Allison Hambrick:
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ASHRAE Journal Podcast. My name is Allison Hambrick, Associate Editor at ASHRAE Journal. Today, I'm joined by Max Rohr and Paige Knowles to discuss workforce development with a focus on outreach, the hiring process, and building your optimal work team. Thank you both for lending your time to us.
Starting with Paige, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Paige Knowles:
Well, thank you for having me. Hi, my name is Paige. I used to go by Plumber Paige because I started in plumbing in high school, and now I'm All Trades Paige. I'm kind of an advocate for the industry, connecting the younger generation to the industry, and just exposing career paths, but I also do work in commercial HVAC as well.
Allison Hambrick:
And you, Max?
Max Rohr:
I am the director of education at Caleffi North America, and I'm also fourth generation in the plumbing industry. So I've been around the trades all my life and really enjoy the education part of this. And I think it's a fun way to get more people interested in the community, I think something that Paige does really well. I work on the manufacturing side, so we're also looking for people to come in to help build the products that would support the people in the trades like Paige and make everything run smoothly and more energy-efficient and make people comfortable in their homes.
Allison Hambrick:
Why do you love the trades and how did you get into the industry?
So I got started in the industry because my parents owned rental properties, so I always was growing up seeing people working, but I never thought that that would be a career path for me. I thought, "Maybe I should just go learn this skill because one day I'm going to own a home." It's good to know how things work. So I never even saw it as a career path when I entered the class to do it full-time. And then, I just kind of fell into it. I feel like that's a lot of people's stories. They just fall into it and they fall in love with it. And it's a really rewarding career path. I just love working with my hands. I don't like sitting behind a desk all day. So no matter where in the trades I am, as long as I'm working with my hands and feel like I'm actually contributing to society and doing something for the better of mankind, I feel good about it.
Max Rohr:
And then, I don't know if I had a choice. I grew up going to plumbing job sites with my dad. My parents owned a plumbing and hydronic heating business, and I would go and I would sit next to the toolbox and I would play with the tools and I would squish plumber's putty into everything. And my dad would just kind of have me around the job sites. Flash forward many years later, I was like, "I don't know if I want to do this just because my dad did it. I'm going to go to college. Maybe I'll go into dental school." I wasn't good at that and I didn't enjoy it. So then, after I graduated, I came back to the plumbing industry, but with kind of a renewed purpose that this is something I really like. I think you can make a difference here. The skills that are required to do this job are disappearing as people retire.
We need more young people into this industry. And also, I just thought it was a very tangible way to help the world. I think that you can look at a building that was designed and executed well and know that you saved a lot of energy and people are happy and productive in their office building or in their home. And I think that that's just a very direct line to something that is good for morale to know that you can tangibly see a building that's working well, that incorporates the products or the design techniques or the ASHRAE guidelines that are important to move the industry forward.
Allison Hambrick:
Speaking of moving the industry forward, why do you think we're seeing such a decline in young people entering the trades and how do you think we can combat that issue?
Max Rohr:
So when I went to high school, I'm a millennial, and in eighth grade, depending on what your scores were and how you were doing in school, you went to the guidance counselor and they're like, "Cool, you're doing well so you're going to go into the college path. If you start to slip, you'll go into the ag path," the agricultural path because I went to a farm area high school. So they're like, "You're doing well, you'll go to college. If you aren't really made out for college, you could go work on a farm and we've got classes for that, too." And that was like A or B. Those were the choices. And I think that I wanted to go to college and I was excited about that, but one of the things that I just learned later is in no way are those jobs any less cool or less productive.
And I think that the loss of shop classes and trade schools and things like that, there were plenty of opportunities somewhere between A and B for me that I would have found like, "Oh, a radiant heating designer is still kind of a cool graphic design computer job, but it's also really an essential trade-type thing." So there's so many places in between that weren't presented to me in high school. And I like the idea of helping paint a bigger picture of the broad spectrum of different types of jobs that you could do to help the trades and to help the built environment.
Paige Knowles:
Yeah, I feel like that's basically my answer, too. It's not so much like a decline, it's just a disconnect. We don't see it. So even growing up, I was pushed. It's either college, military, or the trades, and trades was always the backup plan. So we need to inspire them that it's a rewarding career path instead of second choice all the time.
Max Rohr:
I think something Paige does really well is just really great visibility into it because now you can follow somebody on social media who has an interesting trades career that isn't exactly what you expected. I think that whatever I had, whatever my friends in high school thought a plumber did when I was in high school is very different from what the opportunities are. And I think that specific trades can get pigeonholed into whatever the joke was on what would have been like Jay Leno about a plumber at the time or something like that. It's like, "Oh, it's so much cooler than that and it's so much more complicated and there's so many more opportunities that are really fun and rewarding within that." It's not that the trope that you would think of as some of the trade trope things that we've heard in the past, so—
Paige Knowles:
Agreed. Yeah. I think social media does a really, really good job at that. That's why I created my books. I write children's books for kids to create that visibility and exposure. I think we're just not talking about it enough. And because most—well, growing up in school, seeing the students now talking to them, everybody's parents are the reason that they're not doing the trades because college, college, college is the only path. That's not true. Just see it, see that it's an option even, and then get your hands on tools. Maybe you will be interested.
Allison Hambrick:
Well, speaking of interest, we're segueing perfectly here, give our listeners your best elevator pitch on why those contemplating a job in HVAC or other trades should take the leap.
Paige Knowles:
I feel like that's really easy. Good money, skills that will last you for life, and you'll always have a job. It's that easy.
Max Rohr:
Yeah, I would say that job security is something that's not the best pitch I would say, but that is important. I think there are lots of careers that people graduated and they're wondering, "Oh no, does this even exist anymore? Or I'll have to completely reinvent how I work in this world because there's new software that can do pieces of this," even though the tangible like how does this fit when you put it into a building thing doesn't change. So I think that my pitch would be these are really rewarding, really tangible jobs that are vitally important.
I think that we found that in COVID that like, "Well, who has to go to work today?" Plumbers, HVAC people. They need to keep the heat on. They need to keep these buildings from molding to death or when nobody's in them or falling apart. Yeah, this is we're creating weather indoors with HVAC. It's a really beautiful equation to put together and it's something that can't be outsourced. Someone will need to come to your house to do these things, and it's a fun puzzle to solve that fits all sorts of different learning styles, which I think is a fun part of this as well.
Allison Hambrick:
How can we increase interest in jobs that ASHRAE members and others in the industry post?
Max Rohr:
I would say I grew up going to plumbing wholesale houses and you would see the bulletin board with a job posting for a company that was coming there to buy their parts and they were looking for an additional person to join their team, but you weren't really finding any new diversity of talent there. I would see it and I already worked for my dad, so I was kind of set. So the new input, the new people coming into the industry was harder to develop in that way when it was a very old school, you have to kind of know somebody who is in the family business. The replacement-level staffing here is so heavily based, and I don't know all the statistics for other industries, so heavily based on did your parents do it? If not, you probably won't even know that it exists and you wouldn't see that there's a job posted for some amazing amount of money for the starting salary compared to what you might be looking at to apply somewhere else as a young person.
Paige Knowles:
Very true. Yeah. I think maybe just exposing it on different platforms that aren't the traditional way. There are so many people who probably would fit into a hands-on career anywhere very well, but they don't even know that that's an option. So reaching them where they already are, I think Max and I were talking about this actually, maybe even posting on Snapchat because Starbucks and McDonald's is doing it. Let's have our industry do that as well.
Max Rohr:
Yeah, I saw this article about “Snaplications,” which were going back to 2017 with McDonald's that they would, "This is where our target demographic is. This is what they're doing all day. This would be a way to apply." They were also advertising on Hulu and Spotify and things that that demographic would be paying attention to. So that can be one way to just look for another way to put your job application in front of the people that you're trying to hire.
If you're trying to hire another 60-year-old plumber who is your neighbor, the bulletin board at the wholesale house might be the place to do that. If you're looking for some new person with high potential to come in and learn the skills and use the tools, you might have to go to where they're hanging out, and that is a digital platform now, too. That's not just like the mall or whatever that's on Snapchat or Instagram or something like that.
Allison Hambrick:
So that's perfectly relevant to another question I had for you, which is what differences do you see in recruiting candidates from different generations? So social media versus in person, but even more specific to which platforms are you listing on, Indeed, LinkedIn, branching out into social media platforms like Snapchat that haven't typically been used for recruiting, but also perhaps the way that you frame a job listing, that's going to make a big difference in whether you're attracting Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers are the cap as they continue to retire. And, I guess, another way to frame that would be what would be a green flag or a red flag on a job listing if you're looking for a new position?
Paige Knowles:
Okay. I definitely have that. So I think red flags are not being transparent with your pay and looking for someone who has all the experience already. So oftentimes you see job listings that say, "We need so and-so years of experience.” You know how fast I can learn on the job? You just need to give me a chance. So maybe instead of those red flags, give me a green flag, which would be like, "We are open to training you. These are our steps toward mentorship or training." And be clear with the pay. Just the communication is really the important thing for me, at least from my experience
Max Rohr:
Yeah, I would say a red flag would be some sort of job application that is fast-paced learning environment looking for to learn on the fly, jack of all trades. That kind of reads like you don't quite know what the job is or that maybe you're burning out a lot of people with an unclear set of job roles or something like that to start with. I would say a green flag type thing, kind of like what Paige was saying is that pitch the culture of development that you have at your company, that like, "We want you to come and learn about this company. We want you to learn about how we fit into the industry, how we can be better versions of ourselves, and that you will support them in that."
I think that that has been my experience. I think that's what young people are looking for, being part of a mission that they think is important instead of just having a desk job that pays well or whatever. But that, I think, is a very positive thing about, I don't think that it's specific to any cohort, but people really want to look for jobs that there's a PDF that tells you about their company or a website that says, "This is what we would be if we could do everything perfectly, and here's how we're trying to do that," is what I would look for if I were applying for a job at a new company.
Paige Knowles:
I think so. Yeah, I can vouch for that. I am the younger generation looking for jobs. I have been through that. I know what it looks like, and I coach other students and the younger generation into it. And we always see, we want the culture, we want a place of belonging. So yes, there's the jobs that say what you're supposed to do, but you're going to quit or get fired very quickly. If you want somewhere that you can last, which doesn't really happen except for in the trades, I feel like anymore, create that culture and support.
Allison Hambrick:
Well, we've talked about hiring and putting forth those positions for candidates to find them, but what about when we move to the next step? Say you have two candidates and one is perfectly fluent in the technical skills needed for the job while the other had less experience, but did well with the interview and really clicked with the team. Which one would you pick and why?
Paige Knowles:
I feel like Max has more experience hiring, but as a person, I think you should always choose the person who's more ambitious. So if the person knows things because they learned it, good for them. If they know it because like, "Yeah, I have the experience and I was in this for however long," maybe not. We need the character, we need the people who are ambitious and wanting to learn and are coachable. And even if they have no skills but we can see that ambition, I think that's way more of quality than anything else.
Max Rohr:
And I wouldn't say that I'm like an HR expert as far as I haven't hired a million people, but I think that anytime that I've had the opportunity and jobs that I've had to sit in on an interview or to raise my hand and say, "I'd love to interview for a peer," instead of just the hiring team doing that has been really helpful. And then, again, one of the things that is a good filter for this is as you look at resumes, some of the articles that I've seen about this, if a guy says that they qualify for a hundred percent of the job description, maybe they qualify for 50% of it. And if a woman says that, she probably qualifies for 110% of it and that's a pretty general statement. I don't have a whole white paper about that, but that's one of the filters I would say is look through that and develop some questions that you would ask about how would you tackle the job beyond does your resume fit perfectly for what we're hiring for? Because AI can do that. AI can apply for the job, AI can filter the job, and then you'll get a candidate that maybe that has nothing to do with what would be productive. So looking for some of those soft skills that you can ask about in the interview is helpful to sort out like, "How would you tackle this job?" And there are a lot of different ways to do that.
Allison Hambrick:
To that point, is there ever a time when non-technical traits give a competitive edge? So soft skills over technical skills?
Paige Knowles:
Yeah, I think we both can agree that it does.
Max Rohr:
Yeah.
Paige Knowles:
Yeah.
Allison Hambrick:
Okay. Can you give me an example like a more communicative team member or somebody with more ambition, a predisposition to leadership roles, that sort of thing?
Max Rohr:
Yeah, I've got an example. So Paige and I were on a panel at AHR this year and one of the panels was Leilani Orr, and her husband does a podcast and they have a plumbing, they're an HVAC business, and she mentioned that, does she have 10 kids? And she got them all skiing at the same time. And I have one kid and I got her skiing for an hour and a half at one point and it was one of the harder things that I can imagine. So just like that type of thing is such a good indicator of someone who can solve problems and delegate and really make things happen. That speaks so much more than a resume could about the willingness to just get things done. That is so helpful in every position that you would hire for.
Paige Knowles:
Yeah. I mean, one of the first guys that I worked for, he knew everything, but he could not train. And if we want to see the younger generation coming and taking your jobs or helping you instead of you having to do it all the time, you need to be able to communicate those things instead of you know how to do it so you're the only one who can and will do it. I see it because there is a little bit of gatekeeping still within the trades, why you want to feel important, but there's room for everyone. There really is. It's not going anywhere.
Allison Hambrick:
So you've already touched on this by mentioning issues such as people not being willing to train others or if they're prioritizing presenting their experience in favor of understanding the position and what it entails. So with those kinds of personality clashes in mind, say the candidate you're leaning towards sets off some red flags during their interview. How would this influence your hiring decision?
Max Rohr:
I'd say any sort of in the interview process it's hard because I think that there have been people that, not naming names, but people that I've worked with that as soon as they start the job, they don't want to work anywhere outside of the job description. And I think it's realistic that the job should evolve. And I think that employers should have some system to reward people that are really going above and beyond to figure out what's a better way to do that task. I know that we've done it like this, we're trying to achieve this objective. Is there another way to do that that uses different software a little bit, whatever makes that system better, people who are always looking to pick apart something and do it better.
Finding that in the hiring process is a little bit different. I have a couple things that I've worked with in the past that I think give you an idea for that, but you have to find a creative way to do the tasks. And if you're showing up to just check the boxes that won't be that helpful to your peers or to the company or be maybe the person that you're looking for who can grow in the position.
Allison Hambrick:
Max, you've done hiring demos in the past. Can you walk us through one of those?
