Be the company good people want to work for. Worth leaving a competitor for
Growth needs people before it needs projects. The bigger package waits on the superintendent who can run it, and the people you want are already employed, mostly by your competitors, and checking your company out the same way an owner does.
Hiring is a marketing problem for two years before anybody writes a job posting.
Who applies when you post an opening was mostly settled before you posted it, by what the operators and foremen within an hour of your yard already believe about working for you.
The market already has an opinion
Nearly every hand in the county who might work for you has heard one story about the company, from one person, about one season. It's durable, it travels, and nobody here is responsible for it.
The look happens on a phone
Between the tailgate meeting and the first load. What they find is a site written for owners and general contractors, which is correct, and which answers nothing about what a Tuesday is like or who they'd be running under.
The advertisement is the last thing they read
By the time anyone opens a listing they're looking for a reason to stop reading. Everything that would have made them apply had to exist before they started looking, which puts it outside the hiring process entirely.
The rest of this sheet follows the third, because it is the only one of the three that gets built rather than earned. The first is what your crews say about you, which is a product of how they are treated. The second is a symptom of the third.
What they find first
It starts on somebody else's jobsite.
Nobody at the company is in the room. A hand who ran for you two seasons ago says the name to somebody who is already thinking about moving, and that is the whole of the introduction. What happens next happens on a phone, in a truck, before six thirty in the morning.
Four minutes, and none of it was written for them.
The site is aimed at owners and general contractors, which is correct and also means it answers nothing they came to ask. The social page has not moved in two years. The listing reads like the other nine in the market. Four of these six steps happen on channels you own, and all four are written for somebody else.
Then it is decided by a phone call you never hear.
They ask a cousin, and they take one answer from one person, because it is the only source in the chain that was ever aimed at them. You never see an application, so you never learn the seat was in play. The four steps in the middle are the only part of this a marketing engagement touches, and they are the part that was left to go stale.
Illustrative. Six places one candidate goes between hearing the company's name and deciding, drawn so the four that happen on ground the company owns can be counted. Not a measured path and not a survey: the point is the order, and which part of it is yours.
Six steps in order. The company has a say over four of them: They type the company name into a phone; Three results, none of them about working there; A social page that stopped two years ago; A listing that reads like everybody else’s.
They hear the name on somebody else's jobsite
From a hand who ran for you two seasons ago, to somebody who is already thinking about moving.
They type the company name into a phone
In the truck, before the tailgate meeting. This is the first moment anything you own is in the chain.
Three results, none of them about working there
A homepage built to win work, a services page, a contact form. No account of the work, and nowhere for a candidate to land. Whatever else is on that screen, a review page or a rating, is not yours to control.
A social page that stopped two years ago
Two trucks and a photograph of a machine. No crews, no faces, no names, and a date on it that answers a different question than the one they asked.
A listing that reads like everybody else’s
Competitive pay, five years experience, apply online. Nothing in it distinguishes the company from the one they already work for.
So they ask their cousin instead
One answer, from one person, about one season, and it is the only source in the chain that was ever aimed at them.
Five reasons the same hiring quarter repeats, and only some of them are ours.
We are direct about which of these a marketing engagement moves and which stay with you no matter what gets published. Three of the five are ours. The other two are the ones that decide whether the three are worth doing.
Hiring starts the week somebody quits
Nothing is built in advance, so every opening is worked from a standing start against whoever happens to be looking that month. The pool is whoever is available rather than whoever is good, and the search begins at the worst possible moment for it to begin.
Yours to plan. Ours to build what it draws from.
The website was written for owners, not for hands
It's aimed at the people who award work, which is right, and it also means it answers none of the questions a candidate arrives with. Two audiences, one site, and only one of them was ever considered.
Directly ours to fix.
The best evidence you have is on phones in the cabs
Every week your crews shoot photographs and video of real work in real conditions. All of it stays in the cab. Nobody collects it, nobody has been asked for it, and nobody has agreed to it being published. Some of it never can be: an owner or a general contractor may hold the right to say no, and anything showing a trench, a lift or a man without his glasses goes past your safety director before it goes anywhere else.
Yours to supply and to clear. Ours to ask for it, sort it and publish what survives.
What it's like to work there was never written down
The owner can describe it in a minute in a truck: the scopes, the travel, how winter runs, who came up through the crews. It exists nowhere in writing, so a candidate can't check it, nobody can send it, and it can't be handed to whoever does the hiring next.
We write it. You approve every word of it.
