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Most landscape companies don’t have a recruiting problem. They have an assumption problem.
They’re trying to solve a complex hiring challenge with one or two methods, while holding onto outdated ideas about pay, location and how hiring works.
The model isn’t broken. The way it’s being used is.
The talent stack
There are multiple ways talent comes into a company:
- Internal recruiting (HR, field recruiters, talent acquisition teams)
- Staffing agencies for contract labor
- H-2B programs for seasonal or skilled workers
- Contingency recruiting (non-retained)
- Professional retained search (mid-level leadership)
- Retained executive search (senior leadership)
- Embedded recruiting (recruitment process outsourcing or RPO)
More mature industries use these together. Most companies in the green industry rely on one or two — and expect full coverage. That’s where things start to break.
Where internal teams fit
Internal recruiting is the foundation. Strong teams run pipelines, support frontline hiring, and, in many cases, can handle professional roles. The issue isn’t capability, it’s capacity.
In a lot of organizations, internal teams are expected to handle high-volume field hiring, process inbound applicants and run professional and leadership searches, sometimes all at the same time.
That’s not a strategy. That’s overload.
Volume hiring and leadership hiring are not the same job. One is about speed and throughput. The other is about judgment, positioning and closing. When the same team is doing both, something gives.
Contingency vs. retained
There’s a lot of confusion around these two search models.
Contingency (non-retained) means you pay only if you hire, multiple firms are usually involved, and it’s built for speed and volume. This tends to work when the role is easier to fill, the candidate pool is broad, and geography isn’t a constraint. Where it struggles is that it limits prioritization, offers less control and gives inconsistent access to strong, passive candidates.
Retained search is different. It’s a committed search that is focused, proactive and built to find and close specific candidates. It works when the role actually matters, the talent pool is tight and you need precision, not volume.
Where assumptions break the system
Most hiring problems start in several common areas. Take compensation anchored to history, for example. What you paid before doesn’t matter. Candidates are comparing your offer to what’s in front of them today.
Another is when relocation is treated as optional. The best candidate usually isn’t local. Treat relocation like a negotiation tactic, and you eliminate a large part of your pool before you even start.
Then there is coverage without capacity. A lot of companies centralize everything internally — and still carry 15-25 percent of roles unfilled. That’s not random. That’s a system that doesn’t match the demand.
And when it comes to looking for outside help with recruiting, most companies focus on fees, but almost none track the cost of an open role. A leadership position sitting open for 90 days, for example, slows production, pulls leaders into the weeds and stalls growth. The fee is visible. The delay is what costs you.
Embedded recruiting (RPO)
In other industries, this is standard. In landscaping, it’s still underused.
RPO is simple. It adds recruiting capacity, is already built into your team and is focused on consistent hiring.
And it’s not just for corporate roles. For operators struggling with labor, it can function as a real system that helps build pipelines, drive referrals and reduce reliance on reactive hiring.
In an industry where labor is always volatile, this is still a gap. Without it, internal teams get stretched, and hiring becomes reactive again.
The bottom line
There’s no single recruiting model that solves everything. There’s only the right model for the right role with the right level of capacity. Most hiring problems aren’t random. They’re structural.
If you’re hiring this year, Bloom supports clients through executive search for leadership roles, embedded recruiting (RPO) for operators managing high-volume hiring and advisory on compensation and hiring strategy.
Most companies don’t need everything. But they do need the right approach for the problem in front of them.
