The Landscaper’s Guide to Social Recruiting
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
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With increasing consumer demand and not enough workers to meet it, landscape companies across the country are scrambling to stand out and attract top talent. Perhaps a new consultant will have the answers? Maybe we need to raise employee wages? Heck, record numbers are diving into strategies such as employer branding for the first time in their company’s history. Yet, many in the industry are still not fully and properly leveraging social media platforms to recruit new employees at scale.
Pew Research reports that 84% of adults ages 18-29 use social media and, according to Careerarc, 86% of job seekers use social media in their job search. It’s an ideal place to seek out potential candidates, especially because it offers the opportunity to reach the extended networks of current employees.
Yes, social recruiting is expected to take over traditional recruiting and become the norm, and it may just be a critical time for the landscape industry to get on board. With explosive growth in recent years—a whopping ~66% increase in market size over the past 10 years (according to IBISWorld)—and an already present labor shortage prior to the new pandemic-related challenges, adopting modern recruiting strategies will be critical to the continued success of the industry.
Owners and industry leadership wanting to move quickly in this direction can look to other verticals for reassurance and inspiration. A recent Careerarc study found that 92% of employers use social and professional networks to recruit talent, earning the social recruiting tactic a higher ranking than employee referrals, job boards, and job ads. This is not to discount the value of these more traditional recruiting methods (both online and off) but rather to make the point that these recruiting methods alone are simply not enough anymore.
We know what some of you may be thinking. Despite all of the available data that proves the widespread usage of social platforms, we still hear often, ”But my Spanish-speaking labor force is not on social media.”
Nielsen Media Impact reports that 53% of the adult Hispanic population uses Instagram and 69% are frequent users of Facebook Messenger. In fact, Latinos’ use of social media and mobile apps has surpassed that of the general U.S. population—seemingly a result of the pandemic—according to a report released by Nielsen. Considering nearly 46% of all people employed within the U.S. landscaping services industry are Hispanic or Latino, it seems social media—when properly used and fully leveraged—could be the largely untapped wealth of opportunity for recruitment everyone needs right now.
Social Media Is Critical for Recruiting, Today More Than Ever
As Generation Z enters the workforce and millennials fill leadership positions, social media and virtual communication will be preferred. Both generations largely want to communicate via text rather than over the phone, which makes social recruiting and communicating via social media that much more effective at reaching potential candidates for any position—from laborer to foreman and beyond.
Many valued landscape employees are nearing retirement age, and it’s essential to attract new and younger workers. Monster reports that 75 million baby boomers will be retiring soon, creating a large workforce gap that will need to be filled.
Millennials and Generation Z have grown up with technology in their hands before they could walk, and as a result, are less likely to be attracted to employers that do not utilize technology in all phases of the employment process—from recruiting to onboarding to employee reviews. According to Yello, 54% of Generation Zers won’t even complete an application if a company’s recruiting methods are outdated. While this statistic may not be a 100% reflection of the landscape industry currently, it’s certainly headed in that direction.
Just as physical blueprints and hand renderings have transitioned into design software capable of creating photorealistic 3D renderings, technology is making its way into many areas of the industry. From customer relationship management (CRM) software to labor-management software and everything in between, technology has made many business processes simpler and more efficient.
Imagine for a minute that your landscaping company decided to ignore the advantages of digital marketing, and instead relied only on newspaper ads for lead gen today. You’d be in a tough spot, no? If a company decides to ignore social recruiting, they may as well be relying on newspaper ads—that’s how impactful this important transition is.
Reputation Matters, Reputation Is Social: Both for Customers and Employees
According to Glassdoor, 86% of job seekers research company reviews and ratings before applying for a job, and 50% of candidates say they wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation, even if they’d get a pay bump. A company’s social media presence has quickly become a representation of both its consumer-facing brand and its brand as an employer—each as important to—and influential as—the other.
How your company treats its customers is a reflection of your company culture and beliefs and, as any great leader knows, can have a massive impact on growth and retention rates. This is why industry leaders work to develop social media policies that address customer escalations, delivering timely and customer-centric responses. But what many don’t understand quite as easily right now is that in today’s world, social media is not just consumer-facing—potential job candidates and current employees can and do, of course, see these posts and responses. It’s the great merger of recruiting and marketing referred to as recruitment marketing.
Using Social Media Content to Build a Strong Employer Brand
Whether you realize it or not, job candidates are scouting your landscaping business online well before they make contact with you. This means your content is key to making a good first impression. Since your business is highly visible on social media channels (as long as you have a robust organic and paid strategy), the content posted must be top-notch and a reflection of your company’s core beliefs and culture.
Facebook posts, live videos, and Instagram Stories allow a business to post content in real-time, even on a daily basis. The more content that a landscape company features online, the better potential candidates can gauge if it’s an employer that they want to pursue.
Here are some tips on how to use social media to build a strong brand—both for consumers and top talent:
Keep your social media accounts updated to consistently represent your “offline” brand.
Feature a variety of content, including projects both in progress and completed, team spotlights, and share company core values.
Join industry-specific groups and engage regularly.
Make sure to use appropriate hashtags on your social media posts to make it easier for your ideal landscape job candidates to see your posts. Don’t forget location-specific hashtags—they’re important for creating geographically-focused results.
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WHAT MAKES GOOD SOCIAL CONTENT?
Leading companies make their social content stand out from the competition. But what topics lead to appealing content that accurately represents your brand’s reputation and culture? Let’s take a look at a few.
Make a Difference
Great talent cares about more than just earning a paycheck, and younger workers are more attracted to companies that are making a difference. According to The Deloitte Global 2022 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, societal and environmental issues are critical to this demographic, and when an employer demonstrates efforts to create a diverse and inclusive environment, employees are more likely to stay more than five years.
Employee Benefits & Satisfaction
Who wouldn’t want to work for a company that values its employees? Company culture alone can attract candidates and, according to TeamStage, 46% of job seekers view culture as a deciding factor in the application process while 88% find it at least relatively important.
Leading landscape companies aren’t afraid to show off everything that they do to create a positive work environment and positive culture for their workforce. Share photos of an employee lunch that the company has paid for or the lavish vacation that you gifted a valued employee. The budget is already allocated and time spent—now it’s time to squeeze the employer brand ROI out of the efforts.
If you want to attract top talent, it’s important that you walk the walk in making your company a good place to work. When you do, your employees will be happy and will enthusiastically share your posts because they are proud to be a part of such a great company. Leaders may need to empower and educate them to do so, but the resulting referrals will be a goldmine of opportunity.
Utilizing Video
Featuring your employees in videos and testimonials is a win-win—it creates that social proof that many future candidates seek, as well as makes the featured employee feel valued. After all, no one can express more authentically what it’s like to work for your company more than your current employees. For example, when Unilock was looking to attract more talent for plant operations, the manufacturer engaged Halstead to create a video campaign that featured on-site employee testimonials.
We also worked with Troy Clogg Landscape Associates to create a strong employer brand and digital employee recruiting strategy. One video features testimonials from the owner, Troy Clogg, as well as laborers and every position in between.
Being able to see the employees and hear their voices will help establish an emotional connection with the viewer, which is key to any marketing effort. When in doubt, think of the social newsfeed as a room filled with your future rockstar employees—if your targeting is right, it’s not all that different today.
A Tactical Look at Social Recruiting for Landscapers
Many landscaping firms utilize one or two components of a properly optimized social strategy, and then judge the approach’s effectiveness off of that. But the devil is often in the details. To leverage social as a truly ROI positive tool for recruiting, content, targeting, organic and paid strategies all need to work together cohesively. Let’s drill down on how to make it happen.
Organic Social vs. Paid Social: Understanding the Difference
There are two main “sides” to a fully optimized social media approach—organic social and paid social. Both have their critical place in social recruiting and work best when they are implemented together as part of an overall strategy rather than a siloed approach. It is critical for those involved in social strategies and reporting to truly understand the differences here.
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WHAT IS PAID SOCIAL AND HOW CAN IT BE USED FOR RECRUITING IN THE LANDSCAPING INDUSTRY?