Hiring belongs to nobody in particular
It sits between the owner, a superintendent and whoever handles payroll, so the advertisement, the follow-up and the first day all depend on who has time that week. A candidate reads inconsistency as a warning, and they are usually right to.
Yours. We can only make sure what they find is current.
What the posting answers
Six lines, and one of them is not aimed at anybody.
Competitive pay based on experience. Five years minimum. A Class A preferred. A screening notice, which is your insurer or an owner’s contract rather than a statute. An equal opportunity line, which on federal-aid work is an obligation. Then apply online. It is not a bad advertisement. It is the same advertisement as everybody else’s, which is the problem with it.
They arrive with eight questions.
Not from a form, and not in this order every time. But some version of these is what gets asked on a tailgate about a company somebody is thinking of leaving for, and they were being asked long before this opening existed. The advertisement is the last document in the chain and the only one written after the questions.
Six go unanswered, and five of the six decide it.
The pay line and the licence line half-answer two of them. Of the six left unanswered, five are what a good hand weighs against the job they already have. Not one of those five is a rate, and none of them can be fixed inside an advertisement, because all five had to be answerable before anybody went looking.
Illustrative. Six lines of the kind that run in most markets, and eight questions a candidate arrives with. Not a survey and not a finding: the eight are an example, and the check is arithmetic you can do on the drawing. The five marked are the five the next section takes one at a time, in the same order.
Competitive pay, based on experience
Minimum five years experience
Class A CDL preferred
Must pass pre-employment screening
Equal opportunity employer
Apply online
Who runs the crew I'd be on
Decides itWhat am I running, and what shape is it in
Decides itHow far from my house, and how many nights
Decides itDo you run winter, or lay people off
Decides itHow does somebody get to foreman here
Decides itWhy did the last three leave
No answerWhat does the pay actually come to
ImpliedDo I need my Class A before I start
ImpliedFive questions carry the decision. None of them is answered by the word competitive.
These are the five the drawing above marks, in the same order. One more goes unanswered and is not here: why the last three left, which is not marketing's to touch and not marketing's to answer. Pay is not on this list either. Pay decides whether somebody takes your call; these five decide whether they make it.
Who runs the crew I'd be on
They aren't asking whether the company is good. They're asking about one person, on one crew, on one job, and the answer travels by name long before it travels by reputation.
Ours to make your superintendents visible. Not ours to change how one runs a crew.
What am I running, and what shape is it in
The condition of the iron, whether the machines are on grade control, the scopes you self-perform, and whether the work is varied or the same trench for nine months. An operator who is particular about equipment is usually the one worth hiring.
Ours to publish what's there. We won't stage a fleet that isn't.
How far from my house, and how many nights
Travel, nights away and per diem. They're comparing your answer against a job where they already know it, so a blank reads as the worse answer rather than as no answer.
Ours to state plainly. The schedule itself is yours, and we will not describe four nights away as flexible.
Do you run winter, or lay people off
In the northern half of the country this is the question that decides it, because it decides the year. Run through, push snow, rotate crews into the shop on equipment maintenance, or lay off at Thanksgiving and expect people back in March. A contractor who carries good hands through the winter owns the most checkable recruiting fact in the trade. Further south the same question is asked about the wet season and the heat.
Ours to state plainly, and it is the cheapest advantage on this page to publish if the answer is a good one.
How does somebody get to foreman here
Whether anybody has come up through the crews recently, and whether the path was circumstance or something the company does on purpose. Plenty of good operators do not want it: more phone calls, more time with the inspector, and sometimes less on the check once they stop earning overtime. The ones who do ask are the ones you can least afford to lose.
We can only publish a path that exists. If nobody has come up, that is a decision to make before it is a story to tell.
What an open seat costs
A crew of six, and a seat that was open before the job started.
You priced the work with six. You start it with five, because the operator you needed gave notice in the spring and the opening has been up ever since. Nothing about the schedule changed to reflect it, because schedules do not change to reflect it.
Three of the five absorb it, and by week seven there are two seats.
The cover does not spread evenly across the crew. It lands on the three who can actually do the work, every time, because that is who you ask. One of those three leaves at the end of week six. Not over the hours exactly, but the hours are what made the call easy. Now four people are covering two holes, and the second opening goes up the same way the first one did.
None of the twelve weeks is where this gets fixed.
Nothing published in week three shortens a search that started in week one. A marketing engagement can only act in the two years before the job is ever posted. In those years somebody either has heard of the company or hasn't, and can either find something about the work or can't. That is all this page is offering.
