How To Overcome Building Staff Hiring Challenges

Hiring building staff can be a daunting exercise, particularly if it’s a key position such as a super or resident manager. One large Manhattan co-op faced this task head on when it fired its resident manager and turned to Spark Super, a third-party staffing company, for a temporary placement. James Park, Managing Director of Spark Super, shares the challenges such a significant hire brings, and how it can be met. Habitat’s Emily Myers conducts the interview.

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Transcript

Emily Myers: Welcome to Problem Solved, a conversation about challenges facing New York co-op and condo board directors. I'm Emily Myers with Habitat Magazine and I'm joined by James Park, managing director of third party staffing company Spark Super.

A committed resident manager or super can have a big impact on quality of life for residents in a co-op or condo.

That's why getting the hiring process right is so important. James, you are dealing with this issue all the time, but at a 425 unit co-op in Lower Manhattan, the board recently really struggled to get this right. Can you explain what happened? 

James Park: Okay. So in this co-op, the building reached out to us for a couple things. They reached out to us to have someone cover the building. So generally when this happens, when the super is terminated and they need a new super the first thing is they need to find a replacement super that has the right qualifications and experience and skills to to manage the building as a resident manager. In this case, it was quite a large co-op. There was a body of staff that had to be managed. There were ongoing projects at the building. 

Emily Myers: The co-op reached out to you because they had terminated the super's job? 

James Park: Yes. 

Emily Myers: What were some of the initial staffing problems that led to the termination of the superintendent?

James Park: The super had some problems with the staff. He had some quality of work issues, work ethic issues. They decided to terminate him and to search for a new resident manager. The search for a resident manager, it's a labor intensive, time consuming ordeal.

You often have to spend a lot of time sifting through a lot resumes, having to set up interviews. If you do it the correct way, you have to have them come to the building and perform walkthroughs with the management just to get a sense of whether this person matches. So there's a lot of work that goes behind and a lot of time that goes behind finding the right super or resident manager in this case.

Emily Myers: So how did your team go about identifying and vetting a candidate for the position? 

James Park: They hired us to come in and provide staffing, specifically to provide a temporary superintendent for the building. The challenge there was that when you cover a building like this with a temporary super, the co-op is not providing him with providing the person, the team member, with a place to stay on site as they did with the with the super.

Yet they still need all of the things that keep building running properly. You need someone to handle the everyday affairs at the building. Special projects that are happening at the building. You need someone to be on call for after hours emergencies.

You have to have someone in this case when you have 16, 17 staff members, you need someone who's able to manage the staff properly. We were called in to provide that staffing. And also just to add to that co-ops may not, buildings in general, may not want to have someone come in a temporary position and to cover them under their payroll, and yet they would still need them to be covered by the insurance.

We came in to provide the proper team member who had the right experience and the right set of skills to cover all the functions of a building that they would need covered while they were finding a superintendent.

Emily Myers: So when you bring in a temporary super, they are not living in the building as a permanent super would be. So it's particularly challenging for them because they are being asked to do things when their situation is not set up in an optimal way because they're not living at the building.

James Park: Yes. That is correct. So finding someone who is able to fit all of those boxes, check off all of those boxes in terms of skills and experience, and yet is able to commute in from from a remote location. That's a challenge. So our systems are set up to be able to cover a building 24 7 for all of its needs.

That's one of the reasons why we're called to handle these types of temporary resident manager building super coverages. 

Emily Myers: But in this situation, at this building, your temporary super ended up with a more permanent position. Can you explain how that happened? You were brought in on a temporary basis to provide staffing.

What happened next? 

James Park: Okay. Next thing was that we were asked to help find the co-op a permanent resident manager. Because often the property manager has has a lot of things to take care of and building maintenance is a subcategory of what they do.

For us, maintenance is the entire thing. So this is something that we do day in and day out. They asked us to try to help find the resident manager. And this is a particularly challenging task because different buildings have different needs and different amenities, different characteristics that require a different type of super.

Supers of course, have different set of skills, different experiences so it's not necessarily one size fits all. You really have to try to find the right super. So we were called in to help them with that process. We went through about, if I recall, maybe 200 resumes.

