Isn’t it time you found and kept good employees that care about the business as much as you do?
Sounds almost too good to be true as a Contractor doesn’t it…
When I was a painting contractor back in the 80’s, I thought it was as well.
Boy was I wrong.
For much of my life it was simple. I woke up, loaded up on coffee, went to my jobs, painted until I couldn’t see straight from all the fumes, then I’d call it a good ol’ days worth of hard work.
I’d go home, watch some television, go to bed and wake up the next day to do it all over again. Maybe you can relate to this even if you’re not a painting contractor?
In 1991 it all changed for me.
You see, I broke my neck goofing off while sliding down a hill. Up until this point, I thought I’d just get jobs, get my crew working, and life would be good.
Then when I broke my neck I knew something had to change. I had to do something different.
This lead me to a study of language, organizational development, and spirituality for many years and then taking a job in Germany doing sales training for a software company.
When my contract was up, I came back to America and knew I had to start making some money once again.
Then one day, I walked into a bookstore and saw a painting contractor reading a personal development book and said…
“I can’t believe a contractor is reading a book like that.”
Now what you need to understand is, I’ve always been into the spiritual and personal development world my entire life.
I just didn’t know many contractors who were.
Little did I know, I uttered my disbelief out loud when I thought I was just talking to myself.
This sparked a conversation with a man by the name of Paul Benson.
By the end of our conversation, he hired me to help him with his contracting company.
Within a year I was able to help him increase sales and buy a $600,000 house.
This leads me to today where I focus on helping restoration and construction companies implement new practices for their business operation’s so they improve their productivity and most importantly their net profits.
My main goal is to help you have the freedom to just be an owner of the business rather than having to work in your business day and night.
I have a proven track record of helping contractors grow their businesses year after year.
Over the past 24 year of working with contractors I’ve seen them make a lot of the same mistakes which is keeping them playing small.
By knowing how to avoid the 5 Hiring Mistakes When Hiring Employees, you will be able to find and more importantly, keep good help. This way you will have a team who cares about your projects and getting the job done just as much as you do.
Mistake #1: Perception
You may think you can’t find the right person because of your area, geography, economics, etc. So you don’t even look and this means your defeated before you even start.
I hear owners and managers all over the U.S. complaining that they can’t find good help.
Often they feel this problem is unique to the areas they work in.
This is not the truth.
First Solution:
The truth is, there is no area more difficult to find good, reliable help than any other area of the U.S. Although there are areas that seem that way…
It can be challenging but it is not impossible. To find and keep your help you need to have a very effective process.
It starts with you, your commitment and conviction that you are going to do whatever it takes to attract the best employees…and I don’t mean at any cost! Be positive! Or you are beat before you even started.
So, here’s what you do, set up one person to be the driver accountable for this new hire project. NOT you, someone else. That will be the person to get the ad copy written, posted, collect the resumes, screen candidates, and set up interviews, etc. They may be the person who actually does each step, or they manage getting it done. Either works.
Mistake #2. Procurement
You may use ad copy that attracts the wrong kind of person, the person you really don’t want working for you.
Most ads I see are very plain and generic. The typical job ad describes the bare bones offer of the job and it looks just like all the other job positions available out there.
If you were looking for a great company to work for would you want to respond to a boring, plain generic ad?
Second Solution:
If you want to find good, quality help that will take ownership of your jobs and treat your clients like you wouldd treat them, then your ad copy needs to reflect this.
It also needs to describe something about the culture of your business because the kind of person you really want to hire values a great place to work almost or as much as how much you’ll be paying them.
It also needs to say something towards what they will be accountable for, what is expected of them. And this is important – its needs to describe the challenge and the level of performance you really want. All too often owners ask for way to little, are successful in getting exactly that, then get stressed out dealing with underperforming employees.
Mistake #3. Process
Lots of contractors don’t have a rigorous, effective, screening, interviewing, and hiring process that helps you select the perfect person you want working for you and representing your company. Maybe you are one of them?
Often times due to believing you can’t find good help and thinking it will be difficult to find a good person, you settle.
