Rethinking Recruitment in the Modular Construction Industry w/ Risus Talent Partners [podcast transcript]

John McMullen 

Hello and welcome to Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction, brought to you by the Modular Building Institute.

Welcome everyone. My name is John McMullen and I'm the Marketing Director here at MBI. Today, I'm joined by John Kowalczyk, Keith Jeremiah, and Jordanne Ringwald of Risis Talent Partners. John, Keith, and Jordanne are here to talk about how to find the best candidates to fill positions within the modular construction industry.

John, Keith, Jordan, welcome!

John Kowalczyk

Hey John. Thanks for having us. John, good to be here.

John McMullen 

My pleasure. So, let's dive in, guys, can you tell me about yourselves? What are each of your backgrounds, and how did Rice's talent partners come to be sure

Jordanne Ringwald

I can kick this off. So, this is Jordan. I live in beautiful Syracuse, New York, where we experience all four seasons sometimes in a single day. I've spent the last 15 years recruiting, starting as an agency recruiter, then moving into the corporate recruiting world for a large, modular company. That's where I met John and Keith. It's been full circle back to agency recruiting, starting our own company three and a half years ago. But recruiting has been a passion of mine since college. Go Tigers!

When my young 18-year-old self had no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up, I did some job shadowing. And my aunt was an HR director. She had three interviews lined up that day, and I job shadowed her. And as soon as I learned that you could make a living talking to people, I went all in on recruiting. So, I'm grateful every day that I can make a living doing what I love with people I enjoy working with. I'll kick it over to Keith. Next

Keith Jeremiah

Hi, this is Keith. Thanks, Jordanne, and yeah, my intro is, I been in the recruiting game now for over 15 years, was moved down to Maryland, started at Aero tech and then worked at a large modular provider for over 11 years, had different responsibilities. Started their recruiting function right out of the gate, then moved into HR, and then moved into more organizational performance. They included talent acquisition. You know, love recruiting, loved bringing in good talent, and loved working in the modular industry, originally from Pennsylvania and glad to have an opportunity to work with John and Jordan on a daily basis. I also was lucky enough to get my MBA and 2016 from the University of Maryland, and been able to put some of that to use as we continue to grow out Rises Talent Partners.

John Kowalczyk

And I'm John, happy to be here. So, my background is, I started out my career as an Air Force Intelligence Officer. At one point, I knew stuff. I couldn't tell you, but I've forgotten all about it. So don't try to ask. But I after the Air Force, I jumped into the corporate world. Spent 20 years there. The last 13 I was an HR leader for a couple different companies. The last company was a large modular provider, where I was fortunate enough to meet Keith and Jordan. We're on the same team, and I'd love to tell a little story about how we got this venture started.

So, as many people know, a lot of great ideas—and some bad ideas—start in a bar, and the idea for Rises Talent Partners started in a bar. So, we had a conversation. We realized we've been on the same HR team for six years. We've been working in the modular industry. We know this, this industry, really well, and we think if we started our own venture, we could do really well helping companies across the industry and beyond. So, it started in a bar.

Eventually, we made it a reality to break off and do our own thing, and we'll tell you, John, we've been successful because our vision is really simple. It's to bring joy to our clients that far exceeds recruiting. So yes, we fill roles, important roles, that's how we make money. But ultimately, we just want to partner with good people, good companies gonna help them with their talent challenges. And the last point I'll make is racist, by the way, and you pronounced it right, John, I appreciate it. It's not “recess”, it's not “REE-sus”, it's “RYE-SIS”. And we even put the long eye symbol over the eye, but no one pays attention to that, so they mess it up a lot. But anyway, it's Risus.

Rises is Latin for laughter, and we chose laughter because really, we believe it's the purest form of human connection. When you're laughing with someone, you're connected with them, you keep things in perspective. So, through our careers, we've kind of worked with our partners and clients through laughter, we enjoy each other's companies, we laugh a lot, so we believe when we connect with our clients through laughter, we keep their problems in perspective and we help them with their challenges, right? So, we're excited to be here.