And we had filtered down and interviewed 50 candidates for the position. Ultimately narrow it down to 10, narrow it down to three, and eventually the the board ended up selecting a permanent resident manager. 

There's a risk that the super may come into the job and end up not feeling it for the position and he may end up leaving which is what happened in this case with the co-op. They had hired a permanent resident manager, but he had ended up finding another position in another building.

So we ended up cutting his tenure very short and leaving soon after he was hired. 

Emily Myers: So you were basically back to square one with this building. 

James Park: We were back to square one and the building was left without a resident manager.

And we were called in again to provide the temporary coverage with another resident manager who was able to carry on the everyday tasks and maintenance of the building, management of the staff and such. And we were once again asked to try to help find another resident manager for the building.

We had succeeded in finding another individual, but that individual ended up backing out. 

Emily Myers: So during this time, presumably you are providing coverage when these, resident managers decide to leave you come in with your temporary coverage. Can you tell me then what happened next?

James Park: A service that we offer buildings is what's called a temp to perm.

 It's a chance for the building to to test out the super, before hiring him permanently, because there's a enormous cost to hiring a super permit permanently. Often the the building has to give up an apartment for that person, and now he's a permanent part of the community. For the super, he has to uproot his family and his own life and his living quarters and transition over to a new place. So because of those costs, we do offer what's called attempt to perm, where they can test it for a certain period of time, and if they like him, they can choose to hire him permanently.

In the case with Albert at this particular co-op what ended up happening was that, because he had come in to cover the building during those times that we were actively interviewing and vetting these candidates they actually ended up really liking Albert.

And they're really feeling that over the course of this coverage that he was the right person for this role. The shareholders and residents ended up for the most part really liking him. The board wanted him as a permanent staff at the building; the property manager as well.

On the last go around they ended up deciding to ask Albert if he can stay on as a permanent resident manager. 

Emily Myers: So your temporary staffing solution then became the permanent option for this co-op? 

James Park: Yes. 

Emily Myers: Okay. And was Albert excited at the prospect of taking on the permanent position?

James Park: So often, if our team member comes in with the expectation that this could lead to a permanent position. I guess that question is moot. But in a case like this, Albert came in expecting to be a temporary coverage for various reasons.

Certain team members of ours just wanna do the coverages, the temp coverages, and not be the permanent staffing at the building. So it took a little bit of persuasion, from the board from the manager and myself as well. We encouraged him to take this position and he ended up ultimately accepting the board's offer.

Emily Myers: And how did Albert's kind of leadership style contribute to improving the morale and addressing some of the issues that had been there with the staff? 

James Park: Albert has a natural leadership style that the staffing fell in love with. And that's super important at a building when you're managing staff to have that staff respect you. And during the time at the building, when he first came into the building, he was facing a staff that was demoralized. They had gone through a period of turnover. And the last resident manager ended up being quite combative with them. Because of that animosity or friction between the management, the resident manager and the staff, they were very suspicious of Albert when he came in, but through his own leadership style, management style, he ended up garnering their respect and support. And when the board saw that the staff was listening to him and following him and heeding his direction and guidance they were even more sold on the prospect that Albert would be a perfect fit .

Emily Myers: And did he have a lot of experience in a co-op of this size? 

James Park: He did not. So he was actually brought in under an arrangement that he would be trained under a more experienced resident manager. So what the co-op got was actually an experienced resident manager who was able to cover the building and at the same time provide training for someone like Albert to learn how to manage a building that size. So in this case the co-op was was in a situation where there were two resident managers or two building supers that was covering the building for this temporary period.

What we do in every building is we have a permanent. Temporary covering team member, and then we have a backup. That backup may be a trainee, someone that is looking to get into a building of a certain type and they're willing to come in and be an apprentice to the primary resident manager or superintendent.

In this case, that was the case and he ended up exceeding the expectations of the needs of the building and the expectations of the board and the management. And that was part of the reason why they had decided at the end to take him on. The three periods where he came in to cover the building as a temporary resident manager, was a span of about three years. So during the three years they had him at the building more than any permanent resident manager that they ended up hiring. So during that they ended up really getting to know Albert and to see his work ethic and his work style.

