LAS VEGAS — Steve Miles thinks outside the box when it comes to recruiting. Miles, the co-owner of Jerry Kelly Heating & Air Conditioning in St. Charles, Mo., asked for a show of hands of how many of the plumbing and HVAC contractors attending the Service Nation Alliance meeting here were hiring. Most were. How many had gotten more than 10 applicants in the last 12 weeks, he asked? More than 20? Few did. More than 30? None raised his hand. Miles surprised the room by saying he had 270 applicants in the last 12 weeks.
Miles, who’s an $11.5 million residential contractor in the St. Louis market, is looking to add 20 to 30 people this year. Most contractors turn to Craigslist, Facebook or the local newspaper when they’re looking for people.
“This is not about hiring retreads,” Miles said. “This is about bringing new blood into the fold.”
Miles has bought billboards in his market that said the firm is now hiring good people and that they will train. At first he received little response until he realized that it was difficult to find the online application on his website. The applications poured in once an “apply here” button was placed in the middle of his homepage.
He also, incidentally, put up a billboard looking for licensed residential journeymen that said he would pay $40 per hour plus benefits. That was psychological warfare.
He put the billboard up just to get into the heads of his competitors. Because he pays on performance he doesn’t really pay $40 per hour. His senior technicians make $36 to $50 an hour and one tech took home $110,000 last year.
Miles prefers applicants with no industry knowledge who haven’t had time to develop bad habits. First he has them fill out the standard application, which weeds people out with questions such as, “have you been convicted of a felony?” Out of the 275 applicants, maybe 75% can come in for an interview.
Miles tests for intelligence, mechanical aptitude and personality. The first is the Wonderlic Personnel Test. The online version is a 12-minute timed test that looks for the number of correct answers out of 50 questions in 12 minutes. He will not hire anybody who scores lower than 20 on the Wonderlic, and he quotes comedian Ron White’s line that you can’t fix stupid. Miles doesn’t want to train them again and again and again. He wants applicants that score 20-35.
Miles uses an old copy of a cut-and-paste mechanical aptitude battery. He went to the library, found the mechanical aptitude portion of the civil service exam and copied it and cut and pasted it. He just wants basic aptitude because he can teach the rest.
He tests for personality with the Extended Disc online test. Introverts might make for good installers but they’re terrible for service when they need to talk to the customer.
After the applicants take that battery of tests, perhaps 10% will qualify for an in-person interview and about three quarters of them will interview well and not have any exposed tattoos or piercings.
“Test, test, test, and only hire the best,” Miles said. “Hire slowly, fire quickly.”
Miles invests $17,000 in training for every new hire. First he sends them to live at Total Tech in Nashville (http://www.totaltechschool.com/) for 30 days and most of his trainees pass the NATE certification first time. They come back to St. Louis and do service training for four to six weeks and then go maintenance calls with another tech.
After six months he ships them down to Ultimate Technical Academy in Little Rock (http://www.ultimatetechnician.com/) for diagram reading, troubleshooting and gas furnace diagnostics and repair. After their intensive training at Ultimate Tech they do service calls, and six months later they go back down to Ultimate Tech for more work on electrical diagrams and air conditioning troubleshooting.
Back on the job, they’re assigned what are perceived to be easy service calls and he lets them develop service skills over time.
He has all of his new hires sign a promissory note for the $17,000 in training costs but he’s never had anyone pay it because if the tech wants to leave he usually wants to help them out the door in most cases.
He pays on performance because he was determined that he was not going to lose anyone based on pay. He instituted performance based pay on a trial basis with a few people and it was such a huge success that all the other field personnel were champing at the bit to get on it.
“If you aren’t paying your people more than anybody else in your market, it’s not their fault, it’s yours,” Miles said.
The fish stinks from the head Miles quoted the old proverb. He pays more than the unions for people who get the work done.