#29: Hiring in Construction: What Every Founder Needs to Know

Are construction companies losing top talent because they still recruit like it's 1995?

In this episode, we sit down with Corey Guy of Ground Up Construction Recruiting to dig into one of the biggest make-or-break issues in construction today: finding and keeping top-tier talent. Corey shares hard-won insights on how modernizing your hiring strategy—from brand presence to tech adoption—can transform your business and your team.

Topics we cover:

(3:18) – Why construction has a branding problem and how it's hurting recruiting

(6:42) – Why your website is a recruiting tool, not just a sales asset

(11:28) – The college myth and why trades are making a comeback

(16:39) – Future-proofing your workforce with training and internal pipelines

(30:20) – How technology is reshaping the construction workforce 

(37:43) – Competing with the big firms: how small contractors can attract top talent

Connect with Corey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/corey-guy-a55a8589/

Visit Ground Up Construction Recruiting: https://www.grounduprecruiting.com/

Connect with Mason: https://www.linkedin.com/in/masonbrady/

Visit BradyCFO: https://www.bradycfo.com/

If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to rate, review, and of course, SUBSCRIBE!

LEAVE SOME FEEDBACK: If you enjoyed the series, please rate and review!

Have a business growth question you'd like Mason to cover in an upcoming episode? Email: info@bradycfo.com

Transcript

Mason Brady (00:01.211)
All right. Well, welcome back everybody to, to another episode of brewing business with Brady. Today's guest is Corey guy of ground up construction recruiting. Or one sec. Great. Is it ground up recruiting or ground up construction recruiting? Okay. Sorry. so what do you do that real quick? Yeah. So, yeah. hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of brewing business with Brady. Today's guest is Corey guy of ground up construction recruiting. And Corey is an absolute expert along with his wife in regards to.

Corey Guy (00:13.974)
of construction occurring.

Thank you. OK.

Mason Brady (00:31.035)
how to recruit in the trades, how to get the right people for your construction business and make sure that there are values fit, there are technical fit, and that you're gonna grow a really successful business with good people. So really excited to have you on the show today, Corey.

Corey Guy (00:45.144)
Yeah, thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it, brother.

Mason Brady (00:47.415)
Awesome. Well, this is Brewing Business with Brady. So most of our guests know, any listener knows, I'm a coffee addict and live off the stuff, but not all of our guests are. So we like to understand, know, what's the way you start your day, Corey, that what's your favorite go-to beverage in the morning?

Corey Guy (00:55.287)
Okay.

Corey Guy (01:04.366)
Man, I already had some coffee. I just got some water now, but I always try to get some electrolytes in before coffee. Sometimes after coffee. It just kind of depends what I got going on. But man, usually if I'm working out in the morning though, gotta get that pre-workout in too. So pre-workout, coffee, water, mix of all three. Man, I've been kind of experimenting like...

Mason Brady (01:21.479)
Fair enough. Coffee is just my pre-workout. We're just getting on the coffee.

Corey Guy (01:32.398)
I love espresso. So a shot of espresso looks like just I love just a mouthful of honey, too. So that's sometimes that's my free work.

Mason Brady (01:38.321)
Fair enough, yeah. That's pretty solid too, that's a fast way to get it in that you don't have to sit there and sip the cup while it's too hot and all that, that you just, yeah, you down it get it done. That's really like, that's how the Italians and stuff actually drink it, right? Like they're not going in, like, you know, they'll get just a shot of espresso and that's how they start their day. They'll sit down, chug it and then go about their day or whatever that is. So I think this whole idea of like having this big mug is such an American thing. guess we like bigger than better, know, bigger is better, I guess, but.

Corey Guy (01:46.99)
Yeah. Yep.

Corey Guy (01:58.402)
Mm-hmm.

Corey Guy (02:04.93)
and

Mason Brady (02:08.439)
yeah, coffee one way or the other, whether it's in short form or big form that it's, it's a beautiful thing. Right.

Corey Guy (02:14.786)
Yeah, my wife and I had our honeymoon in Paris and that was the first time I ever had espresso and since then I've just been addicted to it, man. I love espresso.

Mason Brady (02:23.301)
Yeah, no, it's, it's good stuff that it's interesting. I did my masters in Spain and they also have a coffee culture, but they use terrible coffee. That's the only problem. Like they do the espresso and all that. But, I think that the coffee quality itself of like sourcing, coffee, good quality beans, is better in France, Italy. And, so yeah, I, I wish that I could say that I had the same experience that it was amazing and maybe different, but,

Corey Guy (02:33.122)
and

Corey Guy (02:48.403)
Hahaha

Mason Brady (02:50.171)
Yeah, it wasn't that I, but I was still a coffee addict before that too. So, yeah. Well, I, you know, we're not here to necessarily talk about coffee, right? Or Paris or whatever that is. We're here to talk about, you know, the recruitment, the hiring challenges that the construction industry faces that we both serve, you know, construction clients in both of our businesses, right? But it's, it's, you know, there's a lot of talk and especially from a political standpoint too.

Corey Guy (02:53.518)
Yeah, I know.

Corey Guy (02:59.758)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (03:11.553)
you

Mason Brady (03:18.203)
You know, there's a lot going on in regards to, you know, the hiring for the construction industry. And I think one aspect is the actual trades folks itself, but then you need a layer of management, middle management and upper management on top of that to build a successful construction business. And, I'm sure that you've experienced that, you know, one of the things that really does make a construction company successful is that next layer of leadership that, like we're working with a lot of businesses that.

Corey Guy (03:42.082)
and

Mason Brady (03:44.433)
They're pulling themselves, you know, the owner operator pulled themselves up by the bootstraps, got a lot done on their own. Sometimes it's a, it's a family team that's getting it done, but they, they reach a point that we call kind of like whitewater where it feels like you're thrashing around, but not reaching that next step. And a big part of that is getting the next layer of leadership that you can delegate into the next layer of management. Good, good people that you're going to build that next foundation of success on. And so, I, I'm really excited for your insight that you're going to bring to this that.

I'd love to understand for our audience too, what do you see as the biggest hiring challenge that construction companies face today?

Corey Guy (04:22.41)
And a lot of this perception of the construction industry in general, think as an industry, we've done kind of a bad job of promoting it, whether it be the trades or the general contracting side, just the industry as a whole. The world has gone so online these days with video and photos and social media. The construction industry just hasn't.

I'm taking full advantage of that yet. And so I think we've gotten left behind a little bit and you know, the construction industry is competing against one another, but we're really competing against all other industries as well as far as getting talent into it, know, know, technology, healthcare, manufacturing, everything like, although you know, every industry is good.

You construction has so many shortages and we really have to compete against all other industries. So all construction companies, you know, need to start getting more online, utilizing, you know, some of the companies don't even use a website yet. Social media pages, investing in, you know, videos of their job sites, promoting their people and really just showing how cool the industry is in total, man. So I think that's a huge lacking area.

that construction companies are facing right now, like as a recruiter, you know, when a client hired us, that's, that's one of the first things we take a look at is, know, do you have a website? Are you active on social media? are you utilizing these tools to really promote yourself and just attract, attract, you know, people in your cities or the States that you work in. And that kind of gives us an idea of how tough a search might be as far as like,

Does the general public even know who you are? Do the peers in the industry, they even heard of your company? Maybe they've seen some banners on job sites, but do they truly know who you are, what you're trying to do, what your vision, mission is and everything. So that's one of the things we're up against as well as trying to even get the name out of some companies in particular areas just because they've never even been heard of.

Mason Brady (06:42.587)
No, 100 % that I, had previous guests on the show that, I mean, we actually had a, a fractional CMO. he works for a firm that's solely specialized in the construction industry. you know, I mean, his take on even like a website was it's not necessarily going to win you new business, but it's going to make sure as heck that you don't lose new business. But the other advantage of just having the website is it, it in itself is a recruiting tool that.

You think that, you know, a job applicant isn't going to go look online and be skeptical that if they don't find something, and it's not even, you know, like, it's not that you have to have such a better website than everybody else. Like that's not what the world is asking for, but I, like anything, if you and I were buyers and, you know, if we go look up something, if we go look up a product on Amazon, we can't find a website for it to get, see reviews and everything else, or to get other third party sources like.

We're probably not going to choose that. Right. And, you know, I think, you know, for job applicants are at least for employers today, having a brand online is not just for your customers, right? It's also a recruitment tool. It's also, you know, a hiring plan that's, that's critically important. Right.

Corey Guy (07:37.902)
Alright.

Corey Guy (07:49.806)
you

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's not the first thing, you know candidates are gonna go check out as their website and social media and if you're not on there, know They might second-guess applying to that job or going through the interview process just cuz they'll get my mind Or they'll get in their mind and be like, know, these this company might be, you know out of touch out of date Maybe they aren't even utilizing, you know updated construction technology and and so forth man, like Yeah, the littlest of things of you know building the website

can go far ways and some of the companies that we work with are smaller companies, know, 10, 20, 30 people where, you know, the owner has had the company for 30, 40 years and just has never invested in that side. So I understand it, but like we'll even like part of our onboarding process is to get to know the ins and outs of the company. And so we'll even if they don't have a good website or social media, we'll present.

like we'll create a presentation for candidates. least they have something to put their eyes on, be like, you know, this is, this is who they are. can kind of piece it together now. So, but yeah, back to your question, man, that's definitely a hurdle that a lot of companies face.

Mason Brady (09:07.153)
Yeah, I agree with you and I don't feel like I have the answer, but it's sad, know, the nature of the attractiveness of the industry as a whole too is a big problem, right? I was just talking with somebody the other day that, you know, the father is a plumber and he was wanting his son to start to come to work with him to learn the trade.

Corey Guy (09:18.646)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mason Brady (09:34.651)
You know, and the person that I was talking to, they said, you know, why, why wouldn't you push your son to go do something else? You know, that to go get a degree and go do this and this and that. And they said, yeah, but I also know people that, generally I know the wage rates of plumbers, know, of, of, you know, skilled tradesmen and said, yeah, it can be difficult labor because of the elements of being outside and doing, you know, elements of that. But I also know people with PhDs that, you know, have been working, you know,

Corey Guy (09:58.883)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (10:04.497)
for a lab or something for the past 10 years that plumbers make more money than them. And they also don't have the school debt. Right. And there's, there's relevancy to that. I mean, that's a trades example, but you know, it's, it's frustrating too, because, you know, there's so much talk out there that like, Hey, we provide, you know, fractional CFO services as advisory focus, but there's a lot of talk that, yeah, you know, there's shortages of accountants. Well,

Corey Guy (10:10.734)
All right.

Mason Brady (10:31.941)
It's probably one of the first industries that AI, you know, is going to take a big stab at, right? know, when you're dealing with numbers and inputs coming across and you can try to standardize things, that's when AI gets really good at what it's doing. I, I listened to a talk the other day and, yeah, one guy basically said, say goodbye to the paralegal profession. Like it's, you know, when you're thinking of like looking up case law, like why can't a computer do it, to go find relevant examples of.

