Reza Interviews Jordyn a Young Professional working as an Ascent Project Manager at Oakwood Homes

[Music] hi I'm Reza I'm a junior at UVA and I'm majoring in computer science in English today I will be interviewing Jordan Cruz Jordan is an asset project manager at Oakwood homes and Jordan is also a member of the NH and a.hb which is the National Association of Home Builders right yep and you're both as a student and professional part of this organization so the NAHB student chapters is a program dedicated to enriching the educational experience of construction students and they get membership that you had access to educational programming networking opportunities and firsthand exposure to the building industry so hi Jordan how are you good ok so my first question for you is what initially drew you to this career path yeah so I took a class at the University of Denver during my undergrad that was titled the business of the built environment and originally it was just supposed to be an elective just something that filled my schedule and then I started realizing that there was so much more to the built environment to the construction industry and my dad when I was growing up he installed carpet he did different odds and ends within the construction industry and so my scope of this industry was always its hardhats & hammers and that's kind of what I thought there was to it and then I took this class that do you and realize there's there's this entire industry behind it there's a business aspect to it that is very involved and it just drew me in and additionally when I was a child my my home environment was not you know exactly the best and it just he had told theirs it was a leaky building envelope and that resulted in just some some times during my childhood where I don't have a lot of friends come over and winters sucked cuz it was raising in the house we're hanging blankets between your rooms and I realize how important that a good stable home is for someone and what effect that has on a child growing up and I thought you know I I would really like to be a part of being able to deliver a healthy and safe environment for people to raise their families and create memories yeah that sounds right on that's that's awesome um I guess okay so my second question is what high school courses have you found to be the most applicable for what you do yeah so it's interesting because at the high school level I think a lot of the the classes that we would associate with my industry would be you know trade classes that unfortunately a lot of those have been pulled out of high schools and furthermore they might continue to be pulled out considering the environment of everything right now with kovat you know it might not be an investment that our public education system could fund so I encourage people instead to realize that there's a lot of general business classes a high school level like for instance I take in just its general like marketing and management class but even some of those skills that I picked up at that high school level are definitely something that you could carry into the business world with you and you there's a lot more industries than what you would think that that would be applicable to like construction but it really wasn't until I got to college courses that I found those really specific classes and so I actually majored in the business of the built environment within the business school at Daniel's College of Business at University of Denver so I had a lot of specific classes since that was my major but you know someone but that's not actually gonna be my I was gonna be my next question what do you think are the best college courses you could take yeah I and that's I really encourage everyone to at least if you're considering this industry I think that it's a great idea to try to seek out maybe a lot of colleges have some type of construction management class that'll at least dip your toes in the water and and also I highly encourage being able to take some type of accounting or finance class realizing that that applies to so many different businesses because you know even in construction I find myself oftentimes having to go back to you know at least a basic understanding of what is our accounting team looking at so I could better deliver you an on-time and on-budget project cool really cool I guess what kind of internships have you found helpful or apprenticeships that prepared you for this career or what would you recommend for people yeah so I was fortunate enough to have two different internships during my my college years and one of them was with thrive home builders which was an amazing company they are a smaller maybe mid-sized builders what you could consider them but they had a lot of hands-on experiences they could offer me especially because of their size where I was I helped on site and actually was helping with the construction management of a townhouse development that they had here in Colorado and I also was able to help with permitting I did a lot of things in office to get an understanding of business operations so you know I think that there's a lot of internships and apprenticeships that are available to people but I encourage someone to maybe consider those smaller shops yeah they tend to not have as many available internships but if you could land one you end up wearing a lot of hats so it's definitely benefit yeah you get to try out a bunch of different things like that yeah and and my second internship was with metro study and they actually do the housing analytics across the nation so that was a different experience still a really small shop though where they had five people in the office so it was again a very hands-on experience and and those are other facets of the industry that I think people forget about is that it's also there's this entire to analytics side to where we're really crunching into the numbers and trying to figure out does it make sense for us to even build here what's the demographic so now III think that there's a lot of opportunity within the industry and just be