John McMullen 

Well, thank you so much. I love that little story about the meaning of Rises. I think that's a fantastic name for a company. I can connect with that. So, kudos to you.

Clearly, each of you have deep roots in the modular building industry. Tell me a little bit more about what Rises does and how you're leveraging all your collective experience now.

John Kowalczyk

Thanks, John.

Yeah, we're excited to be here. We appreciate this opportunity, and I'll tell you, just to describe our company, and then I'll talk about how we leverage our experience. Simply put, we're a direct placement recruiting an HR consulting firm, meaning we'll partner with companies to recruit the best talent for their openings, and with our experience as part of that work to fill positions, we also provide much more in the way of overall talent and HR consulting.

So, if you hire us to look for someone in the market, we'll tell you, as we're searching for the best candidates, what we're seeing in the market, where the talent is, what are the candidates pay expectations, what types of opportunities they're seeking. We want our clients, really to consider them as consider us as their resident experts for all things talent, not just people. We're here to fill open positions. But we're particularly excited for this podcast. I mean, and John, we do a lot of podcasts. I don't know if you've heard of Joe Rogan, but this podcast is more important because we, unlike any other firm, have come directly out of the modular industry.

So, when we started this business, we did our research, and there are about 20,000 recruiting firms in the US, but what makes us difference is that we have a combined 22 years of doing this kind of work for the modular industry directly. So we're excited to bring that experience to bear for our clients. And in addition to fill enrolls, we've done things like strategic talent planning, employee communications and change management, training and development, so we have a full suite of HR consulting and talent consulting that we can bring to this partnership in addition to fill enroll. So together, we bring that experience to bear, and we're excited to be able to deliver that as much as possible.

John McMullen 

Well, I appreciate that, John, I think you came up with a new tagline for the podcast. “It’s more important than Joe Rogan”.

John Kowalczyk

Love it.

John McMullen 

So why is your combined experience been so important? What difference does it make when you're working with your clients?

Jordanne Ringwald

I'll take this one as you heard during our intros. We all came from different paths and perspectives. We're all very different. We complement each other's skill sets. He's really our big picture guy. He dreams in spreadsheets. John's our negotiator who can charm anyone. I'm kind of the organized chaos keeping our partners happy, but there is one unifier that we all share, and it's a common approach to how we connect with and put our clients first, and that's really formed around this idea of laughter. So we'll mention that quite a bit through this podcast. But recruiting is absolutely a relationship game. You need to gain trust first, then build credibility by delivering results. We think if you get that right, it's a winning formula for a long term mutually beneficial partnership.

John McMullen 

How do you work with clients? I'm guessing they approach you with a need, and then they you know… What's the process?

Jordanne Ringwald

John, a lot of times they do approach us. We've been really lucky in that regard. We've worked with about 85 clients since we started the business, and a lot of them have been through our network, either they knew us already, or we were referred to them through our connections. Many have approached us directly based on, you know, referrals, or we've delivered for them in the past. It starts with clients having a need for talent, as well as a partner to help them find talent. So many of our clients don't have an internal recruiting resource. They rely on us to fill that gap. In other instances, maybe they do have an internal recruiting team. However, they need additional support, you know, above and beyond what their team can provide.

So, our role is to do the heavy lifting in recruiting, which can be daunting and time consuming for an organization, and then our clients can place their energy and focus on what makes their business successful.

John McMullen 

Tell me about the process of working with a client. How do you how do you get started? What information are you after? And what questions do clients often have for you?