Corey Guy (10:45.038)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (10:58.892)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (11:01.551)
of case law applicable to the case that you're defending right now. And so these very white collar positions are up, you know, they're going to have a knife to their neck pretty soon here. And yet construction won't necessarily face those same challenges. So there actually is a lot of security in it. People still need buildings and houses. It's going to be there forever. There's a ton of security in it.

Corey Guy (11:26.254)
you

Mason Brady (11:28.635)
You know, and actually some of the positions do pay better than, know, and you don't have to go into, you know, and get a doctorate to go do it, et cetera. I it's so tough because yeah, there's such a negative perception of it, but I really feel like we've broken at least in American society, this idea, like it's a broken idea that college and more college is the fix to everything. Right. And to go into white collar and to get a white collar degree is the fix to everything when, there's perfectly great.

Corey Guy (11:51.267)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (11:58.221)
opportunities that exist in the construction industry. Would you agree with me?

Corey Guy (12:02.413)
Yeah, man, I mean even looking back like when I was going through high school like my dad is blue-collar he works in tool and die and You know, even though you know that put food on table. It took really good care of our family like He always pushed me to go to college You know, he always he always told me, you know, Cory go get a four-year degree You don't want to break your back for a dollar, you know You don't want to work in this type of stuff where you know, it's grueling type of work and

You know, just teachers and counselors always push that. it was almost like people got looked down upon if they went and got, you know, an associate's degree or, you know, just went and got a certificate in welding or, you know, went straight out of high school and just went into the trades doing carpentry or anything. but I feel like it's coming back, man. I feel like it's starting to turn around.

Mason Brady (12:56.369)
Yeah, I would agree.

Corey Guy (12:59.31)
a little bit, you know, more people are starting to promote it, um, just individually and get the word out there. So many, so many people are going to be retiring over the next five years, almost a third of the, you know, I think over a third of the industry within the next five to seven years, I think it is, are going to be retiring. So many mom and pop shops right now are just gonna vanish. So there's so much opportunity.

for younger people to get into right now, learn a trade, go work for someone for two, three years, gain all this knowledge from people that have been at it for 20, 30, 40 years, and go start their own thing. wages due to that just keep increasing more and more just because less people are getting into it. Say a plumber's making 40 bucks an hour right now, once...

Mason Brady (13:38.151)
Yep. Yep.

Corey Guy (13:54.466)
five years from now, that might be 100, 150 bucks an hour straight out of a trades program. yeah, man, there's so many businesses that are just gonna get lost in so much knowledge that's gonna get flushed down the drain. So, younger people getting into the industry right now just have such a big opportunity to make more than doctors, lawyers, anybody.

because of that.

Mason Brady (14:23.313)
Yep. I would agree. And I think you brought up a point that there is going to be a transition of the businesses, right? That you're going to have a lot of mom and pop or kind of lower medium sized businesses that, they may not have somebody to give it to, right. And they're, know, in order for them to retire, they're going to have to sell it. know, you know, a trades person knowing the trade, like if they were to go get a U S small business administration loan to go buy it.

Corey Guy (14:40.674)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (14:51.847)
Um, they would qualify because they're experts in that business. And, um, you know, the SBA would absolutely say yes, since they truly understand the business and all of a sudden, you know, you spend three to five years in a trade again and know it, and you can go buy a business and. know, how amazing would that be that you now are a business owner? And that's a relevant thing that I think a lot of people should be looking at with this. They call it like the silver tsunami, right? Like it's coming. Um, you know, lot of transitions going to happen and.

Corey Guy (15:16.28)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (15:18.533)
So you don't even have to start something up from, you know, ground zero that you literally can go buy something and step into entrepreneurship and okay. Yeah. That, that, that beats a lot of things out there. That beats a lot of opportunities out there in terms of wealth generation, taking care of a family. Yeah, there's risks to it, but, you know, taking care of a family, like there's a lot of benefits to being a business owner. Right. And, yeah, we can go on all day. I, I'm really interested in understand because we're recording this at the time when.

Corey Guy (15:31.47)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (15:48.731)
You know, this past Tuesday night, know, terrorists were supposed to go in and then, Wednesday morning, you know, and it's like for construction companies is like, how in the world do they plan right now? Right. And then, I know, I know we share like a common client that, does a lot of federal contracting and there's lots of questions that dependent upon what department you do federal contracting with is does just going to come in and just wipe things out. And you know, our project's going to stall and this and this and that.

Corey Guy (16:00.534)
Yeah, stuff.

Mason Brady (16:18.855)
I feel like right now is such a tumultuous time for a lot of construction business owners about planning, but regardless to build a good business, you got to be thinking not just about the next three to six months, but also about what's the longterm plan. So what would you say are some of the potential future risk in workforce planning that construction companies should be thinking about now? What should they be considering now?

Corey Guy (16:39.819)
Bye

Yeah, I mean, it's always been an issue as far as like, when is the right time to hire someone in construction, especially at that kind of mid level ground, say a superintendent or a project manager, because, you know, construction companies are going through the bid processes, getting under contract with owners, but then who's to say it's not going to go sideways, they bring on a superintendent during that time, but then they don't end up actually getting the work and it gets pushed off till next year.

You know, then they're in a sticky situations like do we try to keep this person on? Do we have to let him go even though we hired him three weeks ago? So hiring is always a difficult. Thing to do in the construction industry as far as like when is the perfect timing to do it? So you know, I think a perfect way around that is, know, whether you're have an internal team doing recruiting or or working with a.

