electrician

carpenter

plumber

welder

millwright

Tradesmen International

Here's a summary list of issues I and my former colleagues experienced. (Be prepared, I've written a novel)
As a field rep:
You have a fixed salary at $30,000 with a $400 vehicle allowance IF you drive more than 800 miles within a month. You must fill out a form documenting your mileage, otherwise your allowance becomes taxed, HEAVILY. 
Your job is comparable to most other B2B sales jobs. 1) Wake up almost unreasonably early and drive around town soliciting construction outfits trying to sell them labor support that's far more expensive than competitors with the stipulation that Tradesmen labor is also far superior in skill and demeanor. The truth is, Tradesmen hires from the same local pool that competitors hire from, so the labor is identical. In fact, I've worked with field employees (as they're called) that bounce between one staffing agency to another looking for work. 
The issue in this is that you're selling an unstable, unreliable product most of the time. Whether they show up to work, perform adequately or even know how to do the work is entirely a mystery. Vetting candidates is a difficult task, as Tradesmen cannot perform practical testing to gauge trade skill and comprehension. When a field employee is found to be unreliable or unprofessional, it becomes your job to throw another warm body on site until you get the right fit. It was more or less equivalent to throwing gas drenched timber on a fire. 
Your commissions are based off of the GP obtained from paying clients. Which is an extremely unstable or even volatile process. If the client pays their bill within 30 days, you receive 100% of the commission off of the GP. I feel I should stress, the GP is a % of the revenue obtained. EX: If a client pays $5000 (revenue) ON TIME, you can expect to receive 5% of the GP, with the GP being (on average) around 30-33% of the revenue. Do the math, it isn't good. 
I could go on to explain how obtaining reasonable commission is nearly impossible, as late payments detract from your bonus (31-60 days payment =75% bonus, 61-90 day payment 50% bonus, 91+ days payment =no commission.) To summarize, the company makes you responsible for collecting what's owed to them, but if your labor is unreliable or hurts productivity, it becomes almost impossible to convince your client that they should pay. 
When you fail to meet, no, exceed your goals and expectations (which are almost completely out of you control) you better expect your GM and AM to rain fire and brimstone on you. You end up being caught in the middle of unsatisfied, duped and cheated clients, oblivious, hostile field employees and unstable, avarice management. 
Corporate likes to boast about the insane commission you can make "if you just try hard enough", an ingenious tactic to make you feel responsible for any shortcomings, whether they're your fault or not. Their numbers come from a select few reps who happen to have family in the construction industry or reside in an area with an industrial boom. They preach the exception, not the rule.
As a Project Coordinator:
Your day starts typically at 6 A.M. and ends typically around 7 A.M. depending on your location and market. The base salary is $35,000 and your commission structure is about 1.2 - 1.5% of the GP received from each employee you dispatch. (Refer to field rep description to see how well that works out). Remember, it's GP, not revenue. You're required to proactively recruit, whether there is available work or not. They make you responsible for conducting multiple appointments per week. I was required to have between 30-35 appointments scheduled per week, with the assumption that I could hire 8 eligible candidates at the end. Tradesmen looks for the most qualified craftsmen, which is fine, but retaining them as employees is next to impossible when there's no work for them in the first place. I was required to hire people on the assumption that the contractor MAY have work, IF they win a bid, which MAY have a start date in the near future and as icing on the cake will consider whether they want to be a client or not. The management gets fired up and pressures the PC's to hire a multitude for nothing more than hopes, if's and hearsay. 
If your office is small, you also double as the admin, so your workload substantially increases. The only benefit to this is that you receive your table scrap commission whether the client pays or not. That's really the only security you can expect to have. Unfortunately, you become responsible for keeping some good guys on the hook for a job which may or may not manifest and you peddle humans like meat all in the name of a quick buck. Tradesmen tries to distance itself from other staffing agencies by waving the banner of highly-skilled craftsmen. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. 
Side note: You obtain benefits (Partial benefits for the first 6 months), but you had better hope you never have to use them. Try making ends meet when your salary is low, your commission is non-existent and your insurance deductible is $6000. Next time you head to the hospital better be because you lost a limb.

