Talent tree

If you are like most landscape contractors I have talked with lately, 2014 is turning out to be either a “very good” or a “great” year. Growth across the country is resulting in more opportunities.

But contractors are also facing challenges finding and retaining good employees. As the landscape industry matures, more companies are considering college graduates to fill key positions. As an educator at a four-year university, recruiting for our graduates has been strong for more than a decade (even during the economic downturn), but in the past two years the demand has exploded.

From February through May of this year, I received multiple emails and phone calls from company owners or recruiters nearly every day.

That said, not all contractors understand how college programs work, or how to best use them to identify and hire talented employees.
 

A rough road for schools.

Just as it is important to know the challenges facing your clients, you should understand the challenges faced by the colleges where you recruit. With reduced tax revenues, state legislatures have been forced to make funding cuts to horticulture programs across the country.

Administrators looking to cut costs often choose to weaken or eliminate resources like outdoor classrooms and greenhouses needed to provide laboratories for hands-on experience.

Declining budgets have also made it harder to fill vacant faculty positions. Retiring full-time professors have often either been replaced with part-time faculty, or not replaced at all. Similar to your salaried employees who shoulder greater workloads when cash flow is insufficient to support additional hires, many already-overloaded faculties are struggling to meet the demands created by the additional workload.

My colleagues and I at Brigham Young University recently completed a survey of 450 colleges and universities that offered a horticulture-related program in 1997, and learned that more than 120 of these schools no longer offered a degree or certificate in 2012. Of the schools that did, many reported sharply declining enrollments. This means that the increased need for qualified employees is occurring at the same time that there are fewer landscape graduates available to be hired.

From our survey, it quickly became apparent that two-year colleges are particularly vulnerable. Horticulture programs have repeatedly been weakened or eliminated following the retirement of a champion faculty member. And some areas of the country with the most opportunities for careers in landscape contracting, Chicago for example, simply don’t produce anywhere near the number of graduates from two- or four-year schools to meet the demand.
 

What you can do.

Here are several things you might consider to strengthen your recruitment process.

1. Identify colleges that produce the kind of graduate you want in your company, and develop a partnership with the faculty at these schools. You may not currently even know these professors, in which case my advice is to invite them to lunch. You already invite clients and potential clients to lunch – by getting to know the faculty and sharing what your employment needs are, a professor is much more likely to think of students that may be just who you are looking for.
    
2. Many colleges have career fairs, where students and companies interact in a kind of trade show. The advantage of a career fair is that you can introduce your company to several students. However, the touch is minimal and there are better ways to connect with students. For example, you and your employees have professional skills and knowledge that are needed in the classroom. Several times a year I invite companies to send energetic employees to teach a class like “Bidding Tree Work,” “Profitable Plant Health Care” and “Landscape Design in the Real World.”
    
3. Many landscape companies offer an internship program, which is a temporary work experience that is structured to benefit both the student and employer. An internship program offers companies the opportunity to take a closer look at potential full-time employees. We require our students to complete two internships prior to graduation, and about 30-50 percent of our students will eventually work for a company that they interned with. But before you launch an internship program, you should know that a bad internship experience will be communicated among the student’s classmates. This can poison your company’s relationship with a school for several years. Examples of bad internships include one where a student does nothing more than work as a laborer. PLANET has a template for a quality internship program that can help you get started.
    
4. Due to the limited number of graduates from landscape horticulture programs, you may need to employ some strategies to capture the interest of those who major in something other than landscape horticulture (facilities management, construction management, business and even the humanities). I frequently encounter students in these majors who discover that they want to pursue a career in the landscape industry. Many of them have had experience in the landscape industry, but never thought of it as a career.
    
5. Spending time in high schools, meeting with counselors or as a guest lecturer in a class is also a good way to attract potential future employees. You can help them replace the common negative stereotypes with a positive image of the landscape industry.
   
    

But what will I make?

I’m often asked about the compensation package our students are expecting upon graduation. The range in starting salaries for my students is rather large. This is understandable, as some students have several years of experience before completing their degree while others just have the two required internships. As an educator, my goal is to motivate students to maximize their skills and knowledge. It is a challenge for educators and companies to help students acquire realistic expectations.

That said, students are biased toward companies that recognize the value of a college degree. They have invested significant time and money in earning a degree. They have learned to effectively juggle deadlines. They have dealt with professors who can be as demanding as your toughest client. And they have learned how to think.

Landscapers often say that college graduates need to start at the bottom, just like everyone else. I agree that a degree alone does not qualify a potential employee for a management position, and often use the analogy of a doctor who isn’t ready to practice medicine merely by graduating from medical school – he or she first needs to gain hands on experience through rotations and a residency.

But there are enough landscape companies that treat college graduates like professionals, and these companies have a definite competitive advantage. College graduates still are expected to spend time in the field, but are presented with a clear path for upward advancement in the company.
 

Conclusion.

Demand for qualified employees in our industry will continue to grow as the industry grows. There are many opportunities in our personal lives to share the passion for the landscape industry and communicate the professional opportunities available. If we don’t, who will?

The author is a professor of landscape management at Brigham Young University and a Lawn & Landscape Leadership Award winner. His team has taken first place at PLANET’s Student Career Days competition four times.

Fighting negative perceptions

The industry’s largest education foundation has reshaped its mission to go from quiet banker to extroverted cheerleader.

By Chuck Bowen

Since its inception in 1998, PLANET’s Academic Excellence Foundation has given away more than $811,000 to nearly 800 students. We caught up with board president Tom Fochtman to find out what’s changing with PLANET’s educational foundation.
 

L&L: The mission of the foundation is expanding – what’s the motivation there?

Tom Fochtman: At this year’s Student Career Days, we raised $150,000 and we’ve not done that before. Each board member is charged with bringing in one new ambassador every year. If everybody does that, that’s $375,000.

L&L: What took so long for AEF to build a program like this?

TF: People get so busy and wrapped up in running their business, they don’t focus on the big picture. They think: ‘It’s so bad – how can I do anything to help?’ As the industry has developed and matured, this issue has come to the forefront. PLANET and the board members of AEF have realized that we have to address this.
 

L&L: How will you know AEF succeeded?

TF: Not having to rely on H-2B because we have so many employees here domestically.

I sat with a client of mine yesterday. He turned down a million-dollar job because he doesn't have the people to do the job. He’s not bothered by it, because he knows he’ll get better opportunities that fit. But he totally passed on it.