Recruiting agency someone that's kind of always focused on building a backlog of potential candidates for you. Just because you know owners and other executives and you know at a company don't have time to always be talking to potential candidates that they could hire, you know a quarter or two quarters down the road, but having a recruiter kind of in your back pocket that's doing that work.

for you that's dedicated to specifically talking to candidates. I'm working on behalf of Brady CFO, for example. This is kind of who we are, this is our mission vision, this is what we're trying to build. We're not necessarily hiring right now, but when it comes to it, I would love to have a conversation with you, would love to bring you in and potentially have you join the team. Yeah, always be.

Corey Guy (18:37.4)
having someone dedicated to just building that pipeline up. Whether it be on the labor side or super PMs, estimators, always just having casual conversations, building relationships with candidates in the area, getting your name out, going back, building up your social media presence, joining association meetings, just getting the word out about your company.

who you are, the types of people that you want to bring on board, what you stand for. And really like just always selling your company without necessarily trying to sell it, if that makes sense. But yeah, man, that's like a huge thing in construction. And as the years go on, it's just getting kind of tougher and tougher for companies to get ahold of.

Mason Brady (19:17.969)
Yep. Yep.

Mason Brady (19:33.563)
Yeah. I think of, I forget what the movie is called. They say like, always be closing. It's like, nah, it's ABR. Always be, always be recruiting, right? Like always be recruiting your next, your next person. Right. I mean, I think it's important even outside of construction industry that a lot of businesses need to be thinking that way that, you know, we don't need to, you know, we don't need this now, but we're probably going to need this. Then we need to be talking out there that people need to be aware of our brand. But you brought up something that I really would love, you know, if you have some more particular advice on that.

Corey Guy (19:39.455)
Yeah,

Mason Brady (20:03.329)
cause I think a lot of construction businesses face this a lot of just general businesses face this, but. You know, when is the right time to hire? Like you, brought the example of, you know, you, you, won the bid, you won the proposal, you go out and hire a superintendent, but the job isn't quite starting yet. Like it's, you know, it's delayed. and you have somebody in an overhead position, you know, that I just, you have to cover that cost, but.

Yeah. I mean, that's tough that all of a sudden your job profits are getting eaten up by having them just sit around waiting until that job starts. Right. And, um, how do you, how do you try to avoid that? Like how, how can construction companies be better and making sure that they're timing that correctly to where they're able to pull off, you know, good profitability on their jobs.

Corey Guy (20:44.834)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think a great question. I think we can kind of take it two different ways. One, I think, you know, always be training your younger people. Say, you know, say you're have, you know, four or five project engineers or assistant teams or assistant supers, you know, you need some sort of training program where, know, you're building those people up where it's not taken.

three, four, five years to get them in a middle level leadership role, maybe make it one, two years, just really take advantage of training these types of people all the time that way. When it is tough and maybe you don't know exactly when it is the best time to hire someone at that higher level, someone can easily just transition into that space for you.

You know, don't always have to be worried about hiring some from someone from the outside. You know, be more focused on training from the inside, you know, hiring people at a lower level where it's easier to get them in and then train them yourself. You don't have to train away bad habits or, you know, always have to throw out so much money right away to bring in someone on on board, you know, get them in at a younger age or just at a lower level.

Position training the way you want them to be trained around the ways, you know, your company does things That way when it is kind of is it a good time to hire or should we wait? You know a month or two, you know You know that if it comes down to it, you can put someone in that position and they're gonna know how to do it So I think that's one way you could you could take it Yeah, just building the real solid training program for your employees

Corey Guy (22:46.582)
And then the other way I think it goes back to kind of what we were last talking about is, you know, whether you're working with an internal recruiter that's always building relationships or working with the recruiter, you know, a third party agency, someone that always has, you know, relationships built and at any time can kind of tap into that. And is always working with solid candidates that way, know, stay.

So you don't know if right now is the perfect timing. You want to wait a couple months to make sure that contract goes through, the project gets funded and you're going to start in a couple months. That way, if you're working with a recruiter, say half of the superintendents that that recruiter was working with gets hired somewhere else, but they're still working with three or four other ones that would potentially be really good fits.

could be a really good fit for your company. So I think it just goes back to always curating those relationships and always having an opportunity to tap into that type of a network and be able to pull candidates.

Mason Brady (23:58.033)
Makes sense. What would you say is the number one, I mean, you're kind of identifying what they should do. And I mean, it's easy for us to relate back and say, if they're not doing these, these are mistakes that they're making, right? But what is the number one mistake you would say from your experience that construction companies make when trying to hire top talent?

Corey Guy (24:18.87)
I think like pigeonholing themselves, Having this perfect type of candidate in mind that they want to hire, all these different requirements, skills, experience, culture fit, every single thing just has to check the box. I think that's where a lot of companies fail themselves at is like just having just this perfect candidate in mind. And if they don't check all those boxes,

they're not the right fit. You know, they're moving on to, to someone else. And you know, that just wastes so much time, you know, trying to find that exact person. Cause he might not ever find them, man. And then, you know, you know, say four or five months go along. And then at that point they're like, wow. Like, yeah, maybe this candidate doesn't exist in our market or, you know, maybe just everyone that, you know, could potentially fit is just really happy at their current company.

Maybe not. We're not offering as much money as some of competitors and we can't get to that point. So I think just having so many parameters around the exact type of person that they want to hire, I think just keeping more of an open mind around, know, maybe this person doesn't check this or this, but they check all these other things. We can train them on these things. You know, that's that's easy. But I think, yeah, just having the

and more of an open mindset to the type of person that you want to bring on and not being so exact in what you need. And yeah, and that can change. I you know, say you're hiring a CEO or president of company, you know, you're going to have more checkbox that that person has to hit. Whether, you know, on the flip side, if you're hiring, say, an assistant project manager, you know, for that, you know,

Mason Brady (25:51.143)
Yep. I agree.

