Lauren Schellpfeffer, Excel - Recruiting + HR in the World of Engineering

Introduction

Adam: WiLL Cast number 41 was with Lauren from Excel Engineering. Becca, what does Lauren do?

Becca: Lauren is the HR manager, but
not your typical HR manager. She's a cool agent.

Adam: That's kind of a dig.

Becca: No, it is not. She has a lot to
do. It's all-encompassing. But as she did mention, they rely a lot on their
vendors for some of the policies, procedures, rules, and compliance that people
would often associate with the negative side of HR. She gets to do a lot of the
recruitment, the onboarding, and what I would consider the fun HR — kind of the
ambassador for the company.

Adam: She didn't start in HR. She had
a really cool transition in that she started at Excel as an admin — the front
desk receptionist, I believe — 10 years ago. And as she mentioned, she did not
take a job at WiLL.

Becca: So you interviewed Lauren about
10 years ago?

Adam: I wasn't sure if she was going
to bring that up, but she did. She was great during that interview process. At
the time, in terms of the buildings and the company and the culture and
everything we had going on, she probably made the right decision to go to work
at Excel. She was pretty complimentary of what we've built since then.

Becca: We're coming for you, Excel.

Adam: We've come a long way. I would
say we've probably stolen some ideas from Excel when it comes to the office
culture. What's the expression — imitation is the best form of flattery. It was
great to talk to her. We have a similar recruiting culture. We don't actively
recruit engineers at Wisconsin colleges or anything like that, but just in
terms of the open and honest communication and some of the different ways that
they ensure the people coming on board are a good fit — there's some alignment
there.

Becca: Her personality was just really
refreshing. It was fun to have her in here. We got done — you guys thought you
talked for a half hour, it was almost an hour. It didn't feel like an hour on
my side of the cameras either, which is always a good sign. She seems like a
great ambassador for Excel because she's done so much there. She has a broad
cross-section of skills and backgrounds — from front desk receptionist, she
worked on a project team, she's worked with engineers. And it sounded like, as
Excel continued to grow and this HR role came up, the owners talked to her and
carved out this super important position.

Adam: She goes to the Kentucky Derby
every year.

Becca: And she's into horses even
beyond that. Family tradition.

Adam: This episode is also brought to
you by WiLL Sport, which is Wisconsin Lighting Lab's sports lighting brand. We
do indoor sports, outdoor sports — light poles, light fixtures, control
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Enjoy WiLL Cast number 41 with Lauren from Excel.

The Kentucky Derby Tradition

Adam: Kentucky Derby — how many times
have you been?

Lauren: This was probably my 24th. We
keep trying to calculate how many it's been. My parents have been going
consecutively for, I believe, 38 and 37 years. It's definitely a family thing.
My dad went down to the Kentucky Derby almost 40 years ago. I think they camped
in a tent in a parking lot. He went with a buddy he was teaching with over at
Pyre at the time. He was dating my mom, so of course he came back from the
derby, knew my mom's family was really into horse racing. He's like, I'm going
to impress them. Let's rent an RV, go down there and camp. The rest is kind of
history. It's been an annual thing.

Adam: That's cool. Traditions are
cool. Are you into horses outside of the Kentucky Derby?

Lauren: We used to go horseback
riding, like one trail ride a summer. But my sister did work at a horse farm
down in Lexington after Madison, when she went to school for animal science.
She ended up at the Mayo Clinic of horse hospitals — which is Rood and Riddle
Equine Hospital down in Lexington. She's still down there with my nephew. So
it's kind of a fun transition from being fans of the derby to her living down
there. We go every year. It's just that annual trip, but you pack a lot in a
few days.

From Front Desk to HR Manager

Adam: So you've been at Excel for
almost 10 years, and you're in a human resources role — HR Manager. You
actually started at the front desk?

Lauren: I don't know if this is the
best time to bring up the fact that I also had an interview with you guys at
the same time. And I remember you guys were a little bit smaller, and the
deciding factor was there were so many more people at Excel.

Adam: Yeah, we didn't have that yet.
It was an understandable choice. But obviously, now walking in the building —

Lauren: I'm like, oh shoot. But it was
a good choice. It's funny though — it's really on topic on the HR side,
attracting and retaining really good team members and how important having a
fun, inviting space is. 10–15 years ago, we did not have a fun and inviting
space. That's one of our missions — to continue to make work fun and exciting.
Obviously work hard, the work and the product and the customers are always the
most important, but attracting and retaining a good team is important.

Lauren: So I started out front desk.
When I started at Excel, we were at about 97 employees. Throughout the last
nine years, those first probably 18 months, I switched into a lot of different
roles right off the bat because we were starting to grow at a pretty significant
pace. I moved into a project assistant role in our civil engineering
department. That department works a lot with site plan design, stormwater
management, wetland delineation. What I would do is work with the managers and
the employees for state submittals, local submittals — kind of just the project
assistance on that side, communications, that sort of thing.

Lauren: Then I was approached by Jeff,
our president, to start assisting with some marketing items. That was when
social media was really starting to come into play on the business side. I
helped with the social media pages, started with some event planning. And on
the HR side, Steve, our CFO, asked me to start helping with recruiting, some
new employee orientation. It really started with just a little bit here and
there. When you have a small company, everyone wears a lot of different hats. I
was doing three or four different things. Eventually they said, do you want to
do just the HR and marketing? It was a split 50/50 role. Reporting to both the
president and the CFO was really hard for a while — what's the priority? But it
was a really good learning experience. Ultimately, as Steve got closer to
retirement, I transitioned to just primarily HR.

Personality Types in Engineering

Adam: In an HR role, you start to see
certain types of personalities attracted to certain types of positions.
Engineers can be introverted, generally. Do you see different characteristics
within the types of engineering roles — mechanical versus electrical versus
civil versus AV?

Lauren: You do, and I think the
project manager or the supervisor can also play a big role. There may be more
introverted people in a group if the supervisor is more introverted, so it's
hard to really make that classification by department. But it is interesting. I
really enjoy it personally. There were days when I would go to someone's desk
when I first started there, and they didn't know me as well. I meet everyone
that comes through the door for orientation, so I know everyone. I'm just
always blown away by all of the individuality. I used to go knock on someone's
office and you could just see on their face — especially the introverted ones —
oh God, Lauren's here again.

Adam: I'm smiling — I have never felt
more seen in my entire professional life.

Lauren: I always say hi to everyone,
and I try to say their name, especially the newer people, so they know I know
them. You can see the reactions. That's my favorite part. Some people just walk
past you and don't even acknowledge you, and some are like, oh, hey!

Adam: For a growing organization,
that's often a challenge. You start out with a core, there's a certain type of
personality, a certain group, and then as new people come on, new teams form,
new personalities are led by those teams. For an organization to get over the
hump of only ever having the same type of person — that's an important
milestone. And you need people like you who can really interface between a
variety of groups.

Lauren: It's communication. My biggest
push is usually keep the communication open. Whether the group's introverted,
extroverted — really having that basis of communication, you as a supervisor
are approachable, I can come to you with questions. At the end of the day, the
personalities kind of all just fit into place if you have a group that
communicates well. And we don't always — that's every organization everywhere.
It's a constant goal. Always calibrating the machine.

The Excel Story

Adam: You guys have a really cool
place to work. You just put in another expansion. What is the Excel story and
history?

Lauren: We just celebrated our 30th
anniversary. Excel was founded in 1990 by Gary Runge. He was in Campbellsport
at the time with one or two employees. They started with just architectural and
structural engineering services. As they hired more employees, they were
obviously outgrowing their space. Eventually they decided to purchase the
property up on Camelot Drive in Fond du Lac, where they built the first
building. I think the capacity was for about 50 people. They moved up here in
1996.

Lauren: A year or two prior to that,
Gary had sold 49% of the company to the employees. He owned the 51%. That was
the start of the whole employee ownership. We're now 100% employee-owned. Gary
retired in 2006 and sold the remaining 51% to the employees, making us
completely 100% employee-owned. We had one addition before I started, and since
I've been there — about nine years — we've added on three times.

Lauren: Along the way, we've been
adding different design services. We started with architectural and structural
engineering, then added civil, then MEP — mechanical, electrical, plumbing. We
started a surveying department, process engineering. We've been creating
ourselves as the kind of design firm that's a one-stop shop for our clients.
After all these editions, our most recent one was completed last year. The
building is kind of like the old country farmhouse where you've added on, added
on, added on. But it's a great building — state of the art in capability. With
our most recent addition, we brought capacity to about 350. And we're already
out of room. We're looking into an addition again next year — a two- or
three-story addition, hopefully bringing capacity to about 500.

