Join Us at TPIE and Grow Your Business

We look forward to seeing you January 22nd-24th in sunny Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at the Tropical Plant International Expo (TPIE)— THE trade event showcasing the latest trends in foliage, floral, and tropicals. Connect with The BEST Team— Todd Downing, Harrison Downing, and Joni Downing will be attending. Their focus is to make themselves available to meet with leaders wanting to discuss their company’s executive hiring, succession planning, and restructuring and turnaround needs. With decades of experience in corporate management, sales, marketing, human resources, and business advisory, BEST specializes in talent acquisition and management consulting for the horticulture industry. If you represent a company with executive hiring, restructuring professional, or succession planning needs, please make an appointment to meet with us. Contact us today to setup a meeting or for more information. Download our Best Overview to learn more about the BEST Human Capital & Advisory Group and why there is a better way!
The Benefits of Improving Transparency in Hiring

Like all other aspects of business, hiring and recruitment continue to evolve faster and faster. Implementing AI, such as in the hiring process, will increase the efficiency of the process itself. There are hiring changes that are not technologically based occurring that, when properly applied, are proving to have a positive impact on attracting talent, increasing the retention of new hires, and helping companies become a preferred place for careers. At the top of this evolution in hiring is one simple yet too often ignored approach – transparency! What are the Benefits of a Transparent Recruitment Process? Companies that provide candidates with a fully transparent interview process find that over time, they attract better quality talent, increase offer acceptance rates, get new hires up to productivity faster, improve long-term retention rates, and create a stronger employer brand in their community and industry. All the benefits of transparency and authenticity are intertwined. Top talent candidates who experience transparency in the interview process from the beginning are more likely to stay engaged throughout the entire process. Due to the transparency of compensation and trust developed with candidates, offer acceptance increased. Candidates can make decisions on their compensation offer well ahead of the actual offer letter and are more likely to be flexible on their compensation expectations due to developing a trusting relationship. Once on board and with a thorough training plan, the new hires reach productivity levels faster and often exceed them. Perhaps most importantly, long-term retention rates increase, especially when coupled with a Training & Development program that was shared with them during interviews. Over time, professionals in a company’s community or within the industry hear of the positive culture, strengthening the overall employer brand. How to Implement Hiring Transparency:Transparency Begins Before the Interview Develop job descriptions that accurately reflect the role’s responsibilities and, more importantly, define metrics of success in the role. Job descriptions with a vast number of responsibilities will leave candidates wondering just what the role’s real priorities are, and they may not even bother to apply. Keep responsibilities reasonable and in a prioritized manner. Defining three specific and realistic key performance indicator (KPI) metrics is incredibly helpful to a candidate’s understanding of the role’s mission. It is a core component to increasing productivity once on board. What is a realistic KPI? An effective way to set a realistic KPI is to ask yourself: if the candidate does not achieve the KPI in one year, will I have to fire them? This may sound harsh, but it does result in companies setting KPIs that are realistic, thus influencing positive long-term retention. Help Candidates Prepare to be Their Best Communicate interview timelines, including all the interview steps. Doing so prevents candidates from leaving the process out of frustration. Change is constant, and these timelines can often get derailed due to other business priorities and scheduling conflicts, but communicating any changes immediately develops the candidate’s trust. Provide candidates with company information, an accurate overview of the culture, the names and titles of the interviewers, the type of interview questions the company asks, whether a behavioral assessment tool is utilized, and whether they will be required to present to the hiring committee. Candidates are equally responsible for a successful hiring process. However, providing details does not mean doing the candidate’s job of conducting thorough follow-up research on these details! A Conversation, Not an Inquisition Once candidate conversations begin, transparency is increased by having just that – a conversation. Included in this is realizing that no company is perfect, thus, be prepared to be authentic and share with candidates where the company is challenged and what about the role will not be a bed of roses for any candidate. Be prepared to share the onboarding process and exactly how your company invests in further professional training in their teams. Scripted questions lead to sterile conversation and scripted answers by candidates. We learn so much more about a candidate’s behaviors during a conversation rather than a scripted dialogue, as they are more at ease and able to be themselves as opposed to someone they think you want them to be. Timely & Quality Follow-up Providing quality feedback within 48 hours to a candidate in a timely manner may be the best transparency a company can practice. High-quality candidates will stay engaged with the hiring process to the offer end. Top talent that doesn’t receive thorough, timely feedback will exit the process to focus on other job opportunities. Thorough feedback includes sharing how many candidates are in process. This is a critical transparency step. Please do not tell candidates the age-old HR line that we are interviewing several other candidates and will get back to you, especially if you are not. Be transparent – is it one? Is it 5? Or are there no more candidates? Sharing quality feedback to candidates being turned down will help candidates grow professionally and leave a positive impression of your company with them for the future. This is an important way to build a positive company brand image in the community and industry. Transparency in Compensation and Benefits Gone are the days when compensation decisions were made based on salary history; 22 states plus 23 localities and counting have passed legislation banning employers from asking candidates for this information or basing hiring on the candidate’s current compensation. Hiring managers: please do not ask this question any longer. Transparency of compensation and benefits begins with their inclusion in the job description and extends through the final offer. This requires companies to invest time and resources to identify fair and accurate compensation for the role, industry, and geographic location. When setting the compensation range, be clear on what the absolute max is and what the absolute minimum is. Many great candidates are now passing over job descriptions that do not share this. Discuss the compensation range from the first interview and share benefit details. You are building trust and increasing efficiency by eliminating
Who Wants to Be a Leader?

Do you have a specific career vision of becoming a company leader in the horticulture industry someday? Are you working on adding professional skill sets to enable you to take on C-level or leadership-level roles? As a company, have you invested in a definitive training and development program aimed at developing your next leaders? There is a leadership void in the horticultural industry that will critically need more leaders now and progressively into the future. The number of retirements occurring in the green industry is staggering. Did you know there are over 100 owners of green industry companies retiring soon who have no clear leader to succeed them? Per the USDA, in 2024, the average age of all agricultural producers is 58.1 years, and those over age 65 constitute 40% of the total. As an industry, we endured a period with historically low numbers of students and professionals interested in pursuing a green industry career. This period has created a talent gap in the upcoming generations, especially Gen X. The small number of professionals in this group are talented and knowledgeable. Still, it is merely a matter of supply and demand. There are not enough leaders to take over, and not enough professionals have been provided leadership training. Throughout every sector, demographic, and role in the green industry, there are fewer individuals who have a specific desire and career focus to lead a company. Compare this to the financial or software sectors, where a high volume of professionals have an early passion and focus on driving their careers to the top leadership roles in their industry. It is surprising how small the number of professionals in our industry is who are adequately prepared or willing to be a leader in their company. A dynamic affecting this is the sheer number of family-held companies where leadership has traditionally been passed to second or third generations. While this is admirable, it has also tempered the career aspirations of those not part of the family. We are now at a tipping point where there are fewer generations to pass leadership roles to, causing new and challenging exit planning options for the current leaders. A Mutual Effort Question: How do we address this predicament? Answer: From the mutual effort of individuals and companies. Encourage students and early career professionals to dream big and envision being a company leader. Leadership is not for everyone, provided all the responsibilities and challenges that come with it. However, we need more professionals who genuinely want to take on significant leadership roles with a company. Ask yourself— Have you allowed yourself to dream about this type of role? To have more leaders, we need more professionals who desire to take on a role of this level. With that desire comes the awareness that one must embrace continual learning with curiosity and accept certain sacrifices required to drive one’s career to a top leadership level. This could include putting in longer hours, the ability to relocate, and volunteering to take on new tasks or help in other departments when they are shorthanded. Professionals open to relocating for roles will indeed advance their careers faster! Academically, technical knowledge of plant science-related academia is essential. Yet infusing business knowledge is equally, if not more, important in developing future leaders. We have many excellent educational institutions producing knowledgeable students. Increasing the focus of these academic programs on developing leadership with curricula geared to business and management will provide a business base and inspire more students to do so. For example, we rightly celebrate our grower interns, but we should also celebrate those doing horticulture industry internships in sales, marketing, accounting, or human resources. Have a Plan If you want to lead a company, division, or department someday, identify within yourself the knowledge and skill sets needed to get there. Proactively take charge of gaining the knowledge and experience you lack rather than relying on others. There is just as much onus on companies to be a part of increased leadership development. This does require an investment in both money and time to be successful. Begin to balance your team’s professional development budget with your automation budget. No matter how automized, it still takes strong professionals leading from the front for a company to realize success. Many assessment tools, such as CliftonStrengths, DISC, and Myers-Briggs, are available to help a company identify individuals with future leadership behaviors. These tools will help craft a career plan to infuse them with the skill sets needed to be strong leaders. Does your company have career development planning that includes rotating top talent through different departments or functions? Companies that rotate talent through various departments produce the strongest leadership pipeline. At the very least, does the company invest in continual education or training programs focused on improving communication, soft