Keith Jeremiah

That's good question, John. This is Keith here. You know, when we think about our recruiting approach, we look at layers to kind of exceed expectations from our customers, and there really isn't a unique approach for the modular industry. I mean, really all searches, all good searches, start off with listening, and it's getting on the phone with our customers and understanding their culture, their talent needs, and the challenges that they're facing as a business. And then once we're able to do that and build a connection, hopefully through laughter, we truly try to understand their need and expectations, and we create an approach that will hopefully exceed the client's expectations. Our. Clients usually ask us to find how we find our talent, and our approach really centers around that conversation, and then we go to market.

We use different tools, we use our network, we use our connections, and we just really persistent and really try to drive our approach to make sure that we're finding talent that is passive, that our clients are unable to find, because if we're able to find good talent for our clients, then they ultimately can grow, and we can continue to partner with them and hopefully be a small part of their success. Other questions that come up is, you know, how do we handle, you know, pay our fees? And the simple answer there is, you know, we're very flexible, and we handle the process. We're willing to fill positions, you know, kind of on a more of a direct placement terms. And then we ultimately look at what the market is, what the position is, and then ultimately what the guarantee your period is. And then additionally, with the guarantee, we do it in two different ways. We either do a refund, or we do a free replacement. And that really depends on, you know, what kind of the contract is, what makes sense for the customer, what the role is.

And then I guess the last couple things I'd say about it is, you know, we really want to be an extension of their team, be the client ambassador, and sell their company. So, we really need to understand the company to be an extension. And those are the partnerships that we have successfully put in place with eight modular clients now we feel like part of their family, and we hope to be able to do that with more MBI members in the future, because there's this a true passion for all three of us across the modular space, to continue to help grow this base and continue to bring success and hopefully attract great talent, as we continue to do that.

John McMullen 

The industry has so many different opportunities, from the trades to design professionals to business development, how do you start when you're looking to fill a particular position?

John Kowalczyk

Good question. John, so we have a broad range of recruiting capability. We like to say we recruit from the shop floor to the boardroom, and when we set out, we built our company focusing on management level roles. But the foundation of our business, and truly the reason why we're here speaking to you today is that we jumped right into recruiting unskilled labor like warehousing, machine operators, we progress to skilled labor, more technicians for our first client, and then it kind of took off from there. So no job is really too big or too small for us. We have quite a range.

But, as we said before, the whole process starts by really understanding the hiring Profile we're seeking. Once we know that we can conduct significant proactive outreach, identify the right candidates. Many of them are passive. They are happy in their jobs, but our job is to convince them to think about other opportunities and sell there are opportunities to them, and then we connect with them and see if we can get them hired with our client. But we typically start with candidates in our immediate network, which we built out in the module industry over the last 14 years. And if people in our network are fit for a particular role, we'll ask them for referrals candidates that may be a fit. And then we'll also supplement that network, that significant network connections, by using a range of technology solutions to really find and connect with the right candidates that fit that profile that the company is seeking to fill.

John McMullen 

Are there any next steps for finding the right candidate?

Jordanne Ringwald

In particular, we rely heavily on our network, so once we connect with a candidate who's typically someone we know or was referred to us, we have a thorough conversation evaluate their skill sets through phone and then a video to make sure they're interested qualified and of course, within the compensation range that our client is willing to pay. So if all of that is aligned, we'll send the candidates resume, an executive summary of the candidate's strengths for our clients review, and if they like what they see, we can then facilitate the interview process and really manage our candidate through the entire offer and onboarding stage.

John McMullen 

As a recruiting an HR agency, I'm curious what trends you're seeing amongst your modular industry clients. You said you had several earlier in the conversation. Are there any common needs that you're seeing is hiring picking up? Is it slowing down? What are you seeing?

Keith Jeremiah

Yeah, John, you know, in our experience in the past year with our modular clients, the hiring has remained steady, and it really has depended upon the needs and kind of turnover. But we just had dinner with one of our modular clients yesterday, and we're really excited to hear that they are extremely bullish. They in terms of 2025 seems like the work is there. They have a large amount of subcontractors there to support their in house. So that seems very good sign. And I know they. Said that they have been able to continue to look at, you know, ways to, you know, continue to grow and develop the modular business. So that's, that's been music to our ears. The role is that we continue to kind of get across the board. It's, it's really comes around sales and it seems like project managers slash operations managers. Because I think where we come into play, for a lot of these modular providers or companies, need the right people to bring in more work, and then once they bring that work in, they need the right people to manage the employee base and deliver for the customer. And I feel like that is our sweet spot when it comes to modular it's just really out there in the field helping our modular clients really find the right people to deliver for the customer.

John McMullen 

In your experience, is there anything that manufacturers or contractors can do to get out in front of potential employees and help attract the candidates that they want?

Jordanne Ringwald

Other than working with us? Well, when you do that, we obviously act as your employer ambassador, and we proactively spread the word to targeted audiences about opportunities or companies presenting but really, in addition to that, we recommend a heavy and active presence on LinkedIn. Everyone probably knows it's the largest professional employment network on the planet. So showing your accomplishments, and you know your culture can really help create interest amongst the right people to join your company. Employer Branding is really important, especially in this day and age.

You know, everyone's looking on Google to see how your company is rated, so glass door in particular. I mean, have you ever eaten at a restaurant with a two-star review? The concept with GlassDoor is similar. If your glass door ratings poor, many candidates won't even entertain an interview with you or respond to us as recruiters. So definitely recommend everyone listening to this to take a look at your company GlassDoor rating, and, you know, ask yourself, does it accurately reflect your company culture? And if not, there's definitely steps you can take, and Rises can certainly help with that, to improve your rating. We've done that for other clients. It's kind of the “beyond recruiting” aspect that we mentioned.

Other things you can do. You can also take, you know, creating a company website that's job seeker friendly. So does it show your job openings? Are they easy to find and apply for? Is your application process simple beyond that, once you know, candidates start coming in, or is your interview process concise? Everyone knows, you know, post COVID, there's many more job openings than there are qualified candidates to fill them, and that will continue for the foreseeable future. So, the more efficient you are with your interview and hiring process, the better chance you have at beating out competition.

Companies that are slow on their candidate feedback or their interview process can definitely lose out on really qualified job seekers. I believe it was Google they published the golden rule for interviewing. So what they said, after a lot of research, is after four interview steps, candidates experience diminishing return on their candidate experience. So, kind of all of that. Obviously, we recommend keeping your professional networks fresh, staying active and industry focused associations like MBI and the best hiring is really done through networking. Keith,

John McMullen 

I'm going to switch gears here for a second. You are a member of MBI workforce and Professional Development Committee. Thank you very much. And I was wondering what you could tell me about the work that you're doing as part of that group.

Keith Ringwald

Yeah, no, I'd love to, and I'm honored to be part of it. I got to meet Heather last earlier this year at WOM and I expressed interest, and she asked me to be on it when I came on board. It was in the spring, and there was already a lot of work done by Heather and her team. And what I kind of picked up is Heather conducted a survey in the fall of 2023 and from that, she was able to identify, you know, multiple challenges for the modular industry that we really wanted to focus on, and that was attracting new workers in both labor and trade roles, and many professional roles are a challenge also for MBI members, so supply shortage, and then also just getting the modular name out there some more.

The second key find from that survey was training for both onboarding new workers and professional development our needs MBI members believe MBI can help facilitate so that's kind of the role, that was the kind of mission that I kind of came into and played a very, very small part in so far. But so far in year one, we really wanted to focus on developing careers in modular campaign, and that's launching the MS system that Heather has spearheaded for member for training, exploring workforce development needs, especially in trades.

It's kind of where we're kind of going. The first course we’re proud to announce is going to be launched soon, if it has not already been launched, but it's the introduction to commercial modular construction, and it's a great tool, and I think it's really cool, not just for people that are doing it day to day, but when I was in the modular industry, it wasn't until I really understood what the modular industry was by walking the yard, seeing the fleet, seeing what people do day in and day out, that I've really understood what the mission was as an as a corporate employee, and what I was trying to do.

