Hiring New Employees

Hey Guys. To be honest when I started my mobile business a year ago +/-, I never thought I would get to this point, but I’ve just got to the point in my business that I need to hire an employee or 2. I am fully educated on all the labour laws and deductions and all that, but I’ve never hired an employee before for anything other than occasional labour on the farm at haying time and such, and to be honest it scares me to death. I’ve built a really good reputation in my area and I’d really hate to tarnish it.

To those of you that have/hire employees how do you go about it?
What do you look for in an employee?
What type of interview/hiring process do you use?
Do you look for someone with experience or train someone from the ground up?
Etc., etc......?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

... Awh man, :awman:

I wish I had the answers to your question buddy.

I have gone both ways unsuccessfully in terms of hiring someone with no experience, & someone who had a few years experience but I do believe if you have the time & patience that there is “that person” out there that is a perfect fit for your business.

For me I guess, the shop was getting busier & busier & I had the work there easily enough for say - two staff plus me & the appeal was perhaps this would give me the opportunity to step back a bit & be the Husband & Father I wish I could be.

I figured that if I took on an inexperienced team member I could start from scratch & pour all the knowledge I could into this person & not only set in place the standards of work required worthy of our shop but also give that person a platform to have a career in the industry that I love so much. Alas, & I am aware that much of the blame can fall on myself too but respectively I don’t expect people to grasp things first time but at some stage those people need to be able to retain the information provided & carry out tasks unsupervised in order to “pay their way”.

Then there’s the experienced option. I guess sometimes trying to change someone’s “bad habits” or even alter the way they approach things, perhaps not wrong but because I am a terribly methodical person I have a system & I like to stick to it, isn’t a great option either. Then too It can work the other way too, maybe we/I see a different way to do things that works better.

Forgive the ranting - For me I simply didn’t have time or funds (perhaps not enough time) to carry on attempting to bring someone up to the standard of quality work that I was happy to let go out the door with my name on it. Too fussy? Maybe but hey, the standards I set are exactly why our shop is successful. Sure, if I lowered those standards a bit took on staff I would make a lot more money . . . & I could give my family the time, the Father, The Husband they deserve but I just couldn’t live with that.

This is a constant battle in my own head & each time it comes up I only end up grumpy thinking about it. Like I said though, there is that someone out there that will fit, you just have to find them.

Me, I always come back to the same conclusion - Working alone then I know the standards are kept & well, I don’t view success by the amount of money in the bank.

I wish you good luck in whatever path you decide to take, & if it’s to take on staff - I hope you find “the one”. :buffing:


Aaryn NZ. :dblthumb2:

What kind of future is there in car detailing for somebody? Is there any benefits or paid vacation/holiday's? I'm guessing you aren't going to get what you are looking for. Someone who's going to treat it like it was thier own business. Best thing you can do is pay well for incentive.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Aaryn NZ

... Awh man, :awman:

I wish I had the answers to your question buddy.

I have gone both ways unsuccessfully in terms of hiring someone with no experience, & someone who had a few years experience but I do believe if you have the time & patience that there is “that person” out there that is a perfect fit for your business.

For me I guess, the shop was getting busier & busier & I had the work there easily enough for say - two staff plus me & the appeal was perhaps this would give me the opportunity to step back a bit & be the Husband & Father I wish I could be.

I figured that if I took on an inexperienced team member I could start from scratch & pour all the knowledge I could into this person & not only set in place the standards of work required worthy of our shop but also give that person a platform to have a career in the industry that I love so much. Alas, & I am aware that much of the blame can fall on myself too but respectively I don’t expect people to grasp things first time but at some stage those people need to be able to retain the information provided & carry out tasks unsupervised in order to “pay their way”.

Then there’s the experienced option. I guess sometimes trying to change someone’s “bad habits” or even alter the way they approach things, perhaps not wrong but because I am a terribly methodical person I have a system & I like to stick to it, isn’t a great option either. Then too It can work the other way too, maybe we/I see a different way to do things that works better.