Paid social refers to running targeted ads and sometimes, boosting posts—essentially paying for increased reach and exposure on social platforms. Popular social ads for the landscape industry, and for recruiting specifically, include Facebook Ads and Facebook Jobs, Instagram Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. Since leading firms ultimately view recruiting as a marketing effort in the new era of recruitment marketing, paid social is essentially paid advertising. With this strategy, the business has control over who sees which ads and how often.
Targeting Capabilities & Limitations: Facebook vs. LinkedIn for Recruiting
Facebook has a large user base, but its limited targeting criteria hampers companies from being able to narrow down the audience when it comes to recruiting. While you can use geographical location and very limited interests (landscaping, agriculture, job hunting, etc.) to target users on Facebook Jobs for open positions, that’s the extent of the capabilities. But this is not something to write off. Being able to completely penetrate your service area with job ads is not something to ignore. Think about it—parents of 17-year-old kids not going off to college and eager to learn a trade, an unhappy restaurant worker looking for a fresh start outdoors … these are incredible opportunities often left untapped.
But companies are not limited to only running traditional job ads for recruiting. Remember, recruiting is marketing, and marketing is recruiting. So if we strategically post content highlighting the culture of your company, showcasing your happy team members on a client job site, or covering a recent awards ceremony where you took home the goals, these are not technically job listings. As such, the full targeting capabilities you would use in consumer-facing lead generation campaigns are available. Potential employees working at other firms are seeing this content and following along—they are understanding the opportunities, perhaps even more so than a typical job ad.
What does this look like tactically? You could post a video showing happy employees on the job site with information about your positive team culture. You could then use the Facebook Ads targeting options to reach the Spanish-speaking audience in a specific geographical location.
Or let’s say your company is hiring lawn care specialists. Your in-house team or your marketing agency can take a look at the demographics for lawn care specialists and utilize that in the targeting efforts. Zippia lists the average age of lawn care specialists as 41 years old, with 48% between 20-40 years old and 52% over 40 years old, and 93% male. And, of course, you’re also looking for candidates in your service location.
A Facebook Ads campaign could target men ages 20-45, who graduated from a green industry college, and who are located within 50 miles of your location. It’s important to note that targeting an audience using age criteria is only possible on Facebook Ads and not for Facebook Jobs (employment ads). Facebook Jobs is set to ages 18-65+ by default. Essentially, paid social narrows down the audience pool to more qualified candidates. That’s not to say that candidates outside of these demographics wouldn’t be top performers, but these are generalizations.
When running standard Facebook Ads with team culture messages, be very careful not to cross the line and make it an actual hiring ad or you stand to lose your ad account altogether.
LinkedIn is a professional network at its core but offers many of the features of other social media platforms, such as status updates, private messages, and more. LinkedIn has extensive retargeting capabilities, including tailoring messages based on the actions the user has taken with your brand, engaging event attendees pre and post-event, and accelerating the consumer/candidate journey by guiding them along their path. In addition, you can hyper-target users with member-generated demographic data such as geographical location, job experience, education, age and gender, and interests—there are more than 200 characteristics that you can apply.
Perhaps most importantly for recruiting efforts, LinkedIn users are much more likely to keep their work information up to date whereas Facebook users are not. This is essential for effective targeting efforts. Since LinkedIn often serves as a digital resume, it is great for recruiting managerial roles while Facebook may be better suited for recruiting field-work labor.
According to HubSpot, Facebook wins over LinkedIn when it comes down to numbers, but that is primarily based on the large user base and daily usage. Since LinkedIn ads are considerably more expensive than Facebook’s, you’ll reach much fewer people on LinkedIn than on Facebook with the same amount of budget—but LinkedIn has better targeting options for recruiting. The specific platform you choose for social recruiting should depend on the ideal candidate for the job position and which platform they’re more likely to be on. Remember, leadership, design, and sales roles on LinkedIn, and think Facebook for field laborers, office staff, and field leadership.
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WHAT IS ORGANIC SOCIAL AND HOW CAN IT BE USED FOR LANDSCAPER RECRUITING?
