It’s easy for The Strait & Lamp Group to hire someone; it’s much harder to find people who really want to learn the business. He says everyone wants to start at the top. They jump jobs easily, looking for more money or just because they don’t know what they want.
“They have to understand our business to be successful in this business,” Arnold says. “And that’s probably been the toughest thing — to get people to really bite in and go through all the training, and start lower than what they think they should start.”
The company has had more success with people who have already changed jobs a few times and are now looking for a career, because that’s really who it wants to hire.
“The advice that I give young people all the time is: Listen, pick a career (and) stay focused in it because this is a real job. This is something so that you can feed your family, buy a house, send kids to college — you’ve just got to put your time in,” he says. “It just doesn’t come overnight. And that happens with any field that you’re in.”
Although finding the right personnel is a challenge for The Strait & Lamp Group, it’s also been part of the reason for growth. The company has partly turned a disadvantage into an advantage.
Arnold says in today’s market, builders cannot find labor for certain jobs. So The Strait & Lamp Group has put together a stable of framing crews and exterior trim crews who can be subcontracted out for that phase of the work.
“We give X amount of hours for a project, and we have superintendents that manage that job for them in that particular phase,” he says.
Building the brand unity
At the same time, The Strait & Lamp Group has faced another misperception.
Its six different companies are more commonly know by their different names, so it hasn’t had unity with its 65-year-old brand.
Customers, and potential hires, think that 5th Ave. Lumber or Dublin Millwork, for instance, are small mom-and-pop operations, rather than part of an organization that is a leader in the Columbus market.
Arnold says over the past three years, he and his management team have worked with outside marketing to change the perception.
“There was no unity as far as what the general public was looking at,” Arnold says.
With a new logo and by getting the word out, the business can more easily show customers that it’s big enough to handle larger jobs. And it more easily shows job candidates that it’s not just one lumberyard, but also a place to have a long-term career.
As a result, The Strait & Lamp Group has gotten a lot of inquires through its website as both customers and job candidates check it out, and possibly fill out an online application and inquire about employment.
Mentoring new hires
In order to keep up with the amount of business that’s out there, The Strait & Lamp Group has implemented more internal training as a way to start on the problem.
Arnold says it’s important that their employees can bring value and give informed input to contractors, builders, remodelers and homeowners about what products to use in each situation.
“When it comes to dealing with a custom builder or a custom remodeler, you really have to have that knowledge; otherwise, they don’t need you,” he says. “If they are going to do all of the research themselves, then it’s a commodity type item.”