skills, sales, marketing, financial, operations, or supply chain knowledge? Encourage and support these professionals to become active within the industry via associations, seminars, or other educational and networking events. Don’t be afraid of losing this talent to industry exposure. Several leadership programs have been developed specifically for our industry, such as Dr. Charlie Hall’s Texas A&M EAGL program and the HRI Leadership Academy. Professionals who know their company invests fully in their employee’s growth are much less likely to leave. Employees feeling stifled in their development will leap at the opportunity for growth elsewhere. Investing in the Future No company has an endless budget, but a company can apply strategies that do not require a monetary investment, such as transparency in your business and delegation of responsibilities. Openness with your employees about all facets of the business directly correlates to increasing their professional growth. For example, companies applying the “Great Game of Business” approach to transparency have more engaged, business savvy, and motivated employees concerning their career progression. Pairing high-potential employees with positive mentors will also benefit the mentors themselves by increasing organizational talent strength. Encourage delegating responsibilities and not micro-managing those who are assigned tasks. This must
How Do You Know When It’s Time for a Career Change?

While professional development is viewed differently by everyone and is often driven by a person’s behaviors, the vast majority of people do want to experience continual growth in their careers. A primary rule of thumb is that no matter what this growth looks like, it is important to be going towards something and not running away from something. There are many other factors to think about as you determine what career growth may be for you. Does your company proactively invest with you in planning your professional growth? Do they actively invest in you earning certifications and being active in industry associations or professional peer development groups? Timing – everyone is on a different career time clock, and one’s stage of life influences this. What does your timing for professional growth look like now and in 5 or 10 years? Is it the job itself? What responsibilities would you change or add to feel you are growing professionally? Is it the company? Somewhere, somehow, the cultural fit became misaligned. You can envision being happy in your current role but find growth coming from being in a different culture, a different product or service line, a different market focus, or even a different industry. Is it you? People change, and that’s OK! Even the most committed professionals will, on average, find themselves in 3 different careers during their lifetime. Here are specific indicators that it may be time for a career change. The body, mind, and spirit will be talking to you. Are you constantly tired? Is your body having physical reactions that are stress-related? Is it hard to concentrate? Do you dread Mondays? Even when you have great energy, are you just not enthused about being at work? Is your job negatively affecting your confidence and self-esteem? Do you second-guess decisions? Do you find it difficult to make a decision? Are you only staying because of the money? You can buy some great toys, but they don’t increase your happiness. Is the next bonus target the only reason you are still there? Are you constantly thinking about or researching other jobs? Do the career positions other people you know have seem much more attractive to you because they seem so happy? Or do you even find yourself jealous of their careers? Have you become apathetic to your company, your position, your coworkers, or your industry? You don’t care about the decisions being made, personal or company successes, or positive industry news. Do family and friends share their concerns about your mental state and happiness? Have you disconnected socially from them? Are you quiet when together? If any of these ring true, spend time thoughtfully identifying where your career passions are taking you and invest in what new skills this path requires. Contact me at tdowning@bhcagroup.com for a Candidate Objective Worksheet, which will help you define your career goals, vision, and the parameters that are important to you! Speaking of career development, we are sharing a few current growth opportunities (click here) we are hiring for, which may best capture where your career passions are moving you toward. What are you passionate about? Where do you feel most fulfilled? Whatever that may be, you should be doing just that in your career. We’d love to connect to learn all about it and support your professional journey wherever possible. Todd Downing is a Managing Partner for Best Human Capital Advisory Group and leads the Horticulture & Green Industry executive search and advisory services. He has more than 30 years of experience in the industry and a passion for supporting its continued professional growth.
