Labor shortages impacting search - advice?

October 21, 2025

by a searcher from Dartmouth College - Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH, USA

I’m looking to acquire a home or business services company in northern New England, but persistent labor shortages have made many otherwise-attractive targets more challenging. Housing availability seems to be a major constraint, and it’s not an easy problem to solve individually. Has anyone found effective ways to address regional labor shortages or attract workers in similar markets?

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Reply by a searcher
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Apex, NC, USA

Welp you've stumbled on the main issue of scaling almost all those business types. How do you acquire the talent (capacity) at a reasonable cost to meet the demand? Many of these businesses are run by tradespeople (vs business-focused) so when they hit a snag, they slow (or go backwards) and personally do work or can train up less skilled folks. Source: family all in trades - GC, painting, elevator. IMO it's really a retention concern - if you can maintain your staff then you just need to convince a few people to join each period to meet your growth goals. Most SMB esp with blue collar workforces have high turnover. Ask me how I know. Mgmt is less skilled, they play games with pay (80 hrs one week, 30 hrs the next), and they suck at training. All "easily" fixable problems yet won't get you to 100% retention. My advice is look at staff turnover of the business you're acquiring and figure out why they are losing people (is it lower pay than the competitor, bad mgmt, poor training, no room for growth, bad hiring processes). That's what to solve. As for finding candidates, Indeed works great for blue collar roles. Internal referrals (much easier if you're a good place to work).

Reply by a searcher
from Vanderbilt University in Dallas, TX, USA

One of the strategies that I've used for labor issues with skilled workers is to pull off time-consuming administrative tasks away from the team that drives revenue and utilizing remote and/or lower-cost alternatives and tech-enabled solutions. This doesn't handle the availability, but what I've found is that it's made the company a more attractive place to work. Just a thought.

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