We are interviewing Paul Kiesche of Aviate Creative this week – a deep resource that focuses exclusively on helping tech and manufacturing companies attract and keep great employees. What do you have to change about your company to do this? Do you need boatloads of money – like a software tech firm – in order to get the person you want? Paul tells us how to change your branding to be the company young job-seeking wizards want to work for.
As an extra bonus, he also shares which single employment website might be killing your reputation as a good place to work – and what you need to do about it.
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Show Notes
EPISODE TITLE: 11 – Attract and Retain Top Talent” – Paul Kiesche
EPISODE SUMMARY:
Factory of the Future® is interviewing Paul Kiesche of Aviate Creative this week – a deep resource that focuses exclusively on helping tech and manufacturing companies attract and keep great employees. What do you have to change about your company doing this? Do you need boatloads of money – like a software tech firm – in order to get the person you want? Paul shares which single employment website might be killing your reputation as a good place to work – and what you need to do about it. Don’t miss these amazingly simple gold nuggets of recruitment success!
Paul tells us how to change your branding to be the company young job-seeking wizards want to work for.
Three ways to freshen up the brand without breaking the bank. Are the photos on the website fresh? Do they show the culture of your factory as the employees perceive it? What’s the last company celebration, event, trade show, or shown on the website? What’s the date of the most recent post to your company’s Facebook page? Is there a page that explains what it’s like to work at your factory, and the sense of the culture of the company?
Make a Community page for your website showcasing how the company is an integral part of the town or city where it is located. Take photos when you participate in the Chamber of Commerce, local economic development, or other local events – get these, at least, not on your company’s website, and better still, out onto social media.
Review and update your social media accounts; Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you can’t do all four, pick one and focus on that.
Go to Glassdoor, and Indeed, and find your company listing – yes, you probably have one. These reviews are submitted anonymously by people who have worked in your company or interviewed there. Do damage control; respond to complaints posted to these sites, get some of your current employees to write a review for you.
Participate in the National Manufacturing Day event (November 4th of each year). This event is a great way to introduce the local community to what your company does/makes, stir interest in technologies used to make your products, and helps improve your image as an asset to the town/ city. Most people have never been inside a real factory – their minds are filled with false images of what Today’s factories are really like. Show them the fast-moving, creative and tech-based environment that makes your factory a FactoryoftheFuture!
Reach out to the local middle, high, and trade schools, community colleges, and universities. Make contact with the advisory boards for those and tell them what you are looking for in skillsets and training. They will rewrite training and lesson plans to be more on the mark – they want to have value also and increase their enrollment so it’s in their best interest.
About Paul Kiesche:
In an industry that has one foot in the future, Paul’s company brings manufacturing and technology companies up to speed with cutting-edge branding and creative content. Update, fresh-looking branding elevates your company’s visibility, gain more qualified leads, attract and keep employees or improve your results.
Paul Kiesche is the President and Creative Director of Aviate Creative, an upbeat agency that goes beyond creativity to be problem-solvers and powerhouse thinkers. Their clients / brands include Lenovo, Disney, Kraft, Sakar, Vivitar, Haydon Corp., TheStreet.com, Cimquest and Isolatek to name a few.
He runs a LinkedIn group called “The Manufacturing Marketing Mastermind” which is an invitation only group solely focused on helping professionals that are involved in the marketing and sales of manufacturing companies through peer to peer discussions and community. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/13978455/
Examples of Aviates work and more about the awards and talent of the firm are here on the website, aviatecreative.com.
In addition to running Aviate Creative, Paul is an award winning published illustrator, adjunct professor, speaker and frequent podcast guest. He is also a dedicated artist and further expresses creativity in the form of some astonishing fine art (paulkieschefineart.com). Despite the privilege of having many different roles and passions, his favorite title of all is proud father to beautiful twin daughters.
Transcript
Paul Kieshe – Aviate Creative
EPISODE 11 – How to Attract & Retain Top Talent at your Factory
Mitch Kennedy 4:08
Okay, so here we go. Excellent.
Well, welcome back to another episode of Factory of the Future®.org podcast. I’m Mitch Kennedy. And with me today is Paul Kiesche from Aviate Creative. Welcome, Paul, how are you?
Paul Kiesche 4:25
Good. Thanks for having me. This is great.
Mitch Kennedy 4:27
And, Paul, for our listeners, if you could just give them a thumbnail sketch of how you got into marketing for manufacturers and, you know, you just general background, because it’s very interesting.
Paul Kiesche 4:41
Absolutely. My, my background, I’ve been in marketing and graphic design, my whole career doing branding and so forth. And I’ve really designed for a wide range of industries and then in the last few years, let’s say back in 2015 I started to narrow it down and focus on manufacturing and technology. And that was mostly because I saw that a lot of my clients were in that space and I was doing some really great stuff. And manufacturing is just really cool. So I really love helping them out and being involved in a lot of the work that I do really translates well into that space.
Mitch Kennedy 5:24
Excellent. I really value your participation in factory the future.org because, you know, when I go out to different factories, like we had talked about previously, some of them are sort of stuck in, say, for lack of a better word, like the 1950s, 60s or 70s. And they haven’t fully adopted technology or the new modes of communicating with with their customers and prospective customers. So it’s, it’s great to have you on here and I hope we’ve given a lot of value to to people who need it.
Paul Kiesche 5:58
So excellent. Yeah, absolutely. So I’m thrilled to be involved. And that’s one of the reasons I like manufacturing is that I can see the lack of marketing and branding in there. And it’s, it’s as if the world of manufacturing. Back when they all started their businesses 10-20, 30-50 years ago or more, they they really cared about their look and their branding, and then they just stopped. And they were all frozen in time. And now, now they need to be re-awoken. And I’m trying to get the word out and explain the power of updating their stuff and and i think that’s going to translate a lot to today’s topic. Excellent.
Mitch Kennedy 6:45
Well, why don’t we just dive right in. I know we were going to talk about attracting top talent for your manufacturing business. And, you know, we we’ve got the issue today of the skills gap and This is definitely definitely one of the ways that you can address the skills gap. So tell me what you what you want to want to tell our audience.
Paul Kiesche 7:09
Yeah, absolutely. Well, it’s been an issue for a while. And it seems to be a really popular subject right now because, well, and my belief, I, you know, the economy is increasing, improving. And manufacturers are now more in demand, and they’re trying to get the work done. And then all sudden, they’re realizing very quickly, that there’s not enough employees to go around to get that work done. So there’s a bit of a panic in the air. And they’re doing some interesting things to fix that with associations with colleges and universities, and they’re doing it within themselves, but from my perspective, a lot of them are looking at the long term solutions. And that’s awesome. And then Doing some great stuff. But I want to help them in the short term. And I think that there’s some really simple and easy things they can do with their marketing and branding that can help attract employees and also retain employees. That’s one of the other parts of this is that I hear from manufacturers that they can’t keep people too, because people are in such demand that their employees keep jumping for a better opportunity. So I want to try and work with them
on helping to retain those employees, but then also attract new ones.
Mitch Kennedy 8:33
Yeah, that’s an excellent point. I’ve been in a couple different factories, clients of mine, and they, they’ve said, you know, the people that we’re interviewing are top notch and, and we’re struggling to try to keep them because they’re getting wooed by all these fancy tech companies all the time. You know, they might be programmers or robotics people, or even just skilled trades people machinists, and you know, Guest it’s not just enough to offer good salary anymore, you know, you have to have a space that’s attractive and interesting.
Paul Kiesche 9:09
Absolutely. And it’s interesting that you mentioned the wooed by these technology companies. And that’s something that I want to talk about today is that I work in both spaces. I work in technology, and I work in manufacturing. And I find it fascinating because a lot of technology companies have challenges with employees, but they just do a much better job of marketing and selling themselves and making themselves look sexy. So they attract attract a lot more talent. So they’re willing people away but there’s no reason why the manufacturers can be doing the same thing and actually will bring them back or, or away from other industries or other employers and so forth.
