David Lobato 22:18
A lot of meetings, whenever, what we call is like a rep qualification call. So if you wouldn’t have an opening, I would set up a call with the manager, I would ask them, give me 10 questions that you would ask this candidate. And we’ll ask those questions along the way. And see one, how do they respond to we also have proven tests where it’s a multiple choice test that people can do, but it basically has questions regarding certain skill sets. And the third way is when somebody interviews are the client will typically do some type of mechanical aptitude tests, to see how well do they really work in the sense of scale.
Greg Owens 23:00
Yeah, that’s, that’s great. Um, we actually have them come in and, and, and take something apart, put it back together again and a lot of ways or, you know, paint a window inside our office so we can, we can actually see how they do it, you know, and, and and you know, there’s like usually like a problem to the window or something like that to the vet gotta figure out or ask questions about like, you know, how good a job do you want this to be done and that kind of thing. Yep. And, and when it comes to facilities managers, um, what, what types of what criteria are you looking for as far as like knowledge base? Generally, I know that it can be different if they’re, if they’ve gotten he had experience or something like that.
David Lobato 23:48
I mean, generally, we’re looking at one how, how does this individual communicate? What are their communication skills with us? What are their follow up skills because When, when my team is recruiting a candidate, I’ll tell my clients Give me three to four business days to find one or two candidates. And my recruiters are screening roughly 50 people a day. So, that being said, communication is one of the big things within facilities. We also want to see how do they manage working on multiple projects at the same time? I’ve had almost all my clients tell me, David, we want to see what the facilities manager or the candidate is their response to vendor when the vendors not working fast enough.
Hmm. And, and how do they talk to the vendor? What do they do?
So those are some of the screening questions that will actually kind of like walk me through a time that a vendor wasn’t performing on time. And they don’t Know how to respond or give examples of that. Those are indicators or are they a good candidate? Are they not?
So, I’m not sure if that answers your question.
Greg Owens 25:10
Yeah, no, it does. It’s helpful because, you know, it’s, it’s I like this analogy that you guys are trying to take the guesswork out of hiring. And, and you’re, you’re probably more seasoned that asking the questions and weeding through the people. And I like this thing I got from. I think it’s Gary Vaynerchuk said it was high in a lot of ways though hiring is guessing. And, and as an owner and an entrepreneur. So the hiring part is the guessing part. But the firing part is the knowing part, right? But what you really want to do is go through all that trouble though. You want to do the best job you can in that upfront interview, and finding the Right candidates, what is some of your techniques around getting the right cultural fit? Because we’ve worked in lots of different companies, and we can completely tell the difference between certain companies, right, like we work for a financial institution, you know, and it’s all filled with accountants. And that culture is completely different than when we go to a company like Spin or we go to or google google with all of the, you know, the beanbags are everywhere and there’s toys everywhere and that kind of thing. Yeah, I mean,
David Lobato 26:40
one of the things that I typically do and I say typically because I haven’t been able to do it ever since the Coronavirus, is anytime we have an opening, Mm hmm. I’ll take whatever recruiter is recruiting that position out to the client site. And we’re observing, hey, what is the culture came this company can other companies will, I’ll ask my clients like, just give me a tour, or Hey, I can walk into the facility for 5-10 minutes. That’s all I need. And that’s where we start picking up things. But I also asked a lot of my clients. Do you want somebody from the same industry? Do you want somebody from, from the commercial real estate industry? Do you want someone from the maintenance industry? What is the best type of candidate that you want for this position?
And it makes sense.
Greg Owens 27:36
That’s great.
And so in this time, you mentioned that like, you’ve you’ve had to change your work practices tremendously. In that you can’t really tour the companies like like you once did, how have you guys, um, switched in and sort of adapted to what is our new Reality right now.
