Building Strong Teams: How Builders Can Hire With Confidence

Running a construction company means wearing every hat—estimating, scheduling, sales, even HR.

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For many builders, hiring is the hardest one to keep on. A new hire who doesn’t fit can slow down projects and add to an already long week. A great hire frees up time and helps the whole team run smoother.

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That’s where JL Talent Solutions steps in.

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Why Builders Struggle With Hiring

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Construction rewards skill and grit, but the real challenge is behavior. That means finding people who fit the culture and share the same standards of work.

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Many owners still rely on gut instinct or word-of-mouth referrals. It works when the company is small, but as projects grow, instinct alone stops scaling.

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Justin Landry saw this pattern over and over again while working alongside builders. Most were excellent operators but lacked a system for finding and keeping great people.

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As companies grow from a few projects a year to managing multiple crews, the bottleneck shifts from finding jobs to finding people. Growth demands a different skill set—not just tools and trucks, but systems and structure.

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From IT to Talent Strategy

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Justin’s path to construction recruiting started far from the job site.

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With a background in IT and web design, he moved to Hawaii and joined a real estate firm that introduced him to the building community. Later, he helped launch another recruiting startup—joining as employee number one and eventually becoming Director of Recruitment.

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That experience exposed a deeper problem in the recruiting world: too much focus on speed, not enough on retention. After earning a Talent Acquisition certification from Cornell University, Justin founded JL Talent Solutions to help small construction companies make better hiring decisions. 

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His goal was clear: help builders hire who people are, not just what they know.

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Bringing Structure to Hiring

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JL Talent Solutions blends intuition with data to help builders identify and retain the right people.

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Their process combines Clinical Prediction (the science of forecasting success through data) and Qualitative Methodology (the art of applying experience and judgment). By pairing proven HR practices with modern tools like behavioral assessments and video interviews, JL Talent gives builders a structured, repeatable way to hire.

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It’s an approach that helps owners slow down, think strategically, and make hiring decisions that last.

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Three Hiring Habits That Help Builders Grow

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1. Hire for behavior, not just skill

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Skills can be trained; work ethic and communication can’t. Builders who focus on behavior build stronger teams long-term.

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2. Use structure, not speed

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A rushed hire feels like progress but often creates more chaos. A simple checklist with scorecards, interviews, and behavioral assessments can prevent months of rework later.

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3. Review retention like you review projects

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After each hire, ask: what worked, what didn’t, and what patterns do we see? Treat hiring like any other system in the business: track it, refine it, and improve it.

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A Client Win: From Overworked to Organized

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One client came to JL Talent exhausted—working 80-hour weeks, sleeping at the office, and struggling to keep up.

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Justin’s team helped them add a designer and three new production team members while putting KPIs and performance systems in place. Within months, the owner was back to leading instead of reacting and spending more evenings at home with family.

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“It’s not about filling jobs,” Justin says. “It’s about helping people buy back their time.”

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When to Bring in Help

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Most of JL Talent’s clients aren’t large companies with full HR teams.

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They’re small builders—often between 5 and 50 employees—who’ve realized that growth depends on finding the right people, not just more projects.

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Bringing in a hiring specialist early helps them scale without sacrificing quality or sanity.

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How JL Talent and Ressio Work Together

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Ressio and JL Talent share a simple philosophy: data + systems = scale.

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Ressio gives builders visibility into their projects, budgets, and communication. JL Talent builds the teams that keep those systems running smoothly.

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When both are in place, builders get a clear line of sight from their people to their projects and confidence in the systems driving both.

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Advice for Builders Considering a Change

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Many builders hesitate to delegate hiring, assuming no one will care as much as they do.

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Justin understands that feeling, but he’s seen what happens when owners let go of the parts of the business that drain them.

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“Most owners started their business to do what they love and ended up doing everything else,” he says. “There are people who love the parts you hate. Hiring them isn’t a cost; it’s how you get your time, joy, and energy back.”

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JL Talent Solutions is offering a complimentary hiring assessment for Ressio members! Reach out to Justin and mention Ressio to see where your current process can improve.

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Website: www.jltalentsolutions.com
Contact: justin@jltalentsolutions.com