Know who you’re hiring for
When starting the hiring process, the first thing to do is understand what role (or roles) you’re hiring for and what qualities you want to find in an ideal candidate.
For many shops, the ideal technician might not always be who’s the most technically informed (although that helps), as a strong mentorship/apprenticeship can help bring untrained folks up to speed. Shops should also look for people who have good soft skills and are ready to work.
Jane Clark, SVP of operations at NationaLease, noted more shops are focusing on training to build technical skills. “[Then] they can bring people in who aren’t necessarily qualified on day one, but have a great work ethic and desire to learn helping them learn the skills needed,” she said.
When hiring for senior management positions, Debbie Taylor, principal and executive search consultant for Taylor Transportation Search Group, said it isn’t just about what positions a candidate has previously held; it’s about why a company needs to hire someone.
“As a CEO, the first and most important thing is to get into their gut,” Taylor stated. “What are they solving for? By the time you’re talking to a recruiter, you want to have a lot of clarity on what is expected of that person in terms of outcomes,” she advised.
But if a fleet or shop isn’t sure where to start, Taylor also noted that current leadership trends are shifting away from a ‘management by objective’ style. Instead, companies tend to look for leaders who can hold their people accountable while still being involved and engaged with all the people beneath them, someone who knows about their coworkers’ lives and interests. This type of person, she commented, is someone who leads via their influence, instead of through the weight of their position.
“That humble leadership engages the workforce, and you typically won’t see people scrambling away for 25 cents an hour more, because they feel safer, they feel heard,” Taylor said. “They feel there’s opportunity.”
Conversely, she explained that a red flag when hiring upper leadership, such as CEOs, is if someone takes sole credit for their successes. She argued top leadership accomplishments are only achieved through the people beneath them.
“So a huge red flag is someone who is unable to articulate how the people around him or her helped them accomplish their outcomes,” she said.
Should I use a recruiter?
Once a shop or fleet knows what they’re looking for from an applicant, the next step is to figure out where you want to look for your new employee. For busy shops focusing on growing their business and getting vehicles out the door, hiring a recruiter is one option.
Of course, that does come with a cost depending on the position a shop’s looking for. A recruiter may charge between 30-35% for C-suite-level recruits, said Debbie Taylor, principal and executive search consultant for Taylor Transportation Search Group. Technician Find charges $997 per month for the service, as well as a one-time setup fee per location of $497 in the first month. For those prices, daily advertising fees are not included, and the subscription is meant to be paused once a shop’s hired a new technician.
Is that cost worth it? That can vary depending on the position you need, Taylor explained, stating that the cost of having an empty position or having the wrong person in that position can create risk for your customers. This makes the return on using a recruiter much higher.
“If that cost is not the case, maybe you don’t need to hire a recruiter,” Taylor added. “Or maybe you don’t need the position. It’s really a weighing of the benefit versus the investment.”
