How Do You Find Good Employees?

this thread has reminded me of a funny tale

i used to live close by a U.S. airforce base here in England. Quite a few servicemen took up with british girls and got married and planned to stay here once retired. But when they retired they were only eligible to get jobs on the base,not allowed to work on the economy at least at first.
Anyway there was this chief master sergeant with upteen years service,the king of the rock, who retired and the only job he could get was flipping burgers at the base burger bar. i heard stories of how his former underlings would go in and tease him something rotten "hey chiefā€¦eat shit " etc

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i realized that it was basically stealing when i donā€™t give my best. if i could reasonably do in 45 min what took me an hour, in essence i stole that 15 min of pay.

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Iā€™m hiring!

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iā€™m the owner! now that is.

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I am in the same boat right now! I have all the clients I can handle and donā€™t even advertise but I cannot find even one reliable employee!

I have hired women but I feel I have to have at least one solid male to handle higher ladder moves

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I have the same problem. My business is stuck I canā€™t even market because I canā€™t get decent help.

I donā€™t even have the opportunity to choose the wrong person. If I can get a person to schedule an interview and they actually show up in feel successful.

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I have a pretty good method of hiring now. But its still only give me good guys 50% of the time. Truth is i find about 1 in 30 is a solid worker. I run several ads on Craigslist for one hire. When i have a big pool of applications i can be picky. If they dont answer my 10 questions from the ad well i delete the application. But in the end you gotta hire slow and fire quick. Ive learned not to ignore bad habits from guys. But one thing to remember is that good guys never stay forever. Hiring is on going. But i still wouldnā€™t go solo myself. If i get hurt or wanna take a day off last minute im good. Im kinda burned out in the field. But solo work does have its advantages. Less commitments.

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read it here, ā€œIā€™ll take the headache over the backacheā€

What sad is so many of the good ones turn to bad. Sure some of that blame might fall on me, but not time and no one cares for all the stories. Got a guy now. Last review he scored a 88%, this time around he was lucky to get 70%. Sure winter is hard, but things beyond our control happen and our employees lives become our headaches. Dudes family fell apart and he is a wreck.

I suck at hiring. I utter suck at it. I believe you are a human being you must have pride in our work ethic and lets give it a shot. That kind of thinking lead to 31 or 41 hires last year to find 4-5 keepers of which only 2 are invited back this year.

So I passed hiring off to one of the 2. He managed resturants for years and is pretty good at it. He started with a 3 page ad. Fucking insane. Not a single response from craigslist and 30+ from indeed over the last month. Phone interviews then in person. Believe he has interviewed 4 in person and weā€™ve hired 2. He has 3 phone interviews happening tonight.

I hate the process, oh and Monday 2 days of trainingā€¦itā€™s on the list, I want to create videos for training. I hate repeating myself.

Key, never give up, you are one hire away from a different world

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I have to admit, repeating myself over and over to new hires does become redundant. Itā€™s to the point where Iā€™m telling a person how itā€™s to be done but in the back of my mind Iā€™m thinking, how hard is this?

Why do I have to keep telling you to get in the corners? Long strokes man, long strokes. Can you please stop detailing with wet towels? Youā€™re outside. Wet the damn window down. Letā€™s go.

Come to think of it, I must be a prick to work for. :thinking:

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This here is critical. Gotta nip em in the bud real fast.

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ā€œyou forgot the sill manā€

ā€œno, I am just practicing fanningā€

ā€œdude, the sill is just as important as the glass. Perfect practice makes perfect, wipe the sill every timeā€.

if it werenā€™t for the legal items I consume I would be pounding my head against a well 48 hour in advance.

i try not to criticize Anything [apart from work standard] iv learnt if i do its very easy for an employee to start hating ,which rapidly escalates to bad timekeeping/quitting

when you work together the chat flows about all manner of topics but im careful not to poke my oar in. iv had workers talk about murder methods,knives versus guns and the people they want to get rid of,a deep hatred for the police i was suprised at that but now immune iv heard it so often. maybe its bravado - im not sure why but the younger they are the deeper the feelings seem to be . each of my current employees has convictions for assault, but does an excellent standard of work but rarely engages with customers apart from very brief pleasantries
only yesterday a police car drew alongside us as we worked,had we seen joe soap -apparently out searching for a missing elderly gent . i noticed my workers kept back and offered no comment.

later they discussed hiding the gent if we came across him

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This will always be the bottle neck in your business.
I have been in business for over 26 years ā€¦
Always hire an honest well groomed person with a pleasant personality as they will be in your customers home and obviously you donā€™t want someone who looks like a gangster etc.
Try posting in Indeed.com
Only hire part time at first to see if they are a good fit ā€¦Tell them that it is only part time to start for their benefit as it may not be there thing.

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