Adam: You have locations in other
states as well?

Lauren: We're licensed in all 50
states and six Canadian provinces. We can do work across the country, but every
single employee works at 100 Camelot Drive in that office.

Excel & Wisconsin Lighting Lab's History

Adam: We've worked with you guys on a
variety of things over the years. My dad used to use Excel. I think we still
use them for all of our structural PE stamps for light poles in Florida and
other parts of the country. I remember at one point, when we started to get
into LED lighting about 10 years ago, I knew we worked with Excel, and I'm
like, I wonder if they could help us design a light fixture. I had no idea what
architectural engineering was at the time — you're in the business of designing
buildings, not products. I talked to Jeff Cranky. I was like, can you guys
design a light fixture for us? He's like, that's not what we do. Then we had to
figure out how to design a building, and it's like, where do you go? Let's talk
to Excel again. So we met with Jim, and Jim pulled in the process engineering
team. He's like, well, this is what a master plan is. And I've never heard
about a master plan. Sounds impressive. The first step was, let's maximize the
footprint of the lot that we owned. You guys ended up doing the civil
engineering on the building with Keller. It's been a great partnership.

Lauren: When I first got hired, my
family actually made fun of me, because everywhere we would drive — Excel did
that project, Excel did that project. And finally my sister's like, okay,
Lauren, I get it. Excel probably did that project.

Adam: Welcome to the club. There are
light poles everywhere. I believe that. Pretty much every parking lot, at some
point I've pulled in and checked out the light poles that nobody else notices.

Lauren: I graduated to doing that when
you're on vacation. We were in Tomahawk, and they had light poles that had
flower pots built around them instead of a hanging basket. I told everyone to
stop — I had to take a picture. I immediately texted it to a colleague, who
said, you've graduated to the new level of nerd status — you are eyeballing
light poles on vacation.

Adam: That means you're passionate.

Excel's Growth & Niche Markets

Adam: What's next on tap for you guys?

Lauren: Continue to grow. Food
processing is probably 30–40% of our business. We're in the cheese state, so a
lot of cheese, a lot of milk — Sargento, Sartori, the whole lot of those. We've
also really grown in our retail department and some of our niche markets, like
precast engineering — concrete engineering — structural glass, and our
light-gauge department. They all do specific portions of structural projects,
working with different people across the country. I think Tesla, Facebook are
some clients of theirs. Those bring in huge sales, because our light-gauge
department and precast are some of the biggest providers of these services in
the U.S. Midwest area.

Lauren: We have a lot of diversity in
our portfolio. Even when COVID hit, if something were to happen with the
market, we have so much in so many different areas that we always feel pretty
safe. We've acquired some companies recently — a marketing studio, which has
been great because our clients can use it. They're developing all our social
media, doing videos, drone work for project photography. We also brought in
furniture procurement alongside our interior design department. We're always
looking for ways to add value-added services.

HR 101: Grace, Honesty & Communication

Adam: What were some of the surprises
once you got into HR about what it actually is?

Lauren: HR was not what I went to
school for. I went to school for marketing. I kind of just found myself in the
HR role. But I love it. I didn't realize how much I loved policies, procedures,
processes that were very cyclical and that I could continue to improve on. The
thing about HR is most people associate it with the person that yells at you.
It's very contradictory — on one side, you're reinforcing policy and telling
people what they can and can't do. On the other side, you have to be a
therapist, a counselor. I want you to be happy at Excel, because I'm going to
lose you if you're not. But I also want to make sure you're following all the
procedures and rules we have in place. It's sometimes a balancing act.

Lauren: I do everything from career
fairs — I get to go meet a lot of students, which is a lot of fun — to
terminations, which is the not-so-fun part of the job. I'm a product of Jeff
and Steve — our president and CFO — who really helped me mold into this role. They
kept things really simple. I want to treat you like I would want to be treated.
In terminations, conflicts between employees and supervisors — the more honesty
and communication, usually you have less issues in the long run. The reward of
working with people and seeing people develop and grow their careers is really
probably my favorite part of the job.

Adam: If somebody went to school for
HR and came out with their first job, and they read your book called HR 101 —
what would be the first chapters?

