The market for top talent is as tight as it has ever been. Great jobs are hard to come by. Breaking through the noise, and standing out in an ultra competitive market doesn’t happen by accident.
Join us in this 1-hour session to learn an easy and simple way to stand out and land the job of your dreams.
Key Learning Concepts:
5-step formula to differentiate yourself from the competition
Identify how to align your strengths to the key competencies of the job
Benchmark the top traits that every Search Committee seeks
The characteristics of great application materials
Tyler Bloom is the founder of Bloom Golf Partners. A former golf course superintendent and turf professional, Tyler’s love of all things golf began at the age of six when he stepped onto the course for the first time.
Tyler has an Executive Certificate in Talent Acquisition from Cornell University and a degree in Turfgrass Science from Penn State University. With 20 years of experience in the golf and turfgrass industry, Tyler has worked directly with reputable club leaders at some of the most prestigious clubs to place over 100 professionals in executive and management level positions throughout the United States.
Are you ready to build a top-performing team that drives results? Our proven framework, methodologies, and implementation is based on our personal track record of developing world-class teams. In addition to talent acquisition, we provide leadership development and ongoing consultative services for the golf course and club industry. Our team has personally coached and mentored dozens of future golf course superintendents across the United States.
Apprenticeship program takes aim at helping solve labor shortage in NY’s turfgrass industry
By John Reitman
Golf course superintendents and sports turf managers throughout New York struggling to find help soon will have a new labor source to tap to quench pipeline to tap to alleviate their labor woes.
The New York State Turfgrass Association is finalizing a statewide registered apprenticeship program for the turfgrass industry. The program will help NYSTA employer partners find and secure talent for specialized skilled positions in an industry starved for trained and educated professionals by creating a career pathway for job seekers throughout New York on golf courses, sports facilities, athletic fields, lawn/landscape and other turf-oriented businesses.
The program provides a template to help employers provide state-approved training for an existing employee or a newly recruited worker, said Dom Morales, the retired SUNY Delhi instructor who is helping organize the project for NYSTA.
The New York State Department of Labor is in the final stages of approving the template. Once approved, the program will offer 4,000 hours of structured, on-the-job training and additional instruction through a host of cooperating partners.
The concept has been in the works since 2018. Once approved, the program will offer training, education and certification for groundskeeper – golf course, groundskeeper – sports turf and turf equipment technician.
“Programs like this have been discussed before,” Morales said. “This program is the first time something like this has been done on a statewide basis.”
Bloom Golf Partners helped develop core competencies for the training program and will help market the concept to employers throughout New York. So far, six employers have signed on to either train an existing employee or use the apprenticeship to attract new help.
“I saw this as a way to make an impact in the turf industry and solve a problem,” Bloom said.
“This is not just one faction of the turf industry. This is multiple factions coming together to solve a really big problem.”
Once the program is up and running, it will do so on a one-year probationary period.
“There are a lot of checks and balances,” Morales said.
“It is currently in the hands of the Department of Labor, and it should be approved by late May, or early June.”
There is an increasing number of high school students across the state who at least express a passing interest in careers in agriculture and horticulture. As many as 140 high schools in New York have a Future Farmers of America chapter or some other type of agriculture education program.
Morales and Bloom are going to Syracuse May 12-14 for the state’s FFA conference that is expected to attract more than 2,000 high school students interested in some sort of agricultural career.
“Ag-ed has exploded here,” Morales said.
“The apprenticeship program also would be ideal for a veteran, or someone looking for a career change. This is where the rubber meets the road.”
Tyler Bloom is the founder of Bloom Golf Partners. A former golf course superintendent and turf professional, Tyler’s love of all things golf began at the age of six when he stepped onto the course for the first time.
Tyler has an Executive Certificate in Talent Acquisition from Cornell University and a degree in Turfgrass Science from Penn State University. With 20 years of experience in the golf and turfgrass industry, Tyler has worked directly with reputable club leaders at some of the most prestigious clubs to place over 100 professionals in executive and management level positions throughout the United States.
Are you ready to build a top-performing team that drives results? Our proven framework, methodologies, and implementation is based on our personal track record of developing world-class teams. In addition to talent acquisition, we provide leadership development and ongoing consultative services for the golf course and club industry. Our team has personally coached and mentored dozens of future golf course superintendents across the United States.
With candidates holding more leverage and options than ever, it might be time to adjust your approach to job searches. Tyler Bloom offers 10 tips to help navigate the evolving process.
