Attracting the Right Talent

Good morning. I'm Travis Hendrick with The Family Business Institute, where We Build Better Contractors.

I'm really passionate about people and I'm going to help our membership try to attract the right talent for your company.
I know a lot of construction companies have been told about the importance of social media for years now, and a lot of
our contractors are actually starting to increase their footprint on social media and starting to see the results of not only
increase on the sales side, but in the attraction of talent. And it's an opportunity where social media is working for you
24/7/365, telling your history, telling your story, giving an insight into what it's like to work at your business for prospective
employees. Well, today, there's a second component to that and it's on job ads and job openings. And I believe that there's
two key ways where people engage with your company and look for opportunities.

One's through the social media, and then they start to look at your website for opening roles and something that they can
apply for if they're excited about what the company has to offer. And then there's the other side where they may be job
seekers, they may be people that are just keeping attuned of what's available in the market for their career. And so, they
come across a job ad or a job opening first. And then if they're interested enough, they may go to social media or go to
your websites to learn more about your business. And what I'm noticing with a lot of the clients that I work with is that
we're trying to take the job ad opening and the job description, we're trying to make that one document. And those should
actually be two separate documents, right? You think about when you're selling to a client, you're selling a job. You have
the proposal, which is much more of a marketing document, it's much more polished.

It's a sales approach. You're trying to put your best foot forward to land the project. And then after that, you end up
getting the contract, which is much more formal, much more dry, but it sets the expectations between the agreement.
And that's how we view job ads and job openings versus job descriptions. The job ad and the job opening should be more
of a sales pitch. Now we're just selling to a different person. We're selling to a prospective employee, not a client. We're
selling to the employee. And then once we land the employee and they come on board, then we get into more of the
formal job description that has a lot of the tasks. So, what I want to talk about today is more like how do you build a good
job ad or a good job opening that's going to create excitement and some buzz.

And I think there's about five different components that will lead to a successful job opening ad. So the first one has to be
an intro. You have to do what social media does. You have to be able to provide the history of the company. You got to
give them an insight into the culture, your core values, your vision, where you're going. You're trying to create this
excitement as they're starting to read through this potential job that they may be applying for. And the last part of that
introduction has to be on the opportunity and the opportunity rests with the company. If you want to be a differentiator,
you need to be able to show that you want the opportunity to prove yourself to any prospective employee, that you are
the right company for them to invest their time and their career in. And it'll just set the tone for the rest of the job opening
and building that excitement for them to want to apply to your job, knowing that they understand that you understand
that you have an obligation in trying to make this a successful transition for them.

So, after you move on from that introduction, we get into key accountabilities. And there's two different things. Typically,
what you see is you see these task-oriented job descriptions. That's what I call the have-tos, right? The things you have to
do when you're in a role. So, for example, a project manager, you may have to do timecards on a daily basis or a weekly
basis, turn them in on Friday for their crews and have their productions and stuff for the week. They may have to do
submittal logs; they may have to reply to RFIs in a certain timeframe. They may have to stay up to date on their change
order logs. There are all of these tasks that they have to do. But if you were to ask a project manager, what excites you
about your role? None of those things make the list. The things that make the list are the items are I get to do this, right?

And that's what the job opening needs to show. It needs to show that I get to build high quality projects. I get to build
them safely. I get to network in the community. I get to build relationships with customers, with trade partners, with
architects and designers. I get to be a leader and a mentor and a coach to the next generation below me. And also, I get
to be innovative. I get to be a creative problem solver. Those are the types of things that you want to put in these job ads
that kind of define what this role is and what those key accountabilities are to keep them excited. I think the third
component is core competencies, right? These are the competencies that you've identified as a company that any
candidate would need to be strong in to be really successful in this role. And those can be converted over into a job
description and will be used in evaluating the success of the employee once they've started and they started working
within the company.

So, I think it's really key that those are defined. The fourth thing is a salary. I'm big on exposing the salary, and I'm big on
making sure that we're aligning the salary with the type of talent that we're trying to acquire. I know some people like to
have the flexibility of ranges. I say if you're going to have a range, keep it pretty short, pretty tight. Any range that says,
for example, a superintendent $70,000 to $100,000, that tells me that the company doesn't quite know who they're trying
to attract and what position they're trying to attract. Because there's a big difference between paying somebody $70,000
and paying them $100,000. And you and I both know that you put a range in there, every candidate thinks they're worth
the top. So just know if you're going to bring them in and then you're going to start them lower, there's going to be some
level of disappointment right out of the shoots, which I don't think anybody wants in this new arrangement, okay?

But you got to have salary and stay away from competitive. Competitive salary to most people just means kind of average.
It's the same as what they could find in the market. That's not what you want to portray to any candidate that's going to
come to work for you, okay? And then the last one is kind of easing up on requirements. I've been in the industry over 20
years. Some of the brightest project managers that I've ever been around have been people that have been in project
management for two years, two years, three years. Really savvy people understand the value of relationships, understand
the value of communication, of documentation. They get owners that are eating out of their hands. The architects and
designers love them, trade partners love them.

Schedule is maintained. Project site's clean and organize, right? I mean, you can see some of these people at two and
three years. You're like, these are some of the best project managers that I've ever worked with. So yeah, I know when
we're looking at a senior project manager, sometimes a lot of times we see 10 plus years of project management. I just
wouldn't restrict the candidates who potentially could apply to the company. I want every opportunity to sit down and
discuss with you what we have going on at our company, tell you our story, what it's like to work here. And the opportunity
may not be today for that person. It may be in a little bit different role, or it could be two years down the road, but I don't
want to limit the people that I get to sit in front of to tell about how great our company is and is to work for.

And lastly, make sure that in that job description or that job opening, sorry, you're using the term you instead of the
general superintendent, the project manager will be responsible. Say you, make it seem like you're talking directly to the
person that's reading that document, so they just feel like the intention is completely on them and they can see themselves
in the role, okay? So, I'll leave you with... Take this as an exercise. Go back, take a look at your current job openings. Read
them as a prospective employee, not as an owner or an executive or a senior manager looking to fill a position, and see if
when you read that, if it's eliciting responses that you want, candidates who are reading that to feel, whether that's
excitement, energy, buzz around that role.

And if you're not getting those, they're not either. And it’s probably time to revise those and repost. So that's it for the job
opening ads. I hope that helps you guys out. One more plug for our Boot Camps. They're filling up multiple cities. If you're
interested, please reach out to Charlotte. Again, I'm Travis Hendrick with The Family Business Institute, where We Build
Better Contractors.