Author Ken Blanchard says, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” Green industry careers are created, not made. Like the landscapes that come to life, careers are shaped and defined by the people who invest their time and talents in the living landscape as well as the financial side of the business. Young entrepreneurs who can harness their creativity and grow a dynamic business can make a lasting impression in the landscape field.
One of the industry’s largest and most diverse companies is the Valley Crest companies which includes ValleyCrest Landscape Development, ValleyCrest Design Group, ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance, ValleyCrest Golf Course Maintenance, Estate Gardens by ValleyCrest, ValleyCrest Homescapes and ValleyCrest Tree Company. Hoping to learn more about recruiting for success, we asked industry veterans Tom Donnelly and Roger Zino to discuss the key attributes of recruiting, building and sustaining engaged employees and high-performing teams at ValleyCrest Companies based in Calabasas, Calif.
Tom Donnelly, president of Valley Crest Landscape Development; and Roger Zino, president of Valley Crest Landscape Maintenance, took some time to reflect on how they recruit and retain students to the landscape industry.
Q: Where do you find great people for your teams?
Tom: We target colleges and universities where the students are exposed to practical as well as theoretical learning experiences. We view both the classroom education and the hands-on experience in the field as fundamentally important to success in our business.
Roger: Across the country, we see great opportunities for energetic people with a serious interest in the green industry. We want to make sure we get that word out to all the great students coming out of the major college programs today.
Q: What is ValleyCrest doing to build teams that work toward real results?
Roger: We’re committed to hiring top students who share our passion for serving customers and producing results. We believe that by being open about who we are, it gives us the best chance to identify students who will thrive in our company. Once they become a member of our team, we offer training and development to help them get a sense of how we do things and to build on their skill levels. The key to developing a well-performing team is for each member to understand each individual’s capabilities and consciously work to help each other be more effective.
Every new member of the team brings capabilities that add to the whole team.
Tom: We’re also committed to front-line training for bottom-line effectiveness. Recently we introduced an incentive award program that is proving to be a catalyst for ideas and problem solving. By bringing employees into the center of decision making and asking them to participate, we’re saying, “You are important. You can contribute to our profitability and our success as a company at every level.” They have engaged completely in the process, are motivated by the incentives and take pride in the results.
Q: How do you engage them?
Roger: Students who share our values, work ethic and customer service orientation find us a good fit. We seek out and engage students on college campuses, tell our story, and use our relationships with faculty, administrators and alumni associations to help guide us to students whose core values and career ambitions match ours. We tend to attract those students who get energy from making things happen in a practical way and who enjoy serving others.
Tom: In addition to what Roger said about tapping our on-campus resources, we also place a great emphasis on our intern program, which students love. By the time our interns leave ValleyCrest, we want them to rave about us to their peers and be excited to come back and join our full-time staff after graduation. Or, at the very least, be enthused about opportunties within the green industry.
Q: How does ValleyCrest’s college recruiting plan fit with its overall business goals?
Tom: A new employee’s contribution to ValleyCrest comes after a period of time where the individual can be exposed to a wide variety of company career paths, business methods, processes and procedures. This takes time and planning on our part and patience on the new employee’s part. Our managers all know that working overtime to build a strong staff from within improves overall business performance, which is why it makes sense to start grooming and cultivating new employees right out of college.
Roger: Our main business goal is to be tops in every market we’re in, doing the best work in that market and keeping customers completely satisfied. To do this, we need the best people. As Tom mentioned, our college recruiting plan is important to our mission of doing excellent work, which we know will result in the continued growth of our business.
Q: Parting thoughts?
Roger: We are enthusiastic about the quality of the students we meet across the country and their impressive depth of knowledge and talent. My advice to anyone seeking a career in this business would be to be open and honest about what you are looking for so that you can find a place where you will be excited about coming to work every day and a place where you can develop your talents and capabilities in the green industry.
A landscape architecture graduate from Rutgers University, Tom Donnelly is a 27-year employee of ValleyCrest and President of ValleyCrest Landscape Development, the construction and design/build division of ValleyCrest.
Roger Zino is President of ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance, joining ValleyCrest in 2001 after a ten-year career at McKinsey & Company. A graduate of Georgetown University, he received his MBA from Harvard Business School.