Finding and Hiring Enthuastic Technicians
By Derek Lee
Honorary MECP Master Instillation Technician

Finding Installers
The search for employable installers has been a problem for retailers for the past 25 years. The options for finding your next ?star hire? are varied, but are usually approached from the reactive side, resulting in stress and frustration. The typical hiring pattern is to wait until you are backed up in the shop before you hire additional staff. This leaves you no time to properly mentor the new hire into the valuable employee you need. But there are important steps you can take to make the process easier and more advantageous to you.

Improve the Hunt with Advanced Planning

Timing
Most retailers have a track record that reveals when the staff crunch will occur. If you were quite busy last spring, then you should have new staff in place between 60 to 90 days before the expected rush hits, allowing you to acclimate the new hire to your business methods and staff culture. Don?t make the mistake of waiting until 10 days into the busy season before you take steps to retain your profitable peak.

Sources of Installers
Retailers desperate to hire a new installer typically focus on several areas of interest. These include hiring your installer?s brother, hiring the most eager customer you have, poaching from another retailer, or hiring a graduate from a formal mobile electronics school. They each have a certain value, but retailers need to know which approach is correct for any particular hiring situation.

In only two situations will you be hiring a ?known element.? If you poach an experienced installer from another retailer, there will be a history that you can sometimes tap into to determine if the individual will mesh with your shop structure. Watch for clues to determine if the candidate has adopted ?old dog? attitudes that will cause disharmony with your existing staff and customer service philosophy. There will be surprises. Also, be prepared to pay a premium for extracting your hire from a stable job

By hiring a mobile electronics school graduate, you can obtain a concise appraisal from the school as to the performance of the individual, including work characteristics that will allow you to make a better choice. The graduate is also able to adapt to your business without needing to ?unlearn? bad habits, since the training will have focused on only the ?gold standard? methods in mobile electronics installation. Simply add a measure of real installation bay experience and you will have a top performer.

Expectations
When hiring a graduate, keep in mind that you are approaching your staffing needs in a different way. Instead of dropping the new hire directly into the install bay unsupervised, plan on a short period of ?mentoring? to ensure the new hire is building the hand skills needed to perform. Contrary to a wide perception among retailers, a graduate is a well trained apprentice, ready to vault from a starting position to lead installer in a shorter period of time than any other source of employee. Mobile electronics schools concentrate on ensuring that the key knowledge and basic skills are in place, but can never hope to expose the student to thousands of different vehicles that will roll through your shop in an intensive training program that lasts less than three months. As with any apprenticeship program, your investment is to mate the education with the hands-on experience that ensures the fastest path to a high level producer. A little guidance from the experienced installers on staff will go a long way to strengthening your install team.

Building a Hiring Pool
Retailers simply can?t expend effort on tracking a database of potential employees, since it would not stay current for long. However, it is highly effective to begin building a hiring pool that you can draw from when the need arises. You and your staff will regularly encounter ?enthusiasts? who are natural future installers. All they need is a bit of training and validation before they appear on your payroll.

By encouraging enthusiasts to attend one of several mobile electronics schools, you can begin to put potential hires back into your market area before you have a need. This allows you to choose a new hire from a group of candidates, rather than settling for the only person to answer your ad.

By referring students to mobile electronics schools, the school will reciprocate by giving you back the first opportunity to hire the graduate. In this way, you can review the student?s performance and pick the cream of the crop. When you encounter an eager enthusiast, make an introduction call to a licensed mobile electronics school and start the process.

While the individual will be responsible for their own tuition, you may want to reward the graduates you hire by offering a small ?tuition reimbursement? allowance that will entice the graduate to remain with you long-term, based on an agreed arrangement (get a copy of a general agreement from the school). This also will also go a long way to making your staff ?unpoachable.?

If you would like to contribute your expertise to the MECP community, please contact mecp@mecp.com to submit your ideas for future ?how-to? articles!