Max Rohr:
Yeah, this I really like as a way to, not for if you have a hundred resumes on your desk to do this with every person, but maybe when you get down to the final three or five. One example of this would be, let's say, you're hiring for an engineer and you bring them in, you ask them about their resume. Everybody in the hiring team asks them the same questions about why they applied for the job or whatever. All that stuff is fine. One additional thing that you could do there is ask more open-ended questions. I feel like a lot of interviews are like, "Did you do this? Do you have this certification? Do you speak this language?" Whatever. An open-ended question example for maybe an engineer would be, how would you make this room more comfortable? You're hiring somebody to work on the HVAC design team at your company. What would you do to make this room more comfortable? And get an idea for them to take a step back and like, "Okay, what makes people comfortable in this space? Is there too much sunlight?" Describe what would make you more comfortable in this space. It might be a very good way to know if they're able to take the science and apply it to what's the goal here is to make people comfortable in the conference room. So whatever you would do, the airspeed is too high. It's too noisy. There's too much sunlight coming through. Those types of things would be good to see if they can think about, How would I solve the problem? How would I solve the puzzle as opposed to I have the technical experience on my job site refer to line 45 that says I am a mechanical engineer and have my P.E. stamp or whatever.
How would you fix the space? What would you do here? Another one we did at the manufacturing level is we brought in a product. We said, "How would you make this better? How would you know how to make this better?" And some people are like, "Oh, it looks great." And some people will dig into it and say, "Well, what do people like about it now? Does it fit in most applications? What were some things that if you're looking for an applications engineer at a manufacturing level, what questions would be good to ask? Is it selling well? Does it do this? Could it do this better to figure out like..." They may not have the answers. There may not be any answer to the question, but to have them kind of pick apart how they would assess the problem and make the widget better. Whatever your widget is could be a good way to tackle that.
What's wrong with this furnace? What's wrong with this toilet? And give them a practical thing to work on. No solution is right. It's really more of how would you ask me how to fix it even if you don't know how to fix it would be good to know about that kind of collaboration and teamwork. That'll give you a better indication than just a resume read if they're going to be able to solve puzzles, which I think is present in any of these jobs.
Allison Hambrick:
And I've gotten a little bit spoiled on how this resolves, so I can't act out with you, but you do have sort of a prioritization task that you present to get a map on how potential candidates think. Can you explain that to us?
Max Rohr:
Yeah. So this isn't a completely open-to-interpretation way to do this, but let's say that you're hiring for a specific job. In this case, we'll just use a different one like a manufacturer's representative, outside salesperson. So you can write on Post-its or you can use some sort of digital tool and write like five tasks that you would have to do in order, and then you ask the candidate to rank them to prioritize which one you have to do one completely before you move to the second one. How would you know which one is most important to do? And what I've done in the past is simple things like pick up your clothes at the dry cleaner, return an email about a product listing clarification, compile your sales forecast for next year or something like that. There's no right answer. It's going through like, "Ask me how you would know how to prioritize that."
And the questions they ask are really the most telling to say, "Well, okay, am I going anywhere that I would need clothes from the dry cleaner?" Yeah, you got to leave in an hour. You're going to do a big presentation at the conference or something like that. Like, "Okay, well, I should probably go to the dry cleaner right now because I can work on my sales forecast at the airport." It's completely subjective, but you want to hear somebody work through that. And the best way to start for those is just go into the inbox of the person that's going to be doing that job.
What are the emails they're getting all the time to figure out, "Okay, if somebody calls about a product listing clarification, the last thing that we want to do is miss that project because we didn't say like, 'Yep, absolutely, you're good.'" That's the standard that we're trying to meet and this is the product to do it. Perfect, you're good to go there. If they have some sort of personal experiences to build on that like, "I would never skip this, this is always the most important," that's really telling about how they would triage the job, which is what you're hiring for.
Allison Hambrick:
So not everyone is a hiring manager, but many people will be stakeholders for a new hire. As an employee, how do you engage in that hiring process?
Paige Knowles:
The company that I work for is really involved in the community. So I saw them at a SkillsUSA competition helping with the HVAC competition and I walk up to them like, "Who should I talk to about getting a job?" And so they all know each other. They're already impressed with just the energy, the confidence, the ambition that I had. They take me to the manager. The manager's like, "Yeah, let's set up an interview. Here's my card." I reach out to them the next day. I have an interview. The next day they're like, "We're ready to have you work." So you really can just walk up and create that opportunity for yourself. I didn't know if they were hiring, but I just asked. It doesn't hurt to ask. The worst thing you get is a no.
Allison Hambrick:
Absolutely.
Max Rohr:
And I think that that's part of kind of the community that you're building with All Trades Paige handle is to give other people confidence to do something like that or to know that, "Oh, these are jobs that exist. This seems interesting. I'd like to ask more questions about that." And I think that as the hiring person, you have to have some sort of presence that is supportive of the people that you would want to apply for your job. And I think that that is something that you can do by going to specific trade organizations, sponsoring events where you would see the people that you would want to hire. And that can be rolling back into trade schools, rolling back into high schools and things like that, the Lucy's Engineering Adventure book. I think that that's another example like, "Yeah, go read that to second graders," and there may be somebody that you start that process earlier of like, "Follow these people that are doing these jobs." It's kind of cool to see what they're up to.
I think that as far as going back to the hiring manager question, I haven't been a hiring manager a million times again, but I think that if you are a stakeholder in who is hired, just be direct about why you would want to be involved in that process because if I were hiring somebody to be another version of me in a different territory that I'm going to work with as a peer, I would want to know a lot about them. I think that if that's missed, then just the hiring manager hires somebody they think will be compatible there, something can be missed. So just be very quick to raise your hand that you'd be interested in being part of the hiring process and you have some creative questions that you'd like to ask about the job because you want to make sure they would be successful in the job or understand the job is appropriate.
So I think that in the same way that Paige was saying that she was very direct about what she wanted to do, if you're not the hiring manager, but you have some... If you're a stakeholder in the process, just raise your hand, go to HR, go to your hiring manager and say that you'd like to be involved more. And I think that that's helpful to build a more comprehensive team as well because if you hire somebody who has the exact same skillset that you do and went to the same university and studied from the same professor, have the same extracurricular activities, you may be buddies outside of work, but maybe that's not a new perspective that you're bringing to the office.
Where if Paige and I work together as trainers at Caleffi, we would have a completely different perspective of who should we talk to? How would we explain it? And that is great. That type of multiple perspectives is so helpful for the firm to solve the problem and to attract more people and to explain things well.
Allison Hambrick:
So would you recommend to hiring managers to bring the team into the conversation when looking for a new candidate?
Max Rohr:
I think so. Yeah. I think that having a lot of different perspectives is helpful. It depends on the amount of different interviews that you're doing and things like that. Somebody has to get it down to a reasonable stack of resumes, and that can be hard, but I think in that final round to have the team members involved is good advice.
Paige Knowles:
Yeah, I agree. There's culture there, like everything that we've been saying, and if you don't fit in and you're constantly fighting to even have a place there, yeah, that's not going to work. That you should find someone who's already going to integrate well, and you only find that by the chemistry almost of seeing them all together. Yeah.
Allison Hambrick:
Yeah. I'll step out of the host chair for a little bit to say, I was involved last year in the hiring process for my managing editor. Sorry, Linda, I'm not trying to embarrass you, but being involved in that process, especially with somebody who's going to be in a supervisory capacity ended up being valuable because we had all members of our team who do different jobs. So I'll use myself as an example. I largely do our two podcasts and some digital work on newsletters. Occasionally, I will also dip into the world of copy editing, but a lot of our other team members primarily focus on print. So for a managing editor, we would all be looking for different things, but we're stakeholders in the process. And though we all work differently, we need to be able to work with whoever's brought in. Including us in that process and making sure we all got to have a voice in who was hired ultimately led to a better outcome.
And I think that's the kind of process that needs to be implemented across the board and throughout multiple industries, et cetera, because while our supervisor could have gone and hired the managing editor by himself and he may have chosen the same person, and nonetheless, he would have chosen well, and he would have chosen somebody that could do the job. But as Paige said, that person may not have fit into the culture in the same way as somebody who all of those individual employees and stakeholders were able to evaluate. So just my two cents involving the team in hiring is essential to finding the right person.
Max Rohr:
Yeah. No, that was great. I think in a parallel universe where Linda is really mean, that she comes in and maybe she's really dismissive of like podcasts, is like, "No, I don't really believe in those. I've never done those. Those aren't really interesting. I'm not really that excited about new media stuff." That would for sure be a red flag probably for everybody—
Allison Hambrick:
Oh yeah.
Max Rohr:
—on the team. And it would be good to know that if somebody you are going to be working to and reporting to is open to letting you be the star in your place in the company and seeing what you can do. That's an incredibly great green flag in that hiring process.
Allison Hambrick:
Yes.
Max Rohr:
And even though you're not the hiring manager, you could be very enthusiastic about like, "Linda sounds great. She sounds like she really wants to expand, that she's got good ideas, but will also let me work on things that's like the ideal situation from someone who is not hiring but is a team member perspective." And it sounds like that was kind of what happened with your team, so that's great.
Allison Hambrick:
Yes, absolutely. This leads into our next thought, which is how do you inspire people to speak up about the industry they want to build?
Paige Knowles:
It's an interesting question because I think the industry that you want to build may be unattainable. I have huge dreams, but you need a community, so making sure that you have aligned values and visions with everybody. And maybe you are going to have to compromise, that's real life, but trying to work with people who have the same goals as you. Because if you're always butting heads and you can't even agree on what the outcome is going to look like, it's going to be difficult to grow. And I think the biggest thing anywhere is growth and always improving, so just having that communication, speaking up about it, and yeah.
Max Rohr:
Yeah. I think the problems that we try to solve are so complex and so important just in a sustainability standpoint, the effective use of energy. And there's no one way to do that. So the best case scenario is you're putting together some sort of environment where you have so many different perspectives to say, "What if we tried it like this?" And everybody is supportive of like, "Why don't we look at it that way and see if there's another way that we can make this work and make all the stakeholders happy that's not exactly how it's written down or how we've done it for the last few projects because we need that variety of perspectives to be most relevant," I think.
Paige Knowles:
I think being open-minded is a huge takeaway from that because we've seen what happens if you try to stay old school and traditional. I think the being adaptable and almost woke is the way to go. Yeah.
