If you run a lawn and landscape company, hiring great people is no doubt, one of the top challenges you're facing. But did you know that most employees today, including lawn and landscape professionals, are finding their jobs online on their smartphone? Chances are you're making some of the common mistakes that I see lawn and landscape companies make when it comes to your job ads, and people might not be finding them the way that they could. And that's exactly what I'm going to share in my presentation about recruiting at the NALPs Landscapes Virtual Conference happening the week of October 19th.
In today's episode, I'm going to give you a sneak peek, some clips from my talk, so you can decide if you want to attend the whole presentation at the Landscapes Virtual Show. My name's Jack Jostes and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales & Marketing Podcast. This show is all about helping you increase your sales, increase your profit through attracting the right customers to your business, through sales and marketing. And a big part of sales and marketing is having the right people on your team to take care of your clients. And that's one of the areas that I help people with, which is digital recruiting. So in today's episode, I'm going to share some digital recruiting tips, and I hope you enjoy them.
For the last three years, I've made the annual trip down to Louisville, Kentucky for the GIE Expo, the Green Industry Expo. It's a huge landscape show. And I'm bummed honestly that I'm not going there this fall. I really enjoy going there and meeting my clients and networking. And there's just this energy of that show, it's massive. And last year was really special, I presented the landscaper's guide to modern sales and marketing at the keynote, and it was standing room only, there were over 100 people in the audience, and we sold over 60 books. One person even paid me with a fake $100 bill for my book. I guess that's the sign of success when people try to pay you with fake money? I don't know. But anyways, I'm bummed about it that it's not happening this year. I understand why it's not, I can't wait until we can have something like this again.
I know we're all craving a live event like that. And I'm really excited to be on the virtual experience, which is the show put on by the NALP, the National Association of Landscape Professionals. And so this year, I'm doing a technology express talk, a 20 minute talk, on how smartphones can help solve your labor problems. And I want to share with you a sneak peek from that presentation, it's got lots of really cool data from the NALP compensation and benefits survey, showing that finding qualified employees and skilled labor is still the biggest challenge in the green industry. And my presentation shares three key ways that I can help you with that, with things that you can learn and implement on your own. And the three main points of the talk are how are today's landscape professionals finding jobs? I share some current data about what's working now in some actual interviews with clients, I'm going to roll a clip later as a sneak preview.
Some of the mistakes that I'm seeing landscaping companies make when it comes to their online, their job ads, and I share 10 tips for the landscapers ultimate online digital recruiting plan. So I'm going to give you a little hint of the content about how today's landscapers are finding jobs. And look, here's the data right now from Google Trends this year of people Googling on their smartphone every year, it's doubled year over year, people looking for landscaping jobs near me on their smartphone, typically using their voice. And there was an even bigger spike this spring than ever, partly because landscaping was considered essential and a lot of people were looking for jobs in that industry. So absolutely people are looking online. And I share a story about one of my clients, Tim Stevens, from F&B Landscaping, who was having trouble recruiting and thought that because he couldn't hire anyone, he shouldn't do marketing.
That's what a lot of people think they're like, "Oh, because I can't hire no one, I definitely shouldn't do marketing." But it was, he realized when he was interviewing people for a management role at his company, somebody told him, "Hey, Tim, honestly, I almost didn't do the interview with you because your website is so bad." Here's a screenshot of his old website, it was really unprofessional. Luckily, I saw some photos on your Facebook of your project work and it looks legitimate. But he almost lost out on a candidate before the interview because of his website. So today's landscapers, today's employees, are absolutely looking online. And I share a story about another client, Blue River Forestry and Tree Care, we shot this awesome photo of their team with the flat irons in the back, who actually landed two qualified employees who found them online. One of them applied, he was moving here, he was an arborist.
He came up for a working interview, got the job, and then brought a buddy with him. So that's amazing. So that was a cool story, and yes, this works. So those first two examples were in Colorado and yes, this works in Texas. I have clients in every state who said, "Well, Jack, this is great, but things are different here, buddy." They're different in Idaho or Oregon or Illinois or wherever they are. But I am going to share with you an interview with Casey Hendrix. He's the owner of Tex-Scapes Nursery and Landscape down at Ennis, Texas, about what our employees actually look for when they're looking at your website and how your online presence can actually help. Yes. Even in Texas, let's hear what Casey has to say.
Casey Hendrix:
“What I didn't realize is the huge impact on our branding that the website was having or not having, and being found by, I mean, you're not going to go work somewhere and you pull up their website and it looks like a roadside something that will be here this month and probably gone the next. I mean, you want to work for a substantial company that has benefits that is going to be there, and there's potential room for growth, and learning, and personal growth, and can help you achieve your personal goals. And so once we realized that and built the new site, more than one of our hires since that time had said, "Yeah, I went to your website, everything looked great." And we have links on there. You can fill out an application, you can email it to the proper person.
Casey Hendrix:
You can click on our careers page and it shows a picture of our team and then positions that are available and they click that position. And then they read, "Oh, I've got to be able to lift 50 pounds and I've got to work out in the sun and I might not be a good fit." So then that person doesn't call us. Wonderful. I didn't have to interview that person because we put that information out there, what we're looking for very specifically. And if it doesn't fit then, hey move along. If it does, great, give us a call.”
The most important thing that I cover in my talk is that you need to always be selling, always be selling, always be closing, always be recruiting, right? But for real, you need to always be selling people on why should they work for you? This is the biggest issue I see in most job ads in general cost most industries, but absolutely in the landscape industry, is why should I choose you? And that's what my whole talk is all about is how do you stand out as the place to work through your job ads? And then how do you leverage the technology that people are using today to find jobs? So be sure to register for my talk, register for the virtual experience at landscapeprofessionals.org/LANDSCAPES, and I'll also be doing a Zoom with champions, I'm really excited. So we don't have breakfast with champions this year like we do at NALP in Louisville in person, but we're going to be doing it over Zoom.
And I've actually been running the landscape executive mastermind for the last year. And I've figured out how to really run one of these meetings. And they're exciting, they're engaging. And I look forward to seeing you at the virtual experience. So I hope you enjoyed today's show and register online at landscapeprofessionals.org. And if you're curious about my talk, if you'd like to learn more, just send me an email, subject line recruiting, at jack@ramblinjackson.com. Yes, just send me an email and I'll send you some more information, some of these tips, some of my blog posts and podcast episodes, you can see online. So send me an email jack@ramblinjackson.com with recruiting, and I'll send you some more information about how you can do this. Thanks so much for checking out today's episode.