Organic social refers to any social media activity in which increased exposure or actions were not paid for. Most people refer to this as posting on social media or social posting. Organic social is often published in-house, but often supported strategically and creatively by an outside agency. In-house teams are often a great fit for posting because the effort requires ongoing, fresh, real-time content.
Organic social recruiting could include posting job listings, photos, and videos of the team at work, employee testimonials, branded content, and anything that highlights the company culture. For example, leading companies often post videos of their happy crew in various moments throughout the workday, such as heading out to a job site in the morning, or photos of the friendly office staff in action.
Instagram is currently the best social media platform for organic content. According to Ignite Social Media, organic Facebook posts reach only 2.2% of followers, organic LinkedIn posts reach 5% on average, and Instagram’s organic reach is 9.4%.
Including applicable hashtags with organic social content for Instagram and LinkedIn is essential to targeting a specific audience. Using hashtags relating to the industry niche, hiring, and location in posts and stories can be especially effective. Choosing hashtags that aren’t overly popular is important—the more popular a hashtag is, the more likely it is for your post to be pushed to the bottom of the content feed. A hashtag that no one uses is also not effective—it’s about finding a happy medium. While Instagram allows up to 30 hashtags in each post, the average number used is about 11 per post, according to The Small Business Blog.
Organic social can take time to gain momentum. You will need to build a following and appeal to the social media platform’s algorithms so that your posts are actually seen. The primary budget trade-off is your team’s time, but all along the way you are creating valuable content and rewarding current employees with features and showcases.
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WHICH IS BETTER: PAID SOCIAL OR ORGANIC SOCIAL?
Since paid and organic social content target different goals, the best method is to implement them both for a well-rounded social recruiting strategy. They’re of equal importance, each with their own benefits. But with both, one thing is for certain—putting the focus on content that shows the benefits of working for your company (i.e. company culture and team building) is the most effective type of “fuel” for your social recruiting engines.
Social Media Platforms by Data: Where Should You Prioritize Your Efforts?
In the landscape industry, the best social platforms for organic recruiting are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Although, with the exception of local groups (which we’ll get into soon), Facebook is really a pay-to-play game today. Here are some basic demographics by social media platform, according to SproutSocial.
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FACEBOOK DEMOGRAPHICS
Of the 2.91 billion active Facebook users, the largest percentage of them are between the ages of 25 and 34. Over half (57%) are male, and the average time spent on Facebook per day is 33 minutes. According to Careerarc, 98% of Facebook users access the platform via a mobile device, which means that integrating social into your recruiting strategy can help you meet your potential employees where they spend their time.
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INSTAGRAM DEMOGRAPHICS
Of the 2 billion active Instagram users, the largest percentage of users are between the ages of 25 and 34. However, those ages 18-24 are close behind making up 31% of the users. The percentage of male vs. female users is pretty close, at 51.8% male and 48.4% female. The average time spent per day on this platform is 29 minutes. Since hashtags can be used on Instagram, specific locations can be targeted, which can be helpful in recruiting locals.
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TIKTOK DEMOGRAPHICS
Of the 1 billion active TikTok users, the largest age group is 10 to 19 years old. However, when you combine the age groups from 20-49, this group makes up 64% of the users on TikTok. Consider that 61% of users are female, and the average time spent per day on the platform is a whopping 89 minutes each day. Since one-third of the U.S. labor force is made up of millennials (Business News Daily), this is a great place to catch the eye of the next amazing member of your team. However, it’s important to note that TikTok is not a great platform for consumer-facing marketing at this time since ideal customers in this industry tend to be older.
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TWITTER DEMOGRAPHICS
Of the 211 million active Twitter users, the largest age group is between 18 and 29 years old. 61.6% are males, and the average time spent per day on the platform is 31 minutes. According to Beamery, 58% of job seekers use Twitter in their search, and it remains one of the most used social media platforms.
