What are the three most common hiring challenges for US renewable energy businesses?

My name is Christina Rodriguez-Cintron, and I work at the Green Recruitment Company supporting a range of Owner, Developers, and Consultancies to build out their site teams. My clients often have a wide range of needs, but I have frequently found that they commonly experience the same three hiring challenges. 

I am sharing what’ve I’ve learned, and I am curious to see every one’s feedback ….

Are there any other common challenges I may have overlooked??

Number 1 - Being Heard!

It is truly an exciting time to be in the green energy and technology space, with grass roots activism aligning with advocates like Bill Gates it feels like the green transition has gained real momentum. However, whilst we might finally be turning a corner in getting environmental issues into the popular consciousness, there is a downside for individual firms operating in this space: with so much noise it can be hard to get heard!

This then leads to a second issue, simply that if you are heard, how do you differentiate yourself against so many other innovative/forward looking competitors?

My experience has been that many firms struggle when they try to insource the promotion of their employer brand when the path to success is to have a brand advocate. It is amazing how many firms fully understand the importance of endorsement for their product or service but not for their employer value proposition. For several of my clients, our ability to act as a brand advocate and endorser with our network of candidates has been a decisive factor in attracting talent to their firm.

Number 2 – Understanding What a Candidate Will Do

I often find that many hiring managers experience an uneven relationship with their job candidates. This is mainly because when a client goes to market with a role, they have a future attached to it, the role clearly has an ongoing workload or in the case of renewable energy site teams, a project ahead of it. A candidate however is largely judged on their resume or rather what they have done in the past. When I reflect on the reasons why candidates may have rejected offers or not accepted roles, I tend to circle back to the fact that often they were not asked what their career path is or what responsibilities they aspire to own.

Sometimes it is even as simple as asking, or you may need to access alternative assessment tools to get closer to a correct answer. When working with my clients I have found that the ones that get the most out of the hiring process work with me to utilize psychometric and competency assessments as well as running an interview process that focuses on the role rather than a candidate’s experience. I have also found that client’s that support this methodology also do better on achieving their diversity and inclusion goals because they focus less on the resume and more on the person.

Number 3 – Logistics

Napoleon famously said, “The amateurs discuss tactics: the professionals discuss logistics.” If Napoleon were around now, he might have made a good recruiter, especially for building out site teams. My clients have excellent supply chain management structures for their projects but when they ask for recruitment, they are looking for logistical as well as recruitment support. At least a third of our contract placements will move between states in their deployment with the same client, this can require different payroll set ups, support for the worker and long-term workforce planning. This might seem obvious, but many of my clients have found that using a recruitment supplier with too local a focus seriously limits their flexibility and can lead to unexpected costs if that supplier does not understand labor costs in a different state. Sometimes the issue can also be the ability of the candidate to do the same work in a different state. For instance, this can be very true of any electrical roles for site teams, with not all states recognizing each other’s qualifications.

Is there a Common Theme?

If there is a common theme to my discussion here, then it centers on the idea of leveraged innovation. It has been true for several years that in most areas of business, no firm is truly self-sufficient and must instead make the best use of its supply chain to deliver both a great service and offer the sort of innovation that creates a competitive advantage. This is especially true for recruitment services, when you choose to partner with a recruiter you are in fact buying a bundle of services from candidate sourcing to brand advocacy to assessment tools and finally logistics. Partnering with the right recruitment supplier can make the world of difference.