People & HR

How to track open roles as Construction and Contractor Founders

People & HRFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

You're a GC or trade contractor running 8–15 jobs at a time with a crew under 20. When a foreman quits mid-project or a laborer doesn't show up Monday, you're posting on Indeed from your truck, texting three supers to see who knows anyone, and manually updating a spreadsheet that's already three weeks stale. You don't have an HR director. You don't have an ATS. What you have is a tab in Excel labeled 'Hiring - 2026' with columns for 'Role', 'Where Posted', and 'Status' that says 'pending' on 11 rows. You lose track of which roles are filled, which subs you promised a call to, and whether the apprentice carpenter you liked last month is still available.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

People & HRFor Construction and Contractor Founders3 apps11 steps~22 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live tracker of every open role — field, office, and subcontractor — with status, source, and follow-up date in one place you can check from your phone

Automated reminders so no candidate or sub referral falls through the cracks between site visits

A single place where your hiring notes, COI status, and role requirements live so a new super or office manager can get up to speed without calling you

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Project Management Task Manager Knowledge Management

Data sources & config

Project Management and Task Manager run on Starch's internal data — no external connection required for the tracker itself. Knowledge Management connects to Notion (Starch syncs your Notion data on a schedule) if you already store SOPs there, and can pull in any Google Drive documents through Starch's integration catalog, queried live when the agent needs them. Job board postings on Indeed, Craigslist, or your state's contractor licensing board site can be automated through your browser — no API needed.

Prompts to copy

Build me an open roles tracker with columns for role name, job site, trade, date posted, where it's posted, current status (open / interviewing / filled / on hold), and next follow-up date. I want a kanban view by status and a list view I can filter by trade.

Remind me every Monday morning to review any open roles where the follow-up date has passed and nobody has updated the status.

Create a wiki page for each trade role we hire frequently — framing carpenter, plumber, electrician's helper — with what we pay, what tools they need to own, and what questions we ask in a phone screen. Tag each page so I can find them when I'm writing a job post.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Open Starch and describe your hiring tracker: tell it the columns that matter to you — trade, job site, posting source, status, and next follow-up date. Starch builds the app without you configuring a single form field.

2 Import your existing 'Hiring 2026' spreadsheet by pasting the contents into Starch or uploading the file — the agent maps your columns and populates the tracker in one step.

3 Add every open role you're aware of right now: framing crew for the Morrison build, a reliable plumber for the Eastside remodel, an office admin for estimating support. Don't worry about perfect data — you can update statuses as you go.

4 Set a Task Manager reminder: 'Every Monday at 7am, flag any open role where the follow-up date is more than 5 days ago and status is still Open or Interviewing.' This runs automatically so you don't lose a good candidate because you were on a job site all week.

5 For roles you post online, use Starch's browser automation to check your Indeed or Craigslist posts without logging into each site manually — Starch navigates the page and surfaces new applicant counts or whether your post expired.

6 When a candidate comes in via referral or text, log them against the open role with a quick prompt: 'Add Carlos Reyes as a candidate for the framing carpenter role on the Morrison job — referred by Danny, called him Tuesday, waiting to hear back.'

7 Use Knowledge Management to build a short page for each trade you hire regularly. Include your pay range, what the phone screen covers, any licensing or tool requirements, and the name of the super who usually makes the call. This takes 20 minutes now and saves you that call every time someone new needs to post a role.

8 When a role gets filled, update the status in the tracker with a single prompt: 'Mark the Morrison framing carpenter role as filled — hired Jose Mendez, start date May 5.' The record stays so you have a hiring log at year end.

9 For subcontractor slots, add a column for COI expiration date. Set a Task Manager alert: 'Flag any sub role where the COI expiration is within 30 days and status is Active.' You'll know before the sub shows up on site with lapsed insurance.

10 At the end of each month, ask Starch to summarize your hiring activity: how many roles were open, how many were filled, average days open by trade. You'll start to see patterns — electrical roles take twice as long to fill as general labor, which tells you to post earlier in the project schedule.

