Hiring People - Solving the Mystery?

[Scott Shepherd]

Anyone got any tips for hiring people, people that want to work? We're a small business and we talk to a lot of other small businesses and we all seem to tell similar stories. We can't find people that want to work. None of us have the money to pay headhunters massive fees to find people for us, so we struggling with trying to locate people on our own.

These are all jobs that are skilled trades and everyone would love to have qualified, skilled people, but we're all in the same boat now, we'll take anyone, as long as they are the right type of person. But none of us can seem to find the Holy Grail on where those people exist.

Some people said "Go to the high school trade programs". A number of us have done that. One friend (and business owner) got the "best and brightest" in the technical class. Kid showed up and actually went to sleep on the job on the first day. We interviewed 2 kids, 1 couldn't work Monday-Friday. I asked about Saturday and he said "No", then I said "Sunday?", and he said "I go to Church on Sunday". So you can't work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday?". Got it. The next kid tells me he uses a lot of wood shop tools. I asked him what tools he used. He couldn't name any of them. Tells me he's really good with Photoshop. I asked how long he'd be using it. He said he used it 1 time in a class LAB project. I asked him what days he could work, he said he didn't drive, so he'd have to see when he could get a ride to work.

We hired someone and all they did was text all day. And that was a grown man, not a kid. Guy was approaching 50. Crashed every single machine he touched. Gee, you think if you'd pay attention to machine and not Facebook or text messages, maybe you would have seen the machine doing something wrong. (he doesn't work here any longer)

We've tried employment offices as well. Not a single person there actually wanted a job. They just needed a place to say they interviewed so they could continue to get unemployment.

When I was entering my trade, all I wanted to do was learn about my trade. I'd read everything I could about it at night, I'd do things on my own time that helped me move forward in my career. I can't find those people now.

The pay range has varied from $10 per hour to $18 per hour from the people I know looking for people, and we're just stumped.

Any ideas or suggestions on where to find those great kids that don't want to go to college, but want to work and are smart, hard working kids that want to learn and take the ball and run with it?

[Phil Thien]

Hire older people, not kids. Someone maybe in their late 40's or early 50's.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

Good luck. They are a myth now. Society has been declining since ww2, and the current working age group, is worse than the last. In my experience, even if you find someone who can work, they have so little grasp of financial realities that it's a temporary solution only.

[Dave Anderson NH]

It's a crap shoot Scott. We had a problem with constant texting by some production people and solved the problem by prohibiting cell phones of any type on the work floor except during lunch or breaks. First offense 3 day suspension, second offense nets the offender the opportunity to find a new employer. Most importantly it is clearly stated in our employee manual and we keep a paper trail.

In our industry (die cutting and stamping) it is almost never possible to hire experienced help so we have to train. It is a burden for a small company like ours, but there is no choice. We interview carefully, spend the minimum on ads, and only once used an agency to hire a quality manager. Referrals have mostly worked well for us but even then we have been bitten a couple of times.

[Scott Shepherd]

Hire older people, not kids. Someone maybe in their late 40's or early 50's.

They tend to think they are worth more than the owners of the small businesses, pay wise. Mr. Text Message made me than I do, and we did that to see if paying more would pay off. It didn't in that one case. We can't go bankrupt trying to meet some fat payroll. It's small business, the world where "if you don't generate any revenue, we have no money to pay you" is the normal, it's hard to find people that want a career, not a job.

[David G Baker]

Consider returning Vets. The military has a tendency to make people more self disciplined. When I was hiring I hired mostly Vietnam Vets.

[Dave Sheldrake]

Amen brother, with what the youngsters can get from the state here for doing nothing you would have to pay $60k a year just for them to be better off!

cheers

Dave

[Scott Shepherd]

It's dumbfounding to me (and my friends with small businesses) that you just can't find people that A) want to work, B) care about their job. Honestly, I could put someone up in a pretty sweet deal. You might not get rich next month, but if you help me with what I want to do, I'd happily share in the success with anyone that helped me get there.

