Marketing the Trades: Presenting Fulfilling Careers to the Next GenerationMarketing the Trades: Presenting Fulfilling Careers to the Next Generation

Marketing the Trades: Presenting Fulfilling Careers to the Next Generation Transcript:

Jeff White: Welcome to The Kula Ring, a podcast for manufacturing marketers brought to you by Kula Partners. My name is Jeff White, and joining me today is Carman Pirie Carman, how you doing, sir? 

Carman Pirie: All, as well.  You’re doing well as well, I’m assuming.

Jeff White: I am. Yeah. Nice. It’s a beautiful sunny day here in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Carman Pirie: Yeah. It’s the one day of the year when it’s like that we’re we’re not gonna do the tourism folks much good today. I think if we just complain about it being the only day of sun in the year. No, but it’s a, it’s the way it feels when it’s kinda springish time here. 

Yeah. But look, we’re not here to talk about the weather.

Jeff White: No. We’re here to talk about something that I think every manufacturer is dealing with. It doesn’t always come to the marketing department to assist with this, but I think what it does is it makes you more aware of your impact both to your internal team as well as your customers. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah I don’t wanna be too cryptic, but no but I agree with what you’re saying.

I think there’s marketing almost always should be pulled into assisting with this challenge. I think today’s guest is gonna illustrate why that’s the case in some way, shape, or form. But the other thing that I find interesting about this topic is that, when you said every manufacturer you’re not joking.

It’s a $5 billion-a-year manufacturer or $10 million-a-year manufacturer that literally will have the same challenge here. They have to address it in separate different ways, and it’s a different scale, but. Yeah, the challenge remains.

Jeff White: Exactly. And of course, what we’re talking about is the recruitment challenge on top of the marketing challenge.

So joining us today to shed some light on that is Brittany Bachman. Brittany is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Boulter Industrial Contractors. Welcome to The Kula Ring, Brittany. 

Brittany Bachman: Hi. Thanks for having me. It’s funny that you guys are talking about the weather and this is our second nice day in Wester New York.

Be to pull upstate New York. 60 degrees. We’ll take it. It’s almost June. 

Jeff White: Yeah. And it’s been wet and cold for what feels like weeks too long. 

Brittany Bachman: I had my winter coat out still, but that’s the joys of upstate New York. And as in Canada. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah, there’s a, in this damaged political climate that we live in when people like to talk about the differences between our countries, I think it’s important to point out just how this much the same we are in many cases and we’re living the same weather life in many cases. 

Brittany Bachman: The many things we can relate to weather doing. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

It is, it’s wonderful to have you on the show. I wonder, first perhaps introduce us to Boulter and how you ended up there, if you would. 

Brittany Bachman: Yeah, happy to. So I am VP of sales and marketing. I was recently promoted as of January before I had been hired on in 2017 as marketing manager. So the company is 133 years old this year, fifth generation.

We were founded on ice and coal delivery, and that’s no joke, with two horses hauling ice and coal throughout upstate New York. Since we’ve obviously evolved to keep up with the demands of the area and the 

Jeff White: changing climate 

Brittany Bachman: And the changing climate, right? However, it’s still, we could probably deliver some ice right now at the end of May.

But to give a little bit of background for myself, I was working in a nonprofit hospital in Newark, New Jersey, doing social media, and I decided I wanted to move back home. And so when I had applied for a few different jobs this was being one of ’em. The other one was for marketing for vets.

And so I actually wanted to be marketing for the vet because love animals. And it’s funny because when I said a rigging job, I was like, what is rigging? Which sidebar has since become one of my best marketing campaigns. But working for Boulter has been probably the best career path I could have ever taken.

It’s been an experience to see firsthand how this 133-year-old company evolves with the times and how the skilled labor shortage is affecting not only us but the people we work with. 

Jeff White:  Was this part of why you were brought into Boulter to help address that? Or was it something that once you got there, you realized that you had the ability to assist with it?

Brittany Bachman: I’d say both. So marketing, you see all aspects. And because I am the woman who wears all the hats, you talk about in podcasts, I am the first one on the other side of this. I do the video editing, I do the social media, I do the blog. Honestly, I’ve been able to immerse myself really deep into the industry and see the challenges within it.

And because of that, our CFO who recently retired last Thursday, brought me on to host what was called a Lift and Move event. And so this is with our industry organization called the Specialized Carriers and Rigging Association, where we introduce high school students to the skilled trades.

And so honestly, I was brought on in that aspect, more of a helping hand for trying to plan, but it became a passion of mine pretty quickly. 