Let’s take thing one at a time, since there is a lot to cover here.  Most of this is for the California market because that is where I worked.  
Compensation:  
Base pay is 30-40k per year + commission.   Management will tell you can make 100K with their “robust” commission structure within a year. (They just lowered the commission rate it this year.)  This is simply false.  Only the top 10% of reps in this company make over 100K per year and none of them are in California.  More than half of the reps in this company never break 50K per year.  I knew one of the top rep in the Southern California market and he barely made 65K.
Expect to work 55-60 hours a week.

Goals are set out of thin air by the Area manager.  My goal was the same as the goal of our whole office which encompassed 5 territories    of which I only had one.  .My goal was also 4 times what is was the previous year.  When I questions how the goals were determined all I got was from the area manager was he determined the goals.  He said it  was not based on last years sales,  projections or anything else.  Just what  "he thought" was a proper goal.  This from a man that supposedly  has an MBA.

Very Poor Product:
Tradesmen International business is Labor Support.  We would provide carpenters plumbers and electricians help contractors improve there work flow and increase productivity.  They say they have “Quality Craftsman” to accomplish this. The reality is far different.
We did have a few quality tradesmen but here are some of the other types of “Quality Craftsman” that we had:  registered sex offenders, drug addicts, convicts, people with active warrants and restraining orders.
You see Tradesmen does not do any drug testing or background checks as a condition of employment.
How do I know this about the guys if we didn’t do background checks and screenings?  
Tradesmen would actively recruit ex-cons from halfway houses, to give them another chance.  I’m fine with giving guys second chances but do you really want to send a registered sex offender to work where there might be women and children?  Or someone convicted of theft working on a remodel of a 5-million-dollar house?
We had two guys fail drug tests after they were injured on the job (this is the only time they test people).
We would have guys come to the office (after work) to pick up paychecks reeking of weed.  Guys would even come in high to interviews (we hired some of them).
We had some tradesmen the were arrested on the job-site because they had active warrants.  Try explaining that to your client.   “I’ll get another “Quality Craftsman out here right away, warrant free I hope”.
I had one of our workers tell the contractor (our client) that he couldn’t come in because he got to high the night before on illegal drugs.  I brought this up to management and they said nothing and said he was one of our best workers!
We sent one guy the was supposedly a “Journeyman Tile Guy” to do a commercial shower.  The job was so poorly done it had to rip it out and have it  redone costing my client 25K.  Not a client anymore.  Any surprise?

Upper Management:
Our Area Manager management style was to yell, scream and cuss, and when that didn’t work, he would yell scream, cuss and threaten.  I don’t blame him to much though he was just a lackey for the VP who had much the same “management style”.

Conclusion:
If you want to pimp not so “Quality Craftsman” onto unsuspecting Contractors. (most did start to suspect; most would not use us after one or two times) or you want some training in drug rehab or social work this is the career for you.  Otherwise I would stay clear.

