My new job is as a Recruiter with the same company. I'm now partially responsible (with a team of 2 other recruiters and 1 staffing manager) for staffing about 40 different construction sites and maintenance departments for 20 different companies in 10 different states.

It's really exciting. In the old job, most of the applicants/new hires I was dealing with were the most basic entry-level candidates. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, everyone has got to start out somewhere. But most of the guys that we dealt with weren't very educated or motivated. Employee retention was simply dismal. Since we were a small site, and the jobs were permanent, our pay rates weren't as high as sites where the employees worked based on turnaround (that is, work at the site for a few weeks or months before the job ended.) Guys just weren't used to that.

Here, I'm dealing with very skilled craftsman. We are able to offer incentives like per diem, and the pay rates are higher to staff these positions. Most of these guys are used to this kind of atmosphere. They go out on a job for three months, take a few weeks off, and then go look for another job. At the other job, I had to sell the job to the applicants, here, most of the time guys are trying to sell themselves to us.

The drawback to this is, I'm going to be a lot busier. Which means less inane ranting posts from me. Not that the world will miss much, but just to let you know.