On January 11, 2016 at 20:17, goldenzrule said...
Mac, hiring someone is anything but easy. Sure you can place an ad, sure the phone will ring. That does not mean you're done. For every ad I place for EXPERIENCED people, I probably get 50 responses from people that were never in a field even closely related. I will get another 20 responses from people in live theater that think that correlates to this business. And most come through from people that cannot even take the time to address their email in a properly formed letter, with resume attached.
Sure I can just hire ANYONE off the street, but that will not do anything to lighten my workload. I already have one of those people, and need to find a replacement. Today, it took him 9 hours to run 3 cat5's and a coax from one side of the room to the other in a channel he had to cut behind the baseboard that the builder removed for us. 9 hours. I can train all day, but this very basic task took this individual 9 hours. When I spoke to him about this, he scoffed like I am being unreasonable to expect that it should have taken no more than an hour and a half (that would be the time expected if he were sleeping through it).
Point, anyone can find "help". Finding HELP though is far more difficult than you can imagine until you actually try. Some of us spend years building a business and cannot just hand the keys over to a fry guy simply cause he wants to make more than $10 an hour. The real hard workers that also happen to be technologically minded, have experience in this field or at the very least knowledge in electronics and ability to learn are VERY difficult to find. Some companies spend their entire existence looking for those people, never finding them.
I started at $5 an hour in the early 90's and after 1 year i was doing retro work, new construction, solo installations and i was even beginning to handle the front end of the service department. The next company i worked for i was making $7.50 for a year then $10.00 then $15.00 then $20 and so on and so forth.
I have seen dozens of people come and go. The guys who sucked after week one are the guys who sucked 5 years later. Cut them loose and hire another guy. Rinse and repeat.
The key is having the time and ability to train someone. If you wait until you are running around trying to put out fires your new hire will spend his career as a glorified gopher. 5 years later hes still worth $12 an hour but he needs more money to live. When i started we were busy but every day for the first month was spent being taught how to do things. By week 2 i was retrofitting in-ceiling speakers by myself...leaving the job without needing to paint. This is because the first 3 days of work were spent with me being taught how to do it.