The Importance of Thank You Notes

Our client had told us that the candidate had hit it out of the park during her interview – she checked off all the boxes, save one. Unfortunately, they did not receive a post-interview thank-you note (via email), so they went with another candidate. The other candidate had similar qualifications, although slightly less stellar in the interview. However, he had taken the time to send a thank-you email to express his interest in the position, the projects they were working on going forward, and how he could contribute. Our client was direct and to the point – “No thank you note – no offer.” A missed opportunity. In 2019, Jessica Liebman, the Executive Managing Editor of Insider Inc., stated in a Business Insider article that she has a simple rule when she is hiring. “We shouldn’t move a candidate to the next stage in the interview process unless they send a thank-you email.” Liebman went on to state that bringing someone into your company is always risky. However, a thank you email (not snail mail – too slow) signals a candidate’s motivation and desire for the position and generally means they’re a “good egg.” There are only so many data points one can collect in an interview, she reasoned, that sometimes the thank-you note will make the difference in the selection of candidates. Our client obviously agrees. She further clarified and stated, “To be clear, a thank-you note does not ensure someone will be a successful hire. But using the thank-you email as a barrier to entry has proved beneficial, at least at my company.” So, it makes sense, right? Not necessarily. Unfortunately, back in 2019, and it continues today, social media went into hyperdrive to cancel her and her statements. Other hiring managers, reputable organizations (SHRM and LinkedIn), and publications joined the fray, with several siding in large part with those who disagreed. Liebman followed up with another article humorously titled, “Thank you for reading my story about thank-you notes!” to clarify what she meant a few days later. Many people were seemingly offended that anyone would actually “require” sending a thank-you note after an interview. She went on to explain she was trying to be helpful and shed some light and that, “The biggest factors we consider are a candidate’s talent and fit for the role.” It was a “rule of thumb” and not official company policy. What are the disagreements with Liebman’s piece on sending thank you notes that continue today? Any online search regarding the necessity of thank you notes after the interview will bring up a lot of articles and pundits that say they are not necessary. For example, thank you notes are antiquated and pointless [apparently not to her and the many hiring managers and business leaders we talk to regularly at BEST]. Thank-you notes are to stroke the ego of the interviewer. Seriously? A thank-you note? The application and job description said nothing about sending a thank you. Liebman’s response was priceless on this point, “Neither is being on time to the interview.” Our favorite? Expecting a thank-you note is elitist and shows discrimination and bias because many people have never been taught this skill. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) are critical to any organization today. Different perspectives can lead to increased creativity, innovation, productivity, better decision-making, and a better work environment and culture, among many other benefits. Since 2019, we have been through a pandemic and social justice movement that has brought DEI to the forefront in hiring. However, we have never seen it be used as an excuse not to be courteous and to send a thank you. Laziness would be a better excuse. After all, especially in a customer-facing role, would you want anyone on your team that doesn’t know how to say thank you? But it’s a candidate’s market – you see the news – there are more jobs than people to fill them. So they [the interviewer] should be sending the candidate a thank you. We can concede this point to a degree in that all companies need to do a better job notifying candidates and letting them know why they did not get the position. Point well taken, and it is also something we strive for at BEST. A lot of the consternation on this could be the culturally questioning and upending times we live in – where being contrary on social media is expected and merely aiming for “likes” and that all-important re-share. However, at BEST, we can only speak to our own experience working with clients and candidates and heartily thank those who disagree (because it is indeed helpful). As business leaders, hiring managers, and recruiters, it is often about overcoming buyer’s remorse. When a hiring manager or company leader is getting ready to make a hiring decision, they are looking for those elements, however small, that can put a candidate over the edge and calm their fears about making a bad hire. For example, our client mentioned that they liked the candidate, but she had not sent a thank you. To the client, it was a reasonable expectation – another box to check. By sending a thank you note, the other candidate checked that box and received the offer instead. For the candidates we work with, our resources stress the importance of the thank-you email. A candidate should always ask for the interviewer’s email address during the interview (whether on the phone or in person). Rarely, if ever, has it been questioned. After all, it is another opportunity to sell yourself to the prospective company. It doesn’t have to be a long note – say thank you, say that you want the position, and use it also to state why you are the best fit for the role (one or two reasons you are the best candidate for the job or maybe there was something you missed during the interview) and that you would welcome further discussion. Then, send it within 24-hours while you are still fresh in the interviewer’s mind. Is that so hard? As the “Great Resignation” continues, there