Illustrative. A crew of six on a twelve-week job, with one seat already open when the job starts. Not a measured crew and not a cost: the marks show who carries the cover, not what it came to in hours. What can be counted here is six seats, twelve weeks, and two seats open by the end.
Nothing about the openings changes. What changes is who already knows the answers when one opens.
Not in applicant counts, and not in how the company feels about its own site.
Hiring starts the week somebody quits.
Hiring draws on a pool built over the last two years.
The listing is the only place to look, and it answers nothing.
The answers already exist somewhere, whoever ends up writing the listing.
No name attached to the company but the owner's.
Superintendents and foremen known by name in the market.
The only account of the work comes from a former hand.
Your own account, in writing, that a candidate can check.
Everyone arriving knowing nothing about the company.
Most arriving already knowing who they are coming to.
Show the work, show the trajectory, be there when they look.
Make the work visible.
A superintendent weighing a move wants to know what they would get to build. The projects, scopes and conditions your crews handle are the strongest argument you have, and from outside the fence almost none of it is visible.
Make the trajectory visible.
A company on its way up reads as opportunity. New markets entered, bigger scopes self-performed and work recently won say more about somebody's next five years there than any statement about culture.
Put a name to the company.
The first question a candidate asks is about one person, and at most contractors the only name attached to the company in public is the owner's. Naming the superintendents and foremen, and letting them describe their own work, answers the question that carries the rest of them.
Be findable and current when they check.
The look happens quietly, often at night, before anyone tells you they are interested. What a foreman finds that evening should be current, specific, and easy to square with what their peers said.
This goal leans on four services, and none of them is hiring.
The mix depends on which roles growth actually waits on, and they are not one audience. Three superintendents and thirty operators are different problems with different mechanisms, and the fourth service below reaches one of them and not the other. Name which one you have first; these four shape what the people in it find.
A site that holds up to the night-before check
The second step is the first moment anything you own enters the chain, and today it lands on a homepage built to win work. The same site can show the current work, the current scale and where the company is going without stopping doing its first job.
Project work worth wanting to be part of
Publish the work your crews actually do: scopes, equipment, conditions handled, and the people who ran it. This is what closes the third cause above, because most of the material already exists on phones in the cabs and only needs collecting and permission.
Findable when your name comes up
The quiet look starts with a search on the company name and the market. Both should return recent work rather than the version of the company from four years ago, and this is the one step in the chain a contractor controls outright.
A name that is already familiar
Superintendents, project managers and estimators scroll the same feeds your buyers do, and steady visibility there makes the company a known quantity before anybody is thinking about moving. Be clear about the limit of it: this reaches salaried and field leadership. It does not reach operators, pipelayers or drivers, who are not on those feeds, and it is the wrong tool if the thirty-operator problem is the one you have. The first three services are what carry that.
What none of this does: recruit, source, screen, write your job postings or run your hiring. We are not a staffing agency and this is not a recruiting service. Nothing here replaces pay, schedule or how crews are actually treated. What it does is make sure the company people find matches the one you have built, which is the same asset that gets you onto a bid list. That is the argument for doing it. You are not buying a second programme. You are using the one you have to reach a second group of people.
The most useful proof is proof that looks like the business problem you're trying to solve.
Proof for this goal will show how a contractor's public presence was brought level with the company behind it, and what the people it needed found when they went and looked. Nothing about an individual employee publishes without that person's agreement. The work page carries what is confirmed today.
One slot above is full. The other stays empty until this page has proof of its own.
Read the full caseMarketing can make a good place to work known. It cannot make a bad one good.
Better you know now than after a proposal.
Pay and benefits are not a messaging problem
If the rate is under the market, that is the finding, and we will say it rather than sell around it. Publishing better material about a job that pays less than the one across town gets you more people who look and decline. Where pay is at market and seats still stay open, the gap is usually that nothing about the work is knowable from outside, and that part we can fix. On public work the wage decision is published and the rate is not yours to differentiate on anyway, which is the strongest argument on this page for competing on everything else.
How your superintendents run crews
That first question is about one person, and the honest answer to it is earned on a jobsite rather than written on a page. We can make your people visible and let them describe their own work. We cannot change how any of them runs a crew, and if that is the problem, publishing more about it makes it worse rather than better.
We are not a staffing agency
We do not recruit, source candidates, screen anyone, write your job postings or run your hiring process, and we do not sell a recruiting service. What we build is what a candidate finds when they look the company up. If you want to advertise on top of that, it will at least have somewhere to send them.
