Petticoat-Schmitt Civil Contractors

Core Matters was instrumental in providing not only very succinct and organized learning modules, but also in following up with how we implement the tools.

– Ryan Schmitt

My name’s Ryan Schmitt.

I’m the owner and CEO of Petticoat-Schmitt Civil Contractors. We’re located in Jacksonville, Florida. We’re a heavy civil construction firm. We specialize in doing site development. We have about 210 employees and we largely self-perform a lot of our work.

One of the big problems has been finding and retaining qualified people. It’s an age old problem. It’s been going on for quite a while. A lot of people have either left the industry or are not entering. So finding good qualified and capable people has been a challenge. We believe that if we put on a great team, we can go out and self-perform. And was really fortunate when I came across Ryan Englin and Core Matters. I instantly bought into his philosophy because largely we really aligned. Since we joined forces, we have been really busy as far as implementing a lot of the Core Matter’s processes.

It’s been a lot of training, it’s been a lot of learning. It’s been a lot of collaboration and implementation of improved processes, improved messaging. I really think Ryan’s a creative guy that is a change-maker in the industry. He doesn’t just provide a service. I think he’s providing a movement, a change of how we approach finding qualified people in our industry. And it’s been really enjoyable to be part of that process with them as a company.

We’ve found that having job fairs or a hands-on environment where we can get younger or maybe less qualified candidates on our equipment, were around some of the things we do. It’s been really impactful too, you know, building that future generation. Where Core Matters came in is really how we marketed that and how we approached those people. They were instrumental in providing not only very succinct and organized learning modules, but we also followed up with how we implemented that.

And it was a very structured process to get it from point A to point B. And then, you know, we’re moving to C, D and E continually with Core Matters, but they also back it up with a very clear set of instructions and how to, to get you from one point to the next and ultimately improve the quality of, of your hires and the effectiveness of your hiring. We’ve had really great experience with Ryan and his team and Core Matters. You know, they’ve taken us to the next level. We’re a people first company, but with his help, they’re moving the needle. If you own or run a business and you’re really focused on improving your people, I would highly recommend Core Matters for your hiring and retention efforts.