Increasing visibility of career opportunities in the metal industry

MCS Influencer Randy Chaffee says none of us operate in the industry alone; every good job reflects well on the industry.

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Randy Chaffee of Source One Marketing. You can Read the interview below, Listen to the podcast or Watch the recording.

Jenny Yu: Well, hello everyone. My name is Jenny Yu, and I'm here with MetalCoffeeShop®. And today I'm here for an Influencer response for the month of May with the Randy Chaffee of Source One Marketing.

Randy Chaffee: Jenny, how are you?

Jenny Yu: I'm great. How are you doing?

Randy Chaffee: I'm doing great. It's great to be here, as always.

Jenny Yu: As always, thank you. We're so happy to have you. Because this May, we are talking about training and skill development for metal. So we were wondering if you could share your thoughts about strengthening training pipelines through industry partnerships.

Randy Chaffee: Yeah. I think that's super important, Jenny, because we're only as strong as the ability to get the roof or the metal building or whatever it is that we're doing, built or installed. And we all talk a lot about and worry about, and especially right now in today's environment, material availability and price increases and costs. And we talk a lot about how do we market and close more sales. But at the end of the day, none of that matters if we can't get the roof on or can't get the building built. And I think sometimes we lose touch with that. And I think there's two factors there that I think is important. We think sometimes that we have a labor shortage, and we do. I don't think there's any arguing that, but I would like to challenge everybody to think that maybe we also have a visibility shortage.

Maybe we're just not being visible enough in our industry to let young people especially know, this doesn't have to be just a job, this can be a career. It can be a career whether it's in sales, whether it's in administration, whether it's in procurement or whether it's out on the job site. And I think we are probably not as good as we should be as an industry in getting that message out. And in today's world with... No, I'm going to back up and say, shame on us for that, because in today's world, not only with the print media, but with all the social media, the virtual like we're doing right here, there's opportunities by the minute, by the second, to be exposing people and especially young people that there's nothing wrong with this industry. I think I could be a metal installer. That looks pretty interesting. Look at the amazing work that's being done.

And so, I think we need to do better with that. And then also, with the pipeline, you start local. Everything starts local. Work with your local work centers, whatever those might be. Work with your local schools. I know the people that do a really good job are the ones that go out to the school fairs, the job fairs and stuff. I know that's not overly sexy, right? That's not like, oh, that's what I want to do today is go stand and talk to a bunch of high school juniors about my business because they don't care. They act like they don't care. But what if you get one person, one guy or gal out of that group that says, you know what? I could see myself in this industry. That's a big win. Continually exposing yourself at that local level. And then also at the state and regional level with events and with shows.

And I think the other place that we need to work on is the associations, work with your associations, work in tandem with them, local chapters as well as national, to promote the idea that this is a career that's worth discovering. And finally, I'd throw this out there because I'm on the supplier side of things in our world. We, as suppliers, manufacturers, have a responsibility that, again, I'm going to challenge anybody that listens that's on my side of the fence. We don't do a very good job with that, and we should. We should do better with working with our distributors and our dealers who then work with the local communities to help those contractors, those installers, those builders train, prepare and hire the people to come work for them. Because here's this funny thing, and I know that this should go without saying, but I can make all the widgets that I make, but I'm only going to sell them if my distributor buys them from me, right? I know this is all elementary, but my distributor's only going to buy them from me if his contractor buys them from him. And the contractor's not going to buy them if he can sell all these jobs, but he can't get them installed. So there's a direct link for us suppliers.

So, please listen on this and let's do better together. Let's do better. We need to work with all these, every level to try to help the labor pool, to try to help train these people. And we also want, my parting words on this, I think, is not just get them hired. Oh yeah, I think I'll go be a metal roofer, that sounds like fun. We need you to be a good metal roofer because it hurts the whole industry if we don't. So let's just not hire people and convince them that this is a great place to be.

Let's have the proper training. And that comes from the suppliers and manufacturers. That comes from the trade associations. And if we don't work together on this, so we need to hire people and get them convinced they want a career — and hopefully a career not a job, because the job means I'm going to work until I find something else, and then we're in this constant cycle of retraining. So we want to find people that want a career, but we want to find people that want a career and want to learn to do it right. Or we're going to continually be firing somebody because they're doing bad work. Then we got all the bad issues and we got the costs and we got all those negative things. And every bad job, whether your company did it or our competitor did it, reflects badly upon the industry, right?

Every good job reflects good on the industry. So we as a supplier, if you don't buy my product, I need every product you buy from my competitor to work spectacular for you. If I'm an installer and I don't get the job, none of us get every job, never happens. None of us could handle all the work. I need you to do a great job, right? Because if you put on a subpar metal roof, that hurts all of us in the industry, right? But if you put on a great metal roof and everybody, oh my God, you got that metal roof that they built down at Joe's place. Do you see that? That thing is beautiful. Whether that was yours or not, you're going to reap the benefits of that day in and day out. So build the pipeline, work the pipeline top to bottom, in conjunction with the associations, in conjunction with your suppliers and just don't expect everybody else to do it. Get involved. Just get involved.

Jenny Yu: Yeah. I love it. I mean, it's such a holistic answer to this question. So thank you for really getting all those levels that are so important.

Randy Chaffee: Well thank you. You're welcome. And thank you for the opportunity because that's a hot button with me. None of us operate in the industry alone.

Jenny Yu: Exactly.

Randy Chaffee: And we can't operate alone. We have to operate together. We go compete for the job. And at the end of the day, if I'm competing against you, I'm going to do my best to get the job because that's what we do. But at the end of the day, we've got to keep making the pie bigger because even if I don't increase market share, which we're always trying to do, but 5% of a million dollars is better than 5% of $500,000. I mean, that's simple math. So let's just keep increasing the pie, and we all win. And so get involved. Get involved. You've just got to get involved. Awesome.

Jenny Yu: Thank you so much, Randy.

Randy Chaffee: You're welcome. I appreciate being able to chat about stuff I'm passionate about, so thank you.

Jenny Yu: Thank you. See you next time.

Randy Chaffee: Oh, you got it. Bye-bye.