Author: James Aiken

President of Legacy Search, James Aiken has been dynamically involved in recruiting the elite candidates within the building materials industry for many years. With strength in sales and operations, James has built out multiple sales teams for manufacturers and distributors alike. Email him at james@legacysearch.net

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Human Resources Uncategorized

Hiring Like-Minded Employees

Hiring Like Minded People

Hiring Like-Minded Employees

Culture is Forever

If you’re concerned with hiring like minded employees, congratulations, you are among a very large group of friends.

Naturally, businesses want to build a strong culture of like-minded people that can all be moving in the same direction.

Nowadays, many firms are actually putting more focus on the culture fit versus a functional fit. As they say, you can teach a job, you can’t teach a personality. That’s why making like-minded hires can have such a huge impact on business.

Define Your Culture

In order to find someone like-minded, you have to define what you’re like!

Seems simple enough, but really get into the core of your people and how you operate as a business. There is no good or bad answer, there is only the right answer.

There is a huge difference in culture between a high activity sales and close-driven culture and a laid back family environment where custom care is the primary focus.

Figure out how you define yourself first.

Design the Questionnaire

Once you’ve figured out your core culture, begin to ask candidates behavioral questions focused on uncovering specific scenarios that they have (or have not) displayed the traits you find most important.

A few behavioral questions would include:

  1. Tell me about a time you followed your bosses orders even when you didn’t believe them to be correct
  2. What is a time where you disagreed with a coworker on how a situation should be handled, and how did you alleviate the disagreement and solve the problem?
  3. Tell me about a time where things just slipped through the cracks and a customer got upset. How did you fix things?
  4. Tell me about a time you had to directly help a teammate in order for them to be successful

Trust the Gut

Now, nobody is saying that you should jump to conclusions after the first couple minutes of meeting someone.

What you should do is trust your social abilities after having long conversations with the candidates. Yes, this is a completely subjective way of addressing things, but we are dealing with humans – not robots. We cannot always be 100% objective.

If you’d like to learn more on hiring the right cultural fit, please reach out to us at james@legacysearch.net

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Human Resources

The Seven Deadly Sins of Recruiting

Are you committing any of the Seven Deadly Sins of Recruiting?

I’ve seen the same mistakes day in and day out when it comes to evaluating a recruiting process and it really seems to come down to seven deadly sins…

1) Lack of Process

When hiring managers don’t have a standardized process, its a messy and thrown together schedule that doesn’t provide objective takeaway information. You need to be consistent in all interviews and have detailed information regarding each interview.

2) “Spraying and Praying”

Hiring managers will post the job on multiple different sites then sit back and pray that the right candidate sees it (and applies for it). This is a huge mistake because it only allows you to see one group of candidates in the market – the active ones. And they’re all active for a reason.

3) Using Poor Predictors of Success

This doesn’t happen too often in the sales side of things, but educational requirements or polarized interviews can often filter out the wrong candidates. In sales, we have all seen candidates who are “all hat and no cattle”.

4) Skipping Steps

Sometimes hiring managers will skip certain crucial steps due to an amazing interview, or a strong personal connection. You’re creating a process for a reason, all candidates need to have references and assessments completed. All candidates will go through the same process

5) Losing “Hiring Intertia”

Hiring managers can sometimes get caught up in their own day to day responsibilities (rightfully so) which can lead to slow scheduling. If a candidate is in process for too long, the interest may start to fade. The candidate may also believe that the process is slow because the company is not interested and lose faith in themselves. Make sure to keep a constant line of communication, with action items moving things forward regularly.

6) Checking References Too Late

Since the process is time consuming, many hiring managers will flirt with the idea of doing a weak reference or skipping the reference altogether which is a terrible idea. If you are hiring a superstar – they will be able to provide you with solid references that will hands down recommend the candidate. They know their references will be enthusiastic. If they’re previous managers, what more can you ask for? The only addition on top is to do what is called a “backdoor reference” – where you contact someone that was not listed as a reference, but did previously manage or work with the candidate.

7) Lacking Structured Onboarding

You can’t just drop a superstar into the pool and hope they sink or swim. Onboarding should be a structured 30-60 day process where there are objective goals and metrics established for getting ‘up and running’.

If you can manage to avoid these seven deadly sins, you can easily improve your hiring process and retain better grade employees.

If you’re looking to see what positive steps you can take. . . view Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link).

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Human Resources

Old School Recruiting Won’t Move the Needle

Hard Knocks in the Recruiting Universe

It was about seven years ago when I started my career in recruiting. . .

It was a land of smiling and dialing, posting job ads, and filtering (ahem, reviewing) infinite resumes. I managed a large local automotive manufacturing client at the time, staffing its machining and assembly lines. Very high volume.

Look at this recruiter, bright and full of life!

 

A Tale as Old as Time

If you’ve been in HR or been the primary recruiter on roles like this, tell me if this sounds familiar. . .

  • You post the job on CareerBuilder and LinkedIn. . .
  • Hundreds of resumes come in over a week or two
  • A small group are worth calling, and only a handful will answer.

With the role being public and the client being high-profile, my phone was ringing off the hook non-stop from all types of candidates beating down the door for an interview. . .

“Did you get my resume?”

“What’s the status of my application?”

“Why doesn’t your client want to interview me?”

I was drained from bottle-necked activity, upset, and thinking “this can’t be the smartest way to do this“

Years later, I was recruited for a higher-responsibility position with a more traditional headhunting firm.

“If we do twice as much of what we used to – we will have twice as many results!”

 

Same Tactics, Same Results

Sadly, as time passed, I found out they generally had the same process, just for higher level roles…

“Email the job description to all of the sales reps in Atlanta and then screen the people that respond!”

This agency would use huge purchased B2B lists to mass email out on their job searches. . . Thousands and thousands of emails at a time… With all of those emails likely being the first time they had ever seen our name. The problem remained – tons of people who weren’t fits from the get-go, demanding a slice of time…

And that’s not their fault – we contacted them!

Not to mention the consequences of the flip-side – we had no way of focusing more energy on recruiting people showing interest and had no way of demonstrating value to harder-to-recruit (and typically more successful) associates in the market. I won’t repeat the Einstein quote on insanity, because we’ve all heard it a million times. . .

But I did feel like Macho Man Randy Savage:

Even World Champion Wrestlers have Doubts. . .

 

The Catalyst’s Aftermath

…and it was time to take things into my own hands

With my experience running e-commerce businesses in college and high school, I knew there was a better way to target candidates, the best candidates, and perpetually build interest in firms and opportunities.

The mass-blast job description email just wasn’t going to cut it for companies that needed specific high-grade talent.

It wasn’t going to cut it for the candidates that are having their doors beaten down every day by recruiters and firms alike.

After working with the digital marketing wizards and warlocks of the internet – my firm Legacy Search has put together a complete recruiting strategy for all organizations in the building materials industry.

We designed a process for the Digital Age 2.0…

SmarterChild is here to help

 

Scale With the Human Touch

Not the pre-historic digital age of mass-email blasts, job postings, pay per clicks ads, and pointless (and non-converting) social media updates.

The second generation of the internet – This generation we are adding the human touch to the scaling power of the internet.

  • We’re forgetting about passive job posting (fishing) and focusing on active candidate hunting
  • We’re spending time sourcing precise audiences instead of mass markets
  • We’re skipping the mindless email blasts for personalized job invitations
  • We’re making job descriptions secondary in place of employer value propositions
  • We’re abolishing (most) cold calling for long-term relationship building

By getting laser-focused on who (and how) we contact FIRST, we can cut down immensely on the time we are spending with candidates who aren’t a fit to begin with.

More importantly, we can spend more time converting the best candidates in the market, teaching them more intimately about the value of the opportunity you propose and the firm you’re representing.

What should you do for the top 10% of your identified audience?

Follow this link to request a copy of Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link) and learn the secrets of attracting the candidates that won’t answer calls or emails from recruiters…

Categories
Human Resources

Where’s Waldo: A Candidate Search Story

WHERE’S WALDO?

Have you assessed that there are no candidates in the market?

Have you already worked with contingency recruiters?

Have you posted the job yourself and only seen below-average talent?

Does sourcing feel like you’re playing “Where’s Waldo?”

ERASE THE NOISE FROM YOUR SEARCH

Things can seem frustrating. Especially if you’re managing a territory that’s missing representation. You don’t have a whole lot of time to sink into recruiting and sourcing on your own and everything you’ve seen so far has been depressing!

Look, it’s time to take a deeper dive into your search. Don’t run away, run towards it. If you aren’t personally doing the recruiting – start looking at getting dedicated resources, time, and processes into your recruiting pipeline.

When you’ve worked with recruiters in the past – have you seen timely updates with obvious progression in the search? Are they correctly identifying your competitors in the market? Are you seeing names you already know exist in the market from a competitive standpoint?

When you have nonperforming contingency recruiters, it can seem like all hope is lost.

In reality, the search just needs to have more activity on it.

EFFECTIVE SEARCHES ARE DEEP DIVES

Do you believe your recruiters have followed up with candidates they’re targeting two, three, four times? Are they finding their phone numbers and directly dialing them?

Or are they going for the low hanging fruit?

Don’t fall into the myth that your candidate isn’t out there.

The reality is, you have to have a dedicated search run on the need.

The last time you hired a recruiter, did they show you a list of the people they spoke on the phone with – with eight hours of talk time? Or did they just send you an email that said “no new candidates” and an excuse?

DO IT RIGHT

You don’t find Waldo with a quick 3rd party scan.

It takes time, effort, and a custom process to correctly identify your Waldo.

Attracting them to your role is the next (bigger) step…

Follow this link to request a copy of Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link) that will show you exactly how to get rid of all of the smoke in a candidate search and focus on attracting the very best candidates in the industry.

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Human Resources

Name a Great Coach without a Great Team

G.O.A.T.?

It would be tough to argue Bill Belichick is the greatest football coach of all time if there was never a Tom Brady. . .

Would Phil Jackson have won the most NBA championships in history without Michael Jordan?

Would Young Money Records still even exist if there was never a Lil Wayne?

Every strong leader knows that what truly differentiates their capabilities is their team.

They are focused on attracted the best talent and pushing them all towards one goal. . .

Have you ever heard of a professional sports team that’s main edge is to only recruit players 1-4 years out of college and hope they stay for an eternity?

Not every player is Michael Jordan, not every player is Stephen Curry.

There are Lebrons, Durants, and Shaqs everywhere… although they’re just as important!

The main focus is the IMPACT that these players can have on a team.

If they can keep them long term, even better.

But they’re only focused on one thing. . . the championship.

If we want to oversimplify, the leader is the brain, the team is the muscle.

Succeeding as a big brain with no muscle sounds realistic until a neanderthal comes along and clubs you on the head.

>> Don’t be out of balance <<

If your strategy works, you want your team to be as powerful as possible to truly send a ripple into the universe when you go to market.

Low effort recruiting. . .

will get you low effort results. .

with low effort new hires.

Do it right the first time, and every time, and you will completely change your career.

Follow this link to request a copy of Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link) to learn exactly how to supercharge your talent acquisition to skyrocket your career.

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Human Resources

Reacting to Resignation Letters

The Worst Kind of Break-Up . . .

When you have someone leave your team – you’re put in a tough spot.

You’ve got a territory that’s not being covered and a book of business that still needs to be looked after.

You’ve got all of your other responsibilities, and now the threat of declining business.

Your personal quotas and goals aren’t changing either…

Not to mention, if one person on your team leaves… That makes it even easier for the next to leave.

Rumors float around, and nobody in the history of gossip has ever made LESS money by being recruited away…

The bigger problem is, it can take up to eleven months for a new sales rep to break even. . .

“SH*T ROLLS DOWNHILL”

If you’re putting the weight of the work onto other employees or managers, you’re setting yourself up for another departure.

That means every month the role is left vacant, the floor starts to creak inwards just a little bit more…

And even if you bring in an “acceptable” salesperson – everything won’t just snap back to normal…

So why not spend the time and money hiring a superstar?

GREAT COMPANIES HAVE GREAT PEOPLE

Someone can come in with loads of self-actualization that’s ready to make big things happen.

When you bring in someone with positive energy and a trustworthy approach – that can spread to other members on your team.

Bring in someone that’s going to hit the ground running and someone who is going to lead your team.

With all eyes on you to make sure the territory performs – are you willing to skate by with an okay hire?

Or are you ready to get it done right and make a huge impact

Are you hiring to win, or are you hiring not to lose?

The choice is yours…

 Tactics to hire in the absolute best talent in your market are in our free guide, Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link)
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Company Spotlight

Marvin’s History

Marvin:
Advancing with Purpose

Window Legacy

In 1904, George G. Marvin arrived in a small town called Warroad, Minnesota town near the Canadian border. He managed a grain elevator and lumberyard. He spent the next 70 years building a business that became a cornerstone of the Warroad community.