Max Rohr:
And I think that just like the ideal scenario 10 years from now is that people who follow Paige on social media feel like they would be a great fit for the industry and start looking in that direction for something to do. And there are a million different pathways from there, but we want to make sure that that entire next cohort of people that look like Paige, that went to her have the same experience kind of coming into the trades or are interested in doing something other than college feel like they have some ability to find a home and be supported there, I think, is super important.
Allison Hambrick:
So Max and Paige are here to talk about the Avengers Initiative.
Max Rohr:
Yep. This is the—
Allison Hambrick:
That's a fun game.
Max Rohr:
—this is the team. Yeah.
Allison Hambrick:
Okay. So switching gears entirely, say you find your ideal candidate. How do you equip them with the skills to succeed moving forward?
Paige Knowles:
I can speak from experience a little bit with that. When I was getting hired, we have a sit-down kind of coaching session like, "What are your goals? What do you want to do?" And just creating that welcoming environment for me to speak up about what I want success to look like moving forward. And if that changes, it's okay to communicate, "Now, this is what my success looks like." You know?
Allison Hambrick:
Absolutely.
Max Rohr:
Yeah, I think giving people the space to evolve in different directions, and I've had really cool opportunities where there was some new project that nobody had on their radar and they needed somebody to raise their hand and kind of take the initiative to manage that project. Maybe they didn't do everything, but had to kind of coordinate, Well, what would we do with that? That sounds kind of interesting. And you need to make people very comfortable anywhere in the company to raise their hand and say, "I think that that could be really important for us and really useful and here's why." And give them the space to evaluate that a little bit. If everybody is so busy with just the things that are on the job description and they end up doing something the hard way because there's some software that would be perfect for what they were trying to do, but they can't find 15 minutes to even look into it or make a presentation to upper management about it.
I think that you have to, the best teams that I've worked on, everybody felt like they could raise their hand and have a good idea and have it evaluated in a fair way. And sometimes it's a no and sometimes it's a yes or, "Why don't you look into it?" And I think that even if those projects don't end up panning out exactly as you thought, I've found that good managers will see that they really thought that was a good idea and went for it, and that's important and you want to really make sure that you have a company culture where people will do that and are encouraged to do that instead of like, "That was a dumb idea. We don't like it." There's nothing less encouraging than that, and it won't make your business any stronger and it won't attract more people that you would want to come in and help out to build something better, so—
Allison Hambrick:
Yeah, and not every new idea is going to pan out, but you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. So it's good to have a culture that encourages that.
Max Rohr:
I've got one tactical thing for you there if you'll allow it.
Allison Hambrick:
Have at it.
Max Rohr:
There's I forget what the specific term is. It's called like megaphoning, but if you're in a meeting and somebody has a good idea, but they're kind of an introvert and they just whisper it and they like, "Well, we should probably look into like that," if you just acknowledge that, that's fine. You know that about them, that they seem to know a lot about that topic, but you can also say like, "Yeah, that is a great idea." I think that that would be helpful if you just happen to be more of an extrovert to kind of like, "No, I really think that's smart. We should pay attention to that. This person had a really good idea." The worst thing you can do is take credit for it—
Paige Knowles:
Yeah.
Max Rohr:
—but the best thing that you can do is say, "I also am co-signing that that's a good idea. We should talk more about that." It's just a really good tactical thing to do to help build good morale with your team, but to also make sure not just like me, the loudest person in the conference room doesn't get all the floor time, I think is important to help build good teams and to respect the different ways people communicate things that they're thinking out loud, but it's just a whisper to themselves. That may be the best idea of the day. So help kind of like megaphone that and give them credit for that is good for company culture, I think.
Allison Hambrick:
Absolutely. So thinking back to when you have a new team member just starting out, what strategies can you employ, pun intended, to ensure that training is accessible, both in terms of different learning styles and different levels of technical knowledge?
Paige Knowles:
I think always making it accessible is a great start. Often, people just get comfortable where they are, and if they're doing enough to get paid and not getting yelled at, then that's enough. But if you're looking for growth and training and all of that, I think that is important for growth of the company. It depends what your goals are as well. Some people are just content and that's fine. But me personally, I would always prefer to grow. I think Max and I were on a panel with Leilani and Anthony also was on it and he is always rewarding his employees for training.
So not only are you actually gaining more skills when you are going through the trainings, but you're also being rewarded and celebrated for all of that as well. And I think maybe that is a good way to go about it because then it gives them incentive to want to do it. Even if it's not paid, it's just some sort of recognition people love to be praised, so give them that.
Max Rohr:
Yeah, that's not a cohort-specific thing, either. I think that that's sometimes written off as like, "Oh, millennials always need a pat on the back for doing everything." I am a technical trainer and I've taught people of all ages across North America and everybody likes that. Everybody likes a pat on the back that they had a good idea or did a good job anywhere in your career. So always make sure to do that. And I think that my best days as a technical trainer or when I feel like I could explain something and maybe it's how a valve works or whatever, like five different ways for different learning styles. Like, "Here, you take it and take this wrench and take it apart and look at it." That may be very useful for somebody, and for somebody else that may be, "Here's the specifications for this valve. Here's what it technically is able to do."