So, I think we're not all able to travel, but we all could probably take a look at this course and really understand, you know, what we do as modular providers. I'm really excited about that. And additionally, we've been really kicking around how to incorporate workforce development into one, is its own track? Is it integrated in other tracks? And we were getting close, we're not sure it's ready to be its own track yet in terms of, you know, really just having specific content to workforce development for all the different sessions. So what we're going to really try to focus on this year going into WOM, is just really integrating workforce development as much as possible into other training sessions and just really, just talking about it more, because at the end of the day, I think most providers, most companies, most members of MBI would agree that our people are our biggest assets, and we just need to continue to develop them, especially as we have shortages.

So that's we're working with workforce development. It's been a great group. I've learned a lot, and everyone is extremely passionate. So it's been wonderful.

John McMullen 

Well, appreciate it, Keith and yes, we, we just launched the MBI Learning Center last week, we sent out a bunch of emails inviting people to join the first course, the introduction to commercial module construction is live now. So thank you for all your contributions to that.

Speaking of, and I'll take advantage of you being here: What potential do you see for the online learning platform that MBI just launched among employers who are seeking, not only to bring candidates in and the new employees in, but for the employees that they've got?

Keith Ringwald

Well, that's really good. I mean, you think about that, right? You know, online learning platform, it's kind of a buzzword. It's been now for about 10-15, years. Need to have online and it's, it's really powerful, though, because I think we all learn differently and have different ways of, kind of gathering that information. And I kind of broke it down into five different areas.

So, it's first, I think it's the workforce development, right? I mean, that's really what we're trying to do there. And the platform can address the modular constructions industry talent shortages by offering accessible training for new employees and existing staff. Think that's where it first starts. It's also scalable. You know, we can continue to add more courses for new hires, upskill current workers, help members continue to kind of that ongoing learning process.

I think the second of the five areas I kind of identified was member engagement retention. By offering educational content and certifications, we keep people active in MBI, which allows us to continue to kind of learn, grow together as an industry, and it also helps us prioritize our members that have a satisfaction specification, and could become a key resource for companies seeking to improve their workforce capabilities. So, I think the more we can talk about it, the more powerful it becomes.

We can also start collaborating with academic institutions. So I think we can integrate with universities and students. And what that means is we can start bridging the gap when we have kids that are in universities or community colleges, like here's modular. Have you thought about that? How can we start bringing in people earlier in their career. You know, as we have a maybe an older population that is ultimately kind of retiring from modular How can you bring in new talent?

Fourth area, I think, is revenue potential. And at the end of the day, I think it is an opportunity for us to kind of continue to grow the resources we can have and bring in revenue from an MBI perspective. And I think it can also help with a course catalog. We can start put thinking about ways to advance topics in terms of certifications, micro credentials, and really start bringing up the modular client, a modular industry to be there were some other industries. I mean, how cool would it be someday, if we had, like, a certification where. People would study and take a test for a modular certification. I think that'd be pretty cool.

And I think the last one is just standardization. And then I think I've learned so much since the time that I've been involved with MBI. Is like, how many good best practices are out there right now? Our clients, our companies and all that are really doing a lot of good things, and I think if we could start sharing some of those, it would really help the industry overall, and it would allow the industry to continue to grow and gain more market share. So, I think those are the five main areas, but I'm really excited, and it's been a really cool journey to see.

John McMullen 

What advice—and I don't want to take away clients from you guys at all, but I feel like I should ask for those who perhaps aren't ready or unable to hire you guys—what advice would you give anyone listening to about how to best interview candidates to see if they're a good fit for their own company? Are there any best practices that you can offer other people?

