<font color=blue>INDUSTRY BUZZ</font> Recruiting: The Lifeblood Of Our Business

Coming back from Provo, Utah where I spent some time at PLANET Student Career Days, I couldn’t help being filled with enthusiasm generated from what I experienced there. Seeing the significant interest in our industry from very talented, energetic and entrepreneurial students was inspiring. It is clear to me that our industry is very attractive to the next generation and I believe there are several reasons for that:

1. Gardening is fun. Making the world more beautiful through quality landscaping is an intrinsically satisfying thing to do. A job well done is visible and can be enjoyed by many over a period of time. It’s also a great source of pride. And let’s face it, working outdoors beats sitting in an office any day of the week.
2. Landscaping as a business is challenging. Being successful in the landscaping business requires a lot more than just knowing what flowers to plant. Yes, you have to be knowledgeable at horticulture, but you also have to be good at many other things including:

·      Customer relationship management. Understanding what the customer really wants and seeing their property through their eyes.

·      Sequencing and organizing the work.

·      Managing the labor required to get the work done.

·      Understanding what equipment to use and how to take care of it.

·      Making sure that your team is working safely.

·      Understanding and managing fertility and pest control.

·      Designing and upgrading landscapes.

·      Financial management.

3. Landscaping careers are interesting and evolve over time. There are so many different aspects of a landscape career that can build and develop over time. Early in one’s career it’s all about getting the work done. Throughout your career it shifts to leading the customer relationships, building strong teams of people who can be successful and who can help others develop, learning effective financial management and building new business.

The list goes on, but the key message is that there are challenging and integral roles of management that can be rewarding for a lifetime. It can lead to a general management role that I would contend is as satisfying and diverse as just about any other business in the country.

4. Successful landscape professionals are entrepreneurial. There are many ways to achieve the success of satisfied customers, a strong team and profitable operations, and I am constantly impressed by the entrepreneurial energy that our people have in continuing to innovate and continuously improve what we do and how we operate. Every day there is something new to try.

I think it’s important for all of us to represent our industry in recruiting people into the business for a career.

·      Be candid with people about the job and the progression. We are fortunate in that what we do is highly attractive, but we are best served by being straight about what is good about our industry, what is hard and simply, what takes time to learn. It's a job that requires you to be out in the field getting it done and making it happen. And, for those of us who enjoy that, it's a great way to make a living.

·      Listen closely to what potential recruits mean, not just what they say. Many of the people that we interview may not fully know yet what they want to do or how to express it. It's our job to draw out of them their true professional aspirations and see how it matches what we do. An example of this is many kids coming out of college today really enjoy design but when you dig deeper and find someone who likes to work outdoors, likes the feeling of seeing a landscape evolve over time and enjoys interacting with customers and building relationships over time – then you have a good candidate for the landscape business.

·      Give them access. Make sure that we expose them to what we do and a range of people in our organization who do it. In our company, we very much want to give them exposure to senior people who have been around 15 to 20 years, mid-tenured employees, as well as recent hires so they can get a sense of what a career looks like over time. This also provides the candidate with the best possible chance to explore and understand the careers in the landscape business and how they might fit in.

In closing, recruiting is one of the most fulfilling things we do because we get a chance to take a step back and talk about how much fun our work is. I enjoy the season when we get the chance to step back for a moment and convey our enthusiasm for what we do. And not only is it fun, it is our responsibility because afterall, bringing in hard working, talented people into our industry is the key to continuing to advance the professionalism and growing our businesses successfully!

Roger J. Zino is president and chief operating officer of ValleyCrest Landscape Maintenance.