The company is very metric-based and only cares about production, client orders, and the bottom dollar. 
Processes and procedures change weekly and are notified by email. 
None of the software or platforms intergrate well and are constantly freezing or having technical issues. 
It will take up to 10 mins to upload a document into any of the systems.. Unreasonable goals are set without a good structure to succeed. 
Even if you believe that you are going above and beyond, you will never do enough. 
Your salary/base pay is not based on performance. If you do well, you will be given promises and omissions by management that likely will not be there the following year and their words will not be honored, a temporary pat on the back, and extra work. 
Constant turnover; it begins to feel like everyone is a number. You never know who to contact as employees are constantly leaving or moving to other offices/departments because of low staff. 
There are hidden policies in place to lower your commission if you are in sales based on the Accounts Receivables from clients. 
All commission and incentives have been removed from the recruiting team and replaced with low base salaries. 
Do not expect mileage reimbursement that is even close to the federal mandate. You will pay more in gas than what you receive for mileage.
Do not expect to get a review or raise annually!! If you need time off, Mondays and Fridays are highly discouraged, so reschedule your appointment. 
No work-life balance exists here. 
IT (you will need often) 
Workforce Department and HR works on a ticket system; these tickets are often closed with no resolution. 
You will need to focus on a situation all day if you need immediate help, which is a nightmare for office and remote employees. (but remember to keep your numbers up.) Expensive and Basic Benefits. 
Offices (more than not) have a very toxic work environments ran by managers with no HR training. 
Internal / back-office operations are immature and a cut throat mentality. 


Advice to Management: 

This company could benefit from leadership workshops. Be aware and more competitive with their salary and benefits. Upper management needs to get involved in the day-to-day work to understand the daily obstacles. If they are too busy for this, then listen to the feedback from the employees. 

Reassess the employee benefits. Bring in a professional consultant. 

Pay employees a fair base salary and be honest with the full pay structure including bonuses. 

Employee relation support system and basic office administration is a dire need.

Responsibilities
I am responsible to make sure that my reps are out of their houses and on jobsites by 7am. I begin receiving
email requests at 5am from home. Our corporate office is in Cleveland. I am also responsible to know where all
of our field employees are at all times. We have between 40 to 70 field employees working at any given time. I
pull our aging reports for billing and make sure my reps are keeping up on their clients billing. I am responsible
for making sure our project coordinator is getting all dispatches done on time daily. We try to interview 8 new
employees a day to keep up with our clients man power needs. I help our administrative assistant with payroll
every week and ensure that our field employees, as well as our office employees get paid on time. I was
responsible for the yearly business plan and budget for this next year. Taking the time to look at the trends and
forecast the needs for the office paid off greatly. I completed the task and received praise from my immediate
supervisor for being proficient and a stickler to detail. I am also responsible to maintain a professional office. I
have to make sure all of our services are in order and inventory stocked. I also am responsible for having the
office staff adhere to a professional attire depending on what their job tasks are on any given day.
Management
I have learned much from my Area Manager.  He has helped my sharpen my multi-tasking efforts to become more efficient.  He has been a mentor and a person who cares about his employees.  He has taught me how to stay on task in any hectic situation.
Skills Used
I use relationship building skills. I didn't look at the sales representative job as sales. I looked at it as a
consulting position with my clients. It is a relationship business. I learned all of my clients needs for skilled
trades and put that knowledge to good use. Once you can prove to your clients and potential clients that you
will do whatever it takes to successfully service their man power needs, they will be a loyal client.
I took the same approach to becoming general manager. I used my relationships with my reps and their clients
to cut our collections from over 70% past 30 days to 30% past 30 days in 1 month. I have also been able to
use my past experience as a rep to motivate the reps to push forward and persevere. You have to have a thick
skin to be successful in the labor support business.
The most enjoyable part of this job is helping support the success of all of the people that work for Tradesmen.