creative when you're looking for those internships it might not look exactly like what you thought yeah I didn't go into construction management per se right away even though that was my degree but I gained so much that allowed me to be better at my job by kind of branching out and figuring out what other opportunities exist cool very cool I guess my next question is how have you engaged with the NAHB how do you engage as a student how are you engaging now as a professional what are kind of the differences so as a student NHP has a really great student chapters group and the focus of that group tends to be you know all the students get really excited about the student competition that we do every year so for two years that was really what what my focus was is trying to bring home gold for 4d you I didn't manage to do it but hey we got we got pretty close so you know second and fourth place I'll take it but um Wow you know yeah not too bad but but that was great because I think what nhb does is really trying to expose you to and of the real world of the industry so the student competition you get a case study and it really is putting together something that looks very similar to a business plan that you would actually want to provide to you know and your executive team at a company to say here's this parcel of land we ran all of the market analysis on it we put together a construction schedule we ran a Performa and this is going to be profitable I think we should pursue it and here's why so very hands-on very real-world and that was definitely the focus of my engagement with nhb but there was a lot that came along with that being able to attend international business show I gained a national network of people from from doing that I met so many amazing people at so many different levels of their career which is very helpful knowing someone who just started knowing someone who's two decades into their career someone who's three or four decades into their career and being able to just talk to them about you what what my journey will look like how I might be better prepared for it and all of that was through this national network of NAHB not to mention the fact that they provide scholarships for students and I was fortunate enough to get three scholarships through them Wow thank you it definitely helped my senior year bill okay see ya I end up not paying for my senior year because of the help of NAHB Wow yeah that's huge especially if you look up the tuition at University of Denver it's a it's a pretty penny so thank you any much me I can imagine yeah UVA is also very expensive yeah so you know exactly where I'm coming from yeah yeah okay I guess my next question is what's your typical workday entail like what do you do every day yeah um let's see my my workday now is it's kind of interesting so for the past two years I've been an ascent project manager at Oakwood and basically that's a Leadership Program that I was approached by the CEO our CEO of my company Oakwood homes when I was at the student competition actually so he had he had seen me give you know my presentation with the team approached the team afterwards and and specifically had approached me saying I have this program I I think that you know you would be a good fit for it I'd love to be able to talk more about it it turns out it was pioneering this two-year leadership program where every six months I held a different position within the company so over the past two years I've been a purchasing agent I've been an on-site sales counselor helping seven first-time homebuyers into a home during slow season so you know what that was that was a pretty good record considering it was like middle of winter but I also was in the finance department at my company and helps to put together our refor cast every month so that was definitely more of a business operations kind of look at everything and then now I'm in their land development and acquisition department and where I've been offered a full-time job to become manager of entitlements and acquisition ice that's awesome so many hats so many things you've done that's really cool so it's kind of weird cuz typical is it changed every six months but I could tell you right now in my current position and and what I'll be doing moving forward as a land acquisition and entitlements department really what they're doing is you're constantly looking in the market for opportunities that exist for acquiring parcels of land my company in particular we are a builder developers so we focus on larger pieces of land we want to be able to have something that has at least a five year build-out preferably something that looks more like 10 we have just one little division or one neighborhood within our reunion master plan that has like 1,300 homes in it so and that's just one piece of this giant master plan so we definitely are our big picture builders are our goal is to be able to deliver a true community experience and to be able to give our homeowners that sense of community we've had people tell us before that our reunion development in particular feels like a small hometown which is awesome considering it's like a 30-minute drive from downtown Denver and it's very much a metropolitan area there so yeah to deliver that is kind of what what what our goal is and so my job is to be able to help assist in in any kind of market analysis it might happen with those new acquisitions but more importantly once we acquire that land I think people would be surprised to know that it's it takes two three sometimes five years or longer to be able to entitle that land so that way you could legally start to be able to to build what you want to build so it's a process of working with municipalities to be able to look into what their code is and to be able to to try to to make your product fit within that that code and if it doesn't trying to be able to explain to them I know this doesn't fit but here's the reason why this is going to benefit your community so it's it's a lot of project management there's so many different consultants that we have to work with