As a builder, how do you hire for your team?
How do you find people who want to work with you? Do you look for attitude over skills?
Watch the video now, or read the transcript below.
Finding The Right Team
Amelia
So Duayne, we talk a lot about how building is a team sport, having the right people on board is super essential to running a good, effective, sustainable, thriving building business. How do you suggest builders find good people for their team? It’s the $60 million dollar question at the moment isn’t it?
Duayne
It is very difficult at the moment. I’ll be honest, we are struggling to find people. But again, it’s something that has happened through all the social media we do. We’re not just attracting clients that want to work with us, we’re attracting staff that want to work with us. So, I think it’s one of those things, you’ve got to attract people that are like-minded, that want to work in a business that you’re trying to create, that have similar mindsets. All those types of things.
But we’ve had a lot of success with social media. It puts it out to the world. You’ve generally got people watching the type of work you do anyway. So yeah, just putting good, honest, real videos out there. People see you. We’re always popping up all over the place. But by putting yourself out there doing a video, it’s very personal. And by doing that, you’re nine times out of ten, you’re going to attract like-minded people.
Amelia
I think too, what’s really interesting is what you choose to hire for as well. We know that lots of our builder members in ELEVATE have had success finding team members. They’ve been looking for ages, because they’ve had a list of all of the tasks or responsibilities that that person will have and what they need them to do. And then they’ve decided instead to create ads for these positions that talk about the values of their business and what their business represents, what they’re seeking to achieve, what they’re like, as an operation, as people.
And we’ve had so many members say they hire for attitude over skill, because:
they can teach skill, but they can’t teach attitude
How do you see putting yourself out there means that you’ll attract staff? How do you see the interview process going and making sure that you’re finding somebody who is actually aligned with how you want to deliver business?
Duayne
Well, that’s something I never used to do. I would just simply put an ad out for a carpenter and in the past, there was a point where we weren’t even getting resumes or anything. We do ask for resumes now, but a resume is hard I believe. At the end of the day people can write whatever they want. And it’s like getting testimonials for a build. You can get a testimonial from a former employee, but he’s not going to bag you out.
So I’m a big fan of having an interview.
I think it needs to be very personal. If you’re wanting to take your business in a direction, and grow and achieve your goals, then your team is a massive part of that. So taking the time to schedule an interview. And rather than talk about work in those interviews now, I tend to talk more about them personally. What are their goals? What do they want to achieve? Do they have kids? Have they just bought a house? I try to find out a little bit more about them. And I find by doing that they actually open up a lot more.
We make that personal connection right off the bat. And it just sets the tone for how things will flow in the future. And again, it’s funny, but when you start putting these types of things in place, I’ve had plenty of interviews now with guys that have come, we’ve had an interview, and during that interview, they’ve actually realised that they don’t want to go and work anywhere else. They’re actually happy with where they are, or vice versa. They may not have been looking for a job, they just wanted to have an interview and through the interview, they found out well, holy h…, well the guy I’m working for at the moment cares about none of this stuff.
Having an interview makes it very personal
You can get a feel for their personality, if they’re going to fit. This is a big one for me. Figuring out if they’re going to fit in the team. Because you might have an incredible team at the moment, it might only be two or three guys, or it could be ten. But if you get a new employee that’s a bad egg, you can really disrupt that.
Amelia
Oh, it’s terrible, isn’t it? You can completely derail all of the work that you’ve done to build up your own team and all the trust that you’re placing in them if you bring on board somebody who’s not in alignment with that. One person can send the whole business kaput.
So do you ever do trials or anything like that to see if people are a good fit? I know when times are really competitive, and it’s a scramble to get staff, it can seem crazy that you’d tell a potential employee that you’re going to trial them. But what do you set up to have that opportunity to test somebody a bit, before all of a sudden you’re committed, your all in.
Duayne
Anyone we employ gets a three-month trial. And again we’re very open with them. And everybody in our business is told that how they work through the business, how they get paid, how they get rewarded is completely up to them. I’m very honest with people about that trial. You might be with me for a week, and I’ll come to you and say, hey, you’re on board, let’s go. Or it might take several weeks to see how you work around, how you fit in with the team.
So it’s a maximum three months trial, but it’s up to them to show me how they’re going to work with the team. Have they got the right tools? Have they got the right mindset? Are they turning up on time? And again, it’s about setting that expectation at the meeting before we’ve gone to the trouble of setting them up, getting them to site and organising work around them.
Attitude is Everything
Amelia
Do you see that fit of what I was talking about earlier with hiring for attitude not skills is that something that you’ve really seen come through in your business and in other builders in the conversations that you have with other builders where they’ve had success with hiring team members?
Duayne
100 percent. Even though the industry is as busy as it is, I still wouldn’t put a carpenter on just to put a carpenter on.
We can teach. Even if someone’s been in the industry a long time they might not have done a particular type of work. We’ve actually just put on someone lately that has done very very little concreting.
In our business we do as much as we can ourselves. So again, letting him know clearly what we do in our work and his attitude towards that was really good because from that conversation he let me know that look, I do want to become a builder. My dream goal in the next two to four years is to be a builder.
So, having all those experiences is really good. So yeah, hiring for attitude over skill is I believe the way to go because if you’ve got a good team culture currently you’ve got a good team. Then you can teach people anything, but you can’t teach change your attitude.
Amelia
Most definitely.
We would love to hear your experience as a builder when hiring your team. Drop a comment below, or visit us over on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LiveLifeBuild or Instagram: www.instagram.com/live.life.build/. Or why not check out some more information on creating a great team here: www.livelifebuild.com/blog/people-create-a-great-team/