[Human Resources] Hiring Help

Good help can be hard to find. Consider the typical scenario: You place a classified ad in the newspaper advertising an open position for a service technician, and you receive a slew of calls. You only find a few candidates you actually want to call in for an interview, and once you conduct all the interviews, you’re not impressed with any of the candidates, but you’re forced to make a decision because you need to hire someone for the position right now.

Or so you think.

Too often, pest management professionals hire the wrong people because of the perceived need to hire someone right away. As a result, they fall into the same pattern they’ve always used to seek employees, and they’re less than pleased with the results. But good talent does exist; you just have to know how to find it. The key is to try a new approach for locating top-notch talent. When you do, you’ll realize that finding exactly who you are looking for is actually quite simple. The following tips will help you find the right talent so you can make your organization a success.

HIRE FOR ATTITUDE. One of the most important skills any technician has is his or her ability to communicate well with customers. Most anyone can be trained on how to identify conducive conditions or properly place bait stations. It’s much harder to train someone to have a friendly demeanor and service-oriented mindset.

“We will train them (to do) pest management or service,” said Bobby Jenkins, president of ABC Pest and Lawn Services, Austin, Texas. “We’re mostly interested in the kind of person they are.”

Bruce Carter, president of Carter Services, Farmington, N.M., said he prefers to hire technicians with no background or experience in the pest management industry. He said it’s much easier for him to train someone from the ground up than it is to retrain a technician who came to work from another company.

“We hire for attitude and train for aptitude,” Carter said. “They’ve got to love people. If you’ve got somebody that’s reserved and doesn’t feel comfortable talking, they won’t make a good tech.”

BROADEN YOUR SEARCH. If you can’t seem to find the right talent, you may be looking for the wrong type of employee. Most employers automatically think they have to hire full-time permanent individuals. Does the position you’re hiring for — a technician or customer service representative — really have enough work to justify bringing someone on full-time?

When you consider other job categories besides full-time permanent, you can alleviate a financial burden for your company, and you may be able to bring in people better qualified for the job.

A DIFFERENT DEMOGRAPHIC. When looking to fill a position, don’t limit yourself to specific demographics. Some pest management companies focus on hiring women — especially former stay-at-home moms — saying that female technicians can better relate to customers, and the life experience they have and the knowledge they bring can make them more valuable than someone with years in the industry.

“I’ve found some of my best techs have been single moms that care enough to bust their tail and provide for their family and that appreciates work and that doesn’t have a diddly clue about how to kill a bug other than to stomp on it,” Carter said. He said his female technicians often are able to better communicate a sense of caring and concern for customers’ problems. “They’ll make some of the best hands you could ever have,” he said.

DON'T RUSH. One major mistake employers make is being in a hurry to fill an empty position — especially during the busy summer months. Take the time in the slow season to analyze what needs to be done and what type of person you are looking for to join your company. Really think of all of the possibilities. Can you move people around within your organization? Do any employees have crossover duties that you can combine into one position? Maybe you’ll find that you can combine two jobs previously done by two different people, thus freeing one of them up who would be absolutely ideal for the position you are seeking to fill. When you slow down and take the time to really evaluate what your organization needs, you may realize that the solution is not hiring someone at all.

GET DEMONSTRATED RESULTS. Before you hire someone, be sure you ask for and get demonstrated results. You don’t want to interview someone and have her just talk about what she has done in the past and the type of results she attained. You want her to put her results in writing. You want to find out what she did differently to make a difference in the last organization she worked for.

Jenkins tests his prospective employees — literally. They must go through three interviews, complete background checks, a drug test and a physical. The prospective employees then have to lift a ladder off of a truck, set it up and climb up it to get on a roof to prove they are physically capable of the work — and that they aren’t afraid of heights, either.

“Now it’s truly a physical test,” Jenkins said.

Or, if you’re hiring a salesperson, you want to know how he increased sales at his last job by a certain percentage in a short period of time. Don’t just ask for these demonstrated results. Verify them as well. Ask him for references and call them.

MAKE THE RIGHT CHOICE. You know that hiring individuals for your organization is difficult. And hiring the right talent is even more difficult. The truth is, it doesn’t have to be. When you slow down, examine what you really need for your organization, and approach the hiring process differently than you have in the past, you may be surprised how easy it can be to find the right talent. They are out there; you just have to know how to find them. And when you do, your organization will benefit greatly from the decisions you have made. 

PCT Assistant Editor Chuck Bowen contributed to this article. He can be reached at cbowen@giemedia.com.

The author is a business strategist, author, speaker and CEO of The Management Link, www.marshalindquist.com. She can be reached at mlindquist@giemedia.com.

Don’t Hire From a Piece of Paper

When you first try to find somebody to fill a position, you probably have a wish-list in mind of exactly what skills and qualities you’re looking for. But if you find someone with the right attitude, you will likely end up getting a lot more than what you were looking for and you will be more satisfied with your decision. So always base your hiring decision on the person, not on what’s on his or her resume. Sure, you may have to look for a little different skill set than what you originally thought you wanted, but the important thing is to find the person who will mix well with your current team. In the end, you will be better off hiring the person with the right attitude and only part of the skill set you were looking for rather than someone with the right skill set and the wrong attitude. You can always train job functions, but you can’t train somebody’s attitude.