Contributed by Jim Lynn
Finding a few qualified candidates to hire out of 7.9 million people can be trickier than you might think. 7.9 MILLION is how many people are currently unemployed in the U.S. according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Surely there must be plenty of great horticultural candidates in that huge number. It should be easy to find somebody who wants to work in our industry, right? Think again.
When looking for a strong candidate to work with our crew at Christie Dustman & Co., we are looking for a well-rounded individual that has experience, education, passion, and stamina. We don’t think that’s too much to ask for, is it? Well, it can be difficult to find such an individual who doesn’t mind working in all kinds of weather conditions!
We took a different approach to hiring this year and tried something new: if we can’t find candidates to match our needs, maybe we can take the candidates we have coming in and train them into the fine gardeners we are looking for!
This year, we had two candidates for crew member positions who were eager to get into the landscaping industry but didn’t have the experience or rounded knowledge base that we were looking for. However, both were willing to learn, have a passion for plants and importantly, are likable. Thus, they were high potential candidates, and we let them join the team for a trial period with the crew in the field. On a typical tryout, we have each individual work with each of 
our crew members to get feedback and see how adaptable and teachable they are.
Our new hiring approach has been a great success. If every tryout ended in success we wouldn’t have to have them, but this year we were lucky – we added two new crew members through this process! Welcome to Jhylik and Sarah!
