Why the heck is hiring so hard — Our guide to hiring top-notch staff

Ange
Yeah, it’s interesting. It is a tough one. But on reflection of talking to tradies, the issue I reckon they have is they get really busy and they get so caught up on the tools that they don’t really forward plan or forward think, and you know, I kind of get it. It’s not like they go, oh, it’s January and I’m gonna need a new tradesman by April, so I’m gonna organize it today and get them up to speed. They literally hit April and go, oh my God, I need a tradesman. I need him today. 

Andy
So what do they do? They go out and just find a willy-nilly guy. That’s really not what they want. 

Ange
Yeah, they put an ad in the paper, it doesn’t look that great. And they literally, whoever responds, they take them on, or maybe it’s their mate down the road or their brother, and they’re not the best tradie.

Andy
No they’re not. And they constantly get let down and they fall into this path of there’s just no good tradies out there. I’m just gonna have to do it myself. You know the thing is you might get lucky, but only those that are really amazing gun tradies, they’re not actually looking for a job. So the thing you gotta remember is what you’re trying to attract to your business is not someone that is outta work. You know, what you are really trying to attract to your business is someone that has a job but is looking for a better job. 

Ange
Hmm, which means you kind of need to advertise 365 days of the year because the moment they decide they wanna look elsewhere, they need to find you. They need to find your ad, they need to hear about you. They need to know about you even in advance so that when they get sick of where they are and they wanna step up, be better, work for a better company, and hopefully that’s you in their mind. They go, I’m ready to approach that business. 

Andy
And you’ve gotta be in the right space. Hmm, at the right time, and they’re gonna know something about you. So it’s really interesting, isn’t it? Because are these amazing tradies actually out there looking for your ad. Now, let’s face it, what do most people do when they’re looking at finding a tradie? They do the same freaking thing that everyone else in Australia does, and they put an ad on Indeed. They put an ad on Seek, and maybe if they’re adventurous, they put an ad on Facebook, don’t they? You know? And if you’ve got hundreds, thousands of tradies doing the same thing over and over, and everyone’s getting the same result over and over. And spending a lot of money in the process. Why are you doing this? You have got it so, so wrong. 

Ange
Well, the ads are boring. I think that’s half the problem. If I was the tradie, I was, you know, in some of those locations trying to find a new ad. If I’m reading those ads, they just read the same. One of the things we talk about in marketing is your avatar and you know, we’re talking about this ideal client, like who is it that you wanna work with? People that have money willing to spend it and they wanna spend it with you, we’ll take the thought process and apply it to the tradie that you’re trying to attract. What do they actually want by coming to work for you? What’s enticing, what’s interesting? And I would say when we think about tradies, 99.9% of tradies who leave TAFE wanna start their own business. True or true? 

Andy
True Ange. I think the thing is we all go down this path of old school ways and just expect there’s gonna be 30 amazing tradies knocking at the door. And we’ve done it for 30 years. Why isn’t it working today? And this is where you’ve really gotta look at it, as you said, get the avatar, get your right deal, tradie that you want. And having the right sales technique to make them think to themselves, oh my God, if I join this company, not only am I gonna have a good boss and a good team, I’ve got a company that’s moving forward. So there’s opportunities for me to move forward. And I’ve also got an opportunity to learn how to be a really good business owner myself. Because let’s face it, when you decide to be a tradie, I would dead set believe at least 90% of people when they first decide to be a tradie, think to themselves, one day, I’m gonna own my own business. But as we’ve talked about in many of these podcasts, most people don’t know how to run a business. So when we advertise with our business, one of the key things we talk about is, you know what? Come and work with me at Dr. Drip and we are gonna teach you how to be an incredible business owner. We know you want to have your own business one day, and we are gonna help you so you can get out there on your own. Now the thing that happens there is we get incredible people coming to our business. But we also get people that are really giving a hundred percent to our company as well. And in return, I’m teaching them how to run a business so they can go out there and smash it themselves. And if we look at Dr. Drip, you know, we’ve had guys that have worked with us 11, 12 years, 13 years. And on average our tradies stay with us for, um, an average of six years. But anyone that’s ever left Dr. Drip to go out on their own, they have always absolutely smashed it. 