The results you don't control
A search on your company name does not only return your own pages. A job-board profile with a star rating on it, a maps listing, a review page written by people who have left: those often sit above your site, and most owners have never read theirs. We can tell you what is there and we can make sure the pages you do own are better than it. We cannot take somebody else's page down, and any agency offering to is selling you something worse than nothing.
Named people are easier for your competitors to find too
This is the objection every owner raises and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassurance. Putting your superintendents' names and work in public does make them legible to whoever else is hiring. Our view is that the same visibility is what brings you the next one, and that a person who can be recruited away by a phone call was reachable anyway. But it is a real trade, it is yours to make rather than ours, and anyone who tells you it costs nothing has not run it.
The seat has to be filled this month
Everything on this page works on the timescale of the two years before a job is ever posted. If a superintendent is needed for a start date six weeks out, that is a recruiter, a signing bonus or a subcontract, and this is the wrong tool for it. It is worth starting anyway, for the next one, but not instead of solving this one.
Is this recruitment advertising?
No. We do not run recruiting ads, source candidates or screen anyone, and we do not write your postings or run your hiring. What we build is what a candidate finds when they look the company up, which is the four middle steps of that search. If you want to advertise on top of that, it will have somewhere to send them, which is more than most listings in this trade can say.
Our problem is pay. Everyone knows that.
Then start there, and we will say so on the call rather than after a proposal. Where pay is at market and the seats still stay open, the gap is usually that nothing about the work is knowable from outside. That part we can fix. The rate we cannot, and no amount of publishing changes it.
We are signatory. The hall sends us people.
Then a good deal of this page is not your problem, and you should know that before anybody quotes you. Where you are signatory, the craft side is the hall's and the argument narrows to the people it does not send: superintendents, project managers, estimators, and the foremen on their way up. That is a smaller audience and a more valuable one, and everything on this page still applies to it. It changes what being known for is worth to you, though, and it should change the scope. Plenty of contractors are signatory in one state and open shop in the next, which is a different answer again, and it is the first thing we would ask.
Our people will not be on camera.
Some will not, and that is fine. This works with the ones who will, and most of what matters is not footage anyway: naming your superintendents, stating travel and season plainly, and describing the work accurately. Nothing about an individual gets published without that person agreeing to it, which is a rule we hold whether or not you ask for it. Agreeing is not the same as a signed release, so we set one up with you, keep it with the person rather than with us, and take the material down when somebody leaves and asks. Nobody wants a former superintendent still fronting the company from a competitor's payroll.
Who does this work on our side?
More people than most agencies admit, so here is the whole list. Whoever owns hiring, even if that is still the owner, to approve what the company says about itself. A foreman or two, for a few minutes a month, to answer what is happening on a job and send what they already shot. Your safety director, because published field photography gets a compliance pass before it leaves the building and that is not ours to sign off. And whoever holds a contract on a restricted site, because some of that material is not yours to publish. If nobody inside will name the supers, approve an account of the work or clear a photograph, there is nothing for us to publish and we would rather establish that on the first call.
How long before it shows up in applicants?
Longer than a campaign and shorter than a reputation, and a public page is the wrong place for a number, because anybody putting one here is guessing about your market and your trades. What we can say is which part moves first. What a candidate finds when they search the company name is the one step in the chain you control outright, so it changes soonest; word of mouth moves at the speed of seasons, because it is carried by people finishing jobs. Ask us with your own market in front of us and you will get a real answer instead of a range.
Can you tell us what is wrong before we commit to anything?
We can tell you whether this looks like a problem we take on, and we will be straight if it is not. Search your own company name on a phone, the way a candidate would, and bring what comes back. We will run the five questions against it on the call. That costs you nothing and takes about twenty minutes. Working out what is actually wrong and what to do about it is the Strategic Foundation, which is paid work with a fee attached. We do not give the diagnosis away in order to sell the execution after it, because an agency that does has to make the money back somewhere.
What this costs, and what follows it: this starts with a Strategic Foundation, the paid engagement that decides what marketing has to accomplish before anyone picks a channel. It starts at $7,500. How we work sets out the three engagements, what each one commits you to, and what sits outside the fee. A first conversation establishes fit and costs nothing.
Win the Right Work
Name the roles your next stage of growth waits on, and we will be honest about whether this is weight marketing can carry for a company like yours. Reading what your presence actually says to those people, and where it undersells the company you have built, is the strategy work itself.
Talk about the people you need to grow