MrHVAC.com

The idea behind this particular ad is to look for service technicians and or installation people who might be looking for a career change. Whether is a sore back or bad knees, many of us realize we can’t service calls and work in crawl spaces forever. These are the type of people this ad is targeting.

You don’t need to spend money on a display ad. A standard classified “word only” ad should be fine. You should insert this ad in any section that a technician may go to look for an open position.

You should also post this ad on CraigsList. It’ free so you don’t have anything to lose. Don’t forget to post this ad on your company’ bulletin board.

Please proof read and modify as necessary. You will need to add your own equipment brand, contact name, phone number, and company name. Be sure to change the “We are the largest, award winning <your brand> dealership in the area” part of the ad to fit your own company’s bragging rights.

It is vital that they be given a contact/interviewer name. Is the income reasonable? Change if needed. Don’t mention guaranteed salary though. However, you must include an income amount. Remember that you are attempting to persuade those who have ever even thought of making a job change. Remind your interviewer that these prospects will be somewhat apprehensive about doing something that is new to them. If they are a good prospect, you will want to be certain to do some reassuring.

By the way, I prefer calling salespeople Comfort Consultants or System Consultants. This ad avoids those terms only because we don’t know if the reader will know what those titles mean.

HVAC TECHNICIANS
Would you like a new career? Do you enjoy talking with people? Do you have good organization skills? If you have a few years of experience installing or repairing HVAC equipment, we will train you to become a successful sales consultant. No sales experience necessary. Salary with a generous commission on sales. A first year income of $40,000 or more is a very reasonable expectation. We are the largest, award winning <your brand> dealership in the area. Don’t wait! Call Bob Henderson at 555-555-5555 for a personal interview. Call today. Your Air Conditioning Inc.

**end

Free Download: Systems-Consultant-Job-Ad.docx (right click and Save As)

Have Ideas?
Please post your comments or suggestions. Other companies would really benefit from your ideas.

I was teaching a class not long ago and a man spoke up and said “good employees are hard to come by”. I agreed with him and added that good bosses were even harder to come by. I went on to tell the class that I thought most bosses were terrible managers and missed the point about leadership all together. Puzzled, my students asked me to elaborate.

Most of us never planned to get into this industry. Very few of us went to college in hopes of being business owners in this industry. The fact is that most of us stumbled into the industry through a summer job or even perhaps through retraining as part of a layoff. Or maybe someone convinced us we should consider a trade school instead of going to college.

Most of us worked for someone for a while and then quit to start our own business. That’s what I did anyway and I had no business owning my own business. Like most of you the only thing I knew for sure was that I was being paid far less than they were charging for my time and I thought I could do just as well even if I worked fewer hours. Boy was I wrong!

When many of us started our business we were great to work for. We were flexible and had few written rules. We prided ourselves on being nice. Then we had our first important person quit. It surprised us and made us a little mad. Then we had many other people quit, or take advantage of us, or both. As the years went on we got more angry and cynical about the work force. Trouble is that our bitterness and cynicism is evident on how we conduct ourselves. We are not the leaders that we need to be. We are more like the “jerk” we quit. That’s right. We have become the same person that we quit working for.

TODAY’S WORKFORCE
Young people today are no different than young people of yesterday. They have their own set of emotional baggage to haul around. Many of these kids come from split homes. Perhaps their dad took off with another women and is now working on his second or third marriage. Maybe mom is dating an alcoholic guy with a lousy job. Drugs, alcoholism, divorce, and all the other things young people have to tolerate means unique challenges for anyone trying to hire, train, motivate, and retain these people. Young people today do not need a tough jerk to work for. What they need is a patient yet firm leader who is part head coach and part psychologist. In order to be successful acquiring, training, and keeping great coworkers, you have a lot to do to become a great leader instead of a lousy boss.

This industry is one of the most labor-intensive industries in America. The average HVAC or plumbing company does about $100,000.00 is sales per employee. By contrast, the average distributor can produce from $500,000.00 to 1 million in sales per employee. That means you need to be a skilled leader of human resources. Are you properly trained in the art of leading people? How many of us are? Very few!

Take a hard look at yourself in the mirror and then carefully look around your office. Ask yourself; “why would a real winner work for me?” You have to look like a winner to attract winners. It’s not easy to admit but a lot of us don’t look like the kind of operation that deserves the loyalty of a winner, someone who is in the top 5% or 10% of their field.

ATTRACTING AND KEEPING GOOD EMPLOYEES
Technicians are the most employable people in America. An experienced clean-cut technician could get a job in about 48 hours, anywhere in the country. The industry has a lot of competition when it comes to attracting winners. You need to create a clear career path to attract winners. That means you need to be able to clearly identify job types, qualifications, and their corresponding pay. Show coworkers exactly how and when they can earn a pay raise and how they can get a promotion. Offer educational opportunities so they can learn the things necessary to do a good job in their respective position.

Create a technical training syllabus and calendar that guides your technicians from wherever they may be to where you want them to be. Your company should offer at least 100 hours of paid training each year. This training should not be limited to technical subject matter. In fact, 2/3 of it should be related to customer service, basic business, and diagnostic driven sales.

Can you imagine playing a football game with no rulebook? When would the game start? When would it finish? What would be considered inappropriate behavior? Well, that’s how many of us are trying to run our company.

