Attendees at the 2025 PMP Growth Summit who participated in the Wednesday and Thursday morning breakfast roundtables found the early rise worthwhile. The opportunity offered attendees a chance for a candid discussion on issues with employee retention, successful recruitment strategies and more.
“You have a new generation of workers coming up who may have different expectations or desires that they want from a company. They seem a lot more transitory, where they move on from a job more frequently than in the past. But I still think treating somebody as you would want to be treated is one of the keys to keeping people.” — Dave Cragoe, President, Cragoe Pest Services, Moorpark, Calif.
When it comes to onboarding employees, we are now clear on what we are looking for and what attributes matter to us. We’ve developed a universal sense of what a great team member is and what behaviors we’re looking for. One of the things we soon learned about people we held onto too long is that usually, another person in the process will tell us, ‘I could have told you that on Day Two.’ Before this, we weren’t paying attention to the red flags early enough.” — Dauphin Ewart, CEO, The Bug Master, Austin, Texas
“We have several warehouses in our area, so some of our entry-level candidates say, ‘Well, I can make $30 an hour in a warehouse. I want you to pay me that.’ We decided to talk to some warehouse employees and ask, ‘How do they pay you $30 an hour?’ And they said, ‘Well, it starts at $30, but if you don’t hit certain targets throughout the day, it knocks another dollar off an hour here, another dollar off an hour there. By the time you’re done, you’re usually not making that amount of money.’ So, we’ve learned to get to know even our non-industry competition, learn the reality behind their businesses, and educate candidates.” — Kendra Snyder, General Manager, Quest Termite & Pest, Hellertown, Pa.
“We’ve been lucky the past few years because several local family businesses sold to larger corporations. We’ve picked up four technicians who worked for those companies and loved working for a family business. It’s been the best thing for us, everybody else selling, because many of their employees don’t want to work for a big company.” — Will O’Bryan, General Manager, Jamison Pest and Lawn, Memphis, Tenn.
“The biggest challenge is finding the next set of employees and the amount of people you have to go through to get to quality candidates. It’s very time-consuming. Plus, once you get them, you want to take care of them and help them succeed at what they want to succeed at, while also taking care of your company and customers.” — Justin Sloniger, General Manager, Florida’s Finest Lawn & Pest Control, Ocoee, Fla.
Leave A Comment