Jordanne Ringwald

You want us to share all our secrets. Maybe just one, okay, maybe some, I think to simplify it, just trust your gut. The way you do that, though, is first, you need to understand what you're seeking in an ideal candidate. So considering the job requirements, but as well as the personality traits and behaviors that will align with your company culture, so many companies kind of overlook that critical piece of the culture fit.

While industry experience is great, we always recommend opening up your requirements to hire like the best athlete candidates who may not have the specific, modular experience you're seeking. We see many clients do a disservice to themselves by being too narrow on their experience requirements and then missing out on talent from outside the industry who could maybe quickly learn the industry and make an immediate positive impact.

When you are interviewing, it's always best to get the candidate to talk more than you they should be talking about 70% of the time. To get them talking, we recommend open ended, behavioral based interview questions. I recommend looking up the STAR method stands for Situation, Task, Action and Results. So, asking the candidates about their past experience and situations, how they handled them, what the outcomes were, this will give you a good sense of both their experience and how they operate. And what's that old saying when someone shows you who they are? Believe them. Same thing goes for interviewing, but outside of your core star interview questions, I think keeping it light and conversational so you can get a good sense of how they communicate and operate, and what's their true motivation for wanting to work for your company? It's really key to understanding whether they're a good culture fit.

John McMullen 

Do you guys have an outlook for 2025 in terms of hiring and the demand for jobs within the industry? Are there any trends you see continuing into next year?

John Kowalczyk

Yeah. So John, I would say, in our experience actively partnering with this year eight modular clients of different sizes and locations around the country, hoping, hopefully more in 2025 but hirings remain strong throughout 2024 and it's really ranged across all the roles that you know we have experience working in, VP, sales, ops, back office, service tax, so it's been strong, and this really makes us bullish for 2025 as Keith was saying earlier, as we visited one of our current clients, remain strong through q4 so we think that'll lead into 2025 but and your audience knows as well as we do, While the industry has experienced a lot of consolidation in the past few years. We know the modular customer base remains large and diverse and in need of continued, continuous products and services from a variety of local and national level firms, so especially as the macro economy is hopefully going to rebound here, really bullish about strong hiring throughout 2025 and really that's where we come in.

We want to make sure each of our partners is enabled with the right talent to deliver for their current workload as well as their future workload. And I'll just end with this, John. You know, while we do serve multiple industries in our business, modular really remains the closest to our heart. I mean, not only because our roots are there, but because the industry is filled with good, smart, salt of the earth, people who know how to get things done, and they take pride in what they do every day, and that's really special to us.

John McMullen 

Keith mentioned this earlier. I'll end with this. He was able to meet Heather at the 2024 World of Modular (WOM). Can we look forward to seeing you guys in Las Vegas in April for the 2025 World of Modular

John Kowalczyk

John, I'm not sure you and everyone else will be looking forward to it…

John McMullen 

I’m looking forward to it!

John Kowalczyk

But yes, we'll be there. Though—and this is where it's a little sensitive—it was a little touch and go on the decision to go to Vegas because Jordan has been banned from most casinos in the state of Nevada. He's been categorized as what's called an advantage player. I guess it has something to do with counting cards, but we're going to make it work. We'll keep her out of the casinos.

And you know, our goal, John, is really to become a premier talent partner for the modular industry. So we're going to engage in efforts like this, the world of modular, the Workforce Development Committee, and we're really thankful for you inviting us on this podcast to tell our story. So, we'll be there. First round is on us. Rounds, maybe two to five, John, on you?

John McMullen 

If we're in a bar…all decisions are good in a bar, right?

John Kowalczyk

That's it. Well done.

John McMullen 

Well. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate your time today. John, Keith, Jordanne, thank you so much, and I really look forward to meeting you all in Vegas come April.

John Kowalczyk

Thank you, John, looking forward to it.

John McMullen 

My name is John McMullen and this has been another episode of Inside Modular: The Podcast of Commercial Modular Construction. Until next time.