I'd also be happy to hire returning Vets. Just haven't figured out where they are located because they're not applying for the jobs we've posted. Basically, our business is stuck at a certain level because we can't find people to help take it to the next level.

I personally would think there would be loads of kids out there that don't know what they want to do, but know they don't want to go to college, but if so, they aren't applying either.

[Andrew Fleck]

It's dumbfounding to me (and my friends with small businesses) that you just can't find people that A) want to work, B) care about their job. Honestly, I could put someone up in a pretty sweet deal. You might not get rich next month, but if you help me with what I want to do, I'd happily share in the success with anyone that helped me get there.

I'd also be happy to hire returning Vets. Just haven't figured out where they are located because they're not applying for the jobs we've posted. Basically, our business is stuck at a certain level because we can't find people to help take it to the next level.

I personally would think there would be loads of kids out there that don't know what they want to do, but know they don't want to go to college, but if so, they aren't applying either.

Hi Scott,
Try and contact the people here https://www.acap.army.mil/default.aspx This is just the service that the Army uses, but other branches use something similiar. Everyone who is leaving the Army goes to multiple briefings given by this organization. Their job is to help people transition from military back to civilian life. This includes finding jobs. I'm fairly certain there is a way for you to basically advertise that you are hiring through them. There are a lot of people both in and leaving the service that are from Va. Hope this helps you out.

[Mark Bolton]

Scott,
Unfortunately your conundrum is no news to most of us in business. Reading your post is like listening to myself talk. We regularly hired two kids each year from either the junior or graduating class of the local trade program. It was a crap shoot. You would get a smart kid, but he didnt want to stay in the trade. You would get kids who simply didnt know how to read a tape. You would get kids who had grown up in hard working farm life and they knew well how to get around doing work. It went on and on. I had two very good kids who unfortunately both had health issues. One came to the conclusion that he simply didnt want to be in the trade and the other moved on to big $$ oil field work.

I also went the route Phil and others have mentioned hiring older people and to be completely honest I think they are worse than young people many times. You inherit all of their bad habits. Everything you tell them to do becomes a long time wasting conversation about their opinion of how it should be, could be, or was, done in some job they had 25 years ago. I am what I consider to be a rare individual in that I will always, 100% of the time, consider re-thinking my approach to a given task. That is to say I am open to suggestion always. But a change in procedure happens over time and has to be vetted. For now when I tell you how, when, and what, I want done I just want you to do it. We will consider your opinions in time. That doesnt fly too well with the older crowd and they dont seem to often realize that taking the time to explain why their idea wouldnt work well is wasted $$.

I have gone the head hunter/employment service route as well with no luck. Run ad's in the paper (a nightmare). Its very very difficult.

I have long hoped to find a young "me" who just enjoyed working. I have long said, I never really went to work to make money. I simply cant recall that ever being my motivation. I worked because its simply "what you do". It started with a paper route in my early teens which I sought out more and more routes to fold into my own. Then moved into a yard/landscaping business that I grew locally until I got my license and spread out even more buying brand new truck in high school, and on through the rest of my career. I just worked, and enjoyed working and being sought after, and the money happened all on its own. Its the very same way today.

I dont have an answer for you because I simply believe the mindset today has changed drastically from a mere 20-30 years ago. And unfortunately that change seems to support Dave Anderson's reply where you simply have to treat your employees like cog's in a sense. You must have SOP's, there must be rules for the rules, there MUST be consequences, and so on. If you do any reading over at Woodweb's business forum this is a constant topic of conversation and while I have never been successful at implementing it, the simple fact of rules and rules seem to be the way you have to go. A very common approach that I agree with fully is you have to hire slowly and fire quickly. Implement trial periods so you can hire more and more people (by firing ones that dont fit immediately) hoping to stumble across a lottery ticket that pays.

