Top 7 Recruiting Mistakes That Lawn, Landscape, and Outdoor Living Companies Make
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The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
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Visiting online job boards such as Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, and CareerBuilder is a typical step in today’s lawn, landscape, and outdoor living job search. But with online job boards saturated with listings, standing out to attract the right applicants when they’re doing these searches can be challenging. It’s an employee’s job market, and with the competition to recruit the ever-elusive rockstar crew members higher than ever, is it even worth trying?
Yes, it is absolutely worth trying when you follow a proven recruiting strategy. Considering 76% of people responsible for hiring say that attracting quality candidates is their number one challenge, most recruiters haven’t tapped into effective recruiting practices. They are stuck in a never-ending cycle of making the same recruiting mistakes and getting nowhere. But there is hope.
Mistake #1: Using an Outdated Approach to Green Industry Recruiting
The traditional interview and hiring process involves candidates convincing the employer why they are the best choice for the job, which is an outdated method. This isn’t to say that the candidates don’t need to be qualified and impressive, but it shouldn’t be the primary focus of the process.
At HALSTEAD, we approach recruiting from the opposite perspective—the recruiter must convince the candidate that they are the best choice as an employer. You need to sell the job to them, not the other way around.
Recruiting is marketing, and your role as a potential employer is to market your company as a great place to work. Job postings must attract the candidate and include details your ideal candidate will find enticing. Just as you have a target customer persona in your marketing efforts, you need a target candidate persona for your recruiting efforts.
Creating a Candidate Persona
When creating your candidate persona, rely on data rather than assumptions. Look to your current top-performing team members to identify common traits and factors that make these individuals successful.
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IDENTIFYING DESIRED TRAITS
Consider a scenario where you are recruiting for a sales position. Traits for this position might look like being confident, extroverted, a great listener and communicator, a quick thinker, and a friendly persona.
If you’re speaking with an applicant for this position and they lack appropriate social skills, don’t think on their feet to answer your questions, or seem distracted while you’re talking, these are good indicators that this candidate does not possess the traits necessary for the position. While this is a basic example, you can apply this concept across every role in your company.
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IDENTIFYING COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
In addition to broad traits, consider characteristics such as demographics, education levels, qualifications, and where these individuals tend to spend their time online. Look to your team first, and also consult statistics online for a particular job position.
For example, data indicates that the average landscape laborer in the United States is a 41-year-old white or Latino male with a high school education. By contrast, the average office manager is a 47-year-old white woman with a bachelor's or associate's degree.
While these are generalizations, the data provides insight into where to market to these individuals and what techniques may be most effective. With many landscape laborers being Latino, it may be practical to create recruiting ads in Spanish. Facebook is the most popular social media platform for Millennials, making this the ideal social platform to recruit this age group. Professionals with bachelor’s degrees tend to hang out on LinkedIn, and 1 out of 3 users are between 30 and 49 years old, indicating this platform may be best for recruiting your new office manager.
Creating a well-rounded target candidate persona may include identifying the culture in which they will thrive, driving factors, goals, and interests. As you go through the recruiting process, your target persona may evolve as you identify the traits you’re looking for.
Getting Familiar with the Candidate Journey
There are six stages of the candidate journey, including the following:
Awareness: Candidate becomes aware of your employer brand
Consideration: Candidate researches your company and considers your competitors
Interest: Candidate leans toward your company as their preferred employer
Application: Candidate submits a formal application
Selection: Employer filters applicants to find their preferred candidate
Hire: Employer officially hires a new employee
Active job seekers go through all six stages, while passive talent completes the last three phases only. 70% of the workforce comprises passive talent who aren’t actively searching for a new job but might take on a new job if the right one comes along. These are often the people working hard in their roles and include top talent, making recruiting efforts toward this segment important.
Like traditional marketing, landscape industry firms that successfully recruit top talent implement strategies with touchpoints along each stage of the candidate journey, most of them digital. Ensuring your online reputation and presence are professional and help define your employer brand is essential.
Mistake #2: Not Managing Your Online Reputation & Branding as a Lawn and Outdoor Living Business
Online reputation management is crucial in today’s digital world, and not just for prospective customers. Once a candidate is aware of your company, they’ll perform a Google search to research. They’ll view your Google Business, Facebook, and Glassdoor reviews, visit your website, and scroll through your social media posts. What will they find?
In general, 65% of people read at least five reviews before forming an opinion of a company, and 80% agree that their perception of a company improves when they see an employer responding to their reviews. If and how you respond to reviews becomes a part of your branding, you’ll either be seen as an amiable company to work for or send potential candidates running in the opposite direction for fear of a toxic work environment.
Establishing Employer Branding
Social media is an excellent tool for establishing your employer branding. With 86% of job seekers using social media in their job search, it’s integral to your recruiting strategy.
Companies with positively perceived employer branding post eye-catching photos, such as individual photos of employees with a few details about why they love their employer. Anything that highlights your company's culture and the benefits of working for you is worthwhile.
Videography can be effective in employer branding, especially when it incorporates storytelling. This is a wonderful opportunity for a Spanish-speaking team member to share their experience. Include English subtitles to reach all audiences. Potential applicants are interested in career advancement opportunities, company culture, and the work environment, and using storytelling and professional interviewing techniques to express these first-hand experiences is impactful.
You can feature these photos and videos in the careers section of your company website. Since most applicants will view your website, this creates another touchpoint where you can connect. Make it clear throughout your website copy that your company offers a supportive work environment with the resources they’ll need to grow and develop, find success, and advance their career.
Mistake #3: Providing Insufficient Information in Your Green Industry Job Postings
A great job posting includes an appealing title and a detailed description. Consider search engine optimization (SEO) when writing job posting copy, especially in the job titles. The rule of thumb is to keep the job title short and the description longer but still easily consumable.
When you have your target candidate persona in mind, you can create copy that appeals to this demographic. Entry-level job postings may include more emojis and a more casual voice, while managerial positions might provide more details about company benefits and use a more professional voice. In either case, use bullet points to break up the text and ensure no spelling or grammar errors throughout the copy.
What Information to Include in Job Postings
Include all the important details that a potential employee might be interested in.
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TRADITIONAL JOB TITLE
The job title should clearly indicate the position or title. While using a creative job title like “Team Captain” instead of Foreman may be tempting, these unconventional job titles won’t help with SEO. When a candidate searches for a job, they’ll use the traditional job title, and if you want candidates to find your job listing, you should too.
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COMPANY INFORMATION & LOCATION
Include a short “About” section with a brief overview of your company and values. Describe your company culture, and don’t be afraid to show some personality that will help connect with the potential applicant. List your location or service area in this section of the description.
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JOB RESPONSIBILITIES & QUALIFICATIONS
Clear expectations are key; spelling these out in the job responsibilities will get you off to a great start. Provide specific details on the types of tasks the candidate would perform in this role.
For example, a job listing for a Horticulturist might include the following:
Enjoy the freedom of working in the great outdoors
Demonstrate your leadership skills by supervising, training, and evaluating your team
Use your expert knowledge to carry out scientific and statistical analysis of horticultural problems
Feel the satisfaction of fertilizing turf, flowers, and trees
Take pride in monitoring plantings for pests and diseases
While the official job listing would include more tasks, the examples demonstrate the type of detail you will want to include and also speak to how working in this job position will make them feel.
Provide a list of qualifications, but be clear if any items listed are preferred, or if you are willing to train the right candidate. Hiring based solely on skills is a mistake many lawn, landscape, and outdoor living companies make when specifying expectations has proven to be most effective. You don’t want to lose out on potential high-performing candidates who would thrive with the right training.
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BENEFITS
Top employers lead with benefits. After all, these are the factors that employees care about most. While this includes bonus opportunities, health insurance, retirement plan information, and paid time off, you can also highlight other benefits. For example, you could highlight the benefit that employees can be proud to be a part of an award-winning team or one of the best companies in the industry.
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PAY RATE
Two out of three employees prefer to work at a company that discloses pay information over one that does not. Providing this information upfront helps filter out applicants who might not be the right fit, avoiding time wasted for both parties.
For the right applicant, this shows the benefit of applying because they have a clear expectation of what they will receive, and you’ll know they’re coming into the job interview process content with what you can offer. With more companies listing the salary information on the job listing, potential candidates will be more likely to skip over the listings that don’t include it.
Mistake #4: Not Realizing You’re Competing with Non-Industry Companies and Underpaying
When recruiting for entry-level positions, completing a competitive analysis for your area is essential. These positions compete with other non-industry entry-level jobs at places like Target and Walmart. Offer competitive pay that is more than these companies offer in your area.
Target offers a starting wage range between $15 to $24; if your company offers less than that, you risk losing these potential employees to them. With the average lawn care worker wage in the United States at $14.26, this is one indicator of why recruiting has become more difficult. There’s room for improvement in the industry nationwide to compete with other entry-level jobs.
Mistake #5: Accepting Applications from a Limited Number of Sources
Manually entering job openings on online boards is time-consuming. Limiting your postings to a couple of popular sites may be tempting, but with today’s technology, you can save time and resources with automation. CrewRecruiter is a recruiting solution for the green industry that automates the recruiting process and is built into your marketing system, amplifying and simplifying your recruiting process.
Applicant Tracking Software (ATS)
At HALSTEAD, we use CrewRecruiter to post your job openings on over 100 of the most trafficked job boards, including landscape-specific boards like NALP and social media, helping you reach the right talent pool. Once you post your job listing, the process is largely automated.
With an ATS like CrewRecruiter, you can track, review, and manage applicants across all job boards from one easy-to-use dashboard. The ability to filter and automatically remove unqualified applicants saves time and allows you to focus on the ones who are an excellent fit for the job. With star rating features, you can hire as a team and share the applicants you each find best suited for the job. ATS can also streamline your communication efforts with applicants.
Mistake #6: Taking Too Long to Respond and Losing Landscape Industry Top Talent Because of It
While it takes an average of 27 business days to make a new hire, the best candidates are off the market within 10 days. Taking too long to respond to an application submission could mean losing out on top talent.
The fact is 66% of candidates want to hear more from employees. As with prospects for an outdoor living construction project, you’ll want to keep your prospects warm with various touchpoints.
Automating Communication
ATS can automate texts and emails, so your applicant knows they have not fallen off your radar. An initial communication can be sent once an application is submitted, confirming that you have received it and detailing what they can expect next.
Built-in real-time calendars allow candidates to schedule an interview without the back and forth of finding an opening in schedules. Rather, your calendar will indicate time blocks you have available for interviews, and the applicant can select the time that works best for them.
If you choose to move forward with the hiring process, you can even automate the background-check process. The candidate can complete the process online, and you’ll receive the information within the ATS attached to the applicant profile.
Mistake #7: Lacking an Employee Referral Program
An employee referral program is a passive approach, but it yields excellent results. Referral hires have a retention rate of 46%, compared to only 33% for job board hires, and they tend to stay 70% longer than other employees. Referrals take an average of 13 days less to hire, cost less, and tend to be better fitted with your company than other hires.
Offering your employees an incentive to refer their friends and family can help attract high-quality employees. Whether you offer cash, paid time off, or even gifts, your employees will be motivated to make referrals, and you’ll benefit because of it. Employee referral programs can often be automated in your ATS, making the process even easier.
