The Value of Using a Specialist Roofing Recruiter

Robbie Kerr, Director at The Externals Group

Robbie Kerr, Director of The Externals Group, explains why roofing contractors should consider using a specialist roofing recruiter for their next job vacancy.

Most companies underestimate the cost of hiring on their own. The burn rate of cash while waiting for the perfect candidate to apply for the job often outweighs the cost of a fee.

Roofing contractors are busy and the vast majority are SMEs where hiring is not anyone’s sole job requirement. Recruitment usually gets added to someone’s job, be it the office manager who is dealing with the inner workings of a 20-person office, the project manager who is between sites, the HR manager who deals with the whole business, or the owner/director who is busy running a company. People just don’t have the time to recruit properly and waiting on the right applicant in a competitive market often doesn’t work.

This is where a specialist can make a difference.

Recruitment Takes Time and is Expensive

The Externals Group is a business dedicated to recruiting and we know the time certain tasks take. To break it down:

• Sourcing takes a couple of days to go through all available data points and CVs.
• Outreach can take days although it can be done in an hour or so with automation tools.
• Screening could take up to a week to catch everyone you’re trying to speak to.
• Chasing people for follow ups can take numerous days.
• Booking interviews can take between 1 day to 2 weeks to get interviews in.
• Following up also takes up more time and that’s just the first interview out of the way.

People who only have 1-2 hours a week to deal with recruitment, even if they’re only dealing with ad responses, can quickly become overwhelmed and usually see little return on that time.

People’s time costs money. How much value could someone add elsewhere in the business if all of this is taken care of? To add to this is the cost of waiting – people are usually picking up the slack, putting strain on current employees or a project can’t start, a department can’t open, a job can’t be tendered for costing businesses thousands. Then making a wrong hire because you can’t afford to wait is even worse, because you have the cost of all of the above and training and onboarding only for either disaster to strike or them to leave very quickly and you’re back to square one.

Don’t get me wrong, not all hiring is like this and a lot of jobs are perfectly capable of being hired for internally if you have the right set up, skillset, time and local candidate market with minimal competition or exceptional offering.

Network and Reach Can’t Be Built Overnight

Relationships with qualified candidates like PMs, estimators, sales, and so on take time. These are people we have spoken to for years, even when they weren’t on the market but because we network constantly and are always looking for them, we have those connections. Not every recruiter has these and this is why it is important to work with a specialist.

A construction generalist recruiter can not know nearly enough people in each field because the industry is huge. Yet an accounting recruiter for the area you’re in will be sure to know the market like the back of their hand and the market will know them.

We had a client who wasn’t looking for this particular job but through our networking we found someone who could add real value to them so we made the introduction and now the client has expanded further than planned and is on a trajectory to grow 2-3 times more.

Pitfalls to Avoid

We all have or have heard horror stories about working with recruiters. Recruiters are sales people and unfortunately, there is a huge amount who will say anything to win business and it is a let down in my industry. But like getting a haircut, some are worse than others. Working with a specialist with proven experience in your market is key to that hurdle.

Another common misconception is that working with every available agency will cover the most ground and get you the most applicants to choose from. Most of the time if a company is working with six other agencies and comes to us for help, we turn it away, especially in a niche market. It’s usually the same candidates being hounded by six different people, promoting your company in six different ways and just annoying everyone, making the quality of what does come back, a lot poorer.

If you are an SME on the smaller side, choose one good agency that can learn your business inside and out, or if you’re on the larger side, split into departments for the best ROI.

These are the methods that make recruitment a lot easier on you and give the fastest and highest quality result, coupled with a replacement guarantee to save you from a potential bad hire to protect your investment.

We at The Externals Group are always keen to speak with roofing businesses who want to strengthen their teams. The right recruiter can save you time, reduce risk and give you access to people you would never have reached on your own.

A good recruiter is like a good dentist: they will get the job done, even if no one likes it.

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