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LINKEDIN DEMOGRAPHICS
Of the 810 million active users, 58.4% are aged 25-34 and 23.6% are in the 35-54 age group, and 52% are male. The amount of time spent on LinkedIn varies, with 63% accessing the network weekly and 22% accessing it daily. LinkedIn reports that 50 million people are using the platform to search for jobs each week, while six people are hired every minute. The stats show that job seekers are actively searching for jobs on the platform.
How Can This Data Help Me Recruit Ideal Candidates?
In this example, let’s say that your goal is to recruit landscape designers. According to Zippia demographics, the typical landscape designer is a 45-year-old male who holds a bachelor's degree. While this averaged data can be a helpful guide, ultimately, you know your market and you know your best employees. Perhaps you are next to a local college with a landscape architecture program—this certainly changes the age you may focus on. The overarching point here is that data can help leadership dial-in campaigns and make better-informed decisions.
With this information, you can determine that LinkedIn may be the best social media platform to recruit a landscape designer for a few different reasons, primarily because LinkedIn is highly used by professionals between the ages of 25 and 54. This is where your ideal candidate is hanging out on social media, and we find this to be true in the landscape industry. LinkedIn is best suited to reach candidates for more senior roles vs. field laborers. Think designers, experienced sales closers, project managers, and foremen.
On the other hand, if you have a job opening for a field laborer, we know that these employees are more likely to be found on Facebook and Instagram. Instagram stories and posts within the feed are effective, whereas, on the Facebook platform, Facebook Ads and groups tend to be more effective.
But what about TikTok? Can this newer platform be effective if you are focusing on the long game and targeting a younger audience that will be entering the job force within a couple of years and isn’t planning to go to college. It’s important to note that, at the time of this writing, users on TikTok do not want to be advertised to, so content that does not directly “sell” will be more effective. At the time of this writing, we are carefully watching and testing TikTok as a longer term solution to the labor crisis. This may just be where you find your next landscape laborer!
Now that you’ve determined this information, you can run recruitment ads on social utilizing this data. When you run an ad on a social media platform, you will be given ad metrics so that you can determine your campaign’s effectiveness and tweak your ad if needed. Some of the most important ad metrics are the click-through rate (CTR), conversions, cost per conversion, and frequency.
These efforts are likely more than is feasible to add to an already overfilled plate—most leading companies hire an agency to handle their social recruiting. Agencies keep up to date on current trends, social media algorithms, and everything there is to know when it comes to social recruiting. This allows you to focus on KPIs such as higher profit margins and quality workmanship.
Social Media Networking Opportunities for Landscapers
Facebook is especially useful when it comes to social media networking, although it can be done on any social media platform. Joining your local town and city Facebook groups is an amazing way to find potential hires. Develop an active presence in these groups and post regularly rather than simply publishing a one-off post when you’re hiring. By posting regularly, you develop a rapport with the audience that will help establish your reputation and trustworthiness.
Here are some tips for using Facebook groups for recruiting:
Read and follow the group rules. Some Facebook groups have strict rules against recruiting. In some cases, group admins may be open to sponsorship deals in which you are allowed to post about open jobs in exchange for payment.
Engage in the group and add value. Don’t be spammy by just promoting your company.
Include a graphic or a video with each of your posts. This content will help you reach and engage your audience.
Focus on building relationships and trust. Once trust is established, you will begin to see results.
Another platform we are watching for recruiting is Nextdoor. Business owners can create a free business page and become a Neighbor for Hire. This platform helps you reach locals and build your local reputation. When it comes to cracking the code of the current labor challenges, it will take many efforts all working together. Test, test, test, measure, measure, launch.
Employee Referral Programs: A Critical Addition to Any Recruiting Strategy
As we’ve covered with data in this article, it’s highly likely that your employees are on social media. So how can you gain access to their vast extended networks for your recruiting efforts? Carefully, very carefully. Top performers tend to refer other top performers, resulting in high-quality candidate referral applications. But how is it done without crossing the line and leaving your employees thinking “this creepy company is stalking my social accounts.”
Incentivizing your employees to share your company’s social media content and make referrals—directly or indirectly—is another key, largely underutilized opportunity in the landscape space. Not only are you getting the word out to a wider network across your service area, but the fact that employees are sharing provides social proof that they are happy and proud to be a part of the amazing company they work for.
