Success knows no gender

Scott Jamieson

There is a strong, very visible trend in recruiting in the landscape professional industry. For more than 20 years, I have been recruiting for landscape professionals at most of the top universities in our country. During those 20 years, I have seen an overwhelming increase in the percentage of women seeking careers in our profession.

Just 10 years ago, it was not uncommon to have 20 percent or 30 percent of those visiting our recruiting booth to be female. Back then we thought that was an encouraging trend. Today, it has been my experience that 60 percent to 75 percent of the students inquiring at our Bartlett Tree Experts recruiting booth are women.

What’s also so encouraging is that, generally, these students have outstanding resumes filled with tremendous leadership activities. Much has been researched and written about the “disappearing American male” at our universities. But, most importantly, is our profession in a position to take advantage of this substantial shift?

There is no question our profession is male-dominated; it’s not even worth the debate. Sure, there are successful women working in and owning companies in the landscape profession, but it is typically the refreshing exception. How can an organization be better prepared to bring talented women into the landscape profession as more female students graduate from these programs?

Well, when I sat down to write this, I realized a lot of the advice I have for employing and developing women in the industry can be applied to employing and developing men, as well. But there are a few areas Bartlett is working on in regards to the increasing presence of women in the industry.
 

1. Listen. Bartlett has a number of successful women who have moved through the field into sales and leadership positions. We are actively listening to them about the experiences from their perspective so we can learn and adjust. During a focus group with our female teammates, we heard that women often feel that their opinions are not being heard as much as others.

So, we’ve been providing that feedback to managers so that they are alert to that potential. When there is trust in a company people can be very candid and we are getting some very candid information to help us get better. Not only can you learn much from listening to others, you can also let people know how valuable they are simply by taking the time to listen to their input.
 

2. Focus. A few years ago we brought in a full-time, 100 percent dedicated recruiting professional. Noel Dubak brought much experience to the table at Bartlett but, most importantly, she brought energy and the right attitude to devote all of her time to finding outstanding talent for Bartlett. The fact that Noel, who led our female focus groups, is a female means she is able to relate to our female candidates on a different level. Putting the spotlight on recruiting and retention issues takes energy, time and yes, money. Bringing in someone to relentlessly focus on recruiting and retention isn’t just for the big companies.
 

3. Develop your people. Development of people is the best way to keep great people. We have created career paths and development plans for those teammates who want to move ahead in the organization and this is especially important for our female teammates. Women in our profession may not fit into the same roles as men in our profession and we should have the courage to talk about it and ultimately find solutions. A career path for a female employee may take a completely different path than a male employee.

Paths are meant to be flexible with twists and turns that have to be customized for the teammate. We often see that our women teammates often progress well though our plant health care operations. There is a lot of client contact in that role and though still physical, not as demanding as climbing.

Development isn’t just about those outside of leadership and it is even more important to focus on continually developing your leaders. We realize, thorough listening to our teammates, that most of our issues, really all of our issues, are self-created. Where we see successful career development of our female employees is where we undoubtedly have a manager who is a leader. In almost every case, that manager has been developed into a leader though education, desire and focused efforts.

As I wrote above, I’m not sure there are major differences between developing successful women and men in the industry, but there are a few. If you pay attention to the items above you have a great chance for success.

Scott Jamieson is vice president at Bartlett Tree Experts in Stamford, Conn.