Emily Myers: What role did the board play in the hiring process and in supporting your temporary staff member, Albert, in his transition to a permanent position?

And perhaps another question is how were some of the difficulties that the board experienced in the staffing issues internalized by the board in this journey? Did they change their process over this period of time? 

James Park: The standard way is that the the board had a set of expectations that they want filled or covered by the new superintendent. So they communicate those expectations and those wants to the property manager who then goes out and tries to fill that through the candidate pool. The board is actively part of the whole process, and they're the ones at the end, when the candidates are eventually filtered down to the top three candidates. The board is the final say on who they would want as the permanent resident manager.

If there's a setback in the process where the the resident manager eventually ends up backing out of the offer, or if they end up leaving the position sooner than expected. There's a tremendous amount of anguish, or stress on the board because they have to repeat the process again. And once again, having the board go through even the final leg of the selection process can be enormous time that needs to be spent. That has to be spent. The key is to try to get this right. And I think that was also one of the motivation to have Albert come in was that going through the process would take a long time. And they felt that even if Albert didn't come in with the experience that they were looking for in this normal candidate search because he was there for so long and did so well and outperformed their expectations he was actually the perfect part for the role. 

Emily Myers: What did the board then learn during this process? 

James Park: I think the main thing that the board could have learned is that the process itself is very intensive and if it's done correctly, it takes an enormous amount of time and there's no guarantee. You'll spend a lot of time trying to filter the candidates, and then when you down to the final few. There's a risk there as well that the arrangement won't happen. After the hiring too, there's no guarantee there either. To have the permanent resident manager quit and leave the building gave the board a sense that there's really no guarantee . At least with Albert they knew that he had the, all the characteristics that he liked. He was always there. He didn't take a day off. 

One of the things that we try to look for in our search for resident manager is how long they will stay because buildings of the size really want to pull out about five to seven years on the resident manager.

During that time, they wanna have someone that's experienced and taking care of the building. Looking for that is often the most difficult part of trying to find a resident manager. So one of the things that they liked about Albert was that they had a sense that he would stay a long time. 

Emily Myers: What did your service cost the building? 

James Park: So when it comes to pricing it is customized based on how many hours that the building would need someone a temporary resident manager on site.

Whether they would need after hours, emergency services. What type of candidate, what type of skill and experience in the candidate that they would need. At the end of the day it's an hourly rate. So the rate depends upon how many hours the building wants the temporary staff member at the building. 

Emily Myers: I suppose what we've established is terminating a super is messy.

Hiring staff can be very complicated. Are there any lessons here for other boards facing similar staffing challenges? 

James Park: I would say the takeaway from this is that the process of finding a resident manager, a permanent resident manager is a tough one. It's a long road.

Be prepared to really sit down and try to figure out all of the things that the building is looking for in terms of the experience the building may need in that candidate. 

Emily Myers: Is there any advice you can give to boards as they get to their final three candidates? Because this seems to be where this building, until you came along with your temporary staff member, the building just could not pick the right candidate from those three finalists. So what would be your advice to a board when considering those final three candidates?

James Park: I would say even when you get to the point that you have three candidates finalized take, just take everything with a grain of salt that nothing is for certain, and that expectations can be just overturned very quickly.

But that, this process is worth it. Because if this is a position for a live-in, resident manager, then this is a person that is gonna be living in the community among the shareholders or the unit owners. And so you definitely wanna take time and vetting the right person. I do uh, recommend temporary to permanent offerings, that any company like ours may offer because it gives the building a chance to try out, to really sense whether the candidate is right for the building before they end up offering him a permanent position. 

So in my advice, I would say take your time. Hiring slow is really a critical part of the process and to take time to really vet the person and to sense whether this person is right for the building. I would say what we do, what we've done in this case is to actually go to their finalists current building to take a look at how it's being run. Going that extra step really helps to cement whether the decision is a good one.

But because there's really no guarantee even after you've done this vetting, you really want to look into a possible temporary to permanent service that companies may offer to help, really reduce those risks.

Emily Myers: Great, james, I think that's perfect. James Park, managing director of Spark Super.