While construction unemployment remains lower than it has in years, the skilled labor shortage means as many as 300,000 construction jobs are left unfilled in the current economy. The shortage puts pressure on businesses to attract and hire the right people. However, looking in conventional avenues may not be fruitful and businesses must learn to recognize potential in unorthodox places, according to Burk Moreland, the vice president of sales and operations for IES Residential.
“You should be looking for people all the time,” Moreland said in his session “How to Maximize & Motivate Your People” at the 2020 International Builders Show in Las Vegas. “Stop looking in the traditional places. Everyone in the industry is trying to find those people, so you’ll just be competing against supply and demand, and the demand is really high for those people.”
Moreland said companies will need to rethink some recruiting strategies and onboarding practices to ensure new hires in this tight labor market are the right fit for the company. First, when looking for talent, companies should focus on finding the traits they want in an employee, rather than being caught up in the skills of candidates, especially when looking for candidates outside of the construction industry.
Once candidates are identified, the interview process with them should be extremely thorough, Moreland said, to ensure companies know everything about an individual before hiring them.
A detailed screening creates expectations for the prospective employee and can help guard against the employee leaving the company quickly upon being hired. Once candidates are hired, Moreland said, it is extremely important to continue to engage with them early on the job.
“You have to decide you are going to make the onboarding process more like the sales process,” Moreland said. “If you have a customer, you don’t just take their check and run to the bank.”
A thorough onboarding process can help reveal the company’s culture to a new employee and create a better sense of team and unity. If employees have a detailed and structured process outlining their early weeks on the job, they are more likely to take charge of their own development and feel they are wanted by the company. This will help a company’s performance, as high turnover can lead to inefficiencies and hiring mistakes can severely cost companies, both monetarily and in opportunity costs. These decisions are likely to remain important, as the industry unemployment rate shrinks and the labor shortage continues to negatively affect the construction market.