The construction field has an off season right, when I got hired in it was in February, it was slow going at first which I kinda expected varying week to week just depends on what the project is and the weather pertains.  I was on the fence about not having a full week paycheck and got me thinking maybe I should look for another job, maybe I'll wait to see if it picks up soon, coincidentally at this time I started to get some good leads with good pay benefits (per diem, prevailing wage), you don't have to accept a job lead if you don't feel comfortable, and if you don't know how to do a job that's ok too the employer knows that, just keep busy, learn along the way and apply what you know, I love that it's always something different never really a dull moment, meeting new people is another plus, bitter sweet because when you find people that you work well with as team knowing that it'll eventually going to end and most times work a whole new crew on the next assignment.  I've learned that having your OSHA cert opens the flood gates to more of the better job leads which gets you working and making money quicker, TI offers getting the OSHA cert for free when otherwise you would pay $60 outta pocket, even paying for it would be worth getting for the job sites that require having it.  This job isn't for everybody OK, sometimes you'll feel out of your element, I'm a finish Carpenter by trade, sometimes an employer would need laborers for let's say concrete or steel and know nothing about it - don't be afraid to learn something knew, plus if you prove yourself, show up on time and stay busy to TI and the contractor you're working for and they will more likely to think of you first for the higher paying jobs.  It's a pretty cool gig I like it, based on what's on my resume I thought I'd be doing what I'm best at doing, nope, I may have done 1 or 2 jobs pertaining to my Forte in finish carpentry, don't expect that, but request it - you never know! But everything that you do here is resume building and self building, have the mindset to be goal driven and have the desire to succeed and I promise that it will be rewarding 😉

What is the best part of working at the company?
Tradesmen international St Louis office was a great place for me to find work on a long term project. I was able to network and connect with other big contracting agencies simply by being on the caliber of job sites  tradesmen international contracts . Pay scale is different for every individual but in my experience with TI and all employment is that if your worth more money than hired in at you will get more money.! Go to with do your job like your making the money you feel you should be paid and if in fact you craftsmanship proves your worthy of more money and your attitude reflects this and  is aligned with your expected attendance Tradesmen International with work with you within their means . They have a great store to purchase items needed for  work. They offer pre diem pay for people that travel distance for work that meet their mileage requirements etc. I believe this is a great place for individuals of all skill level from first timers to  journeymen and every level between . It’s a great place to put your time in and learn . They are always hiring somewhere with many locations across the United States and even beyond

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The most stressful part is getting  individuals sent to a job that have no desire to work and have to experience in the environment or an understanding of what takes place in said environments. It’s dangerous for all parties . This was my experience with people sent to wrong sites and this was years ago at The Mach mine shaker plant build  contract I was working on . I finished this job out and hired directly thru the company. That’s another bonus 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It’s obviously at or above standard being it’s been around for some time now

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Same S everywhere else show up and do your job safely and go home .Repeat until job complete or contract expires

Used to be a good company not anymore. I've been an admin for 3 years for this company, I have always been part time (30-35 hours a week) and when I first started I got paid holidays, sick pay, vacation etc. They took that away about a year ago. 
Now they have switched everything to Electronic timecards, employee does not have a choice in the matter you MUST have a device new enough to run chrome and input your hours electronically, then it's supposed to be emailed to the company supervisor. So if the supervisor forgets to approve it like many construction workers supervisors arent super into technology either... too bad. Its somehow my fault. It's my fault when grown men dont turn in their timecard. Somehow all this stuff I have no control over is my fault.
They also started doing electronic invoicing, so the client can not respond to the email (if they even get the invoice at all) and corporate is too lazy to send timecards. So we have a handful of people at corporate processing all the timecards and invoicing for thousands and thousands of employees and clients. There has been nothing but issues so far from employee and client perspective. I'm getting yelled at daily over things I have no control over. I cant even print out a basic list of the timecards that were processed or the invoice count. I'd have to search through 300+ clients just to see if anyone worked there or not.
They don't care about the field employees either. All they care about is making money. The company has turned into basically like our government a bunch of selfish rich top people trying to extort from the people who are lower on the chain. Heaven forbid they just fire us civilly lay us off so we can get unemployment and have time to find a job no instead we get to get yelled at by employees, clients and our bosses. And corporate has the audacity to be bragging about how much money they're saving over firing all the admins. If anything it should go to office budget not corporate it's disgusting.

so I had applied for an electrician apprentice job. had an interview 4 days later and was hired on the spot. I was offered a solid wage that had changed 2 days after my first check. the job I did was basically a lackey and got ZERO experience in the job scope I was offered. 

basically, its a contractor job were you'll do either clean up or some building. I worked with 4 different companies in the first 3 weeks I was there. the rules changed several times during the 3 months I was there. I had to force quit the first one because of the person I was working with was unruly, refused to sign this paper saying that I was there so I could get paid.. I literally worked 2 hours for free since he refused and there was no logical way of proving it. the last job I was at before I quit all together was so full deceitful people that it was pretty much a sick joke. I missed 1(one) day, I got be-raided for it even after showing the manager my viable cause for absence. he degraded me because of it saying 'I cant have you punk a** kids in my company showing when ever you d*** well please".. I walked out right after that and went back to my manager at tradesmen and asked for other work. I never heard back from him so I took my 20 dollar pay check and went home. 

the biggest, and more unusual thing that I had to do was call in EVERY single day to see if I was working. it made no sense. it's like 'how am I supposed to have a normal life" I was the offered to go to Chicago to help do renovations on a hotel. they offered pay increase, compensation for food / lodging/ fuel but had to be gone from home a minimum of 12 weeks- that's the not acceptable in my terms

the structure of the company doesn't make sense. you apply for one thing, then get kicked to ""general laborer"" a week later. the pay seems reasonable till you're looking through it and you're getting peanuts. you're literally over worked and severely underpaid. they will go back and forth saying it's full time.. it's not, they cut you at 35 hours.. that was the longest I worked and the  shortest was two hours.

I worked for tradesmen back in 2016 so things may have changed since then. I was looking to get into construction and wasn't sure what exactly I wanted to do. Tradesmen exposed me to various types of construction and even ultimately landed me my career in the oil and gas industry. Work was never consistent and pay rates always fluctuated from assignment to assignment. That was atleast my experience some guys landed long term assignments. There was room for negotiating pay, per dium, mileage, etc but not much. I learned alot of different things from working with tradesmen and they also gave me the ability to travel the country and get paid to do it. Benefits were terrible, pay was from $13/H and up depending on the job. They do get prevailing wage work so there were times I made alot of money the most being $60/H on an assignment that lasted a week. Reps from tradesmen were for the most part clueless when it came to the jobs atleast the ones I dealt with, but that's not saying they were bad people they just had a tendency to get bad information. So for instance once I was told I'd be working on conveyor belts, but when I got to the job we were building a compressor station for the pipeline. But in the event that I had an issue with the job, my pay, time off, or PPE my reps were always there to quickly try to remedy the problem. It's not hard to make a good name for yourself as tradesmen makes money from the amount of hours that you work. So simply show up to work on time everyday, be ready to work, don't get hurt, and you'll be just fine. Overall I enjoyed my time with tradesmen and if it were a more stable place to work I'd still be there.  Tradesmen also still reachs out to this day about different assignments they have coming up.

What is the best part of working at the company?
I made a lot of good people with tradesmen international some retired but I miss some of them go to extra mile just to help you out but they are a good company to work for it

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
When the job supposed to last 3 weeks end up being a week and a half which sucks because it's neither working you too fast and the old man the job and then waiting a week two weeks for the next project or a month but it's getting sad now because it's hard to find jobs or are there don't want to pay per diem which helps a lot of us especially when we're just getting back on the road But like I said you have a few recruiters that will go that extra mile for you just to help you out and that's few and some

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Used to be more family oriented they used to now you can't step in office cuz everything's by the phone or not really sure some of the guys they have now are good guys I think but they neither avoid your calls or don't let you know what's going on but the office I used to step into is more like a family oriented cuz you're a greater at the door when you walk down near recruiter is always there to help you not or what like I said it's been a while since I've been in an office and something else need to exist anymore

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Busy sometimes recruiters are not sure what's going on and then when you get to the job explain hey it's not what they say it was It started the conflict between you and a recruiter which is not good either they've changed like I said you still got afew good recruiters out there that work with before

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