Later, in 1912, The Marvin Timber & Cedar Company was established. As the years progressed through the 20s into the depression, Marvin Lumber & Cedar Company had its first year with a loss, but was fortunate to offer continuous employment without layoffs during America’s Great Depression.

The company that become Marvin Windows and Doors was born when Bill Marvin (George’s son) realized that making windows would create jobs and keep returning servicemen in Warroad, after the end of World War II.

Generational Leadership

In 1960, Bill Marvin took over as company president. Under his leadership, Marvin grew from a few dozen employees in the 1950s, to a few hundred in the 1960s, to more than 4,000 today. Bill immersed his six children in the business from early childhood. They all remember going to the factory with Dad on weekend afternoons, sweeping floors and emptying wastebaskets.

Bill Marvin had a close eye on the business, but wanted to also give his employees an opportunity to thrive and make a big difference. He believed that everyone should have the opportunity to succeed. “I don’t have to be the smartest at everything,” he said. “I just have to find the people who are.”

The Third Generation

In 1991, Jake Marvin became the President of Marvin, and later in 2000 became the Chief Executive Officer.

In 2012, President Barack Obama discussed Marvin Windows and Doors, using the company’s story as the emotional climax of the address. Obama held up Marvin as an example to the nation, telling how Marvin refused to lay off workers even as competitors made deep cuts.

The Fourth Generation

As 2017 approached, Paul Marvin became the first of the fourth generation within the Marvin family to hold the top post at The Marvin Companies. He was named president of Marvin Windows and Doors on Jan. 1, 2016, after serving as vice president of sales, along with other roles within the company. His promotion to CEO, in addition to continuing to serve as president, caps a steady track record of success over the course of 11 years.

After a re-branding in 2018 and 2019, what will Marvin bring to the window and door market next?

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Company Spotlight

Jeld Wen’s History

Jeld Wen:
Built to Last

Founded in 1960 with 15 employees, Jeld-Wen, Inc. is a privately held manufacturer of windows, doors, and millwork products for sale to wholesale distributors, home centers, and the manufactured housing industries.

Headquartered in Klamath Falls, Oregon, Jeld-Wen employs more than 20,000 people worldwide and operates more than 150 facilities. Jeld-Wen cuts lumber from its own timberlands and its products include interior and exterior doors, garage doors, door frames, moldings, windows, and patio doors.

1960s/70s: The Beginning

Jeld-Wen was founded in 1960, its name formed from the first initials of cofounder Dick Wendt and his siblings and a shortened version of their surname. Wendt, an Iowa native, had been a manager at Caradco, a window manufacturer in Illinois, when its East Coast parent company sold it. The Wendts and partner Larry Wetter, Jeld-Wen’s original vice-chairman, purchased a small millwork plant in Klamath Falls, Oregon, once a bustling timber town five hours’ drive from both Portland and San Francisco.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Jeld-Wen focused on expanding its core business, developing a number of related subsidiaries, some in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Iowa, and Washington. Then, beginning in the early 1980s, the company changed strategies and folded many of these subsidiaries into itself. It also purchased a number of other related businesses in the fields of construction and building supplies, among them Frank Paxton Co. of Kansas City, Missouri, a hardwood products distributor.

1980s: Massive Growth

As a result of its many operations, Jeld-Wen experienced considerable growth. Its 1986 sales totaled $100 million while its employees numbered about 2,500 people. The company ranked seventh in 1989 among privately held companies in Oregon with revenues between $350 million and $399 million. By 1991, its sales had grown to more than $400 million. By 1998, Jeld-Wen was Oregon’s largest privately held company and one of the world’s largest window and door manufacturers, with revenues topping $1 billion. Jeld-Wen employed 11,000 people at more than 150 companies in 40 states and several foreign countries. In Oregon, the company employed 2,500 people, 700 of those at its home base in Klamath Falls.

1990s: Continued Acceleration

In 1996, Forbes ranked Jeld-Wen 225th among the nation’s top 500 private companies, estimating its annual revenues at $850 million, an increase of almost 13 percent from 1995. A year later, that ranking had moved up to 119th with the company’s estimated revenues at $1.39 billion. Much of this money came from the success of Jeld-Wen’s real estate ventures. Throughout the 1980s, Jeld-Wen and its subsidiaries had built or bought 19 West Coast resorts, ranging from British Columbia to Hawaii. By the early 1990s, Worldmark, the company’s timeshare program, had 40,000 members, mostly baby boomers, who purchased points to split vacation time among any of the resorts.

