Hiring top talent is really hard! Ask any employer. No industry struggles more with hiring the right talent for the job than the construction industry – the second largest labor force in the US encompassing over 7 million jobs. In an industry where job-hire fit is of the utmost importance to complete a successful project, you need to find the right tradesperson, for the project, at the right time. Timing is everything! Construction is an industry in which the hiring needs are highly nuanced, hyper local and often times word of mouth. While popular job boards and large recruiting platforms (Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Monster, etc.) often have the supply of jobs with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on job postings that can ultimately yield adverse selection, finding that perfect talent fit for the project often escapes the demand funnel. A rise of verticalized hiring marketplaces is something that the construction industry has yet to successfully adopt which could drastically change the hiring fit for the industry. The idea of a verticalized marketplace is a platform that focuses on one industry, role, or demographic. We’ve seen this play out quite successfully in a few industries like healthcare where Doximity rules the medical network for healthcare professionals and also in the oil and gas industry where Rig Up has been extremely successful creating a place for the specialized energy sector. These are just two examples of successful outcomes for creating an environment where like-minded individuals can communicate throughout their own spheres.
Verticalizing the Construction Industry Through Pride
The best way to enhance a verticalized professional network is to empower a community of like-minds to contribute and engage in user generated content. Through these efforts, you can enhance relationships amongst industry participants, grow a network, instill pride and ultimately welcome outside, yet topical, market participants like employers, sponsors, educators, etc. Tradespeople are inspired by being able to see the fruits of their labor. The pride of this group’s work is paramount and there needs to be a dedicated safe space that allows them to share, collect, digest information for their community. For example, a plumber in Waltham, MA might show off his newly installed trap seal on a pipe and a plumber in Boise, ID can comment on the concern of water flow rate on the project. Industry slang jokes thus ensue! Over time, as you build a network of passionate tradespeople showing off their work, you can welcome employers, tool sponsors and other market participants to start to engage, recruit and better understand the user base. This is how Trade Hounds will win. Trade Hounds is the social media meets verticalized hiring marketplace for the construction tradespeople. By focusing on creating a community that allows for an Instagram-like experience, it is only a matter of time before the Linkedin effect of career progression will follow. Trade Hounds has over 170k users who are posting, commenting, sharing every day creating the essence of a digital resume for these field workers as they share their real-life work. We believe that if you create a community, then the jobs will come as future employers are able to quickly assess and hire top talent.
Why Us, Why Now?
An LPC Ventures investment in Trade Hounds has catapulted our ability to provide value to the construction tech environment. We’re excited about the opportunity to help Trade Hounds accelerate their network growth of acquiring skilled tradespeople who are building our environment. An early partnership here allows us to dig deeply into the construction hiring market and continue fostering collaboration and adoption of new technology in an industry that has historically been on the more manual approach to getting the job done.