Successful Hiring Procedures for Maintenance / Engineering Personnel

By Earl Winter

Being successful in hiring technical personnel is difficult, even for managers with technical skills themselves, and the success rate drops dramatically when the hiring manager is from a non-technical background. With the economy improving and unemployment rates decreasing, it will become even more difficult to recruit worthy staff members for your maintenance / engineering department.

Lack of success in the technical hiring process is often attributable to one or more of the following issues:

1. Placing limitations on the hiring process, eliminating the best applicants.
2. Not fully understanding the skills required for successful performance.
3. Improperly advertising for the position.
4. Improperly screening resumes.
5. Failure to act promptly.
6. Interview technique.

1. Limitations: First and foremost, successful hiring managers have the right attitude going into the process. They understand that they are going through this process in order to properly and efficiently maintain their machinery, a very high priority. They understand that a good technician, no matter the salary, always costs less than a bad one. Successful hiring managers understand that the good maintenance engineers do not need your job as much as you need them. Since they know all of this, they know better than to set limitations on the hiring process before they begin. In other words, they don’t look for the best technician they can find for $XX.00. They simply look for the best technician.

I have been successful in both hiring and in training others to hire technical employees. Yet, nothing has been more difficult to get hiring managers to buy into than this principle. I am not suggesting that the salary range is unlimited. I am suggesting that you don’t set the limit until you have found the right applicant. Once done, you determine what it will take to bring this person on board, and then you make the decision. If he/she is indeed the right person for the job, then you will be wise to pay what you must.

Another limitation often placed in error is the requirement for prior laundry equipment experience. The understanding of a skill, such as electrical, pneumatics, hydraulics, plumbing, etc., crosses industry lines. Don’t limit yourself to only people from your own industry. If you succeed in recruiting high quality technical personnel, you will be happy with the outcome regardless their industry origin.

2. Required Skills: I have given seminars to maintenance managers on hiring, and have frequently asked “what are you looking for in skill sets from the applicants you interview?” From the answers, it was not uncommon to wind up with a list of 25 or more required skills. Of course they knew that it was impossible to find an applicant that had all of these skills unless the applicant was approximately 100 years old and required an astronomical salary.

We would next divide the list up into two categories; must have and nice to have. The list a skill fell into was determined by asking the question, can the skill in question be taught in a plant environment and in a reasonable amount of time. If the answer was no, then it was a must have skill.

When each skill was looked at in this manner, only two skills turned out to be must have. These were welding and electrical / electronic troubleshooting. Welding is a skill that is used in our industry relatively little. The maintenance managers that I asked came to a consensus of approximately once a month on average. Since mobile welders can be contracted quickly and cheaply in nearly every locality, this skill was also put in the nice to have column.

Now that you know that electrical / electronic troubleshooting skills are the only absolutely required technical skill the question arises, how many of your maintenance staff need to have this skill set. I will answer the question this way:

• Whether the problem turns out to be electrical, electronic, or mechanical, the problem is normally found by a good maintenance staff with electrical troubleshooting. The alternative is parts changing until the problem is found. Very expensive. If you only have one electrical troubleshooter, what do you do when he/she is off, or tied up with other work?
• Applicants with electrical troubleshooting skills tend to be more highly educated and intelligent. That normally means they can do the other type of work more effectively as well.

In my plant, every maintenance person that I expected to maintain machinery would have electrical skills or would be in school learning them.

3. Advertising: This is a case where more is not always better, and I learned this myself the hard way. First and foremost, don’t put anything about laundry equipment in your ad. Technicians who have never been in a large commercial laundry think of coin-op laundry equipment instead of the reality, and they don’t respond.

Don’t place the ad under Engineering, unless you actually require a “degreed” engineer. The laundry industry has a tendency to call their maintenance staff “engineers” even though they do not necessarily have an engineering degree. The rest of industry does not follow this practice. Normally, only actual engineers read this section. Place the ad under maintenance, crafts / skills, technician, etc., depending upon what sections your local newspaper has.

My ads are very brief. They begin with the position title, i.e. Maintenance Technician, Industrial Technician, Maintenance Manager, etc. Next I use a hook statement to get their attention followed by something like; exceptional employer offers excellent pay and benefits for an energetic self starter with strong electrical troubleshooting skills. Note, I did not put in all the nice to have skills. I end by saying; resume to: followed by name, email address, fax number, and site address. Note: I did not put the company name here. Why? Remember, at this point, I do not want to mention anything about laundry equipment. I deal