Hiring Employee Pains

Our season kicks off full throttle March 1st each year, so filling two positions to our crew is usually painful.

Again today 1st candidate schedules an interview for this morning ,never seen shows up! My experience with this is typical and always seems to surprise me, not sure why I’m not used to it by now.

Why do people put the time into looking for a job and when a company is interested and wants more info they simply don’t show up.

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Seems that no matter what you do, where in the world you are, or what business you are in this is a problem. We had a guy that went through TWO interviews this month; showed up to both and did great.

Scheduled to start yesterday… NO SHOW. Not replying to calls, texts, or voicemail. Hope he is OK because he is a very nice guy.

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I get those too, they are offered a position for the pay they want but can’t show up on first day.

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When I started my business I never would have thought that the real struggle is getting employees and not the work. We have done good at staying busy, but finding a reliable worker to grow the business is tough.

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My thought to why I struggle to get good reliable workers is it’s unskilled labor. The individuals I’m looking for don’t need a degree or higher education to be eligible for the positions I’m looking to fill.

I have and had and number of employees that I’ve employed for 5 plus years but overall my biggest challenge is finding a reliable workforce.

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The problem may lie in the hiring process itself.

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i find that the younger they are the keener/better they are. im not sure why it is but many who would be fine at 16 are totally useless troublesome liars by age 30

altho you say the jobs unskilled it actually requires a lot of nous. you have to be able to think on your feet . nous/savvy is generally something youre born with - a lot of very well educated sorts have almost no savvy , cant hold a ladder without it dunting them on the chin, never mind climb it

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In our State if you are on un-employment you have to apply for 3 jobs a week to get your unemployment check. My assumption is the State does not verify. So believe this to be one reason people apply but never show up.

Last year we clearly had a worker for a different company trying to learn info on us. Long story, we brought him in for an interview and it was clear he was just digging for work.

Unskilled labor is a major factor and seasonality of the work…

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Could be.

most companies around here have the same issue we are always underemployed can’t find good employees all you need is a body that Is willing to work, hard to come by

I’m busy looking for another full timer to start this spring and it’s a crapshoot so far.
Talked to an owner for an electrician company who has 14 employees the other day and says “your generation (millenials) has it so easy if you want to make money… just show up and you’re better than 75% of them.” Sad and discouraging but the reality. It’s a cultural thing so there’s no easy fix on that other than enabling entitlements.

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I’ve often wondered if the same was said about hippies, abd every new generation for that matter.

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Probably to some extent but not as prevelant as today. With the huge push for white color jobs over the past 20 some years from grade school on it scoops up a lot of hard working potential leaving jobs like ours with scraps. Not saying all who go to higher education are driven, there was a stat I read that the percentages for children who still live at home after 18 is the highest since early 20th century.

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I know I’ve quoted it before but it’s one of the best pieces of advice ì have gathered here,

This is how i found my guy and he’s been nothing but wonderful - Millennial and all⏰

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Yeah. I’ve read all the “finding employee” posts on here I think that’s a good one I haven’t tried yet. I think, too, some of the people looking for jobs have no idea of what window cleaning actually is like and they shy away from seriously considering it. Highly rare that someone has a close friend or family member who is a wc’er. Some might think it’s all repelling down the side of a building and never get past the job posting “window cleaner.”

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Recruiting and screening is usually a time waster and a crap shoot.

We used to burn 20 - 25 hours every time it was time to hire.
Ads, resumes, reading and replying to emails, calling and screening people,
setting up and conducting interviews… a pain in the ass.

3 years ago we set up a system that does all the heavy lifting of finding
motivated and serious candidates. It’s not perfect, but it cut our per hire
time down from 20+ hours to 3 hours (or less)

Feel free to check it out. I shared this a couple of weeks ago in one of the facebook
groups, and a lot of guys are using a version of it.

Hope it helps.

http://bit.ly/2ltdBmD

Sid

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That’s the problem, everybody has been pushed to get higher education, and they want their high paying job right out of college. I started out the same way, didn’t wa t to be a blue collar worker. Fast forward 13 years, quit my desk job, started my business and couldn’t be happier! It’s more time and less money at first but man is it rewarding!

Looking forward to season!

There’s good workers out there just hard to find them. Good luck.