11 If you want to share the tracker with a super or office manager, they can view and update statuses directly — no separate login to Indeed, no 'can you send me the spreadsheet' texts.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

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Worked example

Spring 2026 crew ramp — four open roles across three active jobs

Sample numbers from a real run

Framing carpenter — Morrison Residence (Westfield)	0
Tile sub — Eastside Bath Remodel	0
General laborer — Ridgeline Spec Build	0
Estimating admin — office (part-time)	0

It's the first week of April. You've got three active jobs and a fourth starting May 1. Your tracker shows four open roles. The framing carpenter for the Morrison job has been open 18 days — the Task Manager flagged it Monday because the last follow-up was 9 days ago. You pull up the candidate log and see you had a promising call with a guy named Tomás two weeks ago but never texted him back. You send a message from the job site. The tile sub for the Eastside bath is listed as 'interviewing' — you used two subs on that trade last year, both listed in Knowledge Management with their last day rate and the super's notes on quality. You compare them in 30 seconds instead of calling around. The estimating admin role has been posted on Indeed since March 15; Starch checked the post this morning through browser automation and surfaced that it expired four days ago without you noticing — you repost it in two minutes. By Friday, two of the four roles are filled and you haven't touched a spreadsheet once.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Days open per role by trade (framing, mechanical, general labor)

Number of roles open vs. filled at any point in the build season

COI expiration dates for active subcontractors on current jobs

Candidate follow-up lag — how many days between first contact and your last touchpoint

Roles filled via referral vs. job board vs. previous sub relationship

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Excel or Google Sheets hiring tab

Free and familiar, but there are no automated follow-up reminders, no kanban view, and updating it requires someone to remember to open the file — which doesn't happen between site visits.

Indeed / ZipRecruiter built-in applicant tracking

Works fine for inbound applicants from that one platform, but doesn't track referrals, sub relationships, or roles that aren't formally posted, and you'd need a separate system for subcontractor COI tracking.

Buildertrend or CoConstruct

Good for project and schedule management on the job side, but neither has a usable hiring tracker or subcontractor role pipeline — you'd still be keeping a separate spreadsheet for open roles.

BambooHR or Gusto hiring module

Built for companies with a dedicated HR person who configures offer letters and onboarding flows — overkill and expensive for a 12-person GC tracking four open field roles at a time.

Notion or Airtable manual database

Flexible and decent for this use case, but setup takes time you don't have, there's no built-in reminder logic, and Starch can actually sync your Notion data on a schedule if you're already using it there.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — project management, task manager, knowledge management all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

I already use Buildertrend for project management. Can Starch pull job names and start dates from there so I don't have to type them into the hiring tracker twice?

Yes. Buildertrend is web-based, so Starch automates it through your browser — no API needed. It can pull your active project list and upcoming start dates and reference them when you're logging a new open role, so you're not maintaining two separate lists of job names.

Does Starch connect to job boards so I can post directly from the tracker?

Starch can automate job board sites through your browser — meaning it can navigate to Indeed or Craigslist, check the status of an existing post, or help you draft and submit a new one. It won't do a one-click 'post to all boards simultaneously' integration, but it handles the actual site navigation so you're not logging into each one separately.

Can I track subcontractor COI expiration dates in the same place as open roles?

Yes — the tracker is a custom app you describe to Starch, so you can include any columns that matter to you. Add a COI expiration date field, and then set a Task Manager reminder to flag any active sub where that date is within 30 days. It's one prompt to set up and then it runs on its own.

Is this HIPAA or SOC 2 compliant? We occasionally handle employee health info for benefits.

Starch is not currently SOC 2 Type II certified. For storing sensitive employee health or benefits information, you'll want to verify your compliance requirements before putting that data in Starch. For tracking open field roles, subcontractor contacts, and hiring notes, there's no PII risk that would typically trigger those compliance requirements.

What happens to the data if I stop using Starch? Can I export the hiring tracker?

Your tracker data can be exported. Starch isn't designed to be a long-horizon data warehouse — it's built for live operational surfaces — so if you need a permanent archived record of every hire going back five years, you'd want to export periodically to a spreadsheet or file. For day-to-day tracking of who's in the pipeline right now, it's the right tool.

I have a super who needs to update statuses in the field. Does he need his own Starch login?

Yes, each person who needs to update the tracker directly would need access. You can describe exactly what view they see — just the kanban board for open roles, for example, without access to your financial dashboards — so they're not navigating a full admin interface from their phone.