The Hiring Playbook For Contractors & Home Service Companies.
Everything contractors need to know to hire great employees
Today we’re going to get tactical. We’ll be running through a five step recruitment process that we’ve used to hire thousands of employees.
Figuring out who to hire
Writing attractive job descriptions
Finding great candidates
Interviewing to sell, not to assess
Assessing fit through discovery projects
How to know who you need to hire next in your contracting business.
There are a lot of different positions that contractors need to hire for. The key to not making hiring mistakes is that you have to hire the right person at the right time.
This part of the process is about asking “What gap in the business do I need to fill, what role fills this gap and what kind of person do I need to fill this role?”
If you already have someone working with you, your next hire should replace you so you can get off the tools. This lets you focus more of your energy on hiring, advertising and selling.
If you already have someone working with you, your next hire should replace you so you can get off the tools, and focus more of your energy on hiring, advertising and selling.
If you already have one full crew and you want to add another one, your next hire should be a skilled laborer. You’ll work with them until you’re confident they can train an unskilled laborer (which would be your next hire)
Who you need to hire next depends on where your business is at. If you aren’t sure - send me an email describing your situation and I’ll point you in the right direction.
…but typically a rule of thumb is - hire when it hurts. When it starts getting too stressful or time consuming to run the business without hiring another person, that’s when you make that move.
So how do you find the person?
You have to define who you want to hire before you start the hiring process. Otherwise, you’ll end up with the wrong person.
What should your job post say?
Once you’ve figured out what role you’re hiring for, it’s time to write a job ad.
One important framework is that hiring someone is just like sales. The job ad is your advertising.
If you want to hire great people, they have to want to work for you.
As much as you think you’re doing them a favor, great people want to feel like they’re doing you a favor. Great people have their pick of jobs.
Instead of just telling you what to do, here is a job ad you can have and make your own.
Job post example for contracting businesses.
Before I give you the job post template, I wanted to give you a few quick tips:
Put the “sell” of the position near the top of the ad (e.g., if it has a good pay rate, company culture, benefits, potential for OT/extra earning).
Always have a call to action (e.g., To apply for his position please send your resume to amer@contracting.com).
Keep in mind that sometimes, job boards will not allow you to encourage applicants to send their resumes directly to you.
Try to have a variety of long, short and medium ads for each position because some candidates like to read a lot of detail and some do not so this way we attract both types.
If you copy this ad word for word, it will likely get taken down. Sites don’t like when you copy, but this should give you a really clear idea of how to post your own job ad.
Keep it simple and take action. Far too often people get caught up in making things “perfect” - it will never be perfect. Keep testing new job ads to see if you can get better results.
Company: ABC Electric & Plumbing Job Type: Full-Time
Description
Position Vacancy: Experienced Electrician.
What it’s like working with us: ABC Electric & Plumbing is an Ottawa-based company that began 15 years ago when Andrew & Jennifer Houston decided they wanted to create a business people could think of as the one-stop shop to total home comfort solutions. Our team is built of dedicated, supportive, and engaged members who are focused on creating seamless home solutions and pleasant customer experiences. ABC Electric & Plumbing is known for its award-winning workmanship and client care and are proud supporters of multiple local children’s sports teams. We are focused on adding an experienced electrician to our team to further build upon our multitude of prime services offered. The work you will be doing will be interesting and rewarding as we pride ourselves in creating unique, full-spectrum experiences for our clients.
What we’re looking for: We are seeking an experienced electrician who takes pride in their work and enjoys working as part of a team. We expect all of our team members to maintain great relationships not only internally and with our clients, but with our sub-trades as well. If you enjoy working in an environment that is clean and organized and offers opportunities to develop your skillset, then ABC Electric & Plumbing could be the right fit for you.
What we’re offering: ABC Electric & Plumbing are offering a position in a professional and well-kept work environment. We focus on engaging with our employees to help them develop and grow and we offer a ton of team support. We are fully insured and WSIB compliant.