Corey Guy (26:12.43)
You know, they fit culture wise, they're a good person. You can train them on the skills, you know, whether they have a, you know, constructive management degree or not, you can teach those things. You don't necessarily even have to have a four year degree to come in a position like that. If you have, you know, good, solid people that can train and that person can shadow them, they can learn the skills that it takes. So yeah, I mean,

Companies that tend to pigeonhole themselves in that area tend to lose out on a of candidates and waste a lot of time when it comes to hiring.

Mason Brady (26:50.503)
Yeah, I would agree. Um, I mean, a general rule of thumb that, that I kind of grew into was it's gotta be a hundred percent values fit 70, 80 % of the technical fit. The rest can be figured out, you know? And, if, that, if that's true, then, um, yeah, most things, most things are figure out a bowl. And, um, yeah, I think sometimes it can be difficult too, because we can have in our mindset, like what we want in position, but by not.

Corey Guy (27:01.326)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Corey Guy (27:08.792)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (27:19.867)
being a little bit loose with it, like open-handed with it. We don't know what we don't know. And so unless we've already had the position previously, and we know like a profile that worked for it, especially like if it's a new position, there will be unknowns in regards to what that person may be able to bring to the table that are absolutely excellent. Like we hired like a business development person for our company recently and

Corey Guy (27:34.935)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (27:40.426)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (27:46.607)
It just turned out that she had like great design skills. So whenever she needs to come up with like marketing materials, she just does it herself. And we had a marketing, you know, an outside marketing agency that could help us with that. But she just, I mean, I mean, she can just do something an hour like, I need something for tonight, but when done, you know, it was like, this is actually a pretty cool skillset that I never thought would be important, but it's actually done really well for her. Right. And, there's so much that you don't know in a new position like that. That was a new position for us. And so I.

Corey Guy (27:53.4)
Yeah.

Mason Brady (28:16.295)
I agree with you that, um, I think it's important to understand what you really do want, but you know, living open-handed, but that at the same time, there's the balance, right? Like that doesn't mean that you sacrifice or you lower your standards. Um, but at the same point in time, like being too rigid is, is a real, is a real concern too. Right.

Corey Guy (28:36.024)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's such a good point, man.

driving those framers around the exact type of person that you want to hire and not keep it in an open mind of what else could this person bring to the table that we don't have today? What could this open up for our business? Say a general contractor focuses on healthcare and education and they want to hire a superintendent that specifically has that experience, but maybe this person has some of that, but they also have industrial and

retail TIs and you know, whatever else, you know, how many doors could that open for projects you could start bidding on, you know, how much more revenue could that bring to your table just from hiring this one person that has experience that you weren't even looking for from the beginning. Yeah, the example you use of the graphic design, you know, that's a perfect example of, you know, just things that someone could bring to the table that

Maybe you've never considered before of like, you what else could we do with our business if we just opened up the types of candidates that we could hire.

Mason Brady (29:51.131)
100%. yeah, I think it's, it's important to know like of the ideal client candidate profile, like what are absolutes and what can you live open-handed with that you need to flex on? Right. and, and I mean, yeah, it's, it's good to have an ideal candidate, but if they didn't quite meet this checkbox, are you willing to flex on that or not? Right. and there's some things that like, yeah, you can't, but then there's some things you can. so I'm, I'm interested like.

Corey Guy (30:04.248)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Corey Guy (30:12.248)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Corey Guy (30:18.072)
Listen.

Mason Brady (30:20.753)
How have you seen personally that the construction workforce, how has it changed over the last few years that, you know, in the past five years or so, a lot has happened in the world, right? But how have you seen the workforce change over the past few years?

Corey Guy (30:28.654)
Mm-hmm.

Corey Guy (30:37.676)
Man, technology is a huge one. Technology advances. Obviously with AI, that's a huge, huge one today. Everyone's talking about it. We use it, some in our business. A lot of our clients are starting to utilize it as well, especially with the younger generation. They're growing up with this stuff. They know it, like to back their hand, man.

I'm 29, but still it takes me a little bit to kind of understand this stuff. But like, construction companies are starting to utilize more technology these days that are, think, can be very attractive to certain types of people as well. Say like the utilization on the heavy civil side of equipment, things are going more...

where you don't necessarily have to be in an excavator, have to be in a dozer. These can be utilized off site, where if it's a dangerous work site or something like that, there's so much risk that is de-risked by being able to have these big pieces of equipment be done by a remote controller, just utilized in a different way. I think that...

is kind of an area where we're starting to attract different types of people to the construction industry. So I think from a workforce standpoint, we're starting to find different types of people join the industry, not necessarily just like, you know, guys that their dad worked in the trades their entire life and, you know, that's what they grew up doing. You know, we're starting to see, you know, different ways of thinking.

Different types of personalities and backgrounds join the industry. And you know companies are starting to take advantage advantage of that, which is awesome to see. So I'd say yeah, technology is a huge one where the workforce is kind of changing and will continue to change more rapidly over the next several years because of it. You know some some of our our clients don't utilize.

Corey Guy (33:02.046)
it as much as we wish that they would. They're still utilizing construction technology from decades ago. That's kind of holding themselves back a little bit that we see from their competitors, where it's like even talking to candidates that are used to using Procore or something like that. Then we throw out this different name that's like, I've never even heard of that. Then we start talking to them and it's like, wow, that's...

That's kind of outdated a little bit. Yeah, man, I think that's probably the biggest one is technology.

Mason Brady (33:32.091)
Yep. Yep.

Mason Brady (33:39.365)
Yeah. Yeah. do you see that being the trend going forward that over the next five to 10 years that, yeah, that will continue to be the trend.

Corey Guy (33:44.236)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (33:47.746)
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think we're going to go backwards from here whatsoever. Technology is just what's getting created these days. It's just happening quicker and quicker and quicker. So if you're not starting to utilize those things, you're kind of going to get left in the dark, I would say.

paper and pencil and stuff like that. Contractors are still doing that today, which isn't always the worst thing to do. But when you start utilizing technology and implementing that and to build processes and procedures and just being able to create quicker processes, quicker bids, stuff like that, it just opens up so much for your business.

Mason Brady (34:20.049)
Yep. Yep.

Mason Brady (34:44.679)
Yeah, 1%. I mean, it's all about, yeah, trying to enhance the efficiency of systems, right? That, you know, um, you know, like clock in clock out, you know, time clocking and being able to code it to jobs appropriately. And if, you know, you're within, um, I, I always the, the Bacon Davis Act, the, what's it called? The, uh, the pay system, um, certified payroll and, you know, being able to code, you know, uh, appropriate trades to appropriate jobs and all that.

Corey Guy (34:51.374)
you

Mason Brady (35:13.893)
The more that you can make that happen through a system and efficiently versus, you know, having some backend accountant, having to manually punch that in, you're better off for it. Right. and I think, yeah, more and more of that is even some of the backend stuff that seems pretty boring. like it doesn't always need to be a robot on the job site, right. doing this or this or that, like it's, it's literally going to be that, Hey, these traditional things that have been done this way forever, you know, getting a credit card and be able to expense match it. you know, and being able to.

Corey Guy (35:14.274)
Thank you.

Corey Guy (35:23.479)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (35:33.803)
Thank

Mason Brady (35:43.335)
flow it through to the job costs so that, you know, the project manager has, you know, an idea on what the actual job costs are and has greater visibility. And there's just, it's going to be a greater data flow because greater systemization around things that, happened to. yeah, I wouldn't disagree with you that I think tech is going to be a really big thing. I think what I'm, I'm interested though, too, is it's still, you know, the older generations, whether they.

you mentioned like a lot are going to go into retirement within the next five to seven years. wonder if it, if it's going to push them out faster as a result of having to adopt technology, right? That, where it's going to leave this big gap, you know, for young people to come in. And, I think sometimes it's easy to get so scared. Like we talked about it that, you know, this trend of everybody pushing their kids to go to college and get, you know, a white collar, like.

Corey Guy (36:19.51)
and it's.

Corey Guy (36:26.124)
Yes.

Mason Brady (36:37.319)
go be a doctor, go be a accountant, go be a lawyer type of thing, or go be an engineer. And we're starting to see this shift the other direction that, you know, all of these trades are okay. And so I wonder if, yeah, you know, in terms of the fears that we have about, know, are we going to have the workforce if as a result of, you know, certain technologies adopted, if all of a sudden it just ramps it up, right. That people think that this is cool now. So it'll be interesting to see for sure, but I.

Corey Guy (36:45.304)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (36:59.774)
Yeah

Mason Brady (37:04.153)
I agree with you. think that tech is going to be a really, really big player in it. I'm interested to understand Corey, what's your advice? Cause you know, I'm here in Houston and there's some big construction companies and they're on LinkedIn and they promote all of their team parties, you know, and all their employee activities and their brand is huge all over the place.

Corey Guy (37:08.59)
You

Corey Guy (37:21.294)
Mm.

Mason Brady (37:26.981)
But for smaller mid-size contractors, for these lower mid-size construction companies, how would you tell them that they can compete for the talent that the big guys are going for too? What's the best advice that you can give to them?

Corey Guy (37:43.256)
Yeah, most of our clients are kind of that small to midsize range. So most of our clients are competing against those big guys. And you know, it's tough for them to compete on the compensation side of things just because they can throw out so much money. And that tends to easily attract people is just the how big their salary is or how big their bonus can be.

Um, so that's one area where, know, the small to midsize companies can't compete as much on, um, even when it comes to like benefits, like medical insurance and stuff like that. The bigger guys have a, you know, a bigger pool to be able to, you know, of buying power to be able to pay higher, um, premiums, know, a hundred percent of those types of costs and whatnot. But I think where the small and midsize companies can.

can compete against those larger companies is mostly on, you know, when it comes to, you know, when we're still talking kind of like perks and benefits and stuff like PTO, you know, a larger company, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room as far as like, you know, say someone has used just four weeks of PTO, but when they come to this company, you know, you're only getting two to start off with because that's how it's done across the line. There's no wiggle room there.

But these other people that don't have to go clear up the chain, they can make that decision to give more PTO or give someone a higher vehicle allowance than what they're used to paying in. And really just selling them on the vision and mission of the company. What they do for the community, what they're trying to build.

how family oriented a company can be as far as like the flexibility of being able to go home throughout the day if you need to, to pick up kids, drop them off, know, shuttle them around, things like that. If you're working for a larger company, odds are you're not going to be able to do some of those types of things where a smaller company can allow you to be able to do that. Yeah, I think, you know, just having a good leadership team in place.

Corey Guy (40:05.39)
that cares about people, loves just pouring into them, on them, giving them all the knowledge and experience that they have to be able to train people. That's definitely a competitive advantage that they can have.

Man, I think just...

I think even like younger companies and take advantage of like, Hey, this is kind of where we're at right now, but this is where we're going in the future. And, know, we would love to have you along during this experience. Cause you're going to be able to see what it's like from 10 people to 50 people to a hundred people and how much experience you're going to gain through that. like, okay, I've, I've been at a company where it's been 10 people before.

these were the of the challenges that we faced. You know, this is the kind of opportunities that we had. Then you bump up to 50 and it's like, wow, like now the way we do things is so much different. There's more processes in place, more procedures in place. It's just kind of like exciting going through those phases. So I think selling kind of what your vision is to people rather than, know,

this company has 500 people or a thousand people, we've been through all that. This is just kind of how it is. We don't get off the tracks from what we've done. So I think selling the excitement of a company, being able to go through that type of transition phase and just growing with a company can be exciting to the right type of individual at least.

Mason Brady (41:50.833)
Yeah, no, I, I think to your point, the right type of individual, like I tell people all the time, you know, smaller, midsize businesses are actually really fun to work with because you actually get to learn how the business works, rather than your silo, your, your particular department. Like you can go in and be an estimator at a way bigger general contractor. but you may be an estimating for your whole life and you may not understand the nuances of everything else. And so your, ability to vault into management.

Corey Guy (42:04.206)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (42:14.606)
Thank

Yeah.

Mason Brady (42:18.619)
May it be that much more difficult because you really don't understand the other side of the aisle. Right. but it's hard with it's hard within a small mid market business to not get an idea of how everything works. Cause I, just, you gotta wear multiple hats. Right. So, yeah, I think to your point that, you know, emphasizing that, that you're not going to be the big guy, right? You're not going to be able to do some of these things, but this is the alternatives that you can offer, that wouldn't exist elsewhere. And for the right type of person that's motivated to grow and to learn,

Corey Guy (42:43.63)
Mm-hmm.

Mason Brady (42:48.581)
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. well, Corey, you know, we're kind of coming to the end of the episode or the show here. And, you know, you've provided a lot of wisdom and advice for construction companies on, know, how they can implement great hiring practices and how they can, what they need to be thinking about for their workforce and how to attract the right people. At the same time, we gotta have a little fun, right? so we like the, we like to wrap up, every episode with some fun questions to get to know our guests a little bit better. So.

Corey Guy (43:11.48)
Sure, let's do it.

Mason Brady (43:18.369)
you know, for, for our audience to understand, Corey works with his wife, Khadijah, that, they are husband wife team, husband wife recruiting team. So I'm sure that that's a lot of fun and you know, Corey is a new dad as well. And, so he's got a busy life, but yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, ask you some questions that, know, and I'd love to really understand what's the first thing that comes to mind. So, what's the, what's the best part of working with your wife?

Corey Guy (43:34.445)
you

Corey Guy (43:42.158)
All right, let's do it.

Corey Guy (43:47.48)
Man, how she challenges me. No, she normally is, but she's taking care of Aspen right now. Yeah, I'd say how she challenges me to just be better and grow every single day. Because I think just the way I am, I kind of get stuck in my ways sometimes.

Mason Brady (43:50.513)
She's right next to you, right? She's listening, right? Yep.

Corey Guy (44:14.318)
So she's always challenged me, you whether it be, you know, in the business or, you know, just being my wife trying to challenge me personally and just grow as a man and a husband and now as a father. Like, I think that's the best part, Just having such a caring partner that, you know, loves me. And so she wants to push me to get better every single day.

Mason Brady (44:36.007)
That's good, that's good, that's a real partner, right? So that's awesome. What is the worst job that you had before this career, before you opened up your recruiting firm? What is the worst job you've ever had?

Corey Guy (44:49.737)
Man, was back when I was like 14, 15 years old. Do you know what detassling is? So it's, it's in corn. Like I would detassle corn fields. you know, yeah, you know, you wake up 4 a.m., you know, as soon as the sunrise, you're in the corn fields walking on the, you know, you're soaked right when you walked in. Oh yeah.

Mason Brady (45:01.819)
Yes, OK. Yeah, OK. Yeah.

Mason Brady (45:12.283)
Yeah. Cornfields are humid. They are humid.

Corey Guy (45:15.756)
Yeah, humid. mean, you're getting cut up from the corn stalks and everything. You're getting bit up all day from mosquitoes. You're chafing everything. And then, you know, once it's noon, you know, I grew up in Nebraska. So, you know, the sun is just super hot, you know, now, you know, you're sweating in your cuts, you know, it just hurts. Yeah, so I'd say the tasseling was probably like the toughest manual labor job I had.

Mason Brady (45:40.679)
Great enough.

Corey Guy (45:41.474)
But it taught me so much. glad like my dad and mom pushed me to do it at such a young age because it taught me so much about hard work and just enduring things to like work for what you want. So yeah, definitely did test and then roguing kind of alongside it. That's what beans you have like a, I think it's called like a cipher. You're going through like bean fields and taking out like corn stocks.

that aren't supposed to be there from like the previous years, where the farmer was planting.

Mason Brady (46:15.003)
Yep. Yep. That, yeah, the, the farm labor that, I think it, it makes us appreciate so much of like where our food comes to from, right. that what it really takes to get food to the plate and how difficult it is. and, it's not to be taken for granted. so final question here, what is the strangest or most unique hiring request you've ever received in your company?

Corey Guy (46:23.341)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (46:28.056)
Mm-hmm.

Corey Guy (46:40.633)
wow, that's a good question.

Corey Guy (46:48.174)
.

Corey Guy (46:51.832)
Gosh, I'm drawing a blank on this one,

Mason Brady (46:54.576)
All good.

Corey Guy (47:04.726)
I don't know if I should say this, but working with a client.

Mason Brady (47:06.726)
The answer is yes.

