This article originally appeared on the Birmingham Business Journal.
Jennifer Wright, Vice President Human Resources
Hoar Construction and HPM
What has been the most pivotal moment in your career?
I have experienced many pivotal moments in my career that have helped accelerate both my personal and professional growth. When you take on new roles with greater responsibilities, embrace new company cultures, and work with new mentors and mentees these can have drastic impacts on your career. After graduation, I aspired to be a retail fashion buyer. I had goals based upon the published career path. However, my plan never included working for a company that would sell and close a regional buying office. I pivoted my goals and my role into an assistant store manager role for another national retailer, with responsibilities over operations. This position came with an impressive supervisor and mentor who believed I had great leadership potential. It also came with a great peer who became a friend. Her responsibilities were segmented to human resources, which was new for the company. Six months into my new role, and after many conversations about career goals, we crafted a proposal and plan for our supervisor to switch our positions. That proposal began my journey into HR leadership.
What do you believe has been the most monumental change or shift in your industry and how has it impacted the way business is conducted?
Technology, innovation, and the changing workforce dynamics are having and will continue to have a significant impact on the construction industry over the next decade. The industry has been challenged with replacing an aging workforce and insufficient entries of younger workers seeking a career in construction. This labor gap is expected to continue to expand over the next decade. Yes, some of this gap may be narrowed by future innovations and technology integration into the building process. However, it will not be the only solution to close the labor shortage gap. People are at the heart of our industry; they always have been and will continue to be an important strategy for moving our industry forward. There has been significant focus and strategic alignment around recruiting, developing, mentoring, upskilling, and retaining talent not only in our company but throughout the industry. Helping to create and lead these strategic initiatives at Hoar to sustain our current and future growth plans have been both challenging and professionally rewarding.
What advice would you give to future potential employees?
Set goals both personally and professionally. Evaluate them often and share them with others that will support you and hold you accountable. Success rarely follows a straight path, and it does not come without taking risks. But, having goals that align with your vision and dreams is the important first step.
What positives and negatives are you seeing among the various generations interacting in the workplace?
I am an extremely optimistic individual; I believe there is tremendous value in having various generations interacting in the workplace. Each generation has its unique experiences, values, and worldviews, but it also creates a diverse work environment and an opportunity to foster a learning culture. Mentorship and a team member’s wealth of knowledge sharing from many years doing that role cannot be replicated or taught through online training courses or in a book. Pairing different generations of workers has been invaluable to us as an organization. The unconventional and unexpected relationships and friendships that have been created have been really neat to watch grow.
How do you recruit from outside of Birmingham? What are your top selling points?
We have a national footprint, so our recruiting teams recruit for openings throughout the United States. We are a relationship-driven company, with our clients, our partners, and our employees. What started out as a small family business is now more than 800 employees strong, but we still operate like a family business. Whenever we are recruiting talent to join our company, we purposely invest in building a relationship with that candidate, ensuring that they experience what makes our culture special throughout the entire recruitment process.
I am proud that we are consistently recognized nationally as being a Great Place to Work. I genuinely believe that our people and our culture are very special. We ensure all our candidates feel that same feeling from the very first interaction with us no matter where that role is located.
