The Job You Could Win If You Had the Right Help

The customer is ready. The job fits what your company does. You can see how to get it done, and you would like the work. Then you look at the schedule and realize your crew is already stretched thin.

For a small contractor, that can be the point where a good opportunity slips away.

You could turn the job down. You could push the schedule and hope the customer waits. Or you could take it and ask the same people who are already working hard to somehow find another day in the week. None of those choices feels especially good when you're trying to build a business.

Ben Randall knows that pressure. After about 20 years in the industry, including several years owning a heating and cooling business, he has seen how difficult it can be to grow when dependable help is hard to find.

That experience led him to start building LaborTrader, a marketplace for construction and the skilled trades.

Room to grow without getting ahead of yourself

Hiring another full-time employee can be the right move when the work is steady. The harder situation is a project that needs extra help now, without enough certainty about what comes next to support another permanent position.

A contractor might need another skilled person for a particular stage of a job, or help getting through a stretch of overlapping projects. That need can be real even if the business isn't ready to expand its regular crew.

LaborTrader's planned business-to-business marketplace is meant to give contractors another way to find that help. A business with work to complete could connect with another company that has people available, arranging additional labor around the job at hand.

For the hiring contractor, the potential benefit is being able to consider work that would otherwise be out of reach. For the business providing labor, it is a chance to put available capacity to use.

Finding someone who fits the job

Any contractor who has brought someone new onto a job knows that availability is only the first question. What can they do? What experience do they have? Are they a good fit for the work and the crew?

LaborTrader is being designed to help members look beyond a name and a phone number. Planned profiles, work histories and reviews would give contractors more information to consider, with reliability records growing as members complete work through the platform.

The plans also account for licensing, insurance and employment requirements. A licensed trade or specialized job needs the right qualifications, and the platform is being built with those differences in mind.

Randall also envisions temporary W-2 opportunities supported by staffing partners, creating another possible route for businesses that need help and tradespeople looking for work.

“I know what it's like to want to grow and not have the help to do it,” Randall said. “There are a lot of hardworking people in this industry who deserve better ways to find work, find help and build something bigger. That's what we're trying to create.”

A more useful network

Contractors already turn to people they know when they need a hand. The challenge is what happens when everyone on that list is busy, too.

LaborTrader aims to make that network easier to build and use, helping contractors find businesses and people they might otherwise never meet. A small company could have more options when a good job comes along, while still thinking carefully about what it can take on.

The platform is in development, and preregistration is open. Contractors and tradespeople can preregister for free usage when LaborTrader launches at labortraders.com/signup.