We all have an idea of how we want people to act. The trouble is that few of us have even bothered to detail our expectations in writing. We have no job descriptions, policy manuals, rules, or procedures, yet we have the nerve to complain about the performance of our coworkers. No wonder why owners are stressed out and workers keep leaving for “greener grass”!

You must have a detailed employment policy manual that outlines company rules and what happens if these rules are broken. Make your expectations extremely clear. Create a system of policies and procedures that gives people a reasonable chance to exceed your expectations. You should write down your company’s core values and goals. Your company needs short-term budgets and long-range goals that show everyone where you plan to lead the company. You need a comprehensive organization chart that shows where they all fit in. A good organization chart shows current job positions as well as future ones that are not yet filled.

Finally your company needs to start keeping score. Keep score of sales, profit margins, units sold, and the like. Train everyone on the meaning of these numbers. Let them know what your goals are and publish the results for all employees to see.

What if the NFL did not keep score? What impact would that have on performance? When you keep score, people try harder. It’s not enough that you analyze company financial statements. (You do analyze them, right?) You need to educate your coworkers on the basics of sales, gross profit, units sold and net profit. Train everyone on the meaning of these numbers. Let them know what your goals are and publish the results for all employees to see. You should reward coworkers if these goals are met (I’ll go into this more in a future article).

Most contractors wouldn’t dream of spending a thousand dollars or more on a “help wanted” ad, but don’t hesitate to spend far more to advertise an air conditioning system. Most contractors wouldn’t dream of spending hours interviewing every person who fills out an employment application, but spend at least that much time chasing sales calls with almost anyone who calls. My advice, spend as much time recruiting “winners” as you do chasing sales opportunities.

My point is that this is an industry that requires significant human resource leadership skills and very few of us are properly equipped. Other industries have struggled with the same types of troubles but have overcome. The automotive industry is one such group. The manufacturers stepped in with money and technology and that industry is better for it. Our manufacturers have also taken steps to help but they can only do so much. We are ultimately the ones that create change in our company.

Great leadership is vital to train and motivate today’s young people. Is it time for you to get the training you need to do the job properly? Is it time to start acting like a leader and not the boss you once left. Remember, you started your own business because you thought you could do it better. Maybe its time to take a fresh look at the way you manage people and make some needed changes. Lead your coworkers into the future and they will follow willingly!

There are usually two scenarios that occur when a business hires family or friends. The first consists of your closest of kin asking for a favor. You may not even have a position open, but you make up one just to help out a friend or family member. This is by far, worst case scenario. The second is when you are in desperate need to fill a position and ask for some help because you need help fast. Every now and then there might be the circumstance where the family member is the most qualified for the job, but these don’t seem to cause near as many problems as the first two cases.

I am by no means trying to say that you should never hire employees that are related to you in some way or another, but you definitely should be more cautious. Peter Panken, a labor lawyer with Parker Chapin Flattau & Klimpl, in New York, advises caution. “When you hire people on the basis of relationships, some, will be very good, but some not so good. It causes problems.” He generally tells clients to avoid hiring kin and friends if possible. If you must, there are a few guidelines that you should try and follow when hiring a member of your family or friend.

#1 Make the expectations clear from the start!
This not only includes what you expect from them, but what they expect from you. The ball can roll either way on this one. It is easy for your friend to slack off or feel like they can do whatever they want when at work because “They know the boss personally.” This puts you as an employer in a tough position. You must enforce the rules to EVERYONE, but in many cases it can jeopardize friendships. As mentioned before, this works both ways. Take my coworker for example. She worked for her aunt and uncle in college as a secretary. When she needed time off she tried to do it “by the book”, but they would always tell her it was no big deal and to take whatever time she needed off. This is just one of many cases where they attempted to cater to every one of her needs. They did not treat her as an employee, but as their niece who needed special privileges. As nice as this can be, it can many times make the employee feel less needed than others. This may end up back firing on you as an employer.

By making the expectations clear from the very beginning, you may be able to side step a few of these problems. You must make it clear to them that they will be treated like any other employee. This means that they will not receive special treatment, get away with certain things, nor will they be judged harder than any other employee. You must also tell them what you expect from them. They should be expected to work just as they would for any other employer and are equal to their co-workers. There must be a clear separation of work and personal life. Although this can be difficult, you should both work very hard not to bring your personal life into work, and not to let what happens at work influence your social life.

#2 Don’t make up positions; be sure that there is a real need for hire!
It is natural to want to help a friend out when they are in need, but it is not good business sense to make up positions that there is no need for. It will increase your overhead and can end up being wasteful. It is possible that you will find out that you really did need someone in that position, but it could turn out much worst. It is one thing to create a position and actually get stuff done, but what happens when you are paying someone to do nothing. No matter what, whether you really need them or not, if you have an extra set of hands around there is always something that can be done. What if they realize they aren’t vital to the organization or they just get lazy? Now you’re facing the prospect of firing them. How fun is that? It’ tough enough to fire the people you don’t like. This is a risk you take when creating jobs for your family members or friends.

What do you do?
In some cases people find it much easier to work with family and friends. Although, when it doesn’t work out it can be quite the tragedy. You have to ask yourself this “Is it worth the risk of putting my business and my relationship with this person in jeopardy?” It is in that, where you will find the answer.