Mitch Kennedy 9:52
If you if you had to, like choose three, three things that were different about the way tech companies approach, hiring or marketing them Towards potential hires versus manufacturers, what would those two guys three things that he really stands out when you compare the two? Well,
Paul Kiesche 10:09
well, I have to laugh because
I would say the biggest thing is, is that the tech industry actually puts effort in and does something.
Mitch Kennedy 10:20
Paul Kiesche 10:22
The manufacturing industry appears to do very little, if nothing at all. So that’s the biggest difference is that putting in the effort and putting in the work to help attract employees makes a big difference just in itself. But I can give you some easy examples like really simple stuff is one when you go to a technology company, most of them try to keep their brand up to date and current which includes their website, their logo and their look. So employees or students or anybody coming into it. says this is an upcoming company that I want to be part of. And it looks great, looks sexy, where a lot of manufacturers, you look at them, and they look like, like you said stuck in the past.
They look old, they look like they have, you know, no culture like they have no diversification. And none of none of that’s true. We know firsthand. I go into a manufacturing facility, and it’s amazing. They have robotics and cool gadgets. It’s all shiny and new. And all their facility is amazing. And then you look at their brand, and you’re like, it looks like it’s gathering dust. So that’s
Yeah, that’s a big part of it. And then you go to the career page, you know, this might be a second thing, you go to the career page. And on a technology site, there’s all this stuff about culture and all this interesting information and talks about benefits and all these things that attract employees. And it shows the team and it shows the events and stuff like that and then you go to a manufacturer’s career page. And all they do is list the job openings.
And that’s it, if they have that. So that’s kind of what I’m saying is like, it’s almost as if they’re not doing anything to help the situation.
And they’re all like, they’re playing the blame game right now, which I can understand. But it’s not helping anybody is, you know, they’re saying, oh, education. Too many students are going into desk jobs. And, you know, we need to appeal to them and so forth. Well, that’s correct. But that’s not really helping you in the short term. So something as simple as adding some more information to your career page and making it look a little bit more interesting taking pictures at a company event. All those things are super simple.
And, and they’re doing it already. They’re just not showing it. So when I talked to these manufacturers, they have amazing cultures. They have great personalities in their company, they have events and they just Don’t actually show anybody. So that’s Yeah, always simple.
Mitch Kennedy 13:03
And, you know, the other thing I think that appeals to people coming out of High School or coming out of trade schools or colleges, they like a good story, you know, and I think manufacturing really has a lot of good stories, everything from, you know, how this device was made, which is a, you know, that you could do videos on that to things like, how was this company founded? Like, I worked with a company in Waterbury, Connecticut, that made buttons for the uniforms of the Civil War soldiers, you know, and that’s cool. Yeah, that’s pretty cool. Yeah. And then there’s, you know, there’s other companies around the area where I was, I was working that they made boilers for submarines during World War One and two, and, you know, a lot of cool sort of anecdotal stuff that can be thrown out onto the website. Say, Hey, this is what this company is really all about, or where, you know, this is where we’re going in addition to where we been. I think you’re right, there’s a there’s a lot that can be kind of gaps that can be filled in, so to speak.
Paul Kiesche 14:12
I think that’s fantastic. The showing the history is definitely important, but you nailed it. When you said the students these days care about that story. And a lot of them, they base their decision on the company’s mission and on a field good situation. And a lot of these companies are doing more good than they realize. Maybe they have a green program or their their sustainability program. Maybe they have, you know, a domestic made product where they can promote the fact that they’re helping their country, you know, maybe they have
you know,
maybe they’re helping farmers maybe they’re helping, you know, a local environment or local politician or whatever. Like, there’s always Different things that they might be improving on that can sell that story and people, it makes them feel better about going to work. And that’s a big part of retention, too, is that if someone, you know, feels excited about their work and feels good everyday about their work, they’re more likely to stick around money is not going to make them move as much if the person offering the money isn’t as you know, interesting with their mission, and doesn’t relate as well, to that individual. So, right, right. You’re like I talked to a lot of folks a lot of where this comes from, as I actually interviewed a lot of manufacturers and ask them these questions. And some of them are really struggling and then some of them are actually doing fine. And the ones that are doing well, a lot of it has to do with what we just mentioned where, you know, I talked to Henry repeating rifles, and they don’t have any Any problem finding employees because people want to work for them, they want to work for a Made
in America company, they want to work for
a company that, you know, supports their lifestyle and that, you know, they’re hunting and they love whatever. So it’s like, it attracts that type of person. So they, they don’t have any difficulty at all. So it’s it’s finding your story and finding what relates to your employees and then showing that culture, just being part of a fun team is very attractive. A lot of people there’s that saying that’s popular now where you don’t leave, you know, a company, you leave a boss. Right? You know, I think there’s some truth to that, but it’s also just if you have a company of, let’s say, you know, quote, unquote, friends, you’re much more likely to stick around than if you
are miserable.
Mitch Kennedy 16:51
Yeah, well, that’s, that’s so true. The culture is really, really important within a within a business structure because you spend so much time there to, you know, eight hours Day minimum race.
Paul Kiesche 17:01
Yeah. And the funny thing is all these manufacturers I talked to, they all say, We’re like one big family here. You know, everybody has fun, we celebrate each other’s victories, like they, they talk about all this stuff, but they do not put it on their website, and they don’t put it in their stuff. And they could be putting that honestly, that could be putting it in a recruitment brochure that could be putting it in, you know, a trade show banner at different events, you know, different things that could easily start attracting those other employees at other companies and so forth. No.
Mitch Kennedy 17:33
cool, very cool.
Are there do you think local efforts, such as like, governments, local governments, trade associations, or economic development groups, for example, that are trying to help manufacturers do this? Kind of?
Paul Kiesche 17:54
Yeah, I think, and that’s, I kind of skipped through that a little bit. But I think that there are Looking Yes, absolutely, they’re getting a lot of help. You look at some of the MEP programs, and you look at the government and some of the other trade organizations and so forth, and even education, they’re all really seeing this as a problem that they want to solve. And they’re doing a great job creating apprenticeship programs. I see a lot of colleges adding entire buildings, entire programs to improve the situation. They’re, they’re adding veteran training programs. So I think there’s a lot in progress. And I think all of that should continue and is great. I just want to basically say, hey, there’s stuff you can do in the interim to help yourself, right. You can’t wait for the cavaletti have already to arrive. You gotta get it. Yeah,that could take a long time.
You know, so, basic training, we’re training the very bare basic entry level which, which is needed, but there’s that skills gap in the middle People that might not be entry level, but you have a lot of people retiring right now, you know a lot of people that are in manufacturing or should retire, not to say that I’m telling them to retire, but like they want to retire. They just can’t because no one’s there to fill their job right now.
Mitch Kennedy 19:16
Right. So right, so they’re being they’re being asked to come in part time and, and just kind of or whatever full time even and please keep working.
Paul Kiesche 19:26
Yeah, exactly. And you can’t really fill that with entry level. So I think a lot of things that these programs are doing are attracting that entry level, which is great, but what about all that middle?
That’s not being fulfilled?
Mitch Kennedy 19:39
So yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s one of the reasons we we built FactorytheFuture®.org. We wanted to address the quote, skills gap, which is, it’s getting larger. There’s also a tech gap, if you will, which is that the people that are in school now are Very well connected to the Internet to their friends to, you know, the virtual communities online. And so they, this is exactly where you’re sitting, you’re sitting, you’re saying, look, you know, you want to bring in people to fill your jobs, but you also gotta fill this other gap. You really gotta up your game on the technology front so that these people can, can stay connected, so to speak.
So what’s so interesting, too, is like a lot of the excuses “Well, I can’t compete with the big guys”, “I can’t compete with the tech companies because we don’t have the money.” Right? Right. The thing that, like I went through my notes, and I spent a lot of time you know, preparing for this and I’ve done a lot of interviews and so forth. And not at one point will you ever hear me say you gotta pay them more money. These are all going to be things that you can do that are that are free or free enough, like you can, you know, add a careers page to your site or whatever, that that can attract these employees and and compete against the bigger Salaries.
Paul Kiesche 21:04
Sure, somebody made money, but that’s the thing somebody’s more money is the fact that now you’re in that competition, right? And you’re never going to win because you’re going to go up against these big companies.
Mitch Kennedy 21:12
Right? You know, I gotta say, You’re the first person I’ve talked to who said that? And I don’t mean just the last part about the money. I mean, the first part about look, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to do this. And you can, you can make it happen. I love that. That’s brilliant.
Paul Kiesche 21:34
Yeah, absolutely. Now not everybody has all of these abilities in house but they’re not expensive. For the most part, you know, if you’re rebranding your whole company, which would be great. That might be pricey, right? But if you’re just adding, you know, an extra page on your site, if you’re, if you’re, we didn’t really talk yet about like golden handcuffs like crazy. Little benefit programs that could be completely free to you giving extra extra days off and stuff like that does not impact your, you know, your finances could potentially be more attractive to an employee, you know, right. There are a lot of easy things like that,
Mitch Kennedy 22:15
right? Yeah, yep. And you know, I have a number of friends in the early in the job market and they work for insurance companies and insurance companies gotten very flexible with what they can and can’t do. You know, there’s a lot of people who work remotely one day a week or something like that, you know, and it’s, it’s not really costing the company anything to let them you know, tie in by by internet and do some work.
Paul Kiesche 22:46
Absolutely. Flexibility is is very big now. I know manufacturers probably are saying, well, I can’t let somebody run a machine from home but right there is a flexibility with a lot of other areas that they can that they can play. With that could be very attractive to employees. employees want to, you know, do their hobbies, they want to spend time with their family, they want to, you know, maybe they want to get more educated so you help pay for their training or their education. There’s a lot of what like I said golden handcuffs that you can offer to employees that could be attractive, even, you know, paying for different events. You know, my one, my one case study that I love talking about, and this is what really inspired all of this conversation is I have a technology company called belay technologies and they there are a lot of fun, but they have a very difficult time finding employees but not not for the same reason. They are a government development technologies company, so they are very high clearance and you can’t work for them unless you have Like very high clearance with the government. So that’s very few people. And so they have a very difficult time finding employees, but they have lots and lots and lots of programs in place to help that. I actually have an interview coming up with their, their, their HR person and she’s gonna give me a lot of information about that, but I’ve worked with them and developed materials and stuff for they do a lot of events. So they’ll have, you know, they’ll go they’ll go on the racetrack and race cars or they’ll go climbing, you know, rock climbing or they’ll go you know, skeet shooting, whatever, like anything, that’s going to just be like fun. They do a two level to it. If If, if I’m not wrong with that is what they’ll do is they’ll actually invite their employees, but they’ll actually use it as a recruitment tool to and say, they’ll invite people that are potential employees. What as well, so it mixes them and gets them involved in a culture and an X is like a, you know, an attraction to those potential employee. That’s smart.
Yeah, really simple to, you know, and you’re having fun. So this is not that complicated in that sense, you know?
Mitch Kennedy 25:17
Excellent. I like that.
Paul Kiesche 25:19
So what we did was we created like promotional pieces for like a brochure. We made some trade show exhibit stuff. So when you’re at a trade show, you might be promoting your your products, but maybe you have one retractable banner that talks about your company culture, so it attracts some of those other employees that are walking around and so forth. You know,
Mitch Kennedy 25:39
yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah.
I guess the you know, the other thing that we we probably ought to talk about is the brand itself and what do you there’s, there’s these things you’ve mentioned that are sort of Low cost or mid costs to, you know, maybe change the way you’re you’re trying to reach out to people. But long term strategy, whoa, that’s it you want to have just like when you’re making something, you know what you want to have a plan of how you’re going to do that and you want to have a marketing and branding approach that is not just for today, but just you know, maybe six months, 12 months, five years out or whatever you do, do you help people with that? And how, how do they approach that sort of thing?
Paul Kiesche 26:37
Yes, I mean, that’s what that’s the big part of my businesses, rebranding manufacturers and and helping them with planning out and implementing their marketing as we go. And, you know, I talked to some manufacturers and a lot of them need that. But then some of them are like, we don’t need more business. We need help doing the business that we have, and that’s That’s where I kind of dawned on me. I was like, okay, maybe this, maybe they don’t understand the value of marketing and branding as much in the sense of employment. And that’s where I came to this odd realization was, manufacturers have forgotten that branding and marketing are part of the reason why those employees are not coming around, because, and this is looping back to the beginning of our conversation is when they see that old brand and they see that old website, they’re like, I don’t want to look work for a company that looks like it’s going to survive one more year. And it’s probably got, you know, some old folks in there that I won’t relate to, and that, you know, it just it looks old and dirty and beat up and they want to work for someone fun. And that website, that logo is a big part of that perception. And I use the word perception because it’s not the reality. It’s just perception, right? So we need to revise that perception and control that perception really, and put out the right vibe that’s going to get across the personality and get across the forward thinking. I wrote an article for you not that long ago. And I think I mentioned like, the idea of manufacturers are creating futuristic, incredible products that are super modern, and yet their logos and their brands are super outdated. And there’s no match up there. It doesn’t make any sense to me. So they’ve been kind of skating on by and saying, like, all we don’t need it. We all need that. We all need it. And they forgot the fact that employees are looking at the same thing as prospect. Customers are. Yeah, yeah, it’s negatively impacting that.
Mitch Kennedy 28:48
Yep. And, you know, and then the larger scope, the community, also the community that the businesses located in, I think that there’s a certain amount of branding if you will, or, or community participation that sometimes lacks, you know, and then people walk by or they drive by and they say, Oh, that’s a building that there’s a factory and and I don’t know anything about it. But you know, for example, Manufacturing Day is a is a is a fabulous event that allows people in manufacturing open their doors and, and welcome the community in so that they can see hey, it’s not dark, dirty and dangerous anymore. You know, we’ve got really, really well lit we got the robots going on and, and everything’s well organized. And I think that that spreads into the community. People understand the community value of having manufacturing in their town or their city.
Paul Kiesche 29:49
Yeah, and that that differs per town and city because and that’s one thing I found with my conversations with manufacturers too, is that sometimes they have multiple plans. multiple facilities and offices. And they have, like, for instance, I’m located in New Jersey and New Jersey manufacturers are really struggling. But you talk to somebody in Wisconsin, and they don’t have problem at all because it’s a, it’s a community that appreciates and understands manufacturing more, right, its attacts factory more, you know, each community is a little different that way.
It’s the, it’s the education and the way that the value of it that’s portrayed, so the parents of students in New Jersey may not be selling manufacturing as much as the parents in other states and so forth. So that’s been interesting, but that’s, that’s definitely a challenging thing that to fix. You know, if you have multiple plants, you might be able to, to have more of your manufacturing and one plant and have your offices more and another plant so that way you can attract certain talent. But that’s that’s a pretty challenging thing to fix.
Mitch Kennedy 31:05
Yeah, it’s definitely a sort of a longer term approach. Yeah. And the set and also, I know you had mentioned to me earlier about working with local schools. Do you do when the people that you interviewed Did you have any stories or anecdotes about that sort of approach to building awareness within the school systems for internships and apprenticeships that are available at at factories?