Ange
Mm. If you think about those guys, those ones who actually have intent to start their own business, they’re the go-getters. They’re the ones that are the action takers, hundred percent. And they really wanna smash life, don’t they? They’ve got a really great attitude. They just, they’re, they’re sponges. They wanna learn. So if your ad at the very beginning has actually said, I’m prepared to teach you this. Then they’re gonna be more enticed to come and work for you as a business because you’ve played to what you know that they want. That stuff’s gotta be inside your ad. All you are trying to do is get them to actually make contact with you so that now you can actually. Have these conversations to ensure that you quickly get them on board. Don’t sit back. What’s with the people who will apply for an ad and they’re epic people. And then you go, oh, I’m just gonna wait for a week and wait, see who else applies, and then I’m gonna interview them all in one day. Screw that. Tradies move quickly. If they’ve decided to leave their current boss and they are a gun tradie and they’ve decided to step up, be better, go somewhere else, they’re gonna do it today. Cause that’s the decision that they’ve made and they’ve contacted you and now they’ve contacted probably four or five other companies. And if you haven’t moved fast, you’ve missed such an opportunity. 

Andy
And the thing we always look at too, is we always have a higher attitude over skill. Mm-hmm. , we can teach the skill, but if they don’t have that attitude, they don’t have that winning culture. You know, we hire winners and everyone out there should be hiring winners, hiring the right people at the start, and you can teach them the skills.

Ange
Yeah. I think what’s really interesting to remember is, you know, some of you guys might be saying you are mad. Why would you put in an ad that you’re gonna teach them everything about running your own business? Well, guess what? Here’s the thing. That’s what they’re attracted to because that’s at the moment, their thought process is actually to go out on their own. They’re young or they could be old, you know, mature age qualified tradies. Regardless, the thing that’s exciting to them is actually to go out on their own. But how do you know that once they start working for you, that they actually love your culture? They love the responsibility that they now hold inside your business. They actually love everything about working for you, so therefore they stay with you longer and in actual fact, they never go out on their own. That’s what we’ve found with a lot of our guys inside Dr. Drip, the alternatives, as Andy said, the guys that have over time, you know, given us a good 5, 6, 7 years and or more have been absolute guns for the business and when they’ve gone out of their own, we are there to help them.

Andy
A hundred percent. And, and that’s what we like to do at Dr. Drip. That’s the way we go through our hiring process. Getting the right people from the start, training them the right way, because that is what it’s about. You’ve gotta get the right people into your business from the start. Too many people grab someone and you know, deep down in your gut, they’re not the right feelings, but you’re absolutely desperate. And it takes you a month, two months, maybe even three to six months to train them. And then you end up getting rid of them. Mm-hmm. Because they’re no good and they’ve got the wrong attitude and it’s just cost you a bucket load of cash.

Ange
Well you haven’t trained them cuz you’re cranky at them . 

Andy
Well I did, I did have a chat with a guy and he was like, I don’t like training people. I said, why don’t you like training him, mate? He goes, Because you train them, you teach ’em everything, you know, and they go out and they leave . And I said, so what’s the tradie he likes, now he’s absolutely rubbish. He’s a shithouse. I don’t even know why I employ him. I said, well, mate, just listen to yourself. You know, you’ve got to train them. You’ve gotta get the best out of them, otherwise you’re gonna be stuck with absolute rubbish tradies constantly. And in the end they’ll leave anyway. 

Ange
That’s so true. So if I go back and think about how do you actually attract like the right person, this perfect epic tradie inside your business to actually do billable hours and they’ve got the right attitude, you really need to break it down and start thinking about who is it that you’re really trying to attract and what’s really important to them so that you use that language in the ad that you write and or another format, which I’ll talk about in just a sec. Mm-hmm. And where do you place that ad? So where are they gonna see you or how do you spread the word that you’re trying to find these certain sorts of people? And I’d definitely be saying that word of mouth does definitely work, but I do think 365 days of the year, you’ve gotta have an out, out there. And how about thinking about how they consume, say, social media or the platforms that they hang out. Where are you because that’s where your tradie is. Think about their age, the demographic, their psychographic, because maybe a written ad is not the way to do it. Maybe you need to do it in a video style.

Andy
Well, that’s exactly right. You think about it, people are not going just to work for the business. Hmm. They wanna work for the owner. So if they don’t know who the owner is, how do they know who they’re gonna work for? Hmm. So when you just do a plain ad, all it is is writing. It doesn’t mean much. Yes. You can write it in the right way. That sounds exciting. But a video is a hundred percent the way to get to know the business owner himself. Go through the benefits, you know, talk about an attractive wage car, iPhone training, everything that you want to do to attract the avatar you are looking at. So for us, using video testimonials from our existing team as well, and then we make sure we get out there. Ange talks about putting ads on for 365 days a year. Now you’re not gonna be spending that much money on Seek and Indeed because it just cost you an absolute fortune. But you can have something on your website, you can have something on Facebook, and constantly you can be having that out there. When I dive into Facebook, I’m taking it to another level. I won’t talk too far, but you can talk about retargeting. So you know how many people have watched your videos, how far they’ve watched the video, and if they’ve watched the video over 50%, you can target those people and remarket to them. So when they first saw your Facebook ad, you know what? They may not have been the right time for them. Mm. But guess what? They see it in three months. They see it in six months. They’ve had a terrible day. Six months later for whatever the reason they come home for the partner or friend. I’ve had a gut full, and then your Facebook ad hops up again. Bingo, right place, right time. Oh my God. We just hid an incredible tradie.

Ange
You definitely need to be in front of mine all the time, don’t you? You can constantly remind them about who you are. That moment that they’ve decided to jump ship, let’s hope they jump ship to you. What I suggest you do is grab our exact hiring ad that we are using Dr. Drip. We’ve actually put it in the show notes so that you can download how to hire an A-Grade staff member. You can literally plug and play. 

Andy
Yeah. Once you’ve got those elements in place, you need to hire fast and fire fast. And the thing is, what you’ve gotta realize is you do need to hire fast if they’re the right person. But then you need to train them, not blame them as they say, but if you train them and you’re not getting the response you want, you need to fire fast as well. You know, too many business owners think that when you hire someone, it’s like you’re in a marriage or in a long term relationship with the girlfriend. It’s too hard to move them on. You know what? Business is business if they are not the right fit for your business and you know that, You’ve got to move them on really fast. The thing is, if you find the right person, do not leave it a week to chat with them. How many times have you heard this? If the right person rings our office, our office manager will ring me straight away and I will get on the phone, try and seal the deal, meet him anywhere in Sydney as fast as I possibly can, because if they’re the right fit. You need to make sure you act and you act extremely fast, otherwise you definitely will lose them. 

Ange
Yeah. The challenge we sometimes have, of course, is that you take them on and even though you’ve explained the processes that you follow and the systems, there’s a chance that they’ll actually just push back on the way you operate. Maybe they won’t gel with a leading hand in your business and your team. Maybe they just don’t fit because maybe their attitude in actual fact is not that positive go-getter that you actually saw in that first interview. And if that’s the case, have a chat with them. Let them know what’s going on because this is a probation period at the beginning, but make sure you move on real quick. Cause like Andy said, you can train skill, but you can’t train that attitude. 

Andy
A hundred percent. Remember, hire fast, fire fast. You know what? Download our How To Hire A-Grade Staff Guide and Get your Staffing Issues Under Control Once and for All. Or book in a free one-on-one strategy session with me and we can chat about your unique staffing issues. Until then, catch you next time.

Ange
See you soon.