Forgive the ranting - For me I simply didn’t have time or funds (perhaps not enough time) to carry on attempting to bring someone up to the standard of quality work that I was happy to let go out the door with my name on it. Too fussy? Maybe but hey, the standards I set are exactly why our shop is successful. Sure, if I lowered those standards a bit took on staff I would make a lot more money . . . & I could give my family the time, the Father, The Husband they deserve but I just couldn’t live with that.

This is a constant battle in my own head & each time it comes up I only end up grumpy thinking about it. Like I said though, there is that someone out there that will fit, you just have to find them.

Me, I always come back to the same conclusion - Working alone then I know the standards are kept & well, I don’t view success by the amount of money in the bank.

I wish you good luck in whatever path you decide to take, & if it’s to take on staff - I hope you find “the one”. :buffing:


Aaryn NZ. :dblthumb2:

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Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. Everything you said is exactly what I’m worried about. Lol.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fightnews

What kind of future is there in car detailing for somebody? Is there any benefits or paid vacation/holiday's? I'm guessing you aren't going to get what you are looking for. Someone who's going to treat it like it was thier own business. Best thing you can do is pay well for incentive.

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That’s another issue. I can pay pretty decent if the person was worth it. As far as paid vacations I doubt it.Lol.

Paid stat holidays and such of course, that’s labour law here. As far as benefits for the right person that was willing to stick it out with me for the long haul, I would definitely offer a benefit package. I have one for myself that pays 100% medical, 80 percent dental, and a whole bunch of other benefits for a very reasonable monthly nut, and would be more than willing to offer the same to the right person.
But, alas, you’re right it’s not gonna be easy I don’t think.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fightnews

What kind of future is there in car detailing for somebody? Is there any benefits or paid vacation/holiday's? I'm guessing you aren't going to get what you are looking for. Someone who's going to treat it like it was thier own business. Best thing you can do is pay well for incentive.

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I think what future there is in Detailing is dependant on any one persons desires to be fair. I had been in the industry here in NZ for a long while before my Wife & I decided to open our own shop & we had to borrow some money to do so. Now, the first bank (my bank & the only bank I had ever been with) pretty much laughed us out the door, saying it would never work ....
The Lady at the next bank luckily saw something in us that convinced her to help us. It wasn’t the business plan, because we didn’t have one other than providing people with the finest vehicle detailing they could find.

We are extremely proud of our little shop & we are the most heavily booked detailing shop in the Country. Our name is highly regarded in the “car scene” here & I have made some very very cool friends around the World because of detailing. Will it make us rich? No but having some tough things thrown at us in recent years it became very apparent that money means very little, & certainly wouldn’t have helped/changed those situations.

I totally understand what you’re saying about wanting to find someone who would treat it like their own business & I guess that would be ideal but reality is they would most likely have their own shop if that was the case.

I think if you could find someone very close to that though it would be great. A title/roll such as Shop Manager or an organisation Certificate like being a Certified Detailer or Skills Validated Detailer with the IDA gives a sense of achievement & in some ways a qualification. I know within my own thinking that if an IDA CD or SV Detailer was applying for a position on my team, they would be at the top of the list to interview that’s for sure.

Here in New Zealand the minimum adult wage is $17.70 per hour before tax ($11.38 USD) & if you take someone on full time, they are entitled to 15 days paid holiday per year, 5 days paid sick leave, also you have to contribute to their super annuation (401(k)) & as an employer we have to pay their ACC - Accident Compensation Corperation (medical insurance I guess you guys would call it?) & remembering that here in NZ health care is free.

The inexperienced guy we took on we started him on $20.00 NZ an hour & the experienced guy started on $25.00 NZ an hour. I didn’t think that was too bad at all. Such a hard subject.


Aaryn NZ. :dblthumb2: