It’s the busy time of the year and you need to add more people so you start to advertise. What few people apply have poor skills, attitudes and habits so you keep looking. Over time desperation sets in and you need to add people fast so you lower your standards. You hire warm bodies and hope for the best. After you get them in place you find their attitudes, and habits are making your life a living hell but what else can you do?
This scenario is played out year after year. You used to be able to put an ad in the paper and get plenty of qualified applicants, so what happened? In the 1970s the various trades were adding about 1,000,000 new workers every year. It sounds like a big number but the same number of people were leaving the trade as those coming in. In the nearly 40 years that have passed, the trades are adding about the same number of new people, but with a population that has increased by over 51% the trades are now experiencing a yearly labor shortage of more than 500,000 people.
Why is this happening? After all, being in a trade is honorable work. You protect the public’s health and well being. Modern life as we know it could not exist without the things you provide. So why are people not going into the trades? More importantly, why are we not promoting our trades to potential new workers?
It’s time to take control of our workforce! It’s time to stop hoping qualified workers will magically show up at our door and it’s time to stop trying to reform everyone else’s rejects.
If you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, get a puppy! You have to go out and find someone who doesn’t have a bad attitude and everyone else’s bad habits and train them. Before you start thinking I can’t afford to keep a person on payroll for two years before they make me any money! Consider this, you can hire a person with absolutely no experience, buy all their tools, pay their wages while they learn the skills they need, and break even in just 22 weeks. Best of all they can be producing revenue in about six weeks.
Sound too good to be true – it’s not. it takes a lot of effort but in the end you will have better employees that provide superior service with fewer headaches.
Getting Started
Step 1: You have to find people. You can advertise at job fairs or under “general employment” in the local paper. This works well at bringing in a lot of people, so you will have to weed through applications to find those with good attitudes. Many companies do this with great success. Others like the one-on-one contacts. Always be on the lookout for potential employees. When you go to a store or restaurant, look for people who went out of their way to help their customers. These were the people that didn’t say, “I think it’s on aisle 3,” they were the people that took you to aisle 3 and helped you find what you were looking for.
When you meet these people, get their name and give them your card. Say something like, “I’m always looking for people with great attitudes like yours to add to my team. Why don’t you give a call tomorrow at 10:00 and let’s talk.” Always set aside time for people you meet to call you. Also make yourself a note of the person’s name and where you met them so you will know who you are talking with when they call.
Step 2: Get them involved with your company. You really have to “sell” them on the idea of working in your industry and specifically for your company. Tell them about the great benefits and potential income. Let them know what your standards are and get the drug screens and background checks completed. Be real and don’t sugar coat things, otherwise you will be wasting your time and theirs.
Step 3: Make sure they are going to stay. For the first two weeks of employment have them ride with an experienced worker as their helper. During this period you should meet with them every morning and see how they are doing. Encourage them and let them know how excited you are to have them on board. Then send them out on the nastiest, dirtiest, hottest, coldest, tightest, and most uncomfortable jobs you have. They need to get into every type of crawlspace, attic, and basement. Then tomorrow repeat the process again.
The purpose of this is to weed out the people who are not going to like your kind of work. Better to let them know what it’s really like than to invest a lot of time and money in someone who will quit over the first attic they have to crawl through.
Step 4: If they survive the first two weeks, you need to begin training them. Use a boot-camp method that consists of a one-week crash course that will give them the ability to do one aspect of the trade. These boot camps are available from a number of sources – for example Ultimate Technical Academy provides this type of training for HVAC, PSI, and RSI. You can do your own in-house if you choose.
Step 5: The week following training, have them ride with an experienced worker. Anytime they are faced with a task that was covered in the previous week’s training the experienced worker is instructed to let the new person perform that task. This will reinforces the training and help the new worker gain confidence.
Step 6: The following week is another boot-camp-type training that covers the next phase of the job. For example, it could be gas heating or air conditioning depending on the season.
Step 7: For the next week, the new hire is allowed to run tune-up-type calls or maintenance calls and is shadowed by an experienced technician. After this week, the new person is running tune-ups or maintenance calls by themselves and is producing revenue.
Step 8: When you feel the new person is ready or there is a change of season, they need to attend the next phase of boot-camp-type training. This would complete their basic training in the industry. IT DOES NOT MEAN THEIR TRAINING IS OVER. These are the basics they need to get started – they will need to continue to improve their skills.
Step 9: The week following this training they are shadowed by an experienced technician to provide support and make sure they are ready. After this they should be able to do any type tune-up or maintenance.
Step 10: As the new person improves their skills they should be given an opportunity to run more trouble-type calls. This will increase their confidence and allow them to generate more revenue.
Using a structure like this will allow you to take control of your workforce and provide better service to your clients. While this focuses on the technical side of bringing people into your industry, they need to understand the communication side as well. They should be attending all of your weekly in-house communication trainings. Of course, Success Academy® and the Success Profit Network™ are great resources, for training too. More importantly within 22 weeks you will have a great new employee and given them a great career in the process.