That may work for your brain, where for many of the installers in the world, they need to see it. They need to take a product sample and they need to see how it would work if you put it like this and if you adjusted it like that. What does it physically change inside of the valve? You have to have lots of different ways to explain the task and make sure that people feel like they even know what the goal is. And that's really just it's on the person who's putting together the task to make sure that it's super well-understood and depending on your different learning styles that you're able to pick that up because it's not, again, going back to high school, people who could read through the chapter in the textbook and take the test and pass it.
That's great, but that doesn't even mean that they're good at math. There are people that can build a house without really being able to score well on the test and you need to make sure you describe what you're looking for in a way that lots of different learning styles can pick that up because you can find all sorts of cool creativity within that that's different from what you expected potentially.
Allison Hambrick:
You know, it is a little bit like the learning styles they teach you about in school. Like you have visual, auditory, kinesthetic. For me, I'm under kinesthetic. So even with some of the work I do for ASHRAE, like our weekly newsletters, that's something where I had it explained to me. I was given a written guide, but I didn't get good at it until I started doing it myself. And that sort of thing is very, very specific to the person, but having those resources to help somebody get the training they need, even if the initial round of resources weren't specifically geared to their learning style, like for example, what I needed to be successful at doing those newsletters, having those resources got me started so that I could do it and then learn along the way.
So training can look different for different people, which brings us to another good point. How do you keep employees motivated throughout the training process, especially if they're learning something new or in technical fields? Sometimes you're dealing with some gross stuff. I'm looking at Paige with her plumbing history. So how do you keep them motivated and happy throughout that, or at least with their eye on the prize, as it were?
Paige Knowles:
Yeah. I've gone through many challenging experiences. I've been very frustrated and I think just knowing we're in this together, you're not alone and other people have gone through similar things and there are resources out there. And I think the support is the biggest thing. So if I really was going through it all alone, then I probably might want to give up. But because there are other people who are there for you, willing to train you, even just talk about it, maybe they don't know the answer, either, but that kind of support.
Max Rohr:
Yeah. I think that there are times that it's hard right now and maybe you have done that exact same thing and struggled with it and spent five hours on something that should have taken 15 minutes and just kind of encouraging people that, "Yeah, that's part of the process." But the good news is, in a plumbing context, you're making this customer happy even though it was more than you thought. You're going to get it done and they're going to be happy with the results. And the next time this comes up, you'll be so good at that that you're going to be the hero because you're going to be the person who understands all these different widgets and can solve the problem in so many different ways and keeping the big picture in mind that like, "Yeah, but the homeowners really psyched about this."
And they've had this toilet that was running and drove them crazy for five years, and it took you longer than you thought, but think about the amount of times that that bugged them throughout their lives. This is such a big win for you, and kind of reminding people of the value that they bring to the table is an important part there.
Allison Hambrick:
I do think that's one of the biggest values of technical fields. When you're going through training and you're learning some really complex stuff, a lot of times you do have a physical, tangible thing that you've achieved when you are done. That in and of itself can be a big motivator.
Max Rohr:
Yeah. No, that's what's really fun about just the ASHRAE community in general is that you could go to a building that was really well-designed, well-commissioned, all of those steps were covered well, and be really comfortable. And one of the things that's difficult about the HVAC industry is if you don't know what just as a member of the general public, how you are comfortable in the space, that's such a huge win. And it's kind of a weird thing that our best day's when people don't know that we existed to make them comfortable in the conference room or the training room or the convention center or whatever.
But so many people did such an incredible amount of work to really nail that. And that's a fun win even though it's kind of an invisible thing, which is a whole probably different podcast where that's really like a confidence boost among the HVAC and plumbing community to really take pride in how hard that is to do that well and something you have to remind everybody in the industry about occasionally I think.
Allison Hambrick:
Absolutely. So looking beyond how employers and employees can shape the industry and build stronger teams, what role can organizations like ASHRAE play in workforce development?
Max Rohr:
So I think my experience is that I've been around the trades for a long time, but am newer to ASHRAE in the last, I would say, probably five years or something like that to play a bigger role. But the different regional conferences and the trade shows and things like that you can go to, you really find your community, and I think that that's very helpful, that even if you're on competing teams or if you do a similar role, but for a different industry or something like that, it's good for morale to be around people who really have had the same struggles. And when I've gone to different ASHRAE meetings or different trade organizations and somebody who's not a competitor and is from a different area, but is really open to talking to you about like, "Yeah, man, that was so hard that we couldn't figure that out until we finally found something that, and here's what we did," is so helpful and supportive to see other people that are younger in the industry and know that like, "Okay, I can do this, they can do that. I can call them about that."
It's really, I think, the role that trade organizations play outside of technical standards and things like that. But if you build that community, then you have such a good body of new people coming in to be on those committees and to tell you how they're doing it and to encourage the All Trades Paiges of the world to like, "No, you've got great ideas, you should be on this technical committee, you should help write this book about how to do it better," is what makes this industry stronger, I think.
