The Difficulty and the Enjoyment of Finding the Next Technician to Hire

The wonderful world of HVAC is where I spend much of my life.  Many of the hours spent are with our people who are or become core members of the tribe, we call them AirTightans.  We search high and low for the right type of person to join our tribe.  No they are not tribe members day one, but if we search out the right kind of folks, they can blend into our tribe and as they learn the AirTight culture, eventually (10,000 hours or so) they morph into AirTightans.

Yes, we do all of the "must do's" to ensure we are vetting out and getting the people to interview who at least have the best chance to stick around long-term.  35% of our small and young company have been with us 5 years or longer.  We are 14 years old and have 35 employees on the pay-roll.  We also have the first ever employee, Denny Baumgart and our first customer, Childress Klein Properties.

As you know if have ever tried to hire anyone, let alone a skilled craftsman, it is a laborious effort.  As you are interviewing, multiple times with multiple different people within your tribe, real life keeps going.  So after three rounds and three different groups of us interviewing, we narrow down or list, as that list gets narrowed, we ouch into the relationship with a ride along session with team leaders, work with our production team, etc...

If all of that goes well, then we get to make an offer and see if we can come to terms on finances and benefits.  We are not a unionized shop, so we actually get to negate the person skills value, versus there positional pay, way better in my mind .... Kind of like our customers do us!

Well, this past Friday we came to an agreement with such a gentleman, we are excited by the prospects of him coming, his opportunities to understand us, our ways and most importantly, how strongly we feel that Excellent Customer Service and Care are the cornerstone of AirTight.

Wish us well in our new relationship, we will be learning each other, coaching, mentoring, guiding and everything humanly possible to allow this to flow as it should.

Next up .... Start looking and being open to the next great soul that comes along and wants to take the ride with us.

Is that you?

The Deeper I Dig, the Fewer I Find!

This was my first thought when I saw the number of followers of mine start to dwindle.  The Lizard Brain, as I have learned form Seth Godin, was quite happy about this.  The lizard was thinking, of course nobody wants to read what you write, you are a mechanical guy ...Get over it ... Who cares.

Once I let him, he is a he by the way and a nasty little booger at that, vent for a while and allowed him to be somewhat thrilled with my agony of loosing less than 2% of my tribe, I looked at the situation differently.

It became really simple for me to understand. The deeper I dig into what fascinates me, regardless if it is reading on a specific topic, writing about things I know or just plain interacting with folks --- I realized that a few people in the tribe didn't want to go that deep or invest or waste their time on topics of my interest.

Simple right?  Or so I thought.  I have decided that what I am interested in may be compelling to some and not so much to others, I am now comfortable with this.  So as we gain followers, albeit Twitter, LinkedIn, etc... some will grow to like your stuff, some won't and some will just hate.

The important things is for me are, continuing to educate myself, take others who want to go for the ride along with me and be happy with that.  I live my days and nights with this concept, for the better or for the worse.

The bottom line, literally is: The more concentrated your tribe becomes, by people weeding themselves out, those who only want a casual encounter or to play the Social Media Game, you are left with a higher percentage of quality people who are with you for the right reasons.  With that reason(s) being, they enjoy what it is you produce.


Regards,



G