Lauren: Don't lie. That is my number
one. If you are an employee, do not lie, because the truth always comes out.
Take ownership. If you take ownership in something and you're passionate about
it and you want to succeed and you work hard, you're going to go places. Don't
make your resume two pages — one page. Cover letter? No cover letter. I don't
read cover letters. Personally, it's like, do you have the experience? If you
don't have the experience, are you the kind of person that looks like they're
going to work well or succeed and work hard?

Hiring: Tours, Not Just Interviews

Adam: Do you do all the phone
interviews, or does that go to the engineering teams?

Lauren: It depends on the situation. I
start the interview process. Sometimes I'll ask the department heads if they
want me to screen people ahead of time. With the job market the last year, we
aren't getting 10 resumes for one position — we're waiting all year to get two
resumes. At career fairs, I do all the initial interviews with the students. I
do most of our phone interviews, all the walk-throughs, the tours.

Becca: I'm glad you called it a tour
and not an interview. Adam likes to fake people out.

Lauren: So when I first interviewed at
WiLL, Adam emailed me and said, hey, we're not really hiring in our marketing
department right now, but I think you're essentially an interesting person. Why
don't you come in and just take a tour? Well, it was a two-hour intensive —

Adam: It was not intense.

Becca: You're saying it was a ploy to
get you in the building? He positioned it as, just come walk through the
building and check out what we've got going.

Lauren: Then I got out of here and had
three text messages from friends of friends who knew that I walked through the
building.

Adam: I think you kind of want the
person to be in an environment that more resembles how they're going to be on
an average day. If everything is so formal, people are going to have their
rehearsed answers. It's not even like tricking people — I think that's where a
lot of companies go wrong. Within three hours or three days of somebody being
in an environment, they're going to know a lot about the company and whether
they really want to be here. Be yourself, get the person to be themselves. It
increases the likelihood of whether it's a good match or not.

Lauren: I always joke that hiring is
like dating. Sometimes employees are going to leave your company for no other
reason than it is them, not you. They've got family stuff, the commute might
not be worth it. And same with interviewees — they might not pick you. There
are elements that go into it. You can't overthink those situations as an
employer. There are factors outside of what we could have done.

Recruiting: Career Fairs, Referrals & Recruiters

Adam: Where do you go to recruit?
Colleges, recruiters, referrals?

Lauren: The dynamics of the candidate
market over the last year have changed dramatically, especially post-COVID. A
big part of what we do is career fairs for all the entry-level positions. We go
to Michigan Tech, MSOE — Milwaukee School of Engineering, which is all
architectural engineering specifically, so more on the building design side —
Platteville, UW–Milwaukee, Marquette. We've really found that the more you go
non-locally, you might get employees that come work for you for a few years and
then they leave — they go back home. So we've tried to keep it more local on
the school side.

Lauren: We do have an employee
referral program. We've increased it to $5,000 per referral. That money gets
taxed, and our employees are compensated really well, so you kind of have to
give them a bit more. Students right out of school are our biggest advocates —
I just graduated MSOE and I'm going to tell all my friends to come work at
Excel. Paying an employee $5,000 is going to be a lot cheaper than paying a
recruiter $25,000.

Lauren: We work with recruiters on
positions that we need specifically. One issue I've had with recruiters lately
is, what they used to do is actually go out and proactively recruit employees
from different companies. Now, 90% of the resumes we get are employees that are
laid off, or it's like this pool of candidates they're choosing from.
Occasionally we'll get a diamond in the rough, but overall, recruiters — I've
lost a little bit of the value on that side.

Adam: We've had success with
recruiters. What I found is it's extremely important for the recruiter to
understand the company culture and not just go through the motions. They almost
have to act as if they were actually working here. Referrals are always great —
gold. There's momentum in referrals. Once you get a really good core team, it
seems to get better and better as word spreads. And your employees are your
biggest advocates — they're smart enough to know they're not going to refer
just anyone, because it's a reflection on themselves.

Lauren: We've hired 90 people since
this time last year — between June and June-ish — which is just insane. At
times it's desperation hires, where you're really busy and you need to just
bring someone in and train them from scratch. But when you're bringing in 20
students out of college plus 10 people you're training from scratch, that
really takes a toll on the business. It takes a year or two for people to
really feel confident and comfortable. Since then, it's been kind of, all
right, let's pause and think on the hiring side strategically. We're starving
for anyone that has 5 to 10 years of experience and is licensed. I'm sending
emails and messages on LinkedIn all the time trying to reach out to passive
candidates. But people are happy where they are, and employers are smart enough
right now — you've got to treat your employees well.