David Lobato 28:02
The biggest way we switched is, for example, we just closed. We have a client in the Mission Bay Area, and they’re in the biopharma industry. And they asked us like, David, we want to facilities tech, they needed just have five years of experience, and they need to have a facilities but also some type of supervisory experience. So for us, we just kept it very generic or it’s like, okay, we’re only going to recruit candidates that are in the biopharma industry. We’re only going to recruit candidates, I have five years of experience. And within a week, we sent two resumes and one person at the job this morning. Okay. So, a lot, a lot of it honestly is just listening to what the clients want. Mm hmm. Because they’ll tell you what they need and in my experience, every facilities manager I’ve ever spoken to Anytime I asked them, How are you doing, they always say we are extremely busy, we’re extremely swamped. So I try to keep it very minimal, where I’ll have my main read qualification call. And after that, the only other time I’m going to call them is when I have candidates for them, and I’ll tell them greetings. I’m gonna call you at this time, or two or three candidates for this position.
Greg Owens 29:25
That’s got to be very helpful for them. I can I can imagine, especially right now, so many facilities managers that I’ve talked to, you know, their workload has increased dramatically with the unknowns of COVID-19. And how to get people back into the building and how to do it safely and, and changing things up and they’ve had to, like, you know, their learning curve in the last three to four months has skyrocketed in what they need to sort of how it’s a sort of a new approach. buildings, you know, everything has to be looked at. Especially inside like multi use buildings or in in in skyscrapers right where it is multiple different floors and different companies on them. Yep. What else? Have you seen the I know the biotech industry has been doing well, what other what other areas do you see? Like a need for facilities and tech
David Lobato 30:29
within facility with simplicity and I’ve seen a lot of around the tech companies are basically closed for the rest of the year. So they’ve had they’ve unfortunately had to have to stop hiring. I have seen some hospitals continue to hire, but others have not hired and part of that is because of electric surgery. Because there’s no there’s no elective surgery. They’re not getting additional space. Keep on hiring. Right. So every hospital has been different. However, I have seen a lot of companies outsource more with construction companies to get work done. So, for us, outside of the biopharma and the facilities openings there, we’ve seen a big jump in openings within the construction service industry.
Greg Owens 31:28
Yeah, I can see that everybody I know is super busy in the construction industry. And especially that, you know, there’s like been a pent up demand in a lot of ways and then a lot of changes needing to be made to the facilities and that kind of thing. What about within the universities what what do you hear going on there as far as facilities managers go and and them getting ready for students to come back possibly.
David Lobato 31:59
Right now within both, I can tell you within UCSF and Stanford, they’re not hiring party work for them right now. And UCSF is on the higher freeze until July of 2021.
Oh, so and this is both the campus and the you know, the hospital.
Greg Owens 32:18
Right, right. Yeah, it’s it’s gonna be a rough. Fall and Winter, I think especially, you know, especially once we get through this, you know, summers feels good. You’re able to get outside but once once that’s not able to happen and people are supposed to be back at school and they’re not able to go back. And I can only imagine, especially with all the economic numbers coming out right now about how bad things are and being an election year. I keep forgetting that, that. For us during an election year, there’s always a major slowdown in activity within the tumors. months before the election year, this year being everything so polarizing, and, you know, the civil unrest. And we’re still in the middle of a pandemic that’s continuing to grow here. I can only imagine what the Fall is going to bring.
David Lobato 33:16
Well, I think that I think that was the basically, all non essential business shut down for three to four weeks. You have a lot of companies trying to catch up on those three or four weeks that were missed. Yeah. So that being said, there. That’s what’s kept a lot of companies busy, but as well, a lot of companies still have X amount of budget that they spend this year.
So the but historically,
we’ve seen for example, or construction service industry specifically be busy q3 and q4. And that’s not just here in the San Francisco But in Aerotek West region, which is everything from Colorado to SF, actually to Hawaii,
Greg Owens 34:09
Oh wow,
David Lobato 34:10
so, yeah.
Greg Owens 34:13
And and what do you see is like opportunities within that within the industry?
David Lobato 34:21
within which industry facilities or within?
Greg Owens 34:24
in facilities Yeah. Like or or even within your own company and what you guys are doing because it’s like nice to focus on some of the positive things that you guys can see happening and and that are coming.
David Lobato 34:35
I mean, the main thing that I see is I see a lot of people in facilities retiring over the next five to 10 years. Hmm. So, so we don’t have right now is any apprenticeship to help people get into facilities. Or you don’t have people saying, hey, you can get into facility This is a good paying job because Because no matter what I mean, after, after we go through this pandemic, people are still going to need facility workers on a day to day basis. And if you have nobody educating more of the youth to join this separate trade, and we’re going to keep on having this, we’re gonna have a high demand low supply of candidates out of these positions.
Greg Owens 35:26
Right, right. And what do you see what do you what would you recommend for somebody that wants to become a facilities manager or or even explore it? What do you recommend? What kind of skill set should they try to get away after and what would be the best route? Would it be going in being an apprentice and shadowing somebody or What’s your thoughts on that?
David Lobato 35:50
I think it depends because in as a facilities manager, you have two types. You have someone that’s very administrative base more vendor manager based and then you have those that are very hands on.
Greg Owens 36:03
Right?
David Lobato 36:04
So
I see I know, I believe it’s Berkeley City College has a facilities program that people can do, that people can do. Another option is even Cal Maritime Academy, you have a lot of building engineers that will be able to engineer for a couple years. And then they’ll go become a facilities manager. Just because they no longer want to work hands on, and even making machines. I have a couple of friends that I’ve met while doing this. And in the East Coast, you need a mechanical engineering degree before you’re a building engineer. Mm hmm. In the west coast, that’s not eating at all.
Greg Owens 36:50
I wonder if that’s I wonder if that’s because on the East Coast, the buildings have a tendency to be tendency to be much older than our buildings out here.
David Lobato 37:01
Potentially, I know. I have a friend who moved moved from New York County out here. And he basically was the engineering manager for a lot of the people out at Stanford and the certificates that he has. You don’t see them out here in the West Coast a lot.
Greg Owens 37:22
Right?
David Lobato 37:25
So yeah, yeah. And I mean, here’s the reality of California mandates that all brilliant engineers need to have a mechanical engineering degree. A lot of current workforces going to be struggling because they don’t have the secondaries.
Greg Owens 37:44
Yeah. And it might also be because of the tech industry and how the tech industry just sort of really adopted rapidly, like subcontracting a tremendous amount of that kind of work out. So then, like you mentioned before you become more of a manager have these different vendors that are going to come in and actually do the work? Yep. Yeah. Well, this has been great talking to you, David. And how could people find out more about you and Aerotek?
David Lobato 38:19
And then I’m available via LinkedIn or via my email,
which in my emails dlobato@aerotek.com.
But I’m pretty accessible at all times whenever anyone needs help either finding a job or if anyone needs help finding individuals.
Greg Owens 38:38
Right, right. And do you and what’s your main process for finding those individuals? Is it through like, like LinkedIn? Is it what what what is the best? What’s the best route that you’re usually finding them?
David Lobato 38:56
Yeah, so my recruiting team is the one that goes out and find the people So I have four recruiters that I manage. And every week they’re making about 250 calls asking for either referrals or seeing someone’s interested in a job. And they’re using. It can be Craigslist, it can be indeed it can be LinkedIn. But their job is to connect with people and become industry experts have been betting yourself.
Greg Owens 39:21
Well, this has been really, really good talking to you. I’ve learned a lot about the recruiting industry. It’s been great. I see Katrina is nodding in the background that she was learning new new things that she didn’t know. Any other parting thoughts here, David?
David Lobato 39:37
I mean, you guys ever need any other questions or help? Feel free to ask and I’ll be happy to help out.
Greg Owens 39:42
All right. Yeah. Sounds great. And we’ve been talking to David Lobato of Aerotek and this is the Watching Paint Dry Podcast. Thank you for listening.
Outro 40:04
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