Posted on January 25, 2022
WEDA webinar on hiring and retaining talent a huge success; replay available here
Over 100 attend WEDA’s “Dredging for Talent” webinar
Five dredging and marine industry human resource leaders share their secrets and insights.
DredgeWire reports…
Last week these three panelists:
- Laurie Boyan – VP Human Resources, Weeks Construction
- Rebecca Gardner, PE – Anchor QEA, LLC
- Don Hayes, The Dredging Professor LLC
ably moderated by Janelle Pogodzinski – VP-Human Capital, J.F. Brennan Company, ran a valuable program covering these questions:
- Who are you competing with for talent? And how?
- What recruiting technology are you utilizing and how are using it?
- What are unique ways you are reaching into the community to draw candidates?
- What benefits matter most to the applicants you are seeing? Are there any that are specifically drawing in candidates?
DredgeWire attended the seminar, and heard many insights. Here are some excerpts:
Anchor QEA says it takes up to 6 months to recruit each new hire, amd they are competing with everyone for new talent, such as the Corps.
Weeks Marine is focusing on retention as opposed to new hires. One of the ways they do that is with career mapping.
Employees want projects to align with their values.
Anchor QEA says while the “old guard wants benefits, the mew guard wants training.”
There was a lot of conversation about communicating and communications, which Hayes said was key.
There wasn’t as much talk about remote work as DredgeWire expected, though there was some. Some mentioned that project deadlines don’t lend themselves to remote work.
LinkedIn was mentioned most often as the technology of choice. Some mentioned Indeed.
(Note that DredgeWire has just launched a new Jobs page. Check it out!) https://dredgewire.com/job/
Hayes stressed the valuable role of paid internships for recruiting minorities, who are more often financially stressed during school. “The big surprise is students earn their keep.”
Finally, JF Brennan has had success with a “Girls in Construction Day” at local schools.
The program was great and worth checking out all of it.
See the full recording here:
