5 Questions With Field Nation
Field Nation is an IT field services marketplace that connects contractors to companies to get work done. Field Nation connects people to accomplish great work.
1. Can you describe your role and what it’s like to work at Field Nation?
I’m the Director of Provider Experience and Marketplace Recruitment at Field Nation. That’s a really long title, but what it really means is that my focus is on provider experience. We call our talent on the platform service providers. From an operational perspective, the key things my team focuses on are: how do we add additional value to our providers?, how can we be a voice for our providers in our marketplace?, and what can we do to help improve their overall experience? from both a user interface perspective as well as operationally.
I have a team focused on recruiting talent into Field Nation as our demand grows. We help these skilled technicians get started and expand into new types of work. We also have a team focused on new market development to grow what we can offer our clients. For instance, a new market that we expanded into last year was electricians. And so we had a team focused exclusively on recruiting electricians and then helping them get connected to our clients on our platform.
2. What led you to choose Checkr? What’s your favorite feature?
The biggest thing that drew me to Checkr is that it seamlessly integrates with our product. That’s really exciting for us. Our providers can do everything including ordering a background check right from the Field Nation platform and when Checkr’s results come back, they go right into the Field Nation platform automatically.
3. How do you think about balancing risk and compliance while also meeting the hiring needs of your customers?
There always needs to be a focus on compliance and risk. Because if we’re not concerned about that for our client, we’re not a good partner. As a good partner, we consider what’s the right thing to do for the business and what’s the right thing to do for the talent. That’s a constantly evolving thing, especially with Assembly Bill 5 (AB5) and those changes.
Right now in this current moment with coronavirus, we need to make the right choices to protect the community, to protect our people, and to protect our business. We’re a people business, so supporting the health and safety of people comes first. We take into consideration risk and compliance all the time, because people are our line of work, not physical products. Health and safety always take precedent.
4. What are you most focused on a day to day?
I’m thinking about this from three different directions. I think our day to day is continuing to move with how workers move. What’s always front of mind for me and my team from a recruiting perspective is how do we continue to make ourselves attractive to talent and how do we continue to highlight variable work as something that talent would want to pursue in comparison to full-time opportunities.
From our team’s perspective, how do we continue to be the talent’s first choice for field service contract work? And how can we stand out from our competitors?
5. What regulatory trends do you see in the hiring space?
From a regulation standpoint, California is starting the trend there. New Jersey and a few other states are following as well. As more people continue to choose the freelancer or contractor model, there’s going to be regulatory changes. We want to be a part of that conversation.
In terms of exactly where those changes are going, it’s really hard to tell. I wish I had a magic globe or ball that tells me what’s next. It’s key for us to follow along with what’s happening in the workforce. The gig or the contractor space today isn’t going to be the same in three months, six months, or three years—we can’t expect it to be. It’s just really imperative for us to partner with our providers, the companies posting projects, as well as legislators to make sure that everyone’s voices are heard.
