Last week was the official first day of summer, so it is now officially barbecue season. And if you're having a barbecue with your employees and your team, check out this episode to see how you can use that event to recruit more great people to your team. My name's Jack Jostes and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide To Modern Sales and Marketing. This show is all about helping lawn and landscape contractors enjoy a better lifestyle by attracting the right customers through sales and marketing. And in this case attracting the right employees through recruiting. Alright, by the time you're watching this, it's probably July. This is one of my favorite times a year. Last August Ramblin Jackson celebrated its 10th anniversary. Yes, we've been in business since 2009 and we threw a big party. It was really fun. And some of the things that we did at that event helped us with our recruiting that I wanted to share with you today.
Tip One: Focus On Building Relationships With Your Team
So I've got three tips. If you're going to have an employee barbecue, to get the most recruiting value out of it. The first one is to focus on building relationships with your team at the event at Ramblin Jackson, we play the stump game, which if you've been to one of our private dinners for our clients, we play too, which can get pretty rowdy. There are a lot of variations of the game, but essentially you hit nails into a stump. So Google the stump game and figure out how to play, but it adds something to do. It adds a little competition and it brings people together. You can have prizes and things for that.
Tip Two: Have An Employee Referral Drive
My second tip for you is to have a referral drive. If you don't have a referral strategy for open positions, you should, you should be paying, um, you know, essentially referral commissions. If people refer a friend and they say that they're, they're applying because of somebody that works at your company pay the money. Now there are a lot of different ways to do this. But a lot of times your employees might not know how bad you're hurting to hire new people. They, they might not hear you mention it enough. A lot of business owners or managers are thinking about this every day. And maybe your team doesn't understand the severity of it. So reminding people, I would encourage you to bring some kind of print handout. I have made dollar bills with my face on it. And I've physically mailed that to my team. We're a remote company, but, you know, make it fun, make it memorable, get it out there and maybe create a contest where you're going to celebrate a winner at the employee event.
Tip Three: Hire A Professional Photographer To Shoot Photos for Your Social Media, Careers Webpage, and Recruiting Ads
And the third tip is to absolutely hire a professional photographer to come and shoot the event. You should focus on enjoying the event and connecting with your, with your family and your friends and your employees, and hiring a professional photographer will help you get a lot of amazing photos to use in your social media to put on the careers page on your website, to put in your job, offer letters, photos of these barbecues, make your company look like the professional established company that it is. And you should absolutely be leveraging that by investing in a professional photographer. I get a lot of leverage out of my events and it ultimately looks, makes us look like the great company that we are. So hopefully you found some value in these tips.
Of course, right now with the whole pandemic and things, stay safe while you're doing this kind of barbecue. But definitely celebrate! You guys are working hard and you should celebrate your team. And, if you'd like to learn more recruiting tips, go to landscapersguide.com/podcast and click on the recruiting tab. I have a whole bunch of other podcasts episodes focused on recruiting. And by the way, I'm hiring, if you knew any digital marketing professionals, send them this video or send them landscapersguide.com/careers, and we help lawn and landscape contractors with their branding, sales and marketing, and we're a hundred percent remote company. So I'm looking for great people from around the country who are professional and capable of working remotely, but we've got that dialed in. So thank you for thinking of me. If you meet somebody who might be a good fit, send them my way, send them an email introduction to me, jack@landscapersguide.com or to check out our website. So have an awesome day and I'll look forward to seeing you next Friday. And thanks for watching the first episode of the 2020 River Series right now, I'm in the Saint Vrain River. So you probably hear that sound in the background. It is a beautiful 90 degree day here in Lyons, Colorado. So I'm out standing in the river, cooling off enjoying nature. Alright, have a good one. And I'll see you next Friday.