March/April 2015
Finding people suited
to scrap processing work is a constant struggle, recyclers say. If your
recruitment and retention strategies are falling short, these ideas might help.
By Michael McAuliffe
North,
South, East, and West: Where is the scrapyard labor pool the best? Not here,
say recyclers in nearly every region of the United States. Finding and
retaining qualified workers is a constant fight. Owners and managers say the
obstacles they face—competition from other industries for both specialists and
unskilled workers, an education system that is not producing enough workers
with both technical and “soft” skills, and younger workers who seem to have a
different attitude toward the workplace than their parents and grandparents—leave
them constantly seeking new ways to identify people who have the attitude,
aptitude, and adaptability needed to work in a scrap recycling facility.
This industry is not alone in its complaints.
The Manpower Group (Milwaukee), which connects companies to prospective
employees, provides some stark numbers. In its ninth annual Talent Shortage
Survey, the company found that 40 percent of U.S. employers it surveyed last
year reported having difficulty filling open jobs. The survey, for which
Manpower interviewed more than 37,000 employers in the United States and 41
other countries and territories, revealed the biggest shortages were in the
skilled trades, engineers, and technicians in production, operations,
maintenance, and other roles.
Facing that employment landscape, scrap
recyclers are attacking the problem with a range of approaches, from the common
to the more unusual.
Work Force Weaknesses
Commercial
driving skills seem to be most in demand in the scrap industry today, as well
as experience with common scrap handling equipment. The toughest hiring task
for Far West Recycling (Portland, Ore.), for example, is to find new
maintenance workers and mechanics, says Keith Ristau, president and CEO. “With
the job market tightening all the time, it’s just getting tougher and tougher.”
Operators of forklifts and front-end loaders are getting more difficult to find
as well, he says.
The more than 75 workers at Tri-State Iron
& Metal Co. (Texarkana, Ark.) need heavy equipment maintenance and
operations skills, says company president Howard Glick. The work has become
much more technical due to sophisticated computer controls and processes, he
points out. “Running a modern shredding plant and nonferrous sorting operation
requires a work force that understands how to optimize the equipment it
operates to yield maximum output and quality.”
Most of those interviewed say they’re not
looking for a specific technical skill set, however, so much as a set of
qualities that would make someone a good candidate for scrap processing work.
Rose Mock, president of Allied Scrap Processors (Lakeland, Fla.), says the
ideal employee for her 21-person yard has to have good communication skills,
has to like people, has to be able to handle a variety of tasks on any given
day, and doesn’t mind getting dirty. “They have to like the environment,” she
says. “You know, it’s dirty, it’s loud, it’s different—it’s not a widget-making
job.”
Robert Toth, human resources and safety manager
at Metalico Annaco (Akron, Ohio), describes in detail what characteristics his
company is seeking. “For general laborers, we look for people who have a [high
school] diploma … have the physical qualifications and are free from any
illegal substance use or abuse, have stamina and [the] ability to do manual labor,
have good manual dexterity and good hand-eye coordination, enjoy working with
their hands, enjoy working outdoors, have a fairly high degree of mechanical
aptitude, have good critical thinking skills, can see the big picture and
possess the ability to see a job through to completion, [and] have at least
basic knowledge of ferrous and nonferrous metals. Ideally, they will have
had some scrap sorting experience [and] are able to interact well with
customers, co-workers, and superiors.” Most of all, Toth says, “I look for
people who want to work, not just those who need to work; people who are
career-minded, [who] want to grow, yet are not opposed to starting at the
bottom and learning the business from the ground up.”
At the supervisory and management level, Toth
says, “knowledge, skill, ability, and experience are very important criteria.”
Metalico Annaco expects these candidates to have at least an associate’s
degree, and “business savvy is a must,” he adds. “Versatility and
adaptability are more important than a 4.0 [grade point average]. We need
people who can effortlessly, genuinely communicate with customers, prospective
customers, employees, managers, and CEOs. People who can and want to
provide service beyond the customers’ expectations, ‘can-do’ people, not those
who sit around waiting to be told what to do.”
Working in the scrap industry requires a broad
depth of intellect, adds William Cook, human resources, safety, and
environmental manager at Skagit River Steel & Recycling (Burlington,
Wash.), as evidenced by the need to be able to identify different grades of
metals. “You have to be pretty bright; you have to be pretty sharp; and you
have to deal with people,” he says. Mark Lewon, president of Utah Metal Works
(Salt Lake City), agrees. He’d rather train new workers on scrapyard equipment
and processes, he says. What he really wants is “people who can think.”