Paul Kiesche 31:34
I would, I wouldn’t feel like I have enough experience to really talk about it. The most of my experience with that is is pretty third party. You know, I think the work that I’ve done is more in direct recruitment efforts. But there is a massive push for internships, apprenticeships, training programs, and so forth, and I do think that a lot of those do get tied into marketing efforts and communications.
And also one thing we haven’t talked much about, which I don’t get too involved in, but his publicity to his PR, and those programs are really good PR. So if you start developing any of these kinds of apprenticeship programs or training programs, news outlets love that stuff. And you can get a lot of publicity that way too, which is really excellent.
Mitch Kennedy 32:37
Yeah, definitely. I know. The couple companies I know that have strong internship programs, they, they that initially they had to approach the schools a couple times, you know, because everything changes on a seasonal basis for the school so somebody graduates and And then hopefully you can hire him but sometimes they have an interest somewhere else. But after a while the the contacts they made within the schools, you the teachers, the department heads, or the you know, the principal of the school, they build the relationship and then then they start coming and asking the manufacturers Hey, you’re going to have that program again this year, because we’ve got a lot of people were interested and you know, it, I’ve really found its footing and became part of the community at that point, like, you know, absolutely.
Paul Kiesche 33:33
And from that perspective, I have a lot of experience because I, I, for one, I teach at a local college and then I also I work well, I have a lot of internships. So I personally offer a lot of that stuff and see that that develop, and then I also am an advisor on college advisory boards and what’s important about that is That, right now colleges are guessing a lot at what’s needed. So they’re just assuming or guessing.
And those advisory boards are really good if you want to get involved to really communicate directly with them of what you need. And you say, No, I need this kind of technician and I need them to have these skills. Well, if you tell career services that are if you tell the program directors that they will rewrite the programs to make sure that their their students are skilled in areas that you’re going to employ. So I think that’s something that and I do see manufacturers getting involved. I really do. It’s big part of I think that they think of it as a way to give back, but it is a really good way to ensure that those students are going to come out much more likely to be conditioned for your employment.
Mitch Kennedy 34:48
Nice. Good. I like that. That’s a that’s a you know, I love to hear stories of how how it actually works because a lot of times, people Repeat the stories of Oh, we tried it, it didn’t work. So kudos to you for having internships. But also, I’m glad that you’re having successful, successful. Yeah.
Paul Kiesche 35:11
Well, I was very fortunate in the sense that because I have been, I’ve been teaching for 14 years, one class a semester, but it’s just enough that I can get a real relationship with some of the students and then I can easily they see how I work. I see how they work. So I get the best students for my internships. And you know, that there’s something to be said about that, too, is to be involved in the educational process. I think certainly helps, you know, translate into future employees or future interns and stuff like that. So,
Mitch Kennedy 35:50
you know, that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s awesome.
Let’s see. I’m looking at the list of things that we were going to talk about and I think we’ve covered Just about everything do we want to do like a top top five things or, you know, some some kind of summary, if you will, maybe we can go through some of the short term tactics, a lot of it will be repeat. But I think that’ll be good for people to get kind of a quick outline like you’re saying.
Paul Kiesche 36:18
Great. and, you know, if they’re really interested in diving deeper into some of these with, you know, they can hit me up. And we can talk about it, but and then if you have questions, I’d be happy to go deeper into it.
Mitch Kennedy 36:31
I think for what we’re going to we’re going to do is we’ll, we’ll put show notes on the podcast page, so our listeners can go to the page that this recording for the podcast is going to be loaded onto, will have links to your site, obviously, and we’ll also have a download for them so they can, you know, obviously some of them are probably driving to work and not taking notes in their car hopefully, so excellent.
Paul Kiesche 36:58
So Some of the things that we mentioned was, you know, updating your brand, which includes, you know, your logo, your materials, your website is the website is a massive part of the traction on your website, having a, you know, full careers page that doesn’t just list the jobs, but lists, your culture, your benefits, you know, it doesn’t have to be in detail benefits. It could be a broad description of it, but something that’s going to explain that you want to talk about the events and the team, your history, some of the things that are just going to be more attractive, your mission, your sustaining, you know, if you have sustainability or your maid and all that stuff. An easy thing is up making sure you have updated photos of your facility and videos.