The employer-employee dynamic has flipped, and maybe for good. Good candidates are scarce, whether because they left jobs during the Great Resignation in no hurry to return, or simply because they know the leverage they possess. Your interview process needs to stand out. You need to be efficient and impressive – for the sake of both the interviewers and the in-demand interviewees.
This tip sheet will help you improve on a few of the critical skills needed.
1. Self-evaluation
There are so many factors which determine the volume of candidates a position will receive, including salary, location, and an organization’s ability to grow and develop. By taking an honest look at your organization’s reputation and culture, you can better determine what kind of candidate you’re looking for and the profile of a person who would excel in the organization.
2. Open-mindedness
Whether you are actively in a search process or will be filling a position in the near future, open-mindedness with your candidate pool is paramount. While you may be looking for a certain amount of experience or education, the traditional pool of industry trained and educated workers isn’t what it was five to 10 years ago.
3. Know your ideal hire
Set a job target that includes behavioral and cognitive requirements by having key stakeholders within your organization identify the key motivators and drives of a specific position. Ensure that everyone is aligned with the expectations of the role. Key contributors to define the role could be top performers in the job or those who frequently work with this individual. Utilize assessments like those from DISC, Meyers-Briggs and Predictive Index to help you determine those requirements.
4. Make sure position responsibilities are clearly defined
The arbitrary title and responsibilities of any one specific role varies by organization. Getting clear on the precise responsibilities of the position, knowledge, skills and aptitude will be much easier to determine the type of candidate that would be a fit and to achieve your desired results. In addition, ensure salary commensurates with the skillsets you’re seeking by studying regional compensation reports of comparable organizations.
5. Create a compelling job advertisement
Check to see if there are any conflicting qualities. Consider the length of job description. Highlight your culture, upcoming or previous projects, advancement of team members, and be transparent about compensation and benefits.
6. Target traditional and consider non-traditional candidates
The best employees are gainfully employed, and they often speak and network with other top candidates. Beyond internal networking, target audiences of similar backgrounds. The traditional avenues include industry specific job boards, industry networks and peers, universities and local associations. Consider alternative sources such as social media, trade associations and apprenticeship programs to reach various audiences.
7. Evaluate beyond the briefcase
To determine if a candidate is a good fit, you need to look beyond the résumé or the interview. Our instincts can tell us important information. But when we rely on nothing but our gut, we open ourselves to headaches. A strong interview process doesn’t always mean a strong candidate and résumé are often fluffed. Read between the lines of someone’s resume and find the transferrable skills which could make a candidate a diamond in the rough. Real-world experience doing the work you are looking to have done should count for something even if the education doesn’t fit your criteria.
Conduct a consistent process
To ensure objectivity, questions should be consistent, objective and measurable. Use similar interview questions versus random conversations. Don’t forget to do your due diligence in using background and reference checks to find any information on the candidate.
9. Communicate regularly
The depth of quality candidates you get for a job means absolutely nothing if you can’t act in a timely manner to keep the candidates interested and abreast of their place in the search process. Going multiple weeks without any form of communication with a candidate is a good way to have the candidate lose interest or question the quality of the leadership of a club, and potentially have them drop out of the search process.
10. Commit time to the process
If the role you’re hiring for is an important asset to your organization, you must dedicate time to sourcing, screening candidates, updating them on the process of the search, scheduling phone and in-person interviews, and the final onboarding process.
About The Author
Tyler Bloom is the founder of Bloom Golf Partners. A former golf course superintendent and turf professional, Tyler’s love of all things golf began at the age of six when he stepped onto the course for the first time.
Tyler has an Executive Certificate in Talent Acquisition from Cornell University and a degree in Turfgrass Science from Penn State University. With 20 years of experience in the golf and turfgrass industry, Tyler has worked directly with reputable club leaders at some of the most prestigious clubs to place over 100 professionals in executive and management level positions throughout the United States.
Are you ready to build a top-performing team that drives results? Our proven framework, methodologies, and implementation is based on our personal track record of developing world-class teams. In addition to talent acquisition, we provide leadership development and ongoing consultative services for the golf course and club industry. Our team has personally coached and mentored dozens of future golf course superintendents across the United States.
Tyler Bloom, Owner and President of Bloom Golf Partners returns to give the Earthworks Podcast an update of the state of the work force for 2022. Tyler founded his consulting business at the beginning of the COVID pandemic to address concerns with work force issues in the turf industry. In today’s industry the single biggest conversation continues to be “how do we find qualified employees?”. Most golf courses and sports complexes report that they are about 40% down in staff and it is not getting any better. In addition, play is up substantially and golfers’ expectations are not changing much. Tyler’s company specializes in helping turf organizations find, hire and manage new employees to work in the industry. He shares his insights on how to manage new employee expectations and some ideas on what to expect as we move forward.
