[Stonehenge]

When you look at candidates, what one quality or area of experience turns your head the most (besides direct landscape crew work)?

[agla]

Anything that shows a self starter, commitment, and an ability to listen and follow directions. It is rough up here. There are too many easier and better opportunities for this type of person to inspire them to want to deal with it.

We have a very odd demographic. We have many retired persons that require services, weekend people that don't want to spend the weekend working on their property, very wealthy summer home owners that do not do "gardening", and then the people that service all of the others.

Anyone that has any ability knows they can get work on their own. Those that don't know they can get another job in ten minutes (literally). That does not leave a great incentive for workers to struggle through anything. There is no motivation to keep a job because the next one might pay more. It is a strange place.

[dan deutekom]

I would vote in the pole but I can't pick enough qualities. If it is for general hardscaping I would look for construction experience and if it is for softscapeing then it would be horticultural experience. The ideal candidate has to be a jack of all trades, able to operate and trouble shoot all kinds of equipment, have a good horticultural background, a sense of design, the ability to relate to the public and have the work ethic to put in 60 hour weeks when needed and to not work at all when not. The ideal candidate should be able to find solutions for the inevitable challenges that occur in landscape construction and have pride in the work they do. And just to add to my ideal candidate they should be as strong as an ox and not afraid to show it. Hard type of person to find. When you find this person, take care of them.