Jeff White: I was lucky early on in my career as a web designer, which is weird to work within industrial companies that manufacture wood products and paper products and things like that.

And they had some of the same kinds of challenges and were tackling it by, getting into schools at grade five to talk about some of these. Really interesting career opportunities and the machinery and all of those things that kids really but what are you finding at the high school level that’s intriguing to folks and what’s bringing them to the side where they might be interested in working for Boulter?

Brittany Bachman: So it’s actually interesting, even since COVID, I think there’s been a switch with how high schools are promoting the skilled trades. Back when I was in high school, which was back in 2009, college was pushed for so heavily that the trades were a fallback. They were looked at as blue-collar workers who had no good-paying careers.

Dirty all the time. It was just like those are the kids that can’t go to college. In reality, now looking back at it, those kids are not facing any student loan debt. And a lot of our guys make over a hundred thousand a year. And so I think the push since COVID is that the counsellors and the teachers and the parents are now seeing that there is a big shift towards the skilled trades and they are viable careers.

And so I think for us being at these queer events, being able to have interactive stations and let the kids actually work with their hands has been like the most important part. You could speak to them all day long and they’re just gonna say, okay, great. That sounds awesome. But unless they’re actually seeing what you do and being able to do it themselves, they just don’t understand.

Carman Pirie: That’s gotta be a fairly hard thing to, communicate in a classroom kind of environment, in a school environment, because I think my understanding of what Boulter does is that you transport and move really big, complicated things that other people can’t deal with. So you don’t wanna be doing that as, how do you bring that to life, in an education environment?

Brittany Bachman: Yeah, so we certainly don’t have any of those big machines onsite at one of these career fairs. But I think the biggest part of when we look for recruiting is, problem solvers. We need kids who understand that problem-solving is probably like yours. Number one tool that you can have in your pocket.

No two jobs are the same. You may be moving the same machine at the same location with the same exact weight, but the job can be entirely different. And so having these kids understand that problem-solving is I. Gonna be the number one tool that you can have is most important. So instead of bringing, like a large machine, obviously to the career fair, we have a nuts and bolts exercise, which seems pretty straightforward, except it’s not because the way that they’re screwed in a certain way tricks the kids.

And then we also have it so that they have to compete against one another. ’cause who doesn’t love a little bit of competition, especially against your friends when you can get a candy bar? And so it’s funny because they’ll look at each other and be like, oh, this is easy. And then they’re sitting there and they’re like, wait, why can’t I figure this out?

And it’s exactly. Not everything is as straightforward as you think it’s gonna be.

Carman Pirie: I’m curious, I have found, I guess in the past when I’ve seen those similar types of exercises being done in, in, in more educational environments or what have you, what strikes me is that you the.

Lack of gender bias and participation. I find that, guys and girls equally participate in that, but you actually may be promoting a line of work that maybe is 80 or 90% guys in that, do you, have you found that in the, in, in the work that you’re doing? 

Brittany Bachman: Yeah we. Are obviously trying to recruit more women into the industry.

And I think that’s as a whole, for far too long it’s been seen as like a male-dominated industry, and that’s just not the case anymore. Women can do just as much as men. And so when we have the career fairs, we find that one, the women take their time, so they’re looking at the problem and they’re taking their time to understand it.

The guys go in and they’re just like gung ho I need to beat my friend. And then it’s okay. Wait, what did I do again? And so the girls come in and they’re getting it within like seconds. And so I think for us it’s trying to show that there are career opportunities for both men and women in this field and trying to introduce more women to come up through this industry, whether or not as for us as a company or the people that we work with.

’cause there’s a lot of opportunities out there. Are you, 

Jeff White: when you go into these events and are. Bringing these opportunities for kids to learn about the process and about what you do. Are there, are you bringing team members with you to highlight their roles what they do and what they think of working for a company like Boulder?

Brittany Bachman: We are, yeah. So I try to bring a few field employees and then a project management personnel. So just because to show that. The path is not linear. So if you do wanna go to college, you can still go to college and end up in the trades. You could eventually come back to be an apprentice, you could go into a project management role.

So I like to show that there are a lot of opportunities, whether that is in a field role or in a project management role, or through the transition up the ranks that way. 

Carman Pirie: Brittany, I wanna turn our attention a little bit to the kind of more outward promotion of this. And I’d like to get your thoughts on how you think about blending more EM, employee or prospective employee communication with more prospective client, customer communication.

