It’s part of the hiring process to evaluate whether job candidates are a good fit for the role and your organization, but are you considering how applicants are assessing you as well?
“If your company has a bad reputation, the candidates you want have probably already heard about it,” says Andrew Raddish, co-founder of Live Oak Talent Partners. “It’s a small industry. Everyone knows each other, and everyone talks within the market. Your people are your business, so a good reputation can propel you and a bad one can tank you.”
Do You Have Any of These Red Flags?
Some of the signals that applicants will be watchful for when interviewing are a disorganized yard on site or no process for the onsite interview itself. No one wants to work for a company where chaos is the norm.
Yet not every red flag is quite so obvious. Raddish says a complex, lengthy interview process can also inadvertently drive candidates away.
“Some companies think complexity means thoroughness,” Raddish says. “A lot of the time it doesn’t. It just muddies the water, and the longer it drags, the more a candidate questions how organized you are and how well you get things done.”
Being slow in your decision-making can also reflect poorly on your organization as a whole. Following up between interviews is mission-critical for keeping candidates engaged. Raddish notes that a lack of communication anywhere in the process deteriorates your chances of landing a good candidate.
“Set the expectation for when the follow-up is coming, then meet it every single time,” says Noah Sipes, co-founder of Live Oak Talent Partners. “That does more than tell a candidate where they stand in the process. It shows them how the company operates.”
Raddish says companies are most likely to lose candidates after the second interview or at the offer stage.
“The second interview is usually in person, and that’s where a candidate gets to see under the hood,” Raddish says. “At the offer stage it’s usually comp, an under-offer on base or bonus, or benefits that don’t line up with what was discussed. In a perfect world, all of that gets talked through and understood well before anyone gets to an offer.”
Green Flags Candidates Look For
On the flip side, candidates are most often attracted to businesses that already have a strong reputation in the market.
“Nobody wants to work for a company the community doesn’t see in a positive light, especially the people on the front line with clients, account managers and business developers,” Raddish says.
Your company’s online reviews, social media and website presence are all extremely important if you have recruiters reaching out to individuals who aren’t actively seeking a new job.
“People want to see the company’s wins, the good work they do, and more than anything how they treat their teams,” Raddish says. “Company outings, how people have been treated there. Your presence online is really about your people, how you do good by them, and how you do good work in your community.”
Another positive indicator candidates look for is long-tenured employees who have gone through multiple promotions.
When applicants are considering different landscape companies to work for, Raddish says some of the main elements being evaluated are the day-to-day responsibilities and the autonomy of the role, as people want space to do a good job.
“Company structure matters too, whether it’s family-owned or PE-backed and what that future roadmap looks like, especially at higher-level positions,” Raddish says. “And reporting structure. A lot of the time when someone is looking to leave their current position, it has to do with the leadership structure they’re part of. People don’t leave bad jobs; they leave bad bosses.”
As far as the benefits candidates care about, this includes medical insurance and if vehicles can be taken home. Sipes says competitive PTO is one area many companies can expand on as 10 days continues to be the standard, but he argues this is the bare minimum.
“People are much bigger on a healthy work-life balance now,” Sipes says. “Gone are the days of grinding all year to take one week-long vacation. That has to change, not just in this industry but in every industry. People work to live, not live to work, and the newer generations take that more seriously. If the green industry wants to continue to evolve, it should take notice of the changing priorities of the candidates coming into the workforce.”
Looking for Where to Improve
If you are losing candidates throughout the hiring process, use these data points to determine why an applicant dropped out or declined a job offer.
“You probably won’t get that right away at the point of declination,” Sipes says. “We’d recommend following up a few days to a week later, when it’s a more neutral conversation and the valuable feedback tends to come out.”
Sipes adds that younger people coming into the workforce have vastly different priorities and very few of them expect to spend an entire career at one company.
“The market is too competitive to stay somewhere with limited upward mobility, so people go find better opportunities,” Sipes says.
Because good candidates always have their eyes open, they’ll research your company, your reputation and reach out to their network before they ever apply.
“You’re constantly being evaluated from the outside anyway, by potential buyers, potential clients, potential employees, competitors,” Sipes says. “That never stops. So the quicker you can look in the mirror and understand your strengths and weaknesses, the quicker you can take action and improve.”
