the research journey and then onboarding
CrewRecruiter by Halstead—an ATS built for the landscape industry with SMS messaging at the core—helps you manage your job positions and descriptions by keeping all job and applicant information in one place. No matter whether the candidate applied on Facebook Jobs, clicked on a Google Ads and went to the careers page, applied on Indeed, or shot a QR code from the side of your work truck, the application and associated data all ends up in one, easy-to-manage platform.
CrewRecruiter allows you to automate and oversee every stage of the recruitment pipeline, sorting your candidates by qualification and informing you when and where they’ve transitioned to the next stage. The software has SMS messaging built in at the core, sending automated text messages to candidates with pre-screening questions. Set rules so if a candidate answers “no” to a critical “yes” question, the candidate is bumped to a non-urgent category. The same tools allow you to send emails and schedule interviews automatically, and even generate background screenings and job offers with the click of a button.
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FINDING THE KEY EMPLOYEES NEEDED TO GROW YOUR LANDSCAPING COMPANY REQUIRES A DIFFERENT APPROACH.
Your company already has an employer brand—whether by intent or not. When job-seekers look at (or hear about) open positions at your company, what do they think? What goes through their minds when they visit your website or read company reviews?
Taking a proactive stance on attracting and retaining the right talent for your company helps you grow your business, steer it in the direction you want it to go, and create something great.