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Human Resources

A Fast and Loose Recruiting Strategy is Worse than Gambling

“Do you feel lucky. . . punk?”

Do you like gambling?

There’s a 50% chance your next hire will be considered a mishire in the first 12-18 months.

. . . And if they last, odds are – they’ll be an average performer at best.

LeadershipIQ studied over 5,000 hiring managers, 312 organizations and 20,000 employees

The results are grim. . .

46% of all hires will fail within 18 months 35% will be considered average performers 19% of those hires would be considered a success in that same time period

It’s our mission to de-risk your next hire.

Our process provides better filtering, reporting, and market penetration than anyone.

THE STAKES ARE HIGH

Career ladders are an artifact of the Mad Men era.

You sign onto an organization at 21… follow the rules… get promoted… and retire with a shiny gold watch.

Those days are long gone.

The career ladder died 30 years ago, when over 85% of Fortune 1000 companies downsized their white-collar workforce…

Particularly mid-management jobs. As those companies thinned out… Leadership positions disappeared… and will never be seen again.

THE CORPORATE PYRAMID

The career ladder has been replaced with the corporate pyramid.
Most top-performers have a burning desire to expand, develop, and advance both personally and professionally.

If you’re reading this I assume you either are a top-performer or you want to be one. Well, as you move up the food chain in your career. The competition for the top-spots heats up, and the failure rates are staggering.

The Harvard Business Review puts the failure rate among management hires at 60 percent. And the consequences of failure in your current role can derail a once- promising career. And the higher up the food chain you are, the hotter the competition gets…

No matter how good you are, or think you are, if you want to compete and win. . .

You need an edge.

That edge is ELITE TALENT…

You can learn all about how to purify your recruiting process in Elite LBM Talent: The Blueprint (link)

Categories
Company Spotlight

Andersen’s History

Andersen Corporation is a renowned international door and window manufacturing company. The company employs about 12,000 individuals at over thirty logistic centers. They also operate manufacturing facilities as well as company owned and operated retail locations. Andersen is privately held and has its headquarters in Bayport, Minnesota.

The company’s vision is to make the world a better and more beautiful place. At the same time, they strive to live up to its customers’ expectations.

The notion of caring for the world is part of the company culture. The company encourages all its employees to take part in community activities. Moreover, they provide employees with great opportunities. These initiatives include volunteering for the notable organization Habitat for Humanity.

Hans Jacob Andersen founded the company as Andersen Lumber Company in 1903 in Wisconsin. The company changed its name in 1929 to Andersen Frame Company and Andersen Corporation in 1937. Andersen Lumber Company originally operated from Hudson, Wisconsin.  Logs arrived there through the St. Croix River.

The company originated the famous “two-bundle” method in 1905, which streamlined and improved the window construction process. Hans Andersen sold the lumberyards in 1908 to devote all the company resources and efforts to its window frame business. To expand, Andersen built a brand new factory in South Stillwater in 1913 (now Bayport), Minnesota.

Forbes ranked Andersen Corporation 179 their List of Top Private Companies. The company had sales of $2.5 billion for the year ending December 31, 2016. In addition, Andersen Corporation, along with its affiliates, is the biggest door and window manufacturers in North America.

Andersen deservedly earned the title of the best window products brand of wood as well as wood clad windows. The criteria for the title including brand familiarity and quality rating by the popular Builder magazine back in 2015.

The company’s longstanding practice of manufacturing products that perform year after year allows it to offer the best overall warranties in the whole industry.

Andersen Corporation designs, manufactures, and supplies exterior and interior doors, wood, aluminum, and vinyl windows, and other components, used in the new construction. Andersen makes beautiful awning, casement, gliding and single and double hung windows that will breathe a new life in your home.

The company also makes a slew of high-quality doors, which include entry doors, gliding patio doors, screen doors and storm doors among others. The quality of materials and skillful construction make their products stand out from the competitors. Their doors and windows will add a lot of curb appeal to your home.

The company believes so strongly in its products that it still offers components for doors and windows built several decades ago. In case a problem arises, Andersen has an extensive network of top-notch service providers.

One of the main goals at Andersen is to empower customers so that they can transform their home with stunning doors and windows. Using its unique perspective and superior products, the company helps customers re-imagine how their space can feel, look, and function. With a plethora of collections as well as customization options, the company has reliable products, which create the style and décor you are looking to achieve.