’cause often the channels are the same. Often we’re. We’re talking to both of these audiences via the same channel. So I guess get me inside your head a little bit. How do you think about that split and how one either compliments or doesn’t the other? 

Brittany Bachman: It’s very true, right? So when you market, you’re looking for both the customer, ’cause you obviously wanna grow business, but also on the backend, right?

You can’t grow the business without the people. And the channels are similar for us. I find that LinkedIn is obviously more impactful for our customers. I have since downloaded and started a TikTok channel, and it’s been the necessary evil that just I needed to push into. I’m a millennial, so I understand hey, I was, I grew up on social media at the time.

Instagram was a big deal. And so now TikTok, it’s that. A lot of these kids when I’m at career fairs, tell me, are you on TikTok? Are you on TikTok? Okay. No, but I need to be. So I started that channel and I found that even though some of my content on TikTok is related to recruitment, a lot of the customers find value as well because they see these project highlights.

They see that we’re a business promoting our culture, which I think, falls into our values, which they appreciate, right? We are founded 133 years ago. There’s a reason why we’re still in business. We safety is our number one value followed by quality, community and family. And so those both hit home, I think, with our customers as well as the people we’re trying to recruit into the bu, into the business.

Jeff White: Alright. I think too, as long as your TikTok content isn’t cringe as the kids say, you’re probably gonna be fine. 

Brittany Bachman: I don hope not. I haven’t had any 18 year olds tell me otherwise, but I do tell them. I was like you can be brutally honest. Listen I don’t know. 

Jeff White: I have three kids from 17 to 21 and they regularly tell me I’m cringe, so it’s fine.

But learning. That channel. Even as a millennial who maybe you didn’t even use it for your, within your personal life, but have you found that it’s meant that you have. Had to expand your own skillset constantly and how have you approached that? 

Brittany Bachman: Yes. Yeah. Very much so I still to this day don’t fully understand that.

And, don’t tell anyone that, but I’m learning one day at a time. And if that’s, whether it’s through LinkedIn learning or watching YouTube videos, like a true millennial, always go back to YouTube. That’s how I’m having to expand my skillset because I do use TikTok personally. But when it comes to actually the video editing portion of it, I was completely at a loss.

I was going to Premiere Pro and editing my video there and then exporting it and downloading it to TikTok, and so I noticed that I couldn’t time the songs perfectly. I did end up hiring an intern for some, like content marketing ideas and for her to teach me how to use TikTok, which is, I say it’s embarrassing, but I’m just embracing the fact that I was a millennial and I learned Facebook and Instagram and back in the MySpace days, but that it’s just another channel and it’s one thing that we have to adapt to.

And if it’s gonna bring a younger generation to the trades, I’m more than happy to learn it. I feel like you just, have to, in order to stay relevant and stay competitive. 

Carman Pirie: and then, not only is it where you’re going to have to go to find employees, but it’s increasingly those people will be buyers or the, the, they, the crossover.

I’m sure you’re seeing it already happen. You mentioned some of the customers seeing this content, you can just fast forward, imagine three years from now, the difference in that.

Brittany Bachman: Exactly. Even on LinkedIn, I say most of my content is for customers. I am finding that some of those customers have.

Kids who are the age of like our internship program and then they are recommending that their kid joins our internship. And so it’s not like LinkedIn is, all out. It’s the end all be all just for customers. I am finding out there is still recruitment opportunities within there. So there’s definitely a crossover between all the social media channels and being able to recruit to promote your company across the different channels.

Carman Pirie: I think when people talk about trying to attract the next generation into the trades and into manufacturing, we talk a lot about showcasing the fact that, these are modern work environments and you could say that safety is a big part of it, and it’s not your, it’s not your grandfather’s factory floor and those types of.

Messages are, I think fairly consistent. I’m curious, however, Brittany, what’s been the biggest surprise that you’ve found? What has been the thing where you’re like, wow, kids actually care about that? Is there anything that jumps out to you that you just wouldn’t have expected to be, an angle that would resonate?

That does, 

Brittany Bachman: yeah, so I think it’s hearing directly from the employees. And hearing their stories about how they got into the trades. We have a few people that actually went to college to be, one of ’em was gonna be a teacher, the other one was gonna be like a forest ranger. And then he gotta college and he’s wait, I am gonna make barely $40,000 a year.

I can’t afford to live on this. And so he had a cousin in the industry. Specifically at TER who recommended him to come to the company, and so it’s showing that path. And that you may be confused in high school, you may even go to college and decide you don’t like it, and that’s okay because eventually if you do want to go into the trades, there’s an opportunity for you.

And so I originally thought, I’m like, I don’t know if this is gonna hit home with some of these kids because they like to see like big, heavy machinery being moved or cranes or like all the exciting stuff. But hearing from somebody actually in the field of work that they’re looking to go into has been an interesting opportunity for engagement.

The kids are watching the videos, they’re watching it all the way through. They’re actually reaching out to the employees after and asking a little bit more about their path into the trades, about their current job. As I said, like the person that was gonna be a forest ranger is now a project management project manager at the company.

And he’s exceeding any of the goals that he set for himself. 

Carman Pirie: Yeah. Yeah. That’s, I would that make, that makes sense to me. And it must be really rewarding for those employees too. 

Brittany Bachman: It very much is. I’d look at it like my kids. I have two young kids and it’s funny because I feel like they don’t listen to me for the life of me, but then they go out in public and they’re like, oh, they are the most polite kids.

They listen to everything we say and it’s okay, so maybe that’s. How it relates because you have these kids that are not listening to their parents, that are not listening to their teachers who they see every day, who are not listening to their guidance counselors. They are listening to somebody else that has gone through this path and it relates to them.

Jeff White: I, but there’s a really interesting. Point there around what influences younger people, and it does, it also makes me consider how are you, I. Only leveraging people within Boulderer or are you also working with outside influencers to try and communicate this message in a number of different ways to make sure that, if the kids won’t listen to you, then they’ll at least listen to the person who’s got a hundred thousand followers on Instagram.

Brittany Bachman: So we’re not yet. However I was at a career fair probably about two weeks ago, and I’m gonna give her a shout out here ’cause she’s absolutely amazing. Her name is Plummer Paige. She, I think is 22 years old. And she writes children’s books to get kids into the trades. And so she’s an absolutely amazing resource for these young kids because it shows that I.

You don’t have to go to college to have a really good career in the trades. And she’s young and she’s very like spunky. So she’s and she has a bunch of followers on TikTok and Instagram. And so it’s even more relatable, right? And so I had found her on LinkedIn years ago, and I recommended her to the host of this career fair.

And so she had brought her in to be the keynote speaker and Paige was speaking about her path in the trades. So she became part of the HVAC program and then started writing children’s books. And so she’s talking to these kids at the career fair during her keynote speech, and it’s, I think, hitting home and I think it hit home.

So much so that after the fact you had kids that were lining up to take photos with her. I think as far as like that path, that is something we’re looking to do more of because I am also just the one person here that I wears many hats. As much as I would love to just keep producing content enough to be relatable and reliable and to get these kids really engaged, I think having a resource like that, like this, influencer marketing is heavily impactful.

Carman Pirie: I love that I can picture the kids lining up for the photos after the talk. It’s fun. 

Jeff White: They have a really interesting definition of fame. Yeah.

Carman Pirie: I wonder have you noticed in the, I wanna just probe on this notion of crossover in the marketing between customers and potential employees for just another moment, because it feels to me like this is a common challenge within the space. So a lot of your customers or prospective customers are facing the same challenge that you face of recruiting the next generation.

That’s made you more appealing to do business with because they know that your company is investing and advocating for this is in investing and trying to attract the next generation. And it’s not just a play that’s about er, but it’s a bigger deal. 

Brittany Bachman: Yes, I would definitely say so because it helps the industry as a whole.

I think Boulter’s, like biggest advantage with some of these younger kids is that we say after the internship program, if we’re not the right fit, we’re happy to find you a job because all we want to do is have the industry thrive. If it’s not for us, maybe it’s with our customer and in the end we’re all winning.

And so I think when like our customers see that, or our prospects see that we are investing so much into addressing the skilled labor shortage, it shows that it’s not just to be selfishly for Boulter, but it’s for the industry as a whole. Otherwise, we’re all gonna suffer. 

Carman Pirie: And I find it’s also a message that is, often a natural one for executives to carry forward as well. Sometimes as a marketer trying to get your CEO or what have you, to sing from a, your marketing song sheet can, I don’t know, can sometimes be hard. Sometimes they go a little rogue and they have their own way of talking about the company or have their own way of talking about the products that they sell or the services they provide.

But I find it can keep them to script a little bit more when you’re having them talk about the work that they’re doing to attract the next generation. Has that been has that been the case? 

Brittany Bachman: Yeah, I definitely say so. As marketing, right? Like you, you come out there and people scatter.

You show up with a camera and it’s oh, Brittany’s here again. But in all reality though, like they do see the value in marketing and I think from like the C-suite. They also see the value in marketing and promoting the skill traits because there’s absolutely no way that we’ll survive another 133 years, or some of our customers who we’ve grown to know and to have relationships with for decades will survive.

So I think the message across the board is the same, and I think everyone is on that same page of we have to attract the next generation of skilled workers through marketing and through advertising and all of our salespeople and even the field workers going out and speaking on the topic.

Jeff White: Do you find it hard to shift gears between marketing to potential employees and marketing to Boulter’s customers? 

Brittany Bachman: Yes and no. So I think some of the content is the same. So when I think about TikTok the stuff that I have out there now, or a lot of like project highlights, which. I think kids find it valuable.

They find that it’s interesting, but I also think that prospects and our customers find that interesting as well, especially if they’re the ones being featured. So I think there’s a crossover there. Even some of those employee stories, I think the customers find it interesting as well, because then they can put a face to a name and the project management team that they’re working with, they understand their backgrounds more.

They understand who they’re working with. The field team, they get to put another face to a name and see when they’re out on their job that this is a person from Boulter and here’s their story. So I definitely think there’s a crossover between the two. And the content is similar, but also has its own. Perks for both groups.

Carman Pirie: Brittany, as we bring this episode to a close, I wonder what what you’re seeing around the corner. I want you to look into your crystal ball a little bit. I know that you’ve had some recent success with TikTok and that’s been a bit of a newer initiative, but. What do you think is what’s next on the horizon?

What do you think is possibly your next experiment? 

Brittany Bachman: So I think, and as an industry as a whole, I think AI is going to have a big effect on the skilled trades, and I think that’s gonna be for the better. Don’t get me wrong, I love ChatGPT as my marketing assistant day in and day out.

But ChatGPT is never gonna be able to build a billboard or have the same work as a plumber. And so I think as we see AI taking over more and more jobs, especially those like in career paths from college, for example, I went to school for marketing. I won’t lie that a lot of these jobs that I see are not gonna be taking over by AI.

Or at least slim down, right? You’re not gonna need as many people on your marketing team when you have tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. But there’s always gonna be a need for the skilled traits and. Maybe AI will assist the skilled trades, but it’s never gonna be able to replace them. So I see that as a really big growth opportunity for me, especially in marketing, that this is the time now to really be promoting the skilled trades, to be promoting it within the high schools, even before they’re juniors or seniors.

And they’re starting to, debate if they’re going to college or if they’re gonna go to the skilled trades. This needs to be when they’re freshmen or sophomores. When their parents are still heavily influencing their decisions this is a really good career path that will not be outsourced by the AI.

Carman Pirie: Yeah, I think that’s going to be interesting to watch how that unfolds and how that message resonates. I, you see, and we’ve seen this for a while, younger people leaning into what seemed to be older professions like young, younger people doing going and training to be a blacksmith as an example.

And then they open up a boutique kind of blacksmith shop and execute that craft in a very different way often. But in a way that seems like it hearkens back to, an earlier time. It’s I’m really curious to pull on that thread a little bit. Brittany, I’ll be curious to see how that shakes out because I can see that happening from a skilled trades perspective as well.

And this notion of bringing the. Bring things to life with your hands isn’t something that’s going to be outsourced to AI anytime soon. Like you say, and there is an appeal to that I think it does really connect with what I’m, what in that generation. It’s really, that’s interesting to it’s interesting to imagine a renaissance towards skilled labor. 

Brittany Bachman: That’s an exciting time, right? We’re looking at the shift already just since COVID, as I said, with some of these younger generations already pursuing the trades. But I think there’s gonna be a bigger shift with AI that will be pushing more and more younger. I. Workers into the trades and actually earlier, I don’t even think they’re gonna step into college before they decide that they wanna go into the trades. I think that’s gonna be a decision when they are like freshmen or sophomores and they’re looking at the path after school. ’cause it is a good career. It’s a rewarding career. You work with your hands, and you problem-solve.

No two days are the same. It’s a viable career and it’s one that I think we are gonna have an abundance of job opportunities for the next a hundred years. 

Jeff White: It’s probably gonna reshape society too. You’ve got all these people working with their hands with no student loan debt. 

Brittany Bachman: Exactly. What is that like?

Carman Pirie: Brittany, thanks so much for joining us today. It’s wonderful to have you on the show. 

Brittany Bachman: Thank you. Really appreciate the opportunity. It was great chatting with you. 

Jeff White: Yeah, really good conversation. 

Brittany Bachman: Thanks. Yes. Looking forward to seeing what’s next in the future of the trades.