So, what are the common roadblocks for landscape companies when it comes to social referrals? Two things—(1) posting truly great, share-worthy content to their social channels and (2) having a proper referral program in place.
For roadblock number 1, companies have to post consistently great content—it’s essential to success. But posting regularly is critical for more than just recruiting—it’s critical for consumer-facing marketing as well. Once again, another example of how recruiting is marketing.
For number 2, firms can easily track referrals and the outcomes by utilizing recruiting technology such as those offered by CrewRecruiter. Your employees can share unique links to their contacts, and if someone clicks on the link, you will be able to see that as well as if they complete an application. This strategy has numerous benefits, including being able to reach passive candidates and boosting the morale of your current employees.
With the foundational items of regular posting and a proper referral program in place, it’s time to move on and tackle motivating employees to share the word.
A popular approach in the landscape industry and other verticals is to offer incentives such as cold, hard cash, or non-cash incentives such as extra vacation days. Find out what would most motivate your employees to make referrals and then create clear guidelines on the process. For example, you may offer an employee referral program where employees can be compensated for referred candidates who are hired and retained for a certain period of time. There’s no guesswork involved when it comes to such programs because there are metrics to help track the effectiveness.
Get creative with incentive programs—the data show that the large majority of companies in the industry have fewer than 50 employees. If you are one of those companies, you have a HUGE advantage. You could simply ask every one of your employees what they’d like to see. Businesses with tens of thousands of employees can’t make decisions like this—at least not on such a personal level.
However you cut it and however you make it happen, getting a referral program in place is an absolute necessity in the recruiting game.
In an article featured by Lawn and Landscape, James Manske, CEO of Elkhorn Lawn Care, states that implementing an employee referral program was one of his company’s “ultimate advantages for bringing on new team members” because it resulted in having numerous employees acting as head-hunters. This is an excellent way to reach a larger audience and reward employees for their referrals.
According to LinkedIn, referred candidates only take 29 days to hire while most traditional hiring methods take 55 days. Referred hires also have a higher retention rate and 46% stay on for at least a year, while only 33% of career site hires do the same. The stats are a clear indication of the value of an employee referral program, especially when paired with social media recruiting efforts.
Changing Your Recruiting Mindset: The Necessary Step Toward Success
Leading companies are actively recruiting at all times, especially when it comes to using social media. The reason for this? Nowhere near everyone will see all of your posts or ads all the time, so this comes down to the quality and quantity of your social efforts. Being consistent in your social recruiting efforts will allow for top talent, younger generations soon to be working age, parents of almost college age kids who aren’t cut out for college, and workers currently employed by other companies to see your content over a period of time. You want to keep your business and job opportunities in view—then, when ideal candidates start the process of looking for a new employer, you’ll be the first landscape company that comes to mind.
It’s important that businesses do not wait until they are experiencing a labor shortage before they put any effort into recruiting. There is no “hiring season” anymore, although many still fall into the trap of hiring at the last minute come almost spring, resulting in being short-staffed or equally as bad, being flooded with mediocre hires.
Leading companies take on the mindset “always be hiring.” They keep a steady flow with recruiting, interviewing, onboarding, and developing their team. By being consistent and proactive, they have a steady flow of potential candidates to reach out to, while current employees are the perfect example of what future employees can expect. These same companies are most often the ones who also believe in “always be marketing”—because the same is true for consumer-facing lead generation efforts. You never want to be playing catch-up.
Nurturing at All Phases
Just as you nurture potential leads for projects and your existing customers, you can nurture potential candidates and your current employees. Ideally, your recruiting experience should match that of your employee experience, in that the positive culture is the same and that you provide just as much attention to the hired employees as you do to the candidates that you are hoping to hire.
In fact, 88% of job seekers say that a healthy culture at work is vital, according to TeamStage. The culture of your company will be seen throughout all phases, including in the recruitment efforts, interviews, hiring process, the onboarding process, and commitment to employee development.
