PuroClean

"Core Matters helps us make our hiring and our team our competitive advantage"

– Chris Sanford

I’m Chris Sanford, Owner Operator of Puro Clean Disaster Restoration. We are in Providence, Rhode Island. We help people with everyday disasters in their homes or commercial building to include water, fire, smoke, mold, and biohazard issues. We’re 15 years in business.

We’ve gone through hundreds of employees over the years, and we’ve recognized that we want to have staff that are here and gain experience. The longer they’re with us, the more they can help each other, and the more they can help our customers.

The issue was not everybody was buying into our culture and our core values, and what we needed and wanted here. You know, as a team, as a company. So working with Core Matters, they helped us really identify that, but then really helped us, solidify what was important and then put that into a vision and mission. Core values that we can then talk about and share with job candidates and current employees. So again, we all have that same shared, mission, vision, and core values.

We found Core Matters. They had given a presentation at Puro Clean Regional Meeting, we’re a national franchise. They had brought Core Matters in to talk to owners in the Northeast. We liked the pitch. We decided to reach out and learn more. Then we decided to sign up and work with them.

You’ve got to learn and then change quite a few things in the hiring process. From the way we vet candidates, the way we interview, and the way we onboard. We’re going to be working on the retention piece as well. You’ve got to tailor that process for each position, right? So, I’m hiring an entry-level technician, which is like a laborer. It’s very different than an outside sales rep, is very different from a middle manager.

So we’ve had to tailor that process, per position. It’s taken work on our part. But working with Core matters, using their expertise, they’ve helped guide us through that process. At first, the online training seemed overwhelming, it’s a lot. But by doing that homework in advance, made our Zoom call collaboration much more productive. I think they do understand the blue-collar trades. I think they understand the pain points that we have. I also like that they can help us make hiring our team one of our competitive advantages as a company.

I love talking to local peer companies and competitors, and they just complain that “there are no employees, nobody wants to work. They’re all lazy”. I just let them talk and I don’t say anything. I don’t want them to know that, we don’t believe that. There are great employees. You’ve just got to find them. A lot of companies, a lot of business owners focus on sales. They focus on production. But you know, your people are your core, are your strength. If you’re not looking at human resources, you’re not looking at how you hire, not looking at who you hire, and you’re not making that an important focus of your business, you’re going to be constantly struggling with turnover, especially in this market.

I want to thank Ryan and Tammy from Core Matters. We’ve enjoyed working with you and in fact, we look forward to continuing to work with you. You’ve helped us revamp our hiring process and onboarding, but we want to keep working with you to retain those great employees we’re hiring now.