About The Author
Tyler Bloom is the founder of Bloom Golf Partners. A former golf course superintendent and turf professional, Tyler’s love of all things golf began at the age of six when he stepped onto the course for the first time.
Tyler has an Executive Certificate in Talent Acquisition from Cornell University and a degree in Turfgrass Science from Penn State University. With 20 years of experience in the golf and turfgrass industry, Tyler has worked directly with reputable club leaders at some of the most prestigious clubs to place over 100 professionals in executive and management level positions throughout the United States.
Are you ready to build a top-performing team that drives results? Our proven framework, methodologies, and implementation is based on our personal track record of developing world-class teams. In addition to talent acquisition, we provide leadership development and ongoing consultative services for the golf course and club industry. Our team has personally coached and mentored dozens of future golf course superintendents across the United States.
Four years ago, I sat in my office chair at Sparrows Point Country Club posting job ads on websites and Craigslist, banging my head against the wall to find potential staff amid the mid-season golf calendar. Craigslist? Really? We could not facilitate the type of staff to advance our operations, let alone field enough employees to complete elementary maintenance programs.
I did not have the benefit of modern facilities, average pay scale offerings or a pedigreed work environment to fall back on. I battled an aging infrastructure while still dealing with the pressures of delivering a product for a membership with lofty expectations. However, the labor challenges we face are not discriminate of public, private, resort, high-end or low-end facilities.
In my first two years as a golf course superintendent, I had been through two assistants, two equipment managers and a rotating door of seasonal employees. My pedigree at high-end and world-class golf facilities meant little to nothing as a source of recruitment or motivation.
This was as rugged and uncomfortable of an environment as I had ever been thrown into, and I had two options — quit or solve the problem.
Solving the problem
While scrambling in the process of restructuring maintenance programs, a guidance counselor from a nearby high school stopped in. He was searching for businesses that would help support a work-study program formed by the Baltimore County Public School system for the 2015-16 school year. I really didn’t give the gentleman much time as I knew our “seasonal” team would be diminishing once school returned, and so would my labor budget.
As the season slowed down and I had time to catch my breath, I recognized I needed to spend the 2015 offseason more on staff development than agronomics. We had a core group of millennials and a handful of crafty veterans who I felt could become mentors for this new generation. Embracing the changing workforce would be the first step to address our staffing issues.
I brought on our first work-study student in the late fall of 2015. What did I have to lose? I couldn’t muster a consistent pool of candidates, so anybody — literally, any body — would be better than nothing. The guidance counselor provided me a structured curriculum the student needed to follow. At the time, I thought how silly this was to embrace high school students, who had no business operating a $70,000 rough mower, let alone demonstrating the ability to consistently show up for scheduled work shifts. The well-documented challenges across the industry with millennials was nothing we were immune to.
Irrigation is a specialized task with the potential to generate career interest in golf course maintenance.
The work-study program begins in September with a requirement of 10 hours on a weekly basis until the school year ends in May. Like many areas of the country, the golf season is winding down in the late fall with reduced staff sizes. However, I could easily find 10 hours collectively among my staff that could be allocated to one student. Starting small with one student can be a handful enough without the proper protocols and processes in place.
As time progressed with the student, I found a unique aspect within this situation. I could use the student to help facilitate maintenance as needed — leaf cleanup, weekend preparations, bunker maintenance or other entry-level tasks. I created some flexibility that had not existed. His comfort level grew the longer he was with our staff. What seemed like a liability turned into an asset.
I needed to be all in on this journey to create my workforce and work environment. As the months moved on, I leveraged my industry network to educate and interact with our staff with monthly professional development seminars. The hope was to find one or two connections throughout this process to motivate our team and keep them engaged to grow and advance.
I empowered our core group to take the initiative to become leaders, and coach and train the next crop of employees. They had an opportunity to work with this student on a trial basis. As a result, our core group would acquire the skills and confidence needed to grow into more advanced roles.
Growth Spurts
Now, with a core staff becoming more equipped to a team concept and held responsible for improving the work environment, I had the right framework to recruit, attract and develop. As each season passed, our onboarding and training procedures became stronger and more seamless for new employees.
