Mastering Talent Acquisition: Insights And Tactics For Construction Recruitment Success With Taylor Maurer | Ep. 235

My guest is Taylor Mauer. He is the managing partner of HCRC. They are an expert in the area of recruiting in the heavy civil construction space. We are going to talk all things recruiting, including how to develop an employment value proposition, how to figure out if a potential employee is kicking tires or if they are serious about joining your organization, why recruiting should be viewed by you as a marketing function and how that impacts the way you outreach to potential clients?

I’m going to talk about the biggest mistake people make when they are hiring, how to handle the situation when you bring in a high-level outside executive into a new position, and how to handle the conversations with the peers of that person and the direct reports of that new person that you have in the company.

In addition to that, we take a deep dive into Taylor’s passion for long-distance hiking, a passion that I share with him. I must admit I am a little bit envious of him, as I mentioned right out of the gate because he has hiked a number of different trails that I am looking forward to getting more into a little later in my life. Thank you for reading. Enjoy my conversation with Taylor, and let’s dive right in.

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Taylor, welcome to the show.

Thank you. How are you?

I’m great. I’m happy to have you on the show because you were referred to me by Bill Schultz of Schultz Construction, a dear client and friend of mine. He is a great guy. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with him. I’m glad to have you on the show because we share him in common as a client. We are going to dive into all things recruiting here. Welcome to the show.

As we kick off here, I’m tremendously jealous of you. The reason why is that you have completed the Triple Crown. That Triple Crown has nothing to do with baseball and horse racing. It has to do with long-distance hiking. You have hiked lengths of the Appalachian, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail. I like to kick off by diving into that little bit. Tell me, what did you learn about yourself through your hiking experiences?

One of the first things I learned is that I liked the lifestyle of living on the trail. Being completely self-sufficient and stripping down all of the noise from everyday life is incredibly liberating when your primary concerns are what you are going to eat, where you are going to get water, and where you are going to sleep. Your day revolves around those three main factors.

It allowed me room to grow and think. I learned how to be adaptable in situations, whether it was wildlife, things coming up on the trails, fires, or snow. You do have to learn to be adaptable in those situations. You do run into a lot more crowded than when I was hiking those trails, but you run into a few people that you learn how to interact with and befriend people who are different from you. You share a common passion for the outdoors, but people come from all different walks of life to the trail.

I like what you said at the beginning. You are stripping the noise away. We are surrounded all day, every day. People who are reading are surrounded by that noise, as you described it. What do you do now in your day-to-day life to tap into some of that silence or rest away from the noise of everyday life?

It still goes back to exercising and getting outside, even if it’s much shorter spans of time. Whether it is a hike, a short run, or a bicycle ride, that brings me to the center, helps reduce my stress level, brings me back to the center, and reaches that meditation and Zen that I enjoy.

I live right by the American River up here in Sacramento. I regularly walk on the river, and Highway 50 is 5 minutes from my house, and the river is 2 minutes from my house. Walking on the river, you know that the highway in this large city, Sacramento is right around you, yet you see the coyotes, birds, and bunnies. You go away without your headphones and phone. You spend some time walking. It does bring you to that place of noiselessness, which is tremendously helpful.

I want to pivot into the main topic of conversation, and that is one of the biggest challenges every construction company owner who is reading this faces. That is attracting and hiring the right people. When it comes to hiring, and you have many years of experience working both in the industry as an employee for a construction company and now as a senior managing partner of HCRC, what do you think are the biggest mistakes that construction company owners and executives make when they are hiring people into their organization?

One of the largest mistakes is owners, and this applies to almost every business owner, is creating the time to build the culture of your company and truly make your company a different place to work than your competitors. The heavy civil construction industry is driven by the hard-bid mentality. You win the work by being the low bidder. When you are the low bidder, your profit margins could be limited based on your bid. How do you maximize your profit?

You don’t have a ton of control over your material and labor costs. Where do you make it up? You make it up in value engineering ideally, but a lot of times, it falls on the project management team to work hard on making that profitable. In construction, it is almost the thought that the dog is always chasing its tail there. It is hard to break that cycle of chasing that profit to create a culture and be able to explain that culture consistently throughout the executives of the company to potential employees and employee brands so that you can attract them into your company.

What do you mean by culture?

It is what differentiates your company or the company you work at from your competitors. What does that look like, how does that affect the employees, and what are the stories from the employees, the people that work there, that amplify what your culture and employer brand is?

When you say building the culture, doesn’t culture exist in an organization? How does one build a culture?

Culture exists in every organization, whether it is a good culture, a bad culture, or somewhere in the middle of the road. It is up to the executive team to sit down and decide what they want the culture to be like, and plan on trying to implement things to create what they want their company to be, how they want their culture to be viewed from the outside because that is sometimes what the company culture is and what it is viewed from the outside or to different things.

Tell me more about that. Why do you say what it is and what it is viewed like? Is that because sometimes companies say this is our culture when it is not?

No, I think that culture changes. Sometimes, a dark cloud looms over a time of company when they aren’t focused on the culture. Their attention to developing and nurturing the culture of the company was focused somewhere else. That happened to a lot of companies back in the Great Recession of 2008, that era.

There is going to be some sharing of your company culture through your employees and the outreach. That is interacting with your vendors and subcontractors. If you are a subcontractor, you are interacting with the prime contractor. You are sharing your culture through those interactions, but how do you take that to the market when you are trying to hire? How do you let your target candidate audience know about your culture?

It does take training, but you have to define it and repetitively drive the message to your executive team so that the message is consistent. It doesn’t have to be the same, but you want consistency in how you talk about your culture in your company. I don’t think that is often practiced in the industry. It is mostly driven because of time constraints and focusing on putting out fires.

In your experience working with companies, what are some of the most effective ways to define your culture?

Having a plan of what you want your culture to be and implementing it, and collecting the stories of how your culture affects the lives of the people that work there. Being able to share those stories, especially in regard to candidate outreach. As humans, we are drawn to stories. If you struggle to tell a story, that is a good part of why job descriptions fail horribly because they are not telling a story to attract talent. The challenge is not collecting and amplifying those stories and how the mission and values of the company affect the employees and their stories.

Can you give an example? You don’t have to name the company, but an example that you have of an effective job description that incorporates that idea of a story.

In the heavy civil construction market, you typically don’t see it. Usually, the medium size companies or even sometimes larger companies have the bandwidth and the people to focus on creating that content for talent marketing. You will see stories of the company like, “This is how long we have been in business. This is about our history.” All of that is part of the story.

I can’t say that I have seen an example of where they have shared the stories of the employees in the job description. A lot of that may be by design in regards to a job description because job descriptions, if they are too long and if you put anything in front of somebody who is working 50-plus hours a week, have a family, and a long commute, there is a short attention span there. Being able to tell that story in a job description is difficult. It is almost better if you are actively marketing to your candidate based on your story, and sometimes we see that done effectively through video and video marketing, but it is not done in a job description typically.

When you say marketing to your candidate base, I don’t think that most people consider hiring from the perspective of marketing. I’m interested and curious to you to describe to the audience a little bit about what you mean by marketing to your candidate base when it comes to hiring.

I started recruiting cold-calling and cold-calling candidates. Are you motivated? What is your motivation? Here is an opportunity that may be different or may be able to help you fix your problem. After I founded HCRC, Heavy Civil Resource Consultants, I came to understand that you got to be as much of a marketing company as you are a recruiting company. One of the main reasons for that is the unemployment rate in construction is typically low. Even in times of recession, the Federal government is putting money into infrastructure to negate the effects of the recession overall.

Consistently we see low unemployment rates. Companies are hiring passive candidates. These candidates are employed, and rarely do you find strong talent sitting on the bench. If they are on the bench, they are on the bench for such a short period of time. Making sure that your message is getting in front of them at the right time is difficult. You have to market your company to a potential candidate base. Ideally, you need to do it consistently. Even though the candidate may not even work for a competitor of your company when you are trying to hire, they are going to know who you are because you have been marketing to them.

I know that what you have said is true. The talent out there is difficult to find because the unemployment rates are low. In your experience, what are some of the main reasons that strong candidates switch from one company to another?

The reasons for a switch fall into two categories, professional or personal. With professionals, the two main reasons are limited growth and toxic culture. Those are the two main reasons that we see people making a move professionally. Personally, it can vary. I want to get back closer to where I grew up. We have kids. We want to be close to my in-laws. It could vary across the board.

I’m tired of living in Minnesota. I want to live in Texas or Florida, where it is warm. Those factors are much more expansive. The two main reasons professionally or either toxic culture, the lack of growth, or perhaps the business plan of the company doesn’t align with where the candidate thinks the company should be going.

The main reasons strong candidates switch to other companies are toxic culture, lack of growth, or perhaps the business plan of the company doesn't really align with where the candidate thinks. Click To Tweet

I want to tie in this idea of limited growth and toxic culture to the idea of marketing to your target audience. The best marketing is the marketing that solves the problem and articulates how my company solves the problem of my target audience. What that tells me is that one of the ways for a construction company to be effective in recruiting is to understand their target audience in terms of which companies have limited growth and/or toxic culture environments.

What are some of the most effective ways that a construction company can identify either their competition, direct competition, or perhaps competition that comes outside of their geography, similar companies, in other words? What are some of the best ways to identify those companies where there may be some limited growth for some of the high performers and also that toxic culture?

That is not a problem that is easily solved. Our approach to that is you have to do it at a high volume. I’m going to talk about a particular company. I’m going to leave them nameless, but they are one of the biggest civil contractors in the United States. Whether they have a good culture or bad culture is arguable. It changes based on where you are at in your career. They have a high attrition rate for entry-level to tenure-year candidates. They have a much lower attrition rate for the 10 to 40 years or until retirement. We know that because we are talking to those candidates. We interact with those candidates. We hear and get their stories.

For a company not to utilize the services of a recruiter like us, it is hard to get that information to invest the time in going out and recruiting for that. Most companies do some in-house recruiting. Sometimes it is a shared role with human resources. For medium size and larger companies, they may have dedicated recruiters.

I’m happy to talk about the issues that we typically see with recruiting, but you got to pound the pavement to get the word on the street about what other companies are doing. The other way to get around it is you market it. You market your employer brand and/or employment value propositions. It is such a high volume that you are going to cover the population that will be dealing with those situations of toxic culture or no room for growth.

One of the things to think about, and I like to suggest, is as you are interacting with folks in your industry as a construction company owner, think about those companies that are family owned and that are going to be passing on to the next generation at some point. Think about those companies in which perhaps you have a son or a daughter coming into the company. They are destined for the top seat in the organization in one way or another.

Yet, there is that other person who is a non-family member. That person is perhaps the COO or a VP of some kind. They know that they will never get that top spot. Perhaps, you can bring them over into your organization and give them an expanded level of responsibility and challenge that they are not going to get in the company because the son or the daughter or sons and daughters are going to be taking over that business from their parents. You may want to think of that as a particular targeting framework when you are looking at companies that could provide strong candidates who are limited because of the growth opportunities. What do you think of that perspective?

There are a few thoughts I have on this. One is you are talking about a succession plan here in regards to kids coming up in a company and taking over. In regards to that succession planning, I feel like it needs to be done early. I have left a company because I didn’t feel like there was enough transparency. After the succession plan is decided on or maybe even bringing in those top executives that may be potentially ousted into the succession planning process could be key in retaining them as employees and continuing to contribute to the growth and the success of the company.

I can put myself in somebody else’s shoes and say what I would do. What I would do is I would have that key employee be involved in mentoring my son or daughter in regards to coming up into the company. I find that many people, especially when they have dedicated many years of their lives and countless hours a week to the success and growth of a company, what do they want? They want ownership. Does it have to be 50% of the company? No, if you have the tolerance for putting their skin in the game, it makes it a lot more attractive and easier to retain that type of talent given that common situation that you mentioned.

A couple of things to do is that if you have that situation in your company where you are thinking of bringing your kids into the business and assuming they are qualified, you should be thinking about the top talent that you have and how you might retain them through ownership. At the same time, if you are doing your marketing for talent for your own business, have an awareness of those companies whose succession plan doesn’t involve that top talent. That top talent may be interested in a move, not necessarily because of a cultural fit, but because of an opportunity fit in terms of perhaps ownership as you articulated or expanded responsibility.

Expanded responsibility or more responsibility is the other option, or a mixture of both expanded responsibility and ownership, ideally to retain that talent.

You used the phrase employment value proposition. What is that? How does someone create that employment value proposition?

It is a little bit tricky because you can’t make a proposal to someone without having at least a decent understanding of where they are at and what their motivating factors are. You can still use your culture and benefits to start creating an employment value proposition right out of the gate. We see benefits across the board from companies that cover 100% and almost all of the deductibles for their employees versus companies that have high premiums.

Health cost is going through the roof. How do companies deal with that and try to make their plans attractive? If we are taking a certain position to market for a client and their benefits are exceptionally good, that is one piece of the pie of this employment, potentially employment value proposition that we are taking to our audience.

Is that a phrase that you have? Is it one page that describes your employment value proposition? How do you create that? What does it look like?

An employment value proposition is anything that you can think of that is going to attract somebody to come to work for you and retain them as an employee. I mentioned benefits. If you have exceptional retirement, that is something to note. If your bonuses are above industry standard, that is something to note. You also want to get into the culture.

We saw COVID start to change the face of construction in regards to creating more hybrid and remote roles. For the most part, most of those hybrid and remote options are gone for employees. They didn’t stay to see how many employees say, “I wish I could have a hybrid position. I wish I could have a remote position.” Granted, many positions in construction can’t do remotely. I’m not saying that every position should be remote or hybrid. However, I thought that there was a silver lining in the cloud of COVID here that was going to change the industry and make it a lot more open than it ended up being when it came to. Open to hybrid and remote work for certain positions.

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I hope you are enjoying the interview with Taylor. I know I am getting lots of key takeaways for helping to hire executives into an organization. Once you have hired them, what do you need to do? You need to get them up-leveled in terms of their sales, leadership, strategic thinking, and all of those great and important aspects of being a contributing member of your organization. That is where my book Construction Genius comes in. It is effective hands-on practical, simple, no BS, leadership strategy, sales, and marketing advice for construction companies.

This is what you do. You purchase this book. It costs $20 for the paperback. You get a copy for yourself and all of the leaders in your organization. You read the book over a three-month period. There are twelve chapters. You take four chapters a month. They are easy to read. They are right to the point. It won’t waste your time. Every month you get together and discuss it.

If you purchase ten or more copies of Construction Genius and you send me an email, I will come to one of those meetings via Zoom. I will conduct a question-and-answer session with the people who have read the book. I will also give you a bonus training that I would normally charge $2,000 for. I will do that at no charge if you purchase ten or more copies of the book and distribute them throughout your organization. That is what you call a killer deal. Go out to Amazon, get ten copies of this book, and get your leaders to read it. It will transform the way they think about leadership. It will enable you to build projects profitably and grow a killer business. Let’s get back to the interview with Taylor.

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For certain positions, you are opening up a can of worms here. I was with one of my clients, and they are $1 billion-plus GC. They were doing a company meeting. One of the owners of the company and partner made a comment about the end of the remote/hybrid work environment. People are coming back into the office. I recall the CFO was clapping. There is a real backlash against that hybrid remote work environment simply because most people aren’t that effective in that environment. What are your thoughts on that?

For the effectiveness of a particular employee, part of that responsibility falls on the employee directly and the management of that employee. There have been studies that have been done that state, and I don’t know how the studies were done or measured, but they do state, “People that work from home don’t produce less than what they would if they are in an office.”

You also have to take into consideration, that an employee might have an hour commute to the office and an hour and a half commute or longer back to their house. You eliminate that. That can allow more time for that particular employee to do work instead of driving. Maybe they can knock out some telephone calls while they are on the way to work or home, but it does limit the time that you have to work.

I don’t think that there is any golden rule that says, “Yes. For this individual, remote is the way to go, or it is not.” It is going to depend on a good bit on the individual, the employee, and the manager to make sure that you are keeping the employee on task. Are there people that will take advantage of it and be less productive? There are out there. How do you get around that by having two people that are in similar roles and one’s allowed to work a hybrid schedule, and the other one is not? That is a good question. I’m not sure that there is an easy way to answer that.

You hit upon something unique in that. This is my non-scientific take. Twenty percent of your people can work remotely and be highly efficient. Eighty percent of your people struggle with it because they need other people around them to perform at a high level. It is not because they are bad people or irresponsible. It is either because of their nature or the same reason why everyone doesn’t start their own business.

One of the reasons why everyone doesn’t start their own business is because they don’t have what it takes in their makeup to take complete responsibility for themselves and drive through the challenges of holding yourself accountable, which is required when you start your own business. It is not because they are bad people or they have low characters. It is who they are as people.

Another aspect of it that in construction particularly that I have seen is that, let’s say, I’m a project engineer and I’m working remotely. I can do the technical part of my job, the scheduling, or call the superintendent, but I miss out on those conversations that the PM is having with the owner or with the superintendent where I’m not even involved in the conversation. I’m observing her have a conversation with the owner and see how she interacts with them. I’m learning so much by osmosis.

We are Heavy Civil Resource Consultants as a recruitment firm. How did I learn cut my teeth in this business? It was by sitting in an open room with other recruiters and learning from them through osmosis, even if I could only hear one side of the conversation. The other person is on the other side of the telephone. This was when you were still picking up the telephone to make a telephone call. That is how I learned the business, and there is so much to be said about learning certain things that way.

That is why, in our business, my colleague Cam is here. He is in the office. My colleague Drew is in the office. They are learning to do that. My other colleague, who does operations and doesn’t do phone time, is a hybrid worker. He works from home two days a week. That aspect is not required for him. When Cam and Drew get good at what they do, they are welcome to work a hybrid schedule. I 100% support that with a few stipulations. Hiring an employee doesn’t mean that they have to be remote immediately. If they can prove themselves and prove their effectiveness, and that will help retain that employee, it behooves an owner to consider that option in the future.

Let me ask you this because you touched on this a little bit with the value proposition in terms of bonuses, benefits, and things like that. When a company is recruiting a good candidate, they are a good cultural fit, but somehow the package that they put together is different than a heavy hitter comes in and says, “We got X, Y, and Z for you.” How do I position a negotiation when I’m competing with a company that is offering more money or the package is richer?

A lot of it has to come down to transparency. We consult our clients to deliver offers at least over the telephone, if not in person. When delivering those offers, have a conversation with a candidate about which limitations exist. Most of the time, it is going to be a base salary. If you already know that they are going to get a higher offer and your offer is going to come in low, you can tell them why, “We are not trying to be cheap with you here, but this is the reason that we have come to this number.”

I don’t think an effective way is by saying, “That is what we think you are worth. Having another limitation, as in your boss or another person who has been in that same role for several years here, is making this much. We can’t quite get you there.” Being open to looking outside of the box, whether it is an extra week of vacation, makes it more attractive for a candidate. Maybe you are competing with their employer who has either made a counteroffer, which I don’t recommend companies compete with a candidate who is entertaining a counteroffer.

When you say counteroffer, do you mean a counteroffer from their current employer?

Yes, from their current employer?

Why?

I don’t recommend that because if a candidate’s only driven by money, you should put your best foot forward if they are the right candidate for the role and they fit into your culture. You should go ahead and do it. You should have already hit that cap. If you are not, what is your motivation for doing it? Going back to, are they not worth it? Why aren’t you putting your best foot forward? If you are already putting your best foot forward, there shouldn’t be much room for negotiation. If a candidate is considering a counteroffer from their current employer, it comes down to their motivation.

What is important is that you understand a candidate’s motivation outside of compensation. There is more to life than money. What does that candidate want? Are you going to give them more runway for a career path? Are you going to help them reach their career goals in a shorter timeframe? That is a huge selling point going back to the culture. As I mentioned earlier, was there maybe a possibility of hybrid or something you are able to give the candidate something that, besides money that, is attractive to them,

How do you uncover those hidden motivations that you alluded to?

Investigative recruiting. You have to dig in and get to know the candidate. When we recruit, we are recruiting. I want to know as much as possible, from their hobbies, what they do in their spare time, and if they have kids and are married. Where are their in-laws? Where did they grow up? What are their values? What is important to them? What are they struggling with at their current employment? That is the biggest probably key to uncovering how you might be able to put together an employment value proposition that is going to be effective for candidates.

Why are they having the conversation with you right now about employment? What is driving them to this point? Are they walking around kicking tires? Are they showing up at the used car a lot, knowing that they don’t have any money in the bank to buy a new car, but they like to look at new and shiny things? Maybe. Candidates do that.

What is the best question that you can ask to figure out whether or not the candidates kicking tires or they are going to use you as leverage to get a counteroffer from their current employer?

Asking them in regards to making a career move. What are the top three things they would like to get out of making a career move? Money is generally a factor that is going to come into play, but at least you are figuring out two other motivating factors. I would say, “Dig into it more.” If you put out a list of ten things, a candidate may not be able to come up with it. They may start scrambling and making things up. Start by asking them, “What are three top things you are looking to gain out of making a career move?”

Let’s say you ask him that the top three. If they are tire kickers and they are going to use you as leverage, are they going to go money and struggle after that?

It may be a little bit more difficult for a company to ask this question, but we are broaching the counteroffer conversation early on in getting to know a candidate.

How do you broach that?

We roleplay it with them. What is it going to look like going into your boss and turning in your resignation? Generally, before I ask that question, I want to know how they would describe their relationship with their boss. Are they going fishing on weekends? They grab a couple of beers after work. Do they come over for family barbecues? They go to church together. What does that relationship look like? That can also give you a strong indication of how motivated the individual might be or what type of counteroffer risk they may pose.

I will go as far as to say this. Is it bad to interview a candidate that poses a counteroffer risk? Not necessarily. You have to understand that you may lose that candidate to a counteroffer, but if you have the bandwidth and the time and they are the A-Player that you need and you want for your company, does it mean that you shouldn’t make a run for it? Not necessarily, but you have to understand. That is why when we are submitting candidates to our clients, we go ahead, and if they are a high counteroffer risk, we go ahead and let them know right out of the gate. We leave it up to them to make the decision. Is this a candidate you want to interview knowing this or not?

A couple of more questions for you, and I know this is a practical one from a client of mine. You bring in a high-level executive from the outside to take a role in the organization. How do I prepare long-term employees when I hire that person? Let me ask it this way. I’m going to have employees reporting to this person. My company is growing. I have a key employee, and I’m taking away responsibility from him or her in an appropriate way and giving it to someone else. How do I prepare both the peer of the high-ranking executive I’m bringing in and the direct reports of that high-ranking executive that I’m bringing in from the outside?

Transparency, honesty, and compassion are the three words that come to mind when having that conversation. If you are going to take something away from someone, it is always good to try to give them something else in return. Preparing them for this before it is done may be important. It may be important for them to be part of the interview process. If they are going to be reporting to this new executive, it is better that they like each other and they get to know each other before the individual shows up to work and they get off on a bad foot.

If you will take something away from someone, it's always good to try to give them something else in return. Click To Tweet

Preparing, being transparent, and starting early in the process. This is succession planning. As I mentioned before, being transparent in that succession planning and trying to bring as much of your organization into the plan as possible and having a voice. It is always good to feel like you have a voice even if you don’t get what you want, and if a safe place is created where you can share your concerns and voice and be understood, and have somebody active listen and say, “I hear you, and I understand. I might feel the same way if I were in your shoes. What can we do about this?” Having a conversation like that is the best way to prepare to successfully navigate that type of situation.

I have brought a person on board. Many of us struggle when we have made an investment in someone or something and that investment is not working out. We struggle to cut our losses and move on. What do I do when I have made a hiring mistake? How do I handle that?

Before you take any action, you need to assess the situation from all angles. Many times it may be reactive to be like, “I got to let the person go. It is got to happen.” Before you have that, you think about how that is going to affect the other employees around that person. What is that person doing effectively that is going to have to be picked up by someone else to keep the project, revenue, or schedule on point?

What we see is people getting burned out, somebody leaving the company, and the company not doing enough to hire. They are not investing enough time or money to hire a new employee that will be able to take up and carry the load. That load gets distributed amongst the current employees. Eventually, carrying, too much of the load for too long is going to burn those employees out. You have the potential of losing great employees who have been there for a long time if you don’t address the situation appropriately.

If the person is a cultural fit into the company and you can see them contributing in a different way, redeploy. If they can’t contribute to the company to the growth, profit, and culture of the company, you likely need to let them go. You can do that respectfully. You can fire somebody or let somebody go respectfully and say, “I’m happy to be a reference for you.” You maybe even say, “I don’t think that things are working out here, but I got a friend of mine who has this company. Maybe you should talk to this individual. This is what you do well. That type of skill is something you need to focus on in your career in moving forward. I like to be a sounding board for anybody else that you might be considering as a potential employer to share my thoughts and feedback with them regarding that.”

If the candidate is a cultural fit and can contribute to the company, redeploy in a different position or different responsibilities. If they are not, you need to plan on how you are going to transition that person out, how their responsibilities are going to be distributed among your current employees, and what refilling that position might look like.

Tell us a little bit more about yourself and your company and what you do for construction organizations.

I founded Heavy Civil Resource Consultants in 2017. We are an executive search company for heavy civil construction and related industries. We get into aggregates and do some industrial bills. We do water treatment, which has civil work in it, but also many other types of mechanical works in those. We help our clients fulfill the three crucial things to hiring and successfully delivering talent. The three crucial pillars are you must have a pool of candidates to communicate with and reach out to.

The biggest failure point in almost every search is a message that fails to convert passive candidates to engage in the process. We are here to consult with that. We also help in creating and generating marketing material. What we can’t do is create a culture for a company. We can’t do it. It takes too much time. They need to hire somebody. We can coach them on how to change the culture, but we can’t do it for them.

The third is you got to be able to communicate at high volumes with that potential pool of candidates, and you need to do it consistently. The feedback we get from candidates is when they are interviewing or when they submit their resume to a company, they have a poor experience. Many times they will submit their resume. They don’t know who is going to see that resume. They don’t know where it is going to land. It may not even see the light of day.

It may fall into a junk mail folder that doesn’t get checked, or it may be reviewed by a human resource professional who maybe doesn’t quite understand what the exact hiring needs of the company are or the future business plan of the company and how they might develop employees for that. These candidates never get feedback. There is no, “Sorry, there is no need now.” It is nothing. They hear crickets.

We are trying to improve that candidate experience, even for candidates that aren’t fit at that time. We see that happen quite consistently through internal recruiting or direct submissions of resumes. It is hard to successfully do those three crucial pillars. We communicate with candidates through multi-channels, texting, email, and social media at a volume that is quite high. On average, we have about 10,000 emails going out a day, and managing that is quite an operation.

We are not doing direct solicitation. Ideally, any company is collecting potential candidates whether they want to hire them. Potentially later, you want to stay in touch with those candidates if they are not fit or not engaging in the interview process. You want to reach out and touch them every month and maybe even invite them to some company activity. If the timing is off, but you know they are a good candidate that you might utilize later, start bringing them into the company culture. That is where amplifying that employer brand and employment value proposition to these potential candidates is important, even if it’s for finding a position for them later.

How can folks get in touch with you?

You can call me. That is one of the best ways to do it. You can go to our website, HCRC.us. We love to consult with you and tell you a little bit about how we work and what our expectations of our clients are. Understand the expectations that you might have of us as a talent delivery partner and see if we can help you in regards to marketing to your talent base.

Last question here, going back to the beginning of our conversation. If I had to choose between the PCT, the Appalachian Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail, which one am I going to choose first?

I will choose first.

I will make it more difficult. If I only had to pick one, which one would I pick?

I can work with choosing first, but I don’t know about choosing one. That would be me trying to choose which one I would do again.

If you have three kids, you got to say which one is my favorite.

They are all different. They are different now than when I hiked them. The Appalachian Trail was in ‘99. Pacific Crest Trail was in 2002. The Continental Divide Trail was in 2011. I hiked the length of New Zealand. They had a long-distance trail in New Zealand in 2015 and 2016. Which one would I suggest you do? They all have their unique challenges. None is easier than the other.

The Pacific Crest Trail is a pack animal trail. Typically, the grades are easier. Physically starting, getting out there, and getting in shape on the trail, if you are not in trail shape already, it is going to be easier on the Pacific Crest Trail. Most people travel south to north. Your biggest challenge there is water. You do have to make big miles to get water. Even with the amount of snow, there is still limited water down in the desert section of the Pacific Crest Trail.

In Appalachian Trail, you don’t have any problem with water. They are continuing to make it a little less steep every year. It gets a little bit longer and a little less deep. I grew up near the Southern Appalachians. I truly feel that is where my heart is. I love that trail. I have this passion and connection to it. You go look at the Rockies. The Rockies will blow you away. Being up in Glacier National Park and hiking through Yosemite was amazing. The year that we hiked, the trail was not completely established. There was a crew out there mapping the official route of the trail the year that we were out there. We were using this gentleman’s maps called Brian Le. I don’t even know if he makes maps for the trail anymore. They are different.

What would I do again? Maybe the Appalachian Trail, because my heart is there. I have been out West for several years. Being able to get back to the East Coast and the lush green forest and to see the seasons would be amazing to see that again because I have been away for so long. They are all beautiful and challenging in different ways.

I appreciate your time. There are lots of tremendous insights that we can take away from the biggest mistake that people make using recruiting as a marketing function, why people switch businesses, how to identify those tire kickers, and how to develop your employee value proposition. There is tremendous value here. Thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Thank you for having me. It has been a pleasure. We love shows. We have done some episodes ourselves. We love to share your show with our population. I appreciate you having me on.

Thank you very much.

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Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Taylor. Make sure you check out his website, HCRC.us. Contact him if you like to get to know a little bit more about the work that he does and helping heavy civil companies to recruit candidates. Remember, hire slow, fire fast, and make sure there is a cultural fit. Give us a rating and review. That helps us to get the show seen across the internet. I look forward to catching you on the next episode.

 

Important Links

• HCRC.us
• Taylor Maurer – LinkedIn
• Construction Genius
• www.Linkedin.com/company/hcrc-inc

Taylor has a deep passion for helping and serving the construction industry. He has over 18 years in recruiting in the heavy civil construction and engineering space.

He founded HCRC Inc. in 2017 in an effort to continue to serve clients and candidates using the latest tools and technology. HCRC is developing programs and consulting initiatives to help our clients in more than just recruiting. This includes: onboarding and retention consulting, employee satisfaction assessments, succession consulting, company acquisition, and sales consulting.

Taylor is an avid long-distance backpacker, having completed the Triple Crown (through hiking the lengths of the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide trail) and, in 2016, completed the Te Araroa, which traverses the length of New Zealand. He also enjoy adventure motorcycle riding, kayak touring, bicycle touring, mountain biking, and photography.

Most importantly, he enjoys spending time with his loving family.