I am simply unwilling to do this any more and this issue, far more than any to do with government/taxes/etc, is what would keep me from growing my business. Having just a few employees is a full time job requiring either you, or someone else, to manage them. If your time is too valuable to the business to be spent sitting in the HR position, you now have to hire another person. I simply do not have the desire to babysit children or adults all day long and that seemed to be the only option.

About 6-7 years ago we were running 4-5 guys full time and a couple part time. During that time I basically did nothing other than tend to them. Putting out fires, fixing/correcting their mistakes, stopping every five minutes to answer the same questions, enforcing the rules, and so on. I would go in to work on a Saturday alone and felt like I got nearly as much done in a single day as was done all week (far from true but it felt like it).

Another major issue I have nowadays is when I apprenticed in the trade it wasnt a pleasant experience. You were yelled at, things may be thrown at you, you had to run, literally run, all day long. It made you work your butt of not to get reamed. However now, whether its young or old, people simply will not push themselves at all and even worse they refuse to be pushed. If someone really drops the ball or is continually not applying themselves and you get at all firm, poof, they will quit because your "picking on them". I consider my business "the beach" compared to where I came from. We work an easy pace, work smart, do work thats rewarding, tell jokes, and so on. What we often find is someone comes to work, they quit for whatever reason, then months later they will come back saying they had no idea how good they had it. Unfortunately for most I am one shot deal, once you bail youve bailed. However I currently have one kid thats on his second go around and doing much better.

As I mentioned, I am currently in the process of winding my business down to a level where it may just be me, or me and a helper (perhaps part time). The sole motivation for that is the subject your asking about.

Just a train of thought response here at lunch, sorry if its not grammatically correct and flowing..

[Von Bickley]

That's a big problem with our system. Our present system encourages people not to work. Why get up early and go to work when you can stay home and let the mail-man bring you a check.
Cut out a lot of give-away programs so people will need to work to support themselves and their families.

[Jim Rimmer]

I can't provide much encouragement because it's not just small businesses that face the problem. I work for a major corporation that offers competitive pay ($20/hour and up), paid holidays and vacation, good health and dental insurance, employer matched contributions to 401K, and the list goes on and we can't find good people that are willing to work.

[Phil Thien]

They tend to think they are worth more than the owners of the small businesses, pay wise. Mr. Text Message made me than I do, and we did that to see if paying more would pay off. It didn't in that one case. We can't go bankrupt trying to meet some fat payroll. It's small business, the world where "if you don't generate any revenue, we have no money to pay you" is the normal, it's hard to find people that want a career, not a job.

I'm not disagreeing with your point, mind you. I'm positive there are plenty of 40 and 50-YO people looking for $50+/hour. But Wal*Mart and McDonalds and Home Depot seem to be hiring older and older employees, and I'm pretty sure they aren't paying that terribly well.

[Kevin Bourque]

I was in McDonalds last week. There were at least 8 people allegedly "working" there, but mostly they were talking with each other and generally horsing around.

I think most young people have an over inflated sense of entitlement.

[William Adams]

If someone had the answer, they could make a fortune.

I can well remember my cousin, who was a farmer in the area being told by a gentleman who arranged seasonal labour in the area, ``Go buy a round-baler (as opposed to making smaller rectangular bales) --- I can't find anyone who's willing to work picking up hay bales, and when I find them, they're no-good-for-nothing.''

Quite a change from when the introduction to _The Advanced Machinist_ could say in its Preface,

``Help wanted'', thirty-two paid advertisements in a single issue. Not a single one of these called for any except those possessing qualifications expressed as follows:

Sober, first-class, good, competent, accurate, experienced, undoubted ability, ambitious, able to handle men, killed, with shop experience, executive ability, all-around, able to design, able to supervise construction, satisfactory men.

...

Men possessing the qualifications described above may well be classed as ``advanced'' machinists, designers, draughtsmen and engineers; it is the glory of the age that there are many such to be found...