Corey Guy (47:16.718)
that trying to hire a business development manager and the owner telling us like the person if we end up hiring is a woman that they would have to like go to dinner with his wife just to make sure you know everything is good and like they can't be like

Mason Brady (47:22.887)
Yeah, I think I know where this is going. Yeah.

Corey Guy (47:44.184)
I can't even say that. might have to cut this one.

Mason Brady (47:45.243)
No, no, I get, I knew where you were going with it. It's, it's relevant. No, I get where you're going with it. It's, it's a fine line to cross. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Cindy cut that. All good. All good. We're kind of coming up on time here. So we'll just leave the round questions there. Corey and Cindy, you can kind of cut some of these out.

Corey Guy (47:53.778)
Yeah, we should probably cut that. Yeah, we should probably cut that one. I don't want to that one in there.

Mason Brady (48:10.737)
So Corey, this was really great that you provided us with a lot of wisdom of your years of recruiting, but just your years of hard work and working difficult jobs and kind of seeing where the trends in the construction industry are going overall. For our audience, tell us where they can find you that if they want to figure out more about ground up construction recruiting, figure about you and your wife and, you know, how to hire you, et cetera, learn more about what you do, where can they find you?

Corey Guy (48:35.106)
Yeah, LinkedIn is the best spot. Corey guy in LinkedIn or Ground Up Construction Recruiting or my wife Kadija guy as well. We're very active on there. So that's definitely the best spot to find us.

Mason Brady (48:46.267)
Cool. Well, yeah, thank you, Corey, that I really appreciate you being on here and yeah, for sharing your wisdom and insight, but yeah, I hope the best for you and your wife with new baby and that hopefully there's many more to come and that the house will be filled up. And yeah, the next time we do this, I want to hear little kids screaming and banging on the door. So that'll be good, right? Yeah.

Corey Guy (49:03.95)
She usually is yeah, a lot of times. Yeah, I got I think got a carrier on while I'm making phone calls and everything and yeah clients love it, you know the coups right now and everything it's the best

Mason Brady (49:10.885)
Yep. Yep. yeah. Now I, you think like a lot of people are like afraid of it becoming unprofessional, it just, it creates it more authentic to some degree too that this is life, right? And, makes you more relatable that it's like, we can talk to business all the time, but what makes, what makes Corey Corey, right? so it's good stuff that really thank you for coming on Corey. Really appreciate having you here.

Corey Guy (49:23.949)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (49:30.028)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate the opportunity, man. Thanks for chatting with me.

Mason Brady (49:37.991)
Awesome. Okay. Um, from here, I'm going to record the intro real quick. So, um, I'm to ask you to exit and, uh, that was great, man. Um, so like I said, Cindy will reach out, uh, once the podcast is ready to go live, but she'll also share a lot of social media assets that you all can use that you and Khadijah can post and promote it to. And, um, so yeah, we'll go from there.

Corey Guy (49:58.722)
Yeah, thanks again, man. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I haven't thanked you enough for the introduction to Strategic Man. We ended up hiring three people for him last year and now we're about to enter into like a six month agreement for him as they transition into starting up the New Mexico office and stuff. So thank you so much, man. We love working with Rick and Jason and now his wife coming into the business.

Mason Brady (50:21.573)
Yeah, no, people. and yeah, I, I think there's a lot more opportunities for us to work together, man. that's why I want to do stuff like this, that to build the relationship. And, I think, yeah, we're, we've decided even to niche further in our CFO firm that just pure ag and construction, like that's what we're going to focus in on. And, so we're bringing additional construction CFOs and ag centric CFOs and, just, we want to be niched in the industry of.

Corey Guy (50:24.258)
Yes.

Corey Guy (50:39.554)
in

Mason Brady (50:48.967)
You know, we know these fields well, and we're bringing people on that have, you know, industry and background in it. It's just really relevant that we see the pain points that it's like strategic. Would it be near in a position to get a full-time CFO at any point? But for sure on a part-time basis, it makes a lot of sense for their size business. so, yeah, man, I glad it's working out. And I just think there's a lot of opportunities for us to work together going forward too.

Corey Guy (50:56.684)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (51:06.477)
Yeah.

Corey Guy (51:14.71)
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to chat one time. know you got to run. You got to have a I'd love to chat a little bit more about the specifics of how we can start introducing you to some clients as well.

Mason Brady (51:24.263)
Yeah, absolutely brother. So, um, let's plan that, uh, that, I got to do this intro and, um, hop on a client car real quick, but let's plan for that. Okay. Cool. See you brother. Yep.

Corey Guy (51:31.916)
Yeah, sounds good Matt. Have a good one.

Mason Brady (51:39.161)
All right. Welcome back to another episode of Brewing Business with Brady. Are you a construction business owner or really any business owner, but especially in construction and you're facing the challenge of how do I hire and recruit? Well, that I'm sure one of your biggest challenges in running your business is your people strategy. Am I getting the right people on board and how do I get better and good people on my team to help grow my business? Well, today's guest.

Corey guy of ground up construction recruiting is an absolute expert in this specifically for construction companies on helping construction companies land the right bet and the right and best person for their, for their business. He is an expert in landing the next best hire for your construction business. So if that's a challenge that you're facing, listen in cause Corey guy is the absolute expert. And, yeah, really excited for today's episode that jam packed with value in terms of.

You know, where the construction hiring trends are going, what to consider in regards to your people and how to make yourself a really valuable employer in the site and the eyes of the, the employees as well, that, the people that you're trying to recruit, how to make yourself perceived as a really valuable employer. So, if these are all things that you're interested in learning more about, let's dive in.