Finding great people to work for you doesn’t have to be hard. It can take time though and having an effective hiring process is crucially important to increasing your company’s productivity and net profits. One of the most important parts of finding and hiring the right people is to set the bar high from the beginning.
Third Solution:
The most important part is reading every resume, and calling every single one that might be a possibility. You need to weed out the ones who are clearly not a good fit and call every single person who could be a possible a candidate to fill your position. I know it’s more work to make all those calls, and schedule all those interviews, but it’s important.
Keep in mind working for you company is a great opportunity and something you shouldn’t take for granted. You’ve worked hard to build your company and it’s an honor for someone to work for and with you.
You need to understand if you want great people, you must have a great hiring process in place.
Here’s what an effective hiring process could look like for you:
- Start with really good ad copy.
- Weed out the obviously bad resumes.
- Call all of the people who have good looking resumes and invite them to come into your office for an interview.
You’ll want to do this because how a candidate sounds on the phone is often times very different than how they are in person. - In the Interview Process, have questions prepared that will allow the applicant to demonstrate their knowledge of what you will want them to do for you.
- Prepare to make requests to have them demonstrate their written skills.
This gives you a heads up, an opportunity to see how they perform. Now you have something in your hand in addition to their resume to help you decide.
To have a great company, you must have great people. You want to have great people who go the extra mile, and it starts right here, with you the way you interview them, and the requests you make from day one of them to show you who they really are. How you do this from day one, the requests you make, the challenges you set up, are what will set you apart from the other companies.
Mistake #4: Purpose
Maybe you’re not exactly clear on what type of people you really want to work for you or what type of culture you want your company to have?
Maybe you don’t even know what a company’s culture is or how it applies to you as an owner?
This sets you and your employees up for failure from day one.
Fourth Solution:
One of the most important parts of finding and hiring the right people is to set the bar high from the beginning.
Let your job applicants know from the very first moment and experience of your company that working for your company may be one of the most difficult jobs they ever had. And one of the most rewarding…because, everyone wants to be on a winning team. And they are in fact willing to work for it.
Let them know that the culture of your business embraces ongoing development and continuous learning. Help them to understand you have their back and offer training and coaching for their ongoing development.
The stronger you emphasize this, the higher the quality of the people you will attract, because great employees, the kind you really want, place tremendous value on being able to not only earn a living, but to have the opportunity to increase their value, and have their opportunity for upward mobility.
This starts right in the ad copy, goes all through the interview process, and continues through their whole term of employment.
Mistake #5. Payment:
You may not know how to pay and compensate appropriately. You probably over or under pay or don’t understand what truly motivates the best employees. You may be a business owner that is using cash bonus incentives as a primary motivation for key employees. If so, you are likely finding it doesn’t work all that well.
Fifth Solution:
I see far too many contractors make it all about money. When in fact, money is only a small part of what a great employee really wants.
The worst thing you can do is offer cash incentives to solve a morale or productivity issue because this solution will have a very short- term impact on their productivity.
Don’t get me wrong…there are employees who shop for the highest wage they can find and for these people it is all about the money.
These types of people tend to move from job to job with no real loyalty other than money.
I don’t want you to have these types of people. You deserve better.
The best employees want a long- term home that is a strongly productive environment and challenges them on a daily basis.
Great employees want to be completely accountable and want to be paid adequately and fairly. Pay them enough to keep the subject of money off the table. That’s NOT what you want them thinking about, and it’s not what they want to be thinking about either.
Company culture comes before money for great employees, because that’s what impacts them every single day. That’s what they call home at least 8 hours a day, so for the kind of employees you really want, it needs to be a challenging, rewarding, and fast paced environment.
Your Next Steps
My mission is to demonstrate that a business embracing practices of kindness, respect and empowerment will be very, very successful and profitable.
Ready for a new level of success in your business?
Working with hundreds of companies in over 8,000 meetings for 25 years has shown me if you take the right actions, you will get the best results. The GNA program helps you break free from the exhausting effort to run your business. We offer a step-by-step program helping you to thrive and build the business you always wanted.
Explore how you can achieve a new level of success in your company, schedule time with me today: https://calendly.com/greg-479/free-30-min-discovery