In the Office: The Ownership Mentality

Adam: I know you guys are very much
in-person. Working in person is important in the collaboration.

Lauren: We're fully in the office. We
don't offer remote work. We give everyone 5 to 10 days for pop-ups — your
cable's getting installed, you have a sick child and have to pick them up from
daycare. We're understanding. But because we're employee-owned, we truly
believe owners come to work.

Lauren: I went to our strategic
planning meeting this year — our board of directors, myself, and our CFO. Just
watching these managers — so many brilliant minds in the room, and they're all
engineers and architects, so everyone's idea is better than the other one. I
just left that meeting, and it is infectious watching owners and leaders that
are passionate about the business. You feel that as an employee, 100%. It
trickles down into every single aspect of your workplace.

Lauren: I've always been around
employee ownership. Those people were there. That's the kind of person I want
to work for. And I'm guessing most people do too.

Adam: I think the willingness to be
part of the problems — if there are problems, you will go in the direction of
the problems. Where a lot of cases, if owners are not involved with the
day-to-day, it's so easy to put things under the rug and delegate everything.
If there's a major problem, you should attempt to try and solve it first,
especially if it's core of the business. That makes perfect sense — an
owner-operator willing to go into the trenches. Hopefully that spreads to the
whole operation.

Attracting Young Talent to Fond du Lac

Adam: Being at Excel almost a decade —
what are some things small and medium-sized companies can do to attract young,
talented people to their operations?

Lauren: I could talk about this for
about five or six hours. I actually met with two students and their moms this
week at Excel. They're seniors in high school. They don't know what to do — is
trade school okay? Should I go to the four-year school? If I didn't work at
Excel and wasn't in HR, I'd probably try and get a public speaker role and go
to different high schools and just preach to kids — it doesn't have to be a
four-year degree.

Adam: We talk about that all the time.
We were all pressured to do that. You were almost a failure if you didn't.

Lauren: The way the pay scale at Excel
works is there's two tracks. You can go to a two-year school and start as a
Technician 1, or you go to a four-year school and start as a Designer 1. Well,
the two-year school students are mostly local, going to Moraine Park. We can
hire them part-time at $20 an hour while they're an intern. They're completing
school, paying for school, and graduating two years earlier than the four-year
student. By the time they're two years into the company, the four-year
student's just graduating, and this person's probably debt-free.

Lauren: So the two-year school is a
huge opportunity for employers. Get into the Moraine Parks, get into UW–Fond du
Lac. Email the instructors — not just the career services, but actually email
the instructors and the departments. Say, hey, can I come in and talk to your
class for an hour? Do it once a semester and really sell the company and what
you're doing. A lot of students don't understand that civil engineering in a
two-year school really is just the basics of engineering, and that there's
mechanical, electrical, plumbing — those are actually the niche markets that
need more engineers and are probably going to get paid more.

Lauren: For no college — go to high
schools. If you have the kinds of programs and abilities in your company to
train someone from scratch — we've really started switching to the youth
apprenticeship programs in Fond du Lac. That's hiring students at junior and senior
levels in high school for 10 to 12 hours a week. CESA 6 runs the program. By
the time they graduate, they might want to just continue. They're trained,
they're as good as a full-time employee.

Lauren: Fond du Lac has struggled as a
destination for young hires. We're working on that. But my boss Jeff, our
president, actually said we need to focus more on being a destination employer,
not a destination city. It's our job as different employers — what are we doing
to attract them specifically? What's our company culture? They need to come
into the building and see it to believe it.

Lauren: You need to be strategic in a
desperate environment. You can't just start acting in desperation. The things
you're promising, the culture that you're pitching, should match reality. And
the last thing — get upper management involved. You can have a golf simulator,
a pool table, nap pods — these are all great things. No one will use them or
utilize them if they don't see other people doing it and making it an approved
thing. Get your upper management involved, or the employees will never buy into
that culture.

Adam: It's always a balance. Creating
a great culture, having things that people can enjoy, staying focused on the
work and the customer, and just balancing all of that stuff. And be prepared to
fail, because you won't always do it. Learn, get moving, adjust, do it again.
Keep doing it.

Lauren: Absolutely.

Adam: Well, thank you very much.
Thanks for all you do.

Lauren: Thanks.