Sunday Apr 06, 2025

Episode 9: Hiring - Ads, Budgets, and Targeting

In this episode, host Sid Graef focuses on valuable hiring insights from expert consultant Chris Dexter, a veteran at recruiting in various trades (HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and more). Chris explains how to set a hiring budget, effectively use job posting platforms (like Indeed and BetterTeam), and automate the screening process with tools such as Calendly. He also highlights creative strategies like multi-location job postings, open-house group interviews, and tapping into trade schools. The key takeaway? Building a strong hiring system—complete with a dedicated budget, scheduled phone interviews, and a clear focus on culture—will help you attract and retain the A-players you need to grow past the million-dollar mark and beyond.

Show Notes

Transcript

Sid Graef (Host):
Welcome back to the Huge Insider Podcast. Hey, my friend, it’s Sier, the huge insider, and this is the show for home service professionals who are striving to break the million-dollar revenue mark. That’s you—you are in the right place, and even if you’ve already gotten over a million-dollar revenue, well, you are gonna get even more out of the show.

So why do I say this is the show? This is not your typical podcast. It’s not an interview show. It’s not an expert-driven show. Instead, what we’ve done is we have gathered wisdom and insights directly from seven- and eight-figure business owners—people that are actually running companies that are doing everywhere from 2 million a year to 40 million a year. And we bring you their best insights, all focused on a single topic each month. These are real owners—there’s no armchair philosophers or fake gurus. These are the ones quietly building empires behind the scenes. They’re not on social media looking for attention; they’re in business, and they’re making things happen.

So we’re wrapping up the month of March, and it’s all about our main subject, which is hiring. Today you’re gonna hear from Chris Dexter. Chris has been the CEO, he has been the owner, he has been the partner, and now he’s a private consultant. He has been responsible for hiring hundreds, if not thousands, of technicians in electrical, HVAC, plumbing—the trades, the home services. So he knows his stuff, and I asked him, “What are your best practices for attracting and then hiring A players? How do you get them to come to you? How do you sort out the A players from everybody else?” And this is what he had to say.

We’re about to get started. I just want to let you know everything we talk about, or that Chris talks about, is in the show notes as well as our action guide based on this week’s episode. So with that, let’s get into it.

Chris Dexter (Guest):
First of all, thank you, Sid, for asking for my input regarding hiring techniques. I’ll keep it brief. When customers first retain my services for human resources counseling, hiring—you name it—I always ask ’em the same question, and I get a number of different responses, but one is overwhelming. I ask them, “So, what’s your budget for hiring?” Employers often tell me, “The most important thing we do, or the most important thing we can do right now, is hiring.” And when I ask how much their budget is for it, they typically don’t have one set aside. I’m not certain if they don’t know how to create a budget for it or if they’ve measured it in the past. I’m not certain, but I think it’s fairly easy to put together, and there are some ways to control the budget as well.

Indeed can be really expensive, especially if you go with their advice. You post an ad on Indeed, and it says, “Hey, in your marketplace, you should spend $65 a day.” That’s just terrific—letting the vendor tell you how much they should charge you. I think it does work, but you certainly don’t have to take that advice. But first things first—definitely have a budget. Make this part of your scorecard if you’re keeping a scorecard in some sort of business management setting, so that you know how much you’re spending.

But let’s just dive right in. Indeed is the biggest and best platform out there. You can access it for free or spend 20, 30, 60 dollars a day, and you will get results. There’s automation: responding to candidates, keeping good records, viewing resumes, et cetera. I use it all the time, and I have great results because that’s where most candidates go.

However, I have found a platform a good number of years ago—it’s probably been 10 years—that I’ve been using something called BetterTeam. I have to say, no one has ever gone to BetterTeam to find a job. Job seekers don’t go to BetterTeam to find jobs. BetterTeam goes to the universe and finds people that are looking for jobs and posts for free on Indeed and other platforms. It puts your ad out there and gives you more flexibility. The number one thing I like about BetterTeam—not to rank in an order—but it’s inexpensive. A year, a year for 10 slots—10 postings—is $834 if you choose the yearly plan. I think if you bump it up to 20, which I recommend even for the smallest of companies because it’s so cost-effective, it’s probably like $1,100, something like that. But then 10 slots for $834 a year, and you can change ’em up daily. You can post for as many different jobs as you want, or you can post the same job 10 times.

That brings up a technique that I use for posting. I post an ad for my customer at their business location—the actual address where they reside—and I make sure that’s in there as the headquarters, and I even put that in the ad. I let the candidates know, “Hey, here’s our location, street address, et cetera.” But I also use the other nine ads—or 18 ads, depending on the client’s choice—I’ll post all those ads, and I’ll see, “Yeah, a few of them, I got zero hits on in a day, but I noticed this ad over here on the service road next to the mall, boy, I got six candidates off of that right away the first night.” Maybe I picked something that’s close by, a different zip code but really close. And the theory behind this is that when individuals go to look for work, they go to look for work on their phone. And so what does your phone do? It pushes the stuff to you that’s closest, so it pushes a job to them that’s in their neighborhood.

Occasionally, somebody will say, “The job’s in Roseville? I thought it was in Buffalo.” And then I explain to them, “No, I knew you were in Buffalo, and I wanted to make sure that I got to you. I post ’em all over the place.” But nope, it’s definitely in Roseville. It’s pretty close by, it’s only like another 20 minutes. Again, seldom have I had anybody question that, so that’s probably my number one technique as far as economics.

Another thing is, definitely make sure you’re available for appointments. I include it right in the ad—I include a Calendly link. Set that up so they can schedule a 15-minute call, and make sure you make the calls. You can tell Calendly, “I wanna take six calls a day, I wanna take 16 calls a day, I want ’em to be 15 minutes long, and I want 10 minutes in between each call—five minutes, whatever it is.” So that’s super flexible, and everybody’s using their phone. Everybody clicks on it, it gets sent right to your inbox, and it takes a look at your Outlook calendar and it’s not gonna schedule over them. So technique number two: make sure that you get those right away.

And again, for a great number of positions, just put it right in your ad. There’s no reason for you to scan through all of these resumes and see who’s qualified. Let them book the appointment for the 15-minute call, and you’re gonna get ghosted part of the time anyway. But I have to say, my experience just in the last few years is that if I use Calendly and the individual actually sets up the appointment, they typically are there on the other end when I call them. It’s at that point that I determine whether or not they’re a good fit. I’ve got the appointment, got it all set up, the individuals have applied, and I’ve had the 15-minute phone call. That screening is a good time to see if you want them for an in-person interview. Depending on the type of position, I’ve hired off the 15-minute phone call as well for certain positions that aren’t rocket surgery. After a 15-minute conversation, I can tell if this person has what I want in an employee: Are they engaging? Do they seem sensible, reasonable? Can they carry on a decent conversation, depending on the position? Relevant experience isn’t that relevant—I would rather hire somebody that I thought was the right person, culturally a good fit, et cetera.

Other techniques—and this is Calendly, too, I think—it works well with Calendly. That is to set up a group interview, have everybody out, open house, I don’t know, buy ’em some donuts or cheeses and crackers—whatever you want to do. But I have one customer, and every Tuesday at 10:45, they have an open invitation. I use Indeed for that. I send out the invites regularly. I have 12 slots open, and we’ve had pretty good success. Eight or 10 people will show up—sometimes it’s less, sometimes it’s all of them—and we use that to screen candidates. Having 12 people in seems like a little overkill, and I would agree with that, and it can be a little more work.

First of all, again, just to review: use Indeed. I think it’s great. Keep your budget low; don’t go up to 60 or 50 dollars a day. Try it out at six bucks, five bucks. I think that’s their minimum to sponsor an ad. Indeed also allows you to post the same ad in multiple locations—give it a try. BetterTeam, all one word: use them because they’re very cost-effective, super flexible, but it’s bare-bones. You don’t get a whole lot of the bells and whistles. There’s no applicant tracking system involved with it. It provides all the details. It’s best to text people. I text everybody; initially it’s gonna be emailed through Calendly, which sends it as a phone invite anyway, or as an email, or both. Gosh, what else can I tell you?

As far as techniques, people say your best source of new employees is referrals from your existing employees. That’s true—ask your employees for referrals. It’s not a technique thing like Indeed or BetterTeam or any of the other sites out there. More active techniques, depending on what you’re looking for—I’m hiring for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, apprentices—I’m gonna go to trade schools and academies. There’s one that I go to all the time. I think it’s maybe 16 weeks long. Have a relationship with them. Set up a relationship with a local trade school, with one of the individuals; they’re always looking for placement for their individuals. If I think of anything else, I’m gonna include an addendum and send it to Sid. Thank you so much, I appreciate your time, and I hope you have a great day.

Sid Graef (Host):
That’s a wrap on today’s episode. So what did you learn about hiring and about the hiring process from Chris, and more importantly, what are you gonna do with it? His strategies are simple, but don’t let that fool you—it’s powerful, because at the foundation of every great company is a great team, and that means you’re going to have to hire.

So with this episode and the previous five, you’ve got a really great survey of best practices on how to attract, hire, and retain A players for your team, which is what you need for your business to skyrocket ahead of your competition—because face it, a lot of your competition doesn’t hire anybody that does breath, anybody that can fog a mirror, as they say, and that’s not the way to build a winning team.

So here’s your next step: Take some action. Everything we covered today is in the show notes, but again, the most important thing is to download the action guide. We put together a five-page action guide to help you execute this week’s strategy, and you can grab it at thehugeinsider.com. And remember, that’s in the show notes too.

There are more ways that we can help you level up your business. This podcast is just one way we help you grow. You can also plug into our free weekly newsletter—also called The Huge Insider. You get weekly insights straight to your inbox. There’s no fluff; it’s just straight-to-the-point, actionable insights you can use for your business.

We have a Facebook group just for you. It’s a group and a community where people want to help each other grow and solve problems. Come and join us. The Huge Convention—that’s our annual big show. It’s in August this year. It’s August 20th through 22nd in Nashville, Tennessee, the last year we’re gonna be in Nashville for a while. Right now, tickets are dirt cheap, and you can get them at thehugeconvention.com. This is the event where real breakthroughs happen. It’s the place for networking in our industry, world-class education that’s specifically tailored to the home service industry, and we’ve got the biggest trade show in the industry for exterior cleaning and holiday lighting. It’s a big deal.

Last, I want to mention to you, we have a mastermind. We call it the Huge Mastermind, and this is for folks that have a business that’s already over a million in revenue, and you’ve got five or more employees. This is the fast track to making that a freedom business. You will learn and implement the Freedom Operating System to get more time and money freedom in a predictable fashion.

Last thing I want to say—thanks for listening. I’d love to feature you on a future episode. If you’ve had a big win or if you’ve had a painful failure and lesson that—when you got back up and dusted yourself off—helped you build a better business, I would love to hear about it. Call and leave me a message at 804-600-HUGE (that’s 804-600-4843), and we might just feature your story on an upcoming episode. I look forward to hearing from you.

That’s it for this week. Don’t just listen—take action. I’m Sid Graef. This is the Huge Insider Podcast. We want to help you win and prosper in the marketplace. We’ll see you next time.

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