I have read the post about hiring employees, and agree it not easy. There are ways to hire :

Newspaper ads. – you never know how you going to get

Referral - hopefully the person referring you a possible worker is someone that has good work ethics

Craigs list- well it depend upon how good someone can sell themselves

The list can go on. I don’t think there is any one magical way to find employees. Finding employees the how to will depend upon your market.

Some market the newspaper work well, other it might be the local Penny Saver paper. Churches are good places to contact when looking for help, many larger cities the Churches have programs to assist in helping secure job.

The Military – is another source for hiring, I been told that in some that the pay can be subsidized by the Military as you train your new hires up to 50% of their pay.

When hiring it more about the how you are placing the ads and perhaps what you are saying. We sometime try to say to much in our ads . keep them simple, don’t try to describe our work and what we do , most people won’t understand what we do.

Better place an ad looking for someone with no experience , looking to train, someone that like to work with their hands and someone that enjoys the sense of accomplishment, valid driver license requires.

Then schedule an Interview, if you have an office do the interview at your office, if you office is at your home arrange to interview at a public place, hotel, meeting room, somewhere but not you home.

set an appoint time – see if the interviewer shows up on time. Have questions written down to ask, thing that are important to you as an employer.

Describe the work we do , leave nothing out. tell the good the bad and the ugly. Paint the picture of what we do.

Check their driver license – if their driver license is no good they will not be a good employee – if you cannot insure them to drive your commercial truck they are NO GOOD to you and I have found if they have a poor driving record they will probably be poor employee.

Ask the candidate what they enjoy doing , how do they relax, what type of work have they done in the past and what did they enjoy about there past work and what did they dislike .

Finding the right employee start with the right ad , the right questions, the right expectation of the employee and the employer.

When you finish your interview always walk the candidate to their car. A good look at their car will give you a good idea of the person they are. If their car is clean and neat ,they are going to be clean and neat and take pride in their work.

If their car is dirty , trash all over it and look like it ready to fall apart, that probably the life of the person you are about to hire.

Once you hire someone, do you have an employee manual that spell out exactly what the rules are of their employment? Does it cover what they can do and what they cannot do? Example Do you employees know they cannot drink on the job? if you do not have this written in a manual and an employee drink on a job you cannot terminate this employee for drinking on the job. Well you can terminate them but you will pay unemployment- stupid as it sound this is a true. If the employee do not know the rule they cannot be held accountable. Therefore your hand become tied.

Where am I going with all this, I have employees that have been with me for years, 23 years and have followed me from company to company, why?

In other business I have had employees that worked for me an average of 10 plus years and most ask why.

It wasn’t about the money.

What I have found over time it a combination of thing that keep employee happy and loyal. You need to understand your employee needs , yes a fair hourly rate of pay is important but so are some common thing like some basic paid vacation, some paid sick days, paid holidays health insurance for the employee , these are thing the employee is looking for. Knowing that he or she has something to fall back onto. What if I’m sick , I gotta go to work or I don’t get paid, I rather pay them to stay home get healthy and be able to do their work correctly than be at the job do fair work and maybe make other sick.

Knowing when your employee is having a hard time, and you taking the time to ask if you can help, means more than money, knowing you care. Sometimes maybe they need a few extra bucks to help them out for a short period of time. Well it probably to you best interest to advance them some funds with a payback program than to have them on a job worrying about the problem.

These are some of the thing I found over the years that help me keep employees and develop good hard working employees, loyal employees.

I like to ask the question, do you have any type of review program for your employees? What triggers their pay review, is it on a yearly bases on is it whenever or is it never. Does an employee know when they are hired when they may see pay reviews 3 month? 6 month ? yearly ? what do you .

I know I’ve gone on for a while with this email but feel it’s important to make these comments.

We sometime do not realize what it cost to hire and train new employees, I had a study done a few years ago based upon out type of business by outsource service and when they took into consideration what out techs needed to know to do jobs on their own the estimated training cost for a new hire was between $5000- to $7000. Depending on the hourly rate and how in depth you trained the employee.

So as we try to hire new employees it not just hiring them it how do you keep them long term and make them an asset to you.

These are my thoughts and comments hope you can take something from them.

John E Freitag

Director

The Stone & Tile School

Office 407-567-7652

Cell 407-615-0134

jfreitag@thestoneandtileschool.com

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