Mock and Cook say it’s difficult to find
workers with those skills, and the research supports their observations. In
Manpower Group’s survey, employers said they struggle to fill jobs because so
many candidates lack what are called “soft skills.” Those skills include
creative problem-solving, critical thinking, and being able to work well in a
team, says Sean Lynch, legislative and public affairs manager for the
Association for Career and Technical Education (Alexandria, Va.). “Employers
report consistently [that] entry-level employees, they just don’t have the
skills,” Lynch says.
Beyond the skills gap, there’s an attitude gap,
many say. Greg Brown, owner of Raleigh Metal Recycling and two other scrapyards
in North Carolina, as well as the Benlee trailer manufacturing company in
Romulus, Mich., says he has worked in a range of industries across his career,
from lighting to automobile and monorail systems to high-end residential
construction and renovation. Today, Brown sees a major division in the U.S.
labor force: “Some people are too highly skilled, and some people just don’t
want to work hard.”
Many younger people fit in both categories, Toth
says. “They’re highly educated, for the most part, and many don’t want to do
manual labor,” he says. “If they didn’t learn it in a college classroom, if
they didn’t learn it in a book, they don’t want to do it.”
Among the places Toth has gone looking for
employees are high school shop classes. “You can snag one or two [hires]
occasionally,” he says, but it has not always panned out. Their initial
reaction is positive, he says, then reality sets in. They find the work is hard
and, at times, dirty, and they don’t want to do it. Cook says younger people
exhibit “a sense of entitlement, you know, and their skills don’t meet what
their expectations are.”
Lewon echoes those sentiments. Young people are
most interested in working in communications or in the video game industry, he
says, because that’s what they’ve learned to do really well. “If your job
description does not match those, it’s going to be a lot harder to fill it.”
Competition from other industries has been a
problem as well. The U.S. automotive industry has come back strongly from the
recession, with carmakers adding more than 27,900 jobs in 2014 alone, according
to Center for Automotive Research (Ann Arbor, Mich.) data. The group estimates
the industry will add another 46,000 jobs by 2018, not to mention the many
related jobs with parts makers and other affiliated industries. Many of those
plants are in northeastern Ohio, Toth says, and as those employers hire more
unskilled workers and pay higher hourly rates, they are competing with Metalico
Annaco. In the auto industry, “it’s factory work, but it’s indoors,” he points
out on a late-January day that began with the temperature in Akron below zero.
The labor market for truck drivers is
particularly tight, recyclers say. The recovering economy has led to more
materials being moved around the country, says Randy Goodman, former senior
vice president of nonferrous and general manager of the Louisville facility of
Freedom Metals (Louisville, Ky.). “When you’re dealing with trucks,” he says,
“you’re dealing with every other industry.”
Competition for Class 8 truck drivers—those who
drive the heaviest vehicles, such as dump trucks and tractor trailers—has led
Brown to boost his truckers’ pay, purchase new trucks, and have the trucks
professionally detailed regularly. It’s too early to tell, however, whether
these efforts are working to attract and retain drivers, he says.
Recruitment Strategies
One
hiring approach many of these firms share is their use of temporary employees.
The U.S. temporary employee work force has grown from roughly 1.9 million in
2009 to 2.8 million in 2014, according to a report from consulting firm G.
Palmer & Associates (Newport Beach, Calif.), based on data from the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (Washington, D.C.). Even though temps are only about
2 percent of the labor market, roughly 10 percent of all new jobs reported
since the economic recovery began have been at temp agencies, says Greg Palmer,
the firm’s founder.
Ristau estimates that 75 to 80 percent of Far
West Recycling’s workers started as temporary employees. “It gives both parties
[the employer and the employee] time to see if it’s a good fit before going
through the whole hiring and onboarding process,” he says. Skagit River’s Cook
says the temp-to-perm hiring approach has given the company “our best rate of
success.” The temp agency takes the job of verifying each candidate’s work
history out of his company’s hands, he explains, and this approach gives the
company time to see if the worker will pan out.
SA
Recycling (Orange, Calif.) also likes the tryout period it gets when it uses
temporary workers to fill entry-level positions at its 56 facilities, says Skip
White, corporate human resources generalist. Typically, after three months, SA
puts those workers on the payroll as full-time employees. “By using the
agency’s training and background vetting, SA is able to [bring on] employees
who are already familiar with our work environment and who have demonstrated
interest in a long-term relationship with SA,” he says.
When searching for management personnel,
Metalico Annaco has occasionally employed recruiters, Toth says, though he
describes them as “a little pricey.” Sometimes the company has no choice,
however, because some prospective employees don’t want their current employer
to know they are looking for a new job, he says.
Many of these recyclers also say they use state
employment offices to find workers. Far West did so for the first time in late
2014. “It’s too early to tell whether that’s going to work or not,” Ristau said
in a Jan. 30 interview. SA Recycling asks local workforce investment boards for
referrals, primarily in California, and it posts open positions to the state
job boards in California, Nevada, Arizona, and Texas, White says. Skagit River
lists its openings with its state unemployment office as well.
In addition to those more common recruiting
approaches, these recyclers had some more novel ways of finding workers:
Solicit referrals from
current employees.
A “Friends and Family Program” has been a real hit with the nearly 100 workers
his companies employ, Brown says. Under the five-year-old program, if a current
employee refers someone whom the company hires, and the new employee stays for
at least six months, the employee who made the referral receives $600.
Brown
says he can’t remember where the idea for the program came from, but it has
resulted in about a dozen new employees, including eight at Raleigh Metal
Recycling. “We think that’s probably been one of the better ideas we’ve had,”
he says. Temporary employment agencies have provided a larger number of workers
to the company in that time period, he adds, but the quality of the employee
hired through “Friends and Family” has been better.
Reach out to veterans’
groups.
SA has a substantial number of workers who are Army, Navy, and Marine Corps
veterans. The company is not a federal contractor, White points out, so it’s
under no obligation to give veterans a preference in hiring, but it likes to
recognize their contributions to the country. Veterans have skills other
candidates might not possess, such as being able to think critically and work
in a team, White says, and they will have dealt with diverse groups of people
during their military service. “We find veterans, especially those with
logistics backgrounds, to be very good employees with us,” he says.
Look at pay and
benefits.
Mock believes that to draw good employees, benefits are as important as paying
good wages. Allied Scrap offers its workers medical benefits and vacation time,
she says. In its effort to attract and keep good workers, Skagit River’s
minimum wage is $15 an hour, Cook says, and the company provides full medical
and retirement benefits and a scholarship program for workers’ children.
Think of all company
marketing as recruitment marketing. “Curiously, our largest number of unsolicited
applications come from our 1-800-GOT-SCRAP number,” SA’s White says. “It is
common, especially for commercial drivers, for an applicant to see our number
on the side of our vehicles and call for employment opportunities.” Cook says
some people simply drop by the Skagit River office looking for a job.
Connect with those in
higher ed.
Toth has looked at community colleges and technical schools for potential
Metalico Annaco employees who have engineering skills, and “I’ve had some luck
with that,” he says. SA’s openings for higher skilled positions are posted to
the job boards at colleges and universities, White says.
Building longer-term relationships with
educators could prove valuable for meeting future work force needs, Lynch says.
In advanced manufacturing—a field with occupations that include machinists,
production supervisors, and engineers—education and developing an information
campaign about the industry’s labor force needs can help establish a pipeline
of talent, Lynch says. The local resources have to be sufficient so that
technical education, including at community colleges, can take place, he
acknowledges, but it’s just as important that students learn what jobs are out
there. “The jobs have changed,” Lynch says. “Mom and Dad don’t even know what’s
going on in an advanced manufacturing facility, so they can’t even talk about
it with their kids” to give them ideas for future careers.
Despite his misgivings about the current labor
pool, Toth still is optimistic. “I believe that the new generation of
workers—with some guidance—possesses the potential to do great things in our
industry,” he says. “Their way may be a little different than ours, but it’s
possibly more exciting. That may be not so bad because in today’s economy there
are only two types of companies—those that are changing, and those that are
closed.”
Michael McAuliffe is a
freelance writer based in Greenbelt, Md.
The Scrapyard
Apprentice
The
U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C.) has invested $2 billion over the
past four years with community colleges around the country to increase
apprenticeship programs, says Jason Kuruvilla, a spokesman for the department.
Targeted industries include high tech, health care, information technology, and
advanced manufacturing. Some scrap recycling jobs—including machinist,
electrician, welder, and crane operator—may fit within the scope of advanced
manufacturing, Kuruvilla says.
One company or a group of companies can develop
an apprenticeship program for a specific job. The program must offer both
structured on-the-job training and additional off-site training, such as at a
technical school or community college. The apprentices are guaranteed wage
increases as they gain skills, and the program must result in their receiving
an occupational credential that’s recognized nationwide as a qualification for
the job for which they were an apprentice.
“One of the challenges we’re facing is [that] a
lot of employers don’t realize apprenticeship is an option,” he says. The
Department of Labor has teams in every state that can help employers bring on
apprentices. For more information, visit www.dol.gov/apprenticeship.