Do you ever get totally unqualified job candidates applying to your landscaping company? Did they eat up your time bandwidth to sort through all of their emails, resumes, and maybe even meet with only to find out that there's absolutely no way that could ever be a fit at your company.
Prevent unqualified job applicants from even applying with this simple job application form hack that you can implement easily on your website. My name's Jack Jostes and welcome to The Landscaper's Guide To Modern Sales and Marketing Podcast. This show is all about helping you increase your profit and enjoy a better lifestyle from your business.
And in order to do that you're and you're going to need to have, in order to do that, you're going to need to have great people on your team. But right now there's a lot of people out just applying for jobs that they really shouldn't be applying for. And I want to help you save time from having to deal with that. I actually use this tip in my own business and I can't wait to share it with you in today's episode.
Easily Disqualify Applicants Who Are Just Checking A Box
There are a lot of people out there who are unemployed for legitimate reasons. And I don't want to knock that. And there are also people who are just checking the box that they've applied for a job so they can continue to collect unemployment. And what I want to do with this tip is help you prevent the totally random irrelevant people from applying to your jobs. So they don't suck up the time and resources to sift through their resumes and applications that are so far from being a fit for your company.
One of the greatest things about running a business is the opportunity to create jobs for other people and to build community and to serve your community through employment. And there are certain skills while even if you have entry-level positions that people need to have, there are certain requirements. And what you want to do is get really clear on what are the absolute basic requirements that people need to have, and clearly communicate them in your job advertisements. And then with this tip actually prevent people from even applying. If they don't have them, for instance, do you need people who can lift 50 pounds? Do they need to be able to hang in the sun, the rain, the sleet, or the snow, do they need to have a driver's license? Maybe they need to have all of those things. So you can list that out and in your job application form, have them check a box where they answer questions for those things.
And if they don't have them, it can actually prevent them from filling it out. At Ramblin Jackson, the minimum skill that we need for most of our positions is advanced Google drive experience. If people don't have Google drive experience, they're probably not going to be a good fit for working here. We can certainly teach people through our Ramblin Jackson university, a lot of different skills, and we've taken people who haven't done what we do and we've taught them. But we found through having hired many people who haven't worked, that that was the one thing that we really need to interview for. So in our job applications, we have people rate their experience. And if they're below a certain experience level with certain things like Google drive, or for other positions, maybe a comfort doing sales, then it actually prevents them from applying.
How To Use Boolean (Or Conditional) Logic On Your Website
The way we do this is through something called Boolean logic. And let's not get too worried about Boolean. It's also called conditional logic, but it's essentially, if this happens, then this happens. And I want to show you an example of a tree services company that I work with, who is getting spammed with tons of applicants, from people who are not a fit and that their company, you have to have a driver's license to apply to the job. So what did we do? We asked not after getting their basic contact information, we asked them, do you have a driver's license? And if the answer is, no, it has a little pop-up that says, thank you. We are not accepting applications from people without a driver's license at this time. And you can't even fill it out.
Then if you select, yes, I do have a driver's license. Boom. It pops open lots of other qualifying questions that somebody could still easily fill out. Cause we don't want to make it so hard that nobody applies, but we want to ask questions so we can quickly sort the results and proactively and quickly follow up with the people who are qualified and get an interview with them. And then sort the other people who are less qualified and deal with them accordingly.
The tool we use on our websites at Ramblin Jackson to do this is Gravity Forms. Gravity Forms is a robust, premium contact form plugin, which means that you can ask people all kinds of questions and it'll securely save it. And you can do things like conditional logic or Boolean logic. And we do this in sales. We do this in design intake forms for our clients and in recruiting.
In order for this to work, you've got to have a lot of people applying to your company. It's going to be different for every company. But what I found is I typically need about 300 applicants to get one qualified employee that I actually want to invite on my team. And the way that I do that is through proactively marketing my positions. And one of the ways that I do that is through referrals and other different things, but absolutely through digital marketing.
Landscaping Employees Are Looking Online For Jobs
And right now there's a huge surge in searches of people looking on their smartphone for landscaping jobs near me, landscaping employees are absolutely using sites like Glassdoor. Indeed. They're searching on Google and LinkedIn and you need to show up and stand out as the place to work. Because if you just list of all the hard stuff about lifting heavy things and working in the sun without really selling people on why they should work for you, well, why would they work for you instead of a landscaper that presents a better opportunity? So join me on Thursday, April 8th, for my live free webinar: How To Recruit Landscaping Employees With Digital Marketing, you can register online landscapersguide.com/events.
Now I know what you might be thinking, Jack, this isn't going to work for my company. This doesn't work in the green industry. This doesn't work in Texas. Well, let's watch an interview with Casey Hendricks. My client from Tex-Scapes Nursery and Landscapes, to hear how this disqualification mindset around marketing to clients is also working for marketing and recruiting his open positions.
Casey Hendrix:
What I didn't realize is the huge impact on our branding that the website was having or not having, and being found by, I mean, you're not going to go work somewhere and you pull up their website and it looks like a roadside something that will be here this month and probably gone the next. I mean, you want to work for a substantial company that has benefits that is going to be there, and there's potential room for growth, and learning, and personal growth, and can help you achieve your personal goals. And so once we realized that and built the new site, more than one of our hires since that time had said, "Yeah, I went to your website, everything looked great." And we have links on there. You can fill out an application, you can email it to the proper person.
You can click on our careers page and it shows a picture of our team and then positions that are available and they click that position. And then they read, "Oh, I've got to be able to lift 50 pounds and I've got to work out in the sun and I might not be a good fit." So then that person doesn't call us. Wonderful. I didn't have to interview that person because we put that information out there, what we're looking for very specifically. And if it doesn't fit then, hey move along. If it does, great, give us a call.
If you want to spend more time with qualified employee candidates and fill your positions faster, I hope to see you at my live event on Thursday, April 8th. Register online landscapersguide.com/events. My name's Jack Jostes and thanks so much for checking out this episode of The Landscaper's Guide To Modern Sales and Marketing Podcast. I look forward to seeing you next week.