From skeptic to six placements in five months

The challenge: hiring that would not stick

Landry Mechanical runs heating and plumbing operations where every missed call is lost revenue. By mid-2025 the team had the wrong people in the wrong places and kept having the same conversation about it.

• Local hiring was tapped out In her words: “We sort of exhausted the Facebook groups. We have posted several times. Interviewed a lot of people and not loved any of them.” Even experienced hires were not working out after training.
• An answering service eating the budget “We are spending three to four thousand dollars a week on the answering service.” Local CSRs wanted $25 an hour, and overheads were, in her words, insane.
• Shifts nobody would take “We have been trying and interviewing and trying to find people who will work for these shifts. We are just not getting anywhere.” The previous local hire took months to train and still did not work out.
• Real skepticism about offshore A staffing firm had already sent someone she could not understand on the phone. Another billed $1,900 a month for a person nobody could meet with or track.

I’ll be honest. I was really against the idea at first.

What happened: one hire in June, six by December

The first Opus placement started in late June as a CSR. By December there were six, spread across dispatch, admin, AR, and permit coordination. The owner who was “really against the idea” now says she would not build her team any other way.

• Solo on the toughest shift within a month The first placement was handling evenings alone after four weeks. The experienced local hire before her took three months and still could not do it.
• They asked for more, unprompted Two weeks in: “We may need another one.” At three weeks the operations director asked for a second placement on her own. Hires three and four came six weeks later.
• A booking rate their marketing company calls unmatched “Our booking rate is 91%. Nexstar best-in-class is 80%. Our marketing company says they do not see this level of booking at any other company.”
• Treated like team, not vendors Two Opus placements were named employee of the month in the same December. Both of the newest hires were added to the company holiday bonus pool within three weeks of starting.

We’re up to six across our operations now, and I wouldn’t build my team any other way.