It’s no secret that your company is only as good as the people you hire. With competition for good construction employees at an all-time high, it’s more important than ever to position your company to attract the right job candidates.
Regardless of whether you’re looking to hire skilled laborers, project managers or estimators for your construction business, knowing where to find the best employees can give you an edge over the competition.
Contractors recognize the need to hire good people, but are they looking in the right place? There’s no doubt that the value of “word of mouth” will always be high. Consider the last time you needed a job. You probably asked your friends and family if they knew anyone who was hiring.
But word of mouth only goes so far. And while younger workers might ask their friends and family for job leads, they’re definitely turning to their default resource for, well, pretty much everything: the internet. The internet casts a much wider net for job hunters than word of mouth ever will.
Construction company owners are missing a huge opportunity by not looking for job candidates online.
Consider this likely scenario of a job hunter: 32-year-old Ryan wants to leave his current employer, a small HVAC contractor, to work as a project manager with a larger company.
Without thinking twice, Ryan immediately hops online to conduct an exhaustive search of construction-related job openings in a 25-mile radius of his home. Ryan peruses online job boards like Indeed and Monster, and within a few minutes identifies a dozen local construction companies that are hiring project managers. He can easily tell from the job listings that four opportunities are with HVAC companies, an area of the construction sector he knows especially well. Three of those companies are within 25 miles of his home. Ryan applies for those three positions online without ever printing a resume or licking a stamp.
Ryan also asks his family and friends if they know anyone who is hiring. He just thought to check the internet first.
But Ryan’s not finished. Still excited about the opportunities he found online with the three nearby companies, Ryan grabs his phone and googles the names of the three potential employers he’s interested in. He checks their websites to learn more about their history and management team. Then he looks to see whether he can find a Facebook page for those companies. He also looks at Yelp and Angie’s List for reviews of those companies, because it’s important to dedicated employees like Ryan to work with a business that has a solid reputation.
You get the idea. Many employees, particularly those age 40 and under, go straight to the internet to conduct their job search.
When you need to find quality employees, you need to make it easy for them to find YOU. Make sure you are set up to have the right people find you online.
Finding qualified employees is no walk in the park. If you’d like to have a sounding board to figure out how to find good employees, retain your best team members for the long haul, or improve your online presence, we can help. Contact us online or call 800.899.4623.