Allison Hambrick:
It's important you point out community because, of course, that's a big factor in what ASHRAE is and what it does, but that's also a huge factor in what Paige is doing through building her social media community. So can you speak to that a little bit, Paige?
Paige Knowles:
Yeah, I think it's important to create that support and community at every single stage. So a lot of these trade organizations, we see all the old people doing it together and they have their stories, but let's storytell to make it interesting, relatable, create the exposure, all that kind of stuff to the younger generation. I think workforce development, yes, it's about developing them, but that's not talking to the same guys who have been doing this for 50 years. It's reaching the other people who are wanting to be developed.
So that's how I kind of play a part in that. I will have the conversations with all of the different levels because I'm not afraid to. So many people are just afraid to even speak up. So creating those conversations, telling them that like, "Hey, you can be confident, you can speak up," and then showing all of the pathways available, just creating opportunity that has already existed, but showing it, showcasing it.
Max Rohr:
And I would say additionally that my six-year-old daughter now knows what the little plastic drain snake is and pointed it out in the bathroom because she saw it in Paige's book and understands like, "That's the tool and that's the problem that you would solve, and I know what that is," is really cool and that's nice that as a six-year-old that she's aware of those types of things. That's what exposure to the trades earlier, however you feel like you can give back to the community by explaining them, "Here's what my job is and here's what's cool about it," even if that's just a little bit beyond going to do the job fair at your kids' school where you tell them what you do all day.
That is important that people know what those things are earlier. And I think that that's what I like about the All Trades Paige messaging that is, again, so much easier to get in front of people with social media than it would've been if she had written a book that sat in the library, in the back wall of the wholesale house, or something like that years ago that just wouldn't have new exposure to it, where you can get such a good reach with social media now.
Paige Knowles:
Yeah, right. So we Ms. Rachel, we see Blippi, they're doing it. They're in the homes. So instead of the career fair where we hear about the doctors, the nurses, the lawyers, the firefighters, plumbers and HVAC technicians are heroes just as much, but we don't talk about it. And they're not going to be like, "Ooh, what's this? Let me go see." You have to just create the opportunity and let the kids find it themselves, and kids love to tell parents how things work.
So just giving them something that they can teach. Most of my book's parents don't know how this stuff works, either. So it's great for both of them, honestly. And, yeah, it's great exposure at all ages just to know what it is. I love hearing the stories of when parents are like, "Yeah, I brought these books home and my kid skimmed over it. I don't think the books are ever going to be important and then something's wrong at the home and the kid's like, "I know how to fix this."
Max Rohr:
"I know where the snake is. Yeah—
Paige Knowles:
"I know."
Max Rohr:
... "it's over here. This is the green one, and yeah, here's how it works." Yeah.
Allison Hambrick:
I don't have any kids, but I'm a new homeowner, and Paige, I'm thinking maybe I need your children's book. That might help explain some of this to me because I do not know any of the stuff about owning a house. And anyway, that visibility and that outreach could be important for a lot of ages.
Paige Knowles:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Allison Hambrick:
Anyhow, so it seems that is bringing us to the end of our time. So do you have any parting thoughts for our audience, any takeaways?
Paige Knowles:
Stay ambitious, speak up, and always be willing to grow and find the community that helps you do that.
Max Rohr:
Yeah. The trades that are related to the ASHRAE, the Marvel Universe of ASHRAE, are so vitally important and there are so many different ways into these fields, and they're going to be such amazing jobs to have and to know how to fit in this big machine that will develop a building moving forward that's zero energy and it's comfortable and it's resilient. And all these buzzwords, those are so much more tangible with the people that we would talk to at an ASHRAE meeting for like, "Oh yeah, use this specific machine, design it this way, size it this way, install it this way, commission it this way, and you will achieve those goals."
It's such a fun, tangible thing in a world where so many jobs are so foggy to like, "What would an AI expert do in six months?" I don't even know versus you will always have a job if you can fix the HVAC and you can stop the toilet from running and you can solve people's problems. So there's great opportunity and we need a bigger group of people coming in that aren't just the sons of a plumber like I am, and we need to find ways to make sure that the Paiges of the world would want to apply at your company and want to work with you to solve those problems.
Allison Hambrick:
Absolutely. Thank you both for sharing your time and insights with us. And to our listeners, you can catch up with Paige over at alltradespaige.com or on social media as @alltradespaige. Once again, thank you to our wonderful guests, and thank you to the audience for tuning into this episode of ASHRAE Journal Podcast.
ASHRAE Journal:
The ASHRAE Journal podcast team is editor, Drew Champlin; managing editor, Linda Rathke; producer and associate editor, Allison Hambrick; assistant editor, Mary Sims; associate editor, Tani Palefski; technical editor, Rebecca Norris; and creative designer, Teresa Carboni.
Copyright ASHRAE. The views expressed in this podcast are those of individuals only and not of ASHRAE, its sponsors or advertisers. Please refer to ashrae.org/podcast for the full disclaimer.