With the help of the guidance counselor, he connected the dots to five other school districts within 10 miles of Sparrows Point. Following each initial meet and greet, I began to find applications coming to my desk on a monthly basis. All with similar credentials and a business card of their respective guidance counselor as an informal stamp of approval.
As our staffing numbers started to increase, it allowed me to improve our hiring processes to attract individuals already in the workforce. Balancing quantity with quality was a good position to be in. I now had the leverage to create a “next man up” culture.
Developing the work-study program provided an opportunity to stay focused on a central purpose — mentorship. Reintroducing this concept would help establish the type of culture I was accustomed to in my early career. Through engagement in the industry over the last few years, I have been able to introduce the game of golf with career opportunities.
As an example, in 2018, one of our work-study students assisted our irrigation specialist throughout the year with repairs and servicing, then attended a Toro Lynx training seminar while also assisting with snow removal and clubhouse grounds maintenance during the winter months. I took the student on a field trip to Penn State University to meet with the turfgrass department. When the season picked back up, this student became a huge asset to our operation not just with irrigation repairs, but also understanding the entire property and flow of our workday. His success became a benchmark for incoming summer seasonal help, and also challenged our core staff to step up their game.
Results
Our turnover rates in 2014 were over 50 percent with little to no attrition of being connected to Sparrows Point Country Club. Since then, we have seen retention rates climb as high as 87 percent and have had little to no challenge filling roles within our department.
Our high school program went from one intern in 2015 to 10 in 2019. If not for budgetary restrictions, that number would increase. As we have developed relationships within the school community, the guidance counselors have acted as our recruiters. All that time spent in the first two years of the program have now created an endless supply of candidates.
A large percentage of our success can be attributed to working with guidance counselors and establishing relationships with five other school systems in our community. Attending job fairs, participating in mock interviews and engaging with students in community events were all critically important.
Many people may wonder if they have the time to engage with the schools to this level. At one job fair alone at Patapsco High School, I spoke with more than 150 students looking for seasonal and summer employment. On average, I spend 15 to 30 minutes each day with our staff on professional development via industry or non-industry channels. This is easily infused in morning meetings or lunch breaks, so I am not taking away from production.
Within our department, we have promoted advancement in many forms — internally and throughout the industry. Earlier this year, a board member recruited one of our fast risers due to the type of development programs implemented at Sparrows Point. In 2017, two former assistants moved on to head roles, one at a respected Maryland golf facility, the other at a Division III university. They were replaced with two ambitious gentlemen who started as high school students in 2013 and 2014 and have gained the technical and professional skills to advance into assistant roles in our operation.
We will become the first golf course in the state of Maryland to begin a formal youth apprenticeship program in 2020. Working with non-industry leaders as part of Baltimore County’s Workforce Development Committee, it is mind-blowing how little mentorship and professional development are part of their work cultures. We have a competitive advantage that needs to be shared to bring in quality people.
One of the best results has nothing to do with staff retention or advancement, but diversity. Our team is built with individuals who had no perspective of the game of golf or professional opportunities in the industry. The students who have come into our workplace bring various cultural backgrounds, ethnicities and personalities. It generates a larger purpose than growing grass: creating an environment of teamwork and respect. These were two key principles we lacked five years ago and they were sparked by high school students.
Facing the No. 1 issue in the industry
This all started with the idea to think outside the box, beyond traditional means of staff recruitment and development. Going against the grain, figuratively and literally, has provided a path to endless opportunities to make an impact.
Through trial and error, I recognized a golden opportunity in my own backyard to develop a comprehensive mentorship program to address our immediate issues while also creating a sustainable program. I no longer needed to compete with elite country clubs in Baltimore, D.C. or the Mid-Atlantic, or local businesses. I could embrace the uniqueness of Sparrows Point Country Club and its impact in the community.
Never in my imagination would the program turn into this type of feeder system. To expect this to work as your primary means of labor would garner false hope. Today’s labor market is challenging traditional frameworks and systems. But not embracing the opportunity to grow from within your community and championing internal development will leave you banging your head against the wall, staring at Craigslist ads in the very near future.
Tyler Bloom is the founder of Bloom Golf Partners. A former golf course superintendent and turf professional, Tyler’s love of all things golf began at the age of six when he stepped onto the course for the first time.
Tyler has an Executive Certificate in Talent Acquisition from Cornell University and a degree in Turfgrass Science from Penn State University. With 20 years of experience in the golf and turfgrass industry, Tyler has worked directly with reputable club leaders at some of the most prestigious clubs to place over 200 professionals in executive and management-level positions throughout the United States.
