This HR leader is applying her career lessons to finding and retaining workers in construction

Jamie Gildersleeve, like most other HR professionals she knows, didn’t dream of pursuing a career in the people function when she was young.

“If you ask[ed] me as a high school senior, I was joining the Coast Guard after school. I was going to jump out of helicopters; you would have found me in Cuba somewhere,” Gildersleeve, who now is director of HR at Pittsburgh-based Mascaro Construction, told HR Brew.

After deciding to take some business courses in college, she developed an affinity for HR, and set her sights on the field. After holding multiple HR roles at firms including at financial services giant PNC and construction company Steelsmith, she joined Mascaro in 2019. Gildersleeve and her HR and workforce development manager currently oversee a workforce of around 800.

She said construction is an industry that is experiencing a similar phenomenon as HR, adding that kids don’t necessarily dream of having a career in the field. While Gen Zers are increasingly turning to trades jobs, there’s still a shortage of these roles, which is only expected to worsen as more skilled trades professionals retire in the coming years. That means HR pros in the industry have had to rethink attracting and retaining talent.

“Our biggest piece right now in construction [is] staffing and keeping people interested and engaged. And it’s a tough career,” she said. “You’re running the equipment and you’re in all of the elements, depending where you live in the United States. It’s very rewarding, pays well, but you’ve got to have some grit.”

As such, she says she’s had to think creatively about how to get young people involved in the field, and with improving retention efforts at the company. For the former, she’s launched initiatives including educating elementary and middle school students about a career in construction, and for the latter she’s focused on developing supervisors’ coaching skills with their own staff.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you've worked?

When I arrived, the engagement and trust in the department was at an all-time low.

I came into a space that, at Mascaro, you have a long-standing admin that grew into the HR position over the first 25 years of the company, and then you had this five to seven year period where there was a little bit of a shuffle of HR people. And so when I came in, there wasn't consistency. There wasn’t anybody that had a true HR background performing the role.

The first two months that I was here, I would walk through the building every day, I would do two rounds and stop and talk to somebody like, “Hey, I’m Jamie. I think I met you the other day. What do you do?” Just talking to people, them getting to know me, because I didn’t want to be like all the memes [mocking] HR. I wanted to be Jamie.

I think that [the best changes were] consistency, showing up every day, being really vested in our people, having that open door policy, and even getting out on sites.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job

That I’m just monitoring people’s computers and arrival to work. Trust me, we don’t have time for that!

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Coaching and mentoring our managers. Our people are some of the best engineers, builders, and professionals in the construction industry, but that doesn’t mean they organically know how to manage their teams, be a leader onsite, or a coach to incoming talent.

I’m really lucky with my five years here at Mascaro, ownership [has] spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on leadership development, bringing in an outside resource to come in and teach our people managers and our aspiring leaders of the company. We’ve also had manager training where they are coming in and learning [how to give] feedback and interacting with direct reports.

We’ve pulled people out of their jobs and set them in those trainings, sent them back to their day jobs, and it’s like, “Oh, I forgot what I just learned.” So I continue to keep those skills and topics relevant. A good example is, we do quarterly check-ins here at Mascaro…instead of two big reviews a year. I’m noticing that there was a good portion in our commercial division that just weren’t doing them. So I’m walking by [a work site] and I see somebody’s donuts, I’m grabbing a donut, [and asking] “How’s your team?” As we’re sitting over there, and sprinkles are falling, they’re telling me about their team, like… “I’ve given them feedback on this, but he’s not correcting it.” So I’m like, “Tell me how you’re giving the feedback. Did you follow up in an email?”

[I’m] reinforcing the things that they learn in that structured training, in a social way. I love that because… no longer am I the HR lady, I'm Jamie, having donuts with them.