Every tree-service business owner knows the importance of generating leads, attracting potential customers, and closing sales.
But whether you decide to climb this hill slowly and on your own or partner with an award-winning marketing agency, successfully increasing your client base presents an entirely different challenge: Assembling a staff that can handle all of the work — something many tree-care businesses struggle to do.
However, we’ve identified a few key tactics and strategies that’ll make this easier and help you hire the kind of tree-care professionals that’ll help your business grow.
Why Smart Hiring Makes or Breaks a Tree Service Business
Most tree-company owners recognize that they need high-quality crew members, but few recognize exactly how critical their staff is for growth. In fact, one of the fastest ways to stop growing (or even slide backwards) isn’t a lack of customers — it’s a lack of qualified team members.
Given the physical and technical demands tree work entails (not to mention its inherent safety risks), hiring is one of the most important things you’ll ever do.
Bring on the right people, and you’ll set yourself up for success. But if you hire the wrong people, you can end up facing:
- Accidents and Liability: Inexperienced climbers or careless ground crew techs can cause injuries, property damage, and costly insurance claims.
- High Turnover Rates: Workers who don’t understand the demands of tree work often quit after a few weeks, leaving you scrambling to keep jobs on schedule.
- Dissatisfied Customers: A crew that shows up late, cuts corners, or damages landscaping will lead to poor reviews and scare away the potential customers you need to grow.
- Management Burnout: Constantly rehiring and retraining employees will drain your time and energy, keeping you off the sales and marketing tasks that actually move the business forward.
For many owners, these staffing headaches become the single biggest impediment to growth. That’s why recruiting isn’t just an HR chore; it’s a core business strategy. But if you crack the code on hiring true tree-care professionals, you’ll start enjoying higher margins, improved safety, and better efficiency.
Hiring Qualified Tree-Care Professionals: Six Steps to Success
Knowing that a top-tier staff is important is one thing, but knowing how to build a winning team is an entirely different matter. Follow the six steps outlined below (and get help when you need it) and you’ll be well on your way to assembling an all-star team of tree-care pros.
1. Define What “Qualified” Means for Your Company
To hire the right people, you must identify the things you’re looking for in those people. And this essentially means asking yourself several important types of questions, such as:
- Certifications: Do you need certified arborists, or are you willing to train promising ground workers? Do you need a Certified Urban Forest Professional (formerly a Municipal Specialist)?
- Transportation: Is CDL licensing a must-have? Do potential applicants need to own a car, or are you close to public transportation?
- Skills: Do you need climbers who can use advanced rigging systems, or do you rely on bucket trucks? Do you need someone who can use tomography equipment, air spades, or other specialized tools?
- Roles: Are you looking for climbers or ground crews? Do you need sales arborists or people to perform Level 2 risk assessments? Do applicants need to have customer service skills?
- Physical Requirements: How much weight should applicants be able to lift repeatedly? How much time will you expect a climber to be above ground? How long is your typical workday?
Take your answers to these questions and incorporate them into the job descriptions you’ll be sharing with applicants. Spelling things out in this way not only filters potential candidates but also shows the kind of professionalism that’ll attract serious applicants.
2. Solicit Feedback from Existing Team Members
Before you start trying to add new people to your crew, ask some of the existing team members to share any specific challenges they face or unanticipated benefits they’ve enjoyed while working for your company. This will not only give you the chance to make any necessary changes to help retain existing employees and contractors, but it’ll also give you some ideas for attracting new crew members.
The best staff members to approach with these kinds of questions are those who have either been with you for a long time or exemplify the kind of skill, attitude, and work ethic you’re looking for in new hires. However, it’s also worth touching base with new hires, as they’ll have undergone your onboarding process more recently and have a better idea of what new hires can expect.
This step can also reveal some important clues about your management style. Ideally, your employees will feel comfortable being candid with you about their experiences. But if they remain tight-lipped, you may want to work on fostering a more supportive environment.
3. Tap Into the Right Recruiting Channels
Having done your homework, you can now start getting the word out and advertising the positions you need to fill. But there are both productive and unproductive ways to go about this. Posting a job on, say, Craigslist might get you applicants. But you probably won’t attract the kind of applicants you want.
Instead, try:
- Advertising on industry association websites, like your local ISA chapter or the TCIA career center.
- Hanging help-wanted flyers at trade schools and colleges that offer forestry or environmental programs.
- Posting ads on high-quality job posting platforms like Indeed or Monster.
- Publishing social media ads, which also offer client-focused marketing value.
- Networking at local arborist gear shops, equipment rental counters, and climbing gyms.
It’s also worth leveraging your current staff to fill job vacancies. You could, for example, set up a referral program that rewards your current employees for bringing in reliable workers.
4. Use a Rigorous Interview and Trial Process
Hopefully, after getting the word out about your job openings via the recruiting channels outlined above, you’ll be met with an avalanche of potential applicants. At this point, you’ll need to start whittling them down by implementing a sound interview strategy.
The first step is to sort your applications into two virtual piles: “maybe” and “no”.
To do this efficiently, start by looking for obvious deal breakers, like a complete lack of tree-industry experience or insufficient availability. Your specific deal breakers may differ from those of another tree-care company, which is fine — it’s about excluding people who are obviously bad fits for your specific organization.