Retaining employees is just as important as, if not more important, than hiring new employees. When you are spending time and money to invest in your employees, you want to retain that investment to increase the ROI. Giving your employees opportunities to improve their skills, learn new skills, and become better at their trade will help them develop pride in their work and motivate them to stay onboard longer.
How does this relate to social recruiting? Here’s an example: If you have completed a gorgeous outdoor living space for a customer and they are pleased with your efforts, they are likely to tell people about your company. They may do this on social media or by word of mouth in person.
Much the same, employees who feel respected and valued, and feel as if they are able to improve their skills and further develop a career in the industry, will share their contentment—whether that’s on social media or by word of mouth. It’s all social recruiting.
You can even encourage these employees to share their stories on social media, or you can share them on the business Facebook page with their permission. When potential candidates read about happy employees, they can see that your company is a great place to work and will be a place they can be proud to belong.
Continuing to Nurture During Onboarding
Recruiting does not stop once a potential candidate is hired. A part of recruiting is enrolling a worker to be a part of the organization and part of the cause. Your onboarding process can be a continuation of recruitment, to really get that new employee invested in your company’s mission and goals.
We often talk about the customer experience and how we can improve it, but what about the employee experience? How can we improve it? The onboarding process is one of the most important times to focus on nurturing the employee and creating a great experience for them.
The Role of Technology in Recruiting & Onboarding
We’ve all experienced the frustration of having to fill out the same information on numerous forms. This is the perfect example of how you can utilize technology to not only make this process less frustrating but to save time. By merging your applicant tracking system (ATS) with your onboarding technology, you can simplify this entire process and prevent duplicate form-filling. And this is just one example of how you can help your new hire maintain a positive mindset.
With an ATS solution like CrewRecruiter, landscape companies are able to save time by being able to track, review, and manage all applicants from one place, whether they’re from online or offline sources. Plus, being able to apply filters to identify which laborer position applicants hold a specific license can be a timesaver for both you and the applicant.
As a new generation of landscape workers comes in, it is essential to recognize that the communication methods that they prefer are not the same as what older employees prefer. With automated text and email workflows, potential candidates can move through the hiring process faster, and also feel more comfortable throughout each step.
Creating a Strategic Onboarding Process
Having a strategic onboarding process will help prevent overwhelm from the very beginning. Provide clear guides and online training where your new hires can learn about the company, and expectations, and get a sense of the culture of your company. According to a study by the Brandon Hall Group, companies with a strong onboarding process improve their new hire retention rate by 82% and productivity by over 70%. This is an investment worth making, but what makes a successful onboarding process? Here are some recommendations:
Set a standardized onboarding process that can be duplicated for each new hire.
Make new employees feel welcome and that they are a part of the team.
Provide an effective training program that is engaging, educational, and somewhat entertaining.
Include your foremen and managers in the onboarding process, too, and give them a reason to be invested in it. Your new hires should have clear job expectations.
Communicate clearly, both in person and via technology.
For example, Google is known as an employee-friendly workplace, and some of this is due to its onboarding process. According to Softstart, Google focuses on five elements: clearly defining roles and responsibilities, matching new hires with peers, helping employees build social networks in the workplace, having regular check-ins during the first year, and having an open-door policy.
In the landscape industry, leading companies adopt similar onboarding strategies where members of the crew know exactly what their roles and responsibilities are, creating a team-focused culture full of camaraderie, and encouraging them to share their feedback anonymously.
The relationship between onboarding and recruiting is one that comes full circle. Happy employees will share their positive experiences with their friends and family, often via social media. This creates invaluable social proof that helps build your brand and attract top talent.
When your recruiting strategy aligns with your onboarding strategy, you can expect great things. Social recruiting and social media in general can be a large part of this strategy that will lead to high-quality recruits and happier, more engaged employees.
Just like with the services and projects you deliver, if your business isn’t delivering a quality product, the word will get out. With social media, there’s nowhere to hide. The same is true for company culture. While many companies are trying to find the hack or the quick fix, the fact is that there is no substitute for creating a great culture and a great place to work.