Depending on skill level and experience, we are offering between $30-$35/hour. There may also be an opportunity for you to have an ABC Electric & Plumbing work van. You must have your own vehicle and a valid driver’s license.
How to apply: Interested candidates are encouraged to submit cover letters and resumes by email to John@ABCPlumbing.com. While we thank all applicants, only qualified candidates will be contacted.
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Just adjust the job ad to your own info and you’re good to go.
By the way, a job ad does NOT have to just go on expensive job boards like indeed, let’s talk about how to find top talent without spending money.
Top 4 ways to find amazing employees for your contracting business.
Now that we know what we want to say in the job ads, we need to put it in front of the right people.
Here’s a list of common ways to find great candidates, ranked from best to worst:
Referrals — From other high caliber employees or your network
Deep Outreach — Reaching out to those in your network and asking “Who’s the best person you know at X and would you mind introducing me, even if they’re not looking for a job?”, doing that continuously until you hit someone who’s a fit
Social Media – This method, much like networking, will bring you fewer but often higher quality applicants. This is an extension of word of mouth. You can make posts on your own social media and ask your friends and family to spread the word. You can also post in groups.
Online job sites – There are a ton of sites like indeed, ziprecruiter, kijiji, etc that you can post on. The best way to find sites in your area is to pretend you’re looking for a job, so go to google and look up [your trade] jobs in [your city]. Just make sure you follow the rules on these sites, some are more strict than others. And definitely do not copy any ads you see there.
You’ll notice the top two – referrals and deep outreach – will take a lot of time and are fairly challenging to get a lot of applications.
Those two strategies are more about quality than quantity. Although they will take more time than posting a job ad, the candidates are usually the best.
Now we have people who are interested in working for us…
How do we know how to pick the right person to work for us?
How to interview potential employees (specifically for contractors)
Here’s the truth about hiring that you probably haven’t heard before. Interviews are a terrible predictor of performance.
Of course, you’ll still ask them questions about their experience and their expectations but take their answers with a massive heaping of salt. Remember, they’re trying to impress you, they want the job.
The best way to assess someone who is applying for your job is to bring them out to a jobsite (more on that later). Before you bring them out to a site, you’ll want to make sure you accomplish two things:
Set hard expectations – this means you need to be crystal clear about what you will expect of them. Be clear about how hard the job is. Make it sound even harder than it is.
Get them excited about the opportunity – The way you get someone excited about a new job isn’t by talking, it’s by listening. For someone to be excited and hopeful about getting a job with your company, they have to see a big future for themselves. You’re not selling you. You’re selling them that the way they will have the future they want is by working with you. You must understand their 5 year goals, their dream job, and anything else that’s important to them. Then, you’ll pitch your company around what they want and don’t want. People are more interested in themselves than they are in you and your company.
If you do this properly, the hard expectations you set will turn away bad applicants and attract good ones - ones who want to work hard. And for the ones that want to work hard, they’ll be sold that the hard work will be worth it.
The next step after these calls is getting them to agree to do a paid “Audition Day”. It’s in this “Discovery Project” where you’ll assess whether they’re actually a good fit.
Which brings us to the final step:
The BEST way to see if someone is a good fit for your contracting business
At this point, hopefully the interview sales call we just went through has gone well enough that the person is interested in next steps.
The next step is an “Audition Day” where you pay them to come work with you for a day.
You want to pick a project that is typical of a normal day, but make sure you bring them to an easy going client.
You’ll spend most of the day with them, observing how they think, how hard they work, how good of a job they do.
Make sure you are early, and that you set a high standard for quality and speed.
At the end of the day, review their performance and if they’re good, offer them a one week trial.
If they do well during the one week trial, you can bring them on full time.
This is a long process, and I guarantee you’ll bring people to job sites that you won’t hire. It’s all part of the process.