From there, you’ll want to identify a handful (perhaps five or so) of the most promising candidates from the “maybe” pile. Have these applicants come in for an in-person interview or set up a video conference. You don’t need to grill these candidates like they’re applying for an assistant VP position at a Fortune 500 company, but you will want to make sure they’re a good fit.
So, start by ensuring that they understand your expectations for the role, inquiring about their prior experience, and reviewing the compensation package. You’ll also want to give them the chance to ask any questions they have and receive clarification when needed.
You may also want to implement hands-on skill checks. For example, you could ask them to tie a few common knots, perform some basic pruning on a tree in your lot, check their chainsaw safety practices, or have them demonstrate some basic climbing skills.
You could also present a few scenario questions. For example, you could ask:
- What they’d do if a co-worker cut a corner or neglected to wear proper PPE.
- How they’d handle a tricky removal or deal with a jammed chipper.
- What they’d say if a customer requested services not covered on the work order.
Finally, it’s almost always wise to start your new team members out on a trial basis lasting 30 to 90 days. This will give you a chance to see their work habits and skills in action and decide if they’ll be a good fit before making a long-term commitment.
Pro Tip: Always be sure that you avoid asking prohibited questions during the interview process. Washington and Lee University offers a quick primer on the subject, but it’s also important to check the regulations in your specific state.
5. Prioritize Safety and Culture Fit
The best crew member isn’t always the most experienced climber or most seasoned sales arborist; it’s the one who values safety, works well with others, and treats everyone — including clients and coworkers — with respect. Toxic or careless workers can not only cause accidents but also scare away potential clients, harm morale, and lead to faster employee turnover.
This means you have to ensure every new hire will fit in well with your company’s safety-first mindset and overall culture. To an extent, you’ll need to trust your gut when making these kinds of decisions. But it can also be helpful to arrange for potential hires to meet with other crew members.
Finding employees who fit into your culture can actually be one of the more challenging steps in the recruitment process, but it will pay dividends. By building a reputation as a company that only hires team members who fit well (and then treating them well once they’re on board), word will spread that you’re a company worth working for.
6. Invest in Training and Retention
High customer retention rates are crucial for the long-term success of any tree care company. In fact, it costs between five and 25 times as much to land a new customer as it does to retain an existing customer. But this same principle also applies to your staff — it’s more cost-effective to retain capable staff than it is to find new team members.
And this means that hiring doesn’t end on day one. The people you hire today may move on to another company tomorrow if they are provided with a more attractive offer. So, you’ll not only need to pay competitive rates and treat your employees with respect, but also invest in them.
You can do this in a number of ways, including:
- Paying for certifications, including things like ISA certification, CDLs, and CPR certificates.
- Offering steady hours and a clear path for advancement.
- Recognizing hard work — even small gestures keeps morale high.
- Providing performance bonuses or implementing a profit-sharing program.
Even simple things like buying lunch for the crew after particularly challenging jobs can help create the kind of atmosphere that employees appreciate.
Let ORB Tree Service Marketing Help You Find Crew Members
Nothing will help you scale your tree-care company faster or more effectively than the guidance of a professional marketing agency — especially one that specializes in the tree-care industry, like ORB Tree Service Marketing. We understand the unique challenges arborists face, and we’ve developed a unique online-ready blueprint that’s specifically tailored for businesses like yours.
But there’s something else that distinguishes us from run-of-the-mill marketing agencies: We also provide recruitment marketing services.
This means we not only help you position your brand and convey your message in a way that helps you attract more customers, but also more employees and contractors. This kind of bidirectional approach ensures that you’ll enjoy an increased demand for your services while also being able to fill out your crew with the kind of professionals that’ll help take your business to the next level.
Set up a call with us now. We’d love to learn about your specific business and outline the things we can do to help you grow.
Sources and References
- HubSpot – “What Is Inbound Recruiting?”
Explains how inbound marketing principles—attract, engage, delight—apply directly to recruiting and candidate experience.
https://www.hubspot.com/inbound-recruiting - Forbes Agency Council – “Attracting Top Talent: How To Successfully Leverage Recruitment Marketing”
Offers high-level insights on employer branding, storytelling, and multi-channel strategies for recruiting quality candidates.
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2022/03/11/attracting-top-talent-how-to-successfully-leverage-recruitment-marketing - NAS Recruitment – “Recruitment Marketing 101: Best Practices to Attract and Hire Top Talent”
A tactical guide from a recruitment-marketing provider covering employer branding, multi-channel reach, and analytics.
https://www.nasrecruitment.com/resources/blog/recruitment-marketing-101-recruitment-marketing-best-practices - Harvard Business Review – “The Value of Keeping the Right Customers”
Contains the oft-cited “5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire than retain” and links retention improvements to large profit gains.
https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers - U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – “What Shouldn’t I Ask When Hiring?”
Authoritative guidance on legally forbidden questions in interviews—helps ensure your hiring practices are compliant and safe.
https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/small-business/what-shouldnt-i-ask-when-hiring - Harvard Guide to Legally Permissible Interview Questions and Discussions
Use this if you want a stronger legal/HR angle on what hiring questions are safe vs. risky.
https://my.wlu.edu/Documents/general-counsel/Harvard%20Guide%20to%20Legally%20Permissible%20Interview%20Questions%20and%20Discussions.pdf
