Where Is Your Next Restoration Hire Working Right Now?

Restoration managers commonly ask themselves the question, “how am I going to attract top talent to my business?"

But there’s an important question that precedes that, which is “where is that top talent working right now?”

Think about it. Before you can pitch your business to your next all-star restorer, you need to know where to find them. You can have better retention than anyone else in the industry, but if you’re not connected to the mouth of the river, you’ll never catch any fish.

We’ve got your back. The KnowHow team recently conducted the largest ever survey on the restoration workforce, and we asked them dozens of questions about every aspect of working in the restoration industry. If you haven’t already, download your free copy of the findings: “Why Workers Quit.”

So, where is your next restoration hire working now?

Look Beyond the Restoration Industry

We asked restorers, “Where were you working prior to your current role?"

Based on the data we collected, the answer may surprise you. There’s roughly a 50-50 chance your next hire is not currently working in restoration at all. Of all our survey respondents we polled, 48% said they had no construction or restoration experience prior to getting hired at their current company.

As one of our many survey respondents told us, “I was a stay-at-home mom before I joined my current company. Prior to that I worked at Walmart.”

Most restoration managers' first instinct would probably be to look to other restoration companies’ staff to potentially poach their top talent. This strategy isn’t always effective, and it always leaves you paranoid that another company could just as easily do the same to you.

A better strategy—an overlooked strategy at that—is to look outside general construction to find high-end talent. A major advantage of hiring outside restoration is that these employees are completely green. They’d be coming into your restoration company free of any bad habits, and ready for you to mold and shape them into the ideal restoration laborer. Instead of looking at experience and restoration skills when hiring, consider looking at attitude, motivation, and willingness to learn. These are attributes that can’t be taught and are what really defines high-end talent in the long haul.

As one of our respondents said, “I’m always trying to learn new skills. I discovered an opportunity in restoration while I was looking for a new job.”

The other advantage to looking outside restoration for new employees is they come in with no preconceived ideas of how work and processes should be done. They are completely open to learning new things, ready to listen, and ready to carry out work the way you believe it should be done.

This puts the onus on you to define your processes step-by-step, and make it crystal clear to new hires the roadmap to getting trained up and skilled in their role. This may seem like lots of work, but KnowHow makes it simple to become a process-driven organization, and the benefits of being able to tap into an untapped talent pool make it quickly worth the time and energy.

Restoration Employee Referrals

When we dove into how workers found out about their current job, workers responded with one singular source above the rest: friends and family.

If you haven’t optimized your hiring process for referrals, then you’re missing out big-time. Rewarding current employees for referring a friend or family member is one simple way to encourage staff to get the word out when you’re hiring. Combine this with the fact that you don’t need your hires to necessarily be already in the restoration industry, and you’ve got the ability to uncover some hidden talent.

Upgrading your Restoration Company’s Onboarding

The Restoration Workforce Survey revealed that new labor hires want a well-defined, structured on-boarding. The number one way to do that, and to ensure you’re giving new hires what they want, is to have tightly defined processes in place that employees can follow and have handy at the click of a button.

At KnowHow, we help restoration companies do just that. We help restoration companies create step-by-step processes on everything from onboarding steps, to properly completing field fieldwork tasks. KnowHow also gives your restoration workers access to these processes directly on their smartphones, so they can access a process anytime, anywhere. KnowHow gives you peace of mind that work is getting done exactly how you want it to be done, with fewer costly mistakes.

Visit our website to learn more or book a demo with us!