So it’s time to hire a new service technician

Congratulations, your business is doing well. It's time to hire a new service technician. Is this a dream come true or a nightmare about to begin??

So let's look at the process of hiring a new service technician. We're going to have the HR department create an ad. We're going to go through the interview process. If you're lucky, we can do this in two to three weeks.?

If you’re getting good results, four to five people are sending resumes a week. You spend two to three hours going through the resumes and want to schedule interviews. You pick your top four candidates to come in for interviews. You set up the interviews. The first one is a no-show the day of the interview. The second candidate never answered when you called to set up the interview. The third candidate doesn't have anywhere near the experience he said he did on his resume. The fourth candidate shows up, has a pulse, seems like he can carry on a conversation and has an idea what it's like being an HVAC technician.?

I know a larger company that just went through this entire process. They hired a lead technician based on the experience on his resume and how he presented himself during the interview process. He went through two or three rounds of interviews – an initial Zoom call with HR, in-person interviews and meetings with the hiring manager, department manager, and the new person's would-be supervisor, who all moved around their schedules to meet with the candidate.?

Next they do all the paperwork: a background check, drug test, check his driving record, and HR spends three to four hours doing new-hire paperwork. On his first day of work, he spends most of the day doing mandatory company training and getting everything the company is going to supply for him.?

His first week he cuts someone off in the company truck and hits a car. OK, not the end of the world. We have all had bad days driving. Should this have been a red flag? Maybe. But remember we really needed the service tech and that's why we started this process.?

He goes out on his first day doing an install of a 4-ton system. The estimators have Quoted this as a three-man, day-and-a-half job. Our new service tech takes four days to put the system in. Now, this is a commercial job but it is still residential equipment just in a commercial application. The supervisors and department heads chalk it up to just being a new crew and learning how to work with each other.?

His jobs kept taking longer and there were problems with each one that he did. So the company pulled its resources and sent out field supervisors and trainers to try and help their new technician. It was soon obvious that they had hired the wrong candidate. And we've all been there. But at this point, the company had spent a lot of money and resources on their new hire to find out they've hired what I like to call a Chuck in a Truck – a technician who doesn't have the skills they say they do and does service with a shotgun approach: if I change enough parts and pray hard enough, the unit should run. But the HVAC gods are fickle and this rarely works.

So what does it cost to hire a new employee? The average cost of hiring a new employee in the United States is around $4,700, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Various factors can impact that number, such as the size and location of your business, the role you're hiring for, and your industry. Plus there are additional “soft” costs that are difficult to measure, such as lost productivity and the time managers spend onboarding new employees and dealing with new-hire paperwork. Here’s a look at some of the expenses of hiring a new employee:

• Salary: This is your biggest cost. The average base salary for an HVAC tech in the United States is $53,622, or $26.75 an hour (Indeed.com).

• Benefits: The average cost of benefits, such as health insurance, retirement savings plans, and paid time off, is about 30 percent of an employee’s salary, or $15,000 on top of a $50,000 annual salary (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).?

• Recruitment: The cost of advertising the job, interviewing candidates, and making a job offer can add up to around $2,000 (Glassdoor.com).

• Training: If you need to provide training to your new employee, you can expect it to cost about $1,000 (Glassdoor.com).

• Onboarding: The cost of onboarding your new employee, such as providing them with equipment and software, is normally around $500 (Glassdoor.com).?

So hiring a new technician is a big deal. And today there is a shortage of people going into the skilled trades. Young people are told they need to go to college to get a decent job. Yes, we will always need doctors and lawyers and other positions that require higher education and four-year degrees. Those jobs are great for some people. But there will always be a spot in the trades for people who want to work, and college is just not the path for them.?

Every HVAC company is looking for that experienced service technician with a 1 percent call back rate. That's getting harder and harder to find, and you’re competing with other companies who want to hire them, too. My recommendation is to hire for character, find a local trade school with proven results and take the people with character you like and turn them into the service technicians you need.?

As an industry, the HVAC area has to do more to promote local schools and invest in the future of the HVAC industry as a whole. Even Chuck in a Truck gets lucky sometimes, but we can’t rely on him or his inflated resume to do our service.

Lawrence A Merck?

HVAC Consultant?

[email protected]

HVAC Training Services?