New Application Process Turbo-Charges Recruitment in Rochester

By / Sheralyn Belyeu

The Local 46 JATC in Rochester, New York, receives more than six times as many applications per year as before the pandemic. “Right now, I have 84 applicants in the system,” says JATC Training Director Allen J. Mort. A few are queued up for interviews, and 34 of them are prepared to be dispatched as soon as contractors need labor. “We’re waiting for the spring season and the summer work to kick in, and people are ready to get going.”

Local 46 used to receive about 40 applications a year, which Mort accepted in person at the JATC once a month. Potential apprentices often took other opportunities between application days. Of the applicants who came in, most were more interested in fulfilling outside requirements than they were in finding work. The Local interviewed many people who never returned to submit their educational and identification credentials.

COVID gave Mort the opportunity to experiment with an online process. Local 46’s new system captures potential apprentices as soon as they express an interest, so the JATC receives almost 250 applications a year. The online process explains the documentation requirements upfront and filters out the uninterested, allowing Mort to focus on the most serious applicants. He only schedules in-person meetings with candidates who have already demonstrated their commitment by fulfilling the Department of Labor minimum requirements.

The key to the new process is a QR code that links to recruiting information online. Local 46 had the QR code printed on business cards they can distribute through the community, and Mort also loves to share the code on stickers developed by Local 46 Marketing Rep Jon Perna. The Local can spread the word by leaving a sticker or two behind where non-union workers find and scan them. “We don’t want people to litter job sites, but we might put the code in a couple of key spots where everybody goes, like the break area or the gang box,” Mort says. Recruiting offices in schools and vocational training institutes are also good locations for cards and stickers.

The code leads applicants straight to a PDF document with all the information they need. “There’s no login,” Mort says. “It’s got to be quick and seamless.” The first thing potential apprentices see is the heading: “Sheet Metal Workers & HVAC/R Techs Union.” The word “HVAC/R” in the title is crucial to Local 46’s success.

“We have a little bit of a branding problem,” Mort says. Most people have a good idea of what an electrician does, and they can guess that carpenters are involved with wood framing. But the average person on the street doesn’t understand what sheet metal work entails.

“You’d be surprised by the people that don’t know,” he says. “HVAC is a more familiar term. Most people we’re introducing ourselves to have had technicians in their house working on their boilers. At Local 46, we’ve changed all our information to say sheet metal worker and HVAC/R technicians because the younger people and the people looking for jobs say ‘HVAC.’”

Information about pay and benefits comes next. “Local 46 just finished up a contract negotiation, and our wages changed,” Mort says. “We want to make sure we get the wage information out as soon as possible, so people see the most modern number.”

With paper applications, the wage change would have meant reprinting reams of paper, and most of that paper would have ended up on the floor of someone’s car. With the online process, the Local could reach all potential apprentices by revising just one source, the PDF.

“The information in the background can be updated on the website,” Mort says. “My coworker changed the rates at the end of last week, so it’s fresh information in the system.” The stickers and cards still work, so there’s no need to replace materials that are already in the community, and the QR code never expires.

The PDF includes links to International Training Institute (ITI) videos explaining career paths in sheet metal. “The videos are only a few minutes long, so they’re not overwhelming,” Mort says. The ITI videos help potential apprentices see the range of the sheet metal trade.

“Because of the information in the PDF, by the time people come in for the interview and get out there for the job, they’ve already had some education regarding the tasks involved,” Mort says. “I always tell them, we are giving you all the glitz and glamour of the trades, but at the end of the day, you have to show up every day and put out a decent amount of effort. You may be working on the heating and ventilation system, so the air in the space is probably not going to be tempered to your liking. If you’re installing the roof, you might get rained on a little bit.”

The actual applications take potential apprentices directly to the iTi’s TotalTrack system. “This is the main database for all our apprentices internationally,” Mort says. “When applicants enter information, they’re going into the same database that they’re going to use all the way through their career.”

Best of all, they enter the information themselves. “If I give you my email address and it’s too wordy, or there’s a pronunciation issue, or it gets entered in incorrectly, that’s the potential loss of an applicant,” Mort says. The online application eliminates data entry and error of entry, preventing unnecessary loses.

Mort chose a paid QR code service that allows him to track the code’s use. “Since April of 2022, this QR code has had almost 2,200 hits,” he says. Ninety percent of the scans are from mobile devices. Mort even knows how many of those devices were Android or Apple.

With a tight labor market, Mort encourages all JATCs to reconsider their application processes to see if they can improve their efficiency. Local 46’s results suggest that modernizing the process can be life changing. “This new system is lightyears ahead of what we were doing before,” he says. ▪

A Colorado native, Sheralyn Belyeu lives and writes deep in the woods of Alabama. When she’s not writing, she grows organic blueberries and collects misspellings of her name.