engineers landscape architects in consultants that have a very specific specialization and geotech engineering and so it's really kind of a project management at that level and and I'll tell you there's really no such thing as a typical day every day there's something that surprises me and yeah I'm pretty fresh and do it but I've spoken with some of my colleagues that have been in it for decades and you know I keep telling them that I feel like I haven't learned nearly as much as what I need you to be fully successful and they said you're not going to shake that feeling every day you are learning something new because every day it's evolving you might have a new someone that's a new city manager and they have different expectations and they want to evolve their city just like how you want to evolve your company so it's definitely a learning process which can be daunting for some but exciting for others so it's definitely kind of you have to have that personality type where you're ready to adapt and to learn every day Wow very cool Wow um guess what's what's something that you wouldn't expect out of this career when you first started getting into this yeah so I think that a lot of people had probably have them as inception that I did where the majority of the homebuilding industry is hardhats & hammers not knowing the complexity of what goes into it so I think that I would encourage people to to be more open-minded with what this industry can become knowing that it seems kind of simple sometimes I think when you're just looking at it at a snapshot like all right yeah you here's some land you put a house on it you build it with wood you know it it's a house but there's so much that goes into it and there's so many different people that you gonna interact with and that was one thing that I didn't realize is that it's not just the home builder it's not just the developer it's every consultant every engineer every designer I mean there's so many different people that get involved in this and I think that's what's been a really incredible experience and why my relationship with nhv has has helped me so much as well is because they they have that network they have everyone from the mom pop home builder that has five people that work for them to national builders that have a reach across the entire country and being able to to talk with those people and to understand what what their job entails and how someone in my position needs to be able to interact with them so that way we could all get our job done more efficiently and be able to deliver better healthier and safer homes for everyone very cool Wow um I guess as a last laugh you have any last couple thoughts about you know any words of wisdom you might give to someone considering taking a construction management yeah I think that it's important to be able to get involved in organizations like NAHB I think in my industry in particular it's been extremely helpful to be involved with nhv because they that's like the national chapter and then you have your local chapters and your state chapters so that only has neh be done so much for me as a student and and now I'm giving back and trying to be involved in their student chapters as an alumni by being able to reach out to more students and young adults trying to explain to them what this industry really is not just the hardhats & hammers right and that group has been able to assist me in completing college which is amazing and then being able to to help me get more integrated into my local chapters so the Denver metro hva has educational sessions they have networking mixers which have all been virtual now it's co-ed yes but still it's just a great place to be able to to bounce ideas off of because ultimately at the end of the day especially in this industry where things are constantly evolving even on the building side there's always new materials coming out there's there's new building methods we get better more efficient every year and because of that not only are you learning new things but you're trying to be able to gain an experience to have that acknowledged that comes with working in an industry for decades so being involved in a network and an organization like NAHB or your local HPA chapter it gives you that experience without you having to have personally spent decades right like I could kind of learn from others that may have said oh yeah I've been through that same thing have you thought of doing it like this or this and getting that knowledge especially when you're fresh in your career is completely invaluable so regardless of what industry you go into although I highly encourage everyone to take a look at construction and specifically the home building industry because it's amazing but either way I think that a lot of industries have these types of organizations and it's always beneficial to be able to reach out and to make those connections and a lot of industries even though it's so big at the end of the day it's really kind of small and you end up realizing how many times that you've interacted with this person and you know you might you might have met them 10 years ago and then now they're your colleague at your new you know works so it's it's a great idea to make those connections and to take advantage of educational sessions and other tidbits of knowledge that might exist within those organizations and networks very cool thank you so much Jordan yeah that's been really insightful yeah yeah no problem no problem at all so thank you for joining us I hope you guys learn more about NAHB if you want more information please visit the NA hbq career page to find out how NAHB can help you with your career development until next time and have a good week goodbye [Music]

Channel: Cue Career

Views: 26,205

Rating: 4.9885387 out of 5

Keywords: cue career, cue career interviews, college career videos, how to get a job out of college, jobs after college, careers after college, NAHB, builders industry, reza cue career

Id: 9ZMloELwEEU

Length: 21min 8sec (1268 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 04 2020