Mitch Kennedy 37:54
Yeah, sounds simple.
Paul Kiesche 37:56
Yeah, they’re just so outdated or poor that it just Makes it look bad. You want to show off that culture? One thing we didn’t talk about, which is really simple is update your profiles on LinkedIn, Glassdoor, and indeed, if you use the deed, or any job recruiting site that you use, but Glassdoor a lot of people forget about, which is if you’re not familiar with it, they basically it’s a place for employees to rate your employment. And they can either praise you or trash talk, you know, and it’s a whole profile of your business that you’re, unless you contribute to you’re not in control of so I would recommend you take a look at it. you review your profile and then if there are bad reviews, you know, do your best to encourage happy employees to start writing some positive reviews because people are looking at it and especially the people in school, are going to look at that and say I’m not working for them.
So that’s a big thing there. Wow. Yeah, you can host events we talked about. And the other thing is golden handcuffs. So think about offers, like, what kind of benefits you offer them packages, signing bonuses, relocation packages. Do you pay for education do? Do you have different kinds of events for them? Like what kind of things can you do? or days off that we had mentioned, having special hours for the summer, anything like that, that’s going to give somebody this idea that it’s a fun environment and a pleasant family atmosphere, that kind of thing. So those are some of the short term strategies that I would touch back on basically.
Mitch Kennedy 39:49
Yeah, those those are great, I think. I think people can get a lot of mileage out of that. That’s, that’s excellent. I didn’t even know about Glassdoor. And that’s kind of like Yelp for businesses. Hiring, right?
Paul Kiesche 40:01
Yeah That’s right, except much more dangerous.
It’s great. If you’re looking for a job, it’s really great because you get a real inside view. Now, a lot of manufacturers probably are barely listed on it, if at all. But if you are listed on it, you better be careful because you can quickly get some really bad reviews on it. So keep an eye on that. And it’s pretty an anonymous, so people are very open and free about it. It also goes into salaries. So some people will put their salaries on and they’ll quickly you’ll see that some, like if you’re looking for a job, you could say, Oh, look, this position is actually usually averaging around, you know, whatever, 60,000 or 80,000, or whatever it is. And it quickly tells you a lot of that information too. So employees love it.
Mitch Kennedy 40:55
Yeah, well, so take a look at your Glassdoor profile. Wow.
Awesome. any parting words I know, you know, I just want to put a little plug in for you again, just that your company specializes in helping manufacturers and so I want to make sure that you get a chance to give you whatever elevator speech you have for aviate creative.
Paul Kiesche 41:22
Oh, that’s great. Yeah. Now well, it’s been awesome. A lot of fun talking with you. My company if anybody wants to reach out is Aviate Creative at AviateCreative.com and we get involved, like I said in the branding, marketing, graphic design kind of thing, and certainly can help with trying to attract employees through different methods. But I’d love to reach out and even just talk because I’ve been, like I said, interviewing a lot of manufacturers. Some of those articles will make it on the factory, the future, and I just want to hear what kind of struggles they have. And see if we can have another podcast Oracle to help resolve what they’re facing.
Mitch Kennedy 42:05
Yeah, great. Great. Alright. Well, Paul, thanks again for being on the show. I’m sure our listeners have have been blown away by this sort of hidden corner of their business that they haven’t really thought about for a while. And I hope that they can take the stuff we’ve talked about and turn it around. So amazing. So thanks again for being on the show. And just for everybody who’s listening, we’re going to put the show notes in on the episode page and then we’re also going to have free download available that will offer you some added value for this particular topic. And we’ll probably have some other links both to Paul site and obviously things articles factory, the future that relate to that.
So thanks for listening and hope you have a great day.
