Recruiting new hires is one of the toughest challenges that today’s lawn and landscape business owners face. Whether you’re looking to attract field labor, salespeople, or managers, it’s important that you are finding ways to distinguish your company. After all, you’re one of many local lawn and landscaping businesses actively seeking new hires. It’s important that you give these potential recruits a reason to choose you.
It starts with your website, says Chad Diller, president of the sales and marketing agency Landscape Leadership.
In the past 10+ years, Landscape Leadership has helped to transform lawn and landscaping companies’ websites into recruiting tools generating hundreds of job applicants each year. Diller says that there are a few must-haves that need to be on your website if you’re looking to do the same.
First and foremost, you need a strong career center page. This is going to serve as the hub for all of the other features that can help you recruit leads. You also need to give more attention to the photography and video that you’re using on that career page. This is an opportunity to feature real-life team members and show job seekers the very folks they’ll be spending time with if they apply and get hired.
Diller says that video can go a long way in showing recruits what the job will look like.
“It helps to show team members in action, working together and interacting with clients,” he says. “This also presents an opportunity for team members to talk about what they love about their job. These team testimonials can really hit home with a recruit.”
Diller says that it’s also helpful to list open positions, but you must be careful that this page doesn’t get too cluttered. If you have a lot of open roles, then you might need to consider a thoughtful way to break out that information in an organized manner.
“For one of our clients, Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape, we created this job position page to give more detail about the available positions and highlight features of the job,” says Diller. “We also included more video in case it was missed on the main page.”
Connecting with Applicants
Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape has a website that helps attract the best landscaping candidates.Kingstowne Lawn & Landscape
Diller says that the companies that are most successful at recruiting are those that go out of their way to connect with recruits. Another way this is achieved is with team member stories. Recruits are going to be more interested in hearing from actual employees when it comes to what it’s like to work there.
Along the same lines, team member testimonials can also provide this value. These two- to three-sentence-long testimonials are great additions to your main career center page. They’re even more meaningful when coupled with a photo of that employee.
Finally, Diller says that writing helpful career advice articles is another valuable way to connect with recruits. This is a place to dive into topics like diversity in the workplace, training, transitioning from other industries, and workplace culture. All of this helps set you up as a caring and compassionate employer who wants to help.
And don't forget to incorporate Spanish recruiting content into your website. You might even consider creating an entirely separate career center page in Spanish. It's important to remember that some potential recruits may not speak English fluently.
According to Diller, when you meet recruits where they’re at, you’re much more likely to attract their interest and gain a new hire.
“When you get all of this right, you’ll help ensure that you have a steady stream of applicants coming in—who can turn into your most valuable team players,” Diller sums up. “An added bonus is that they may also be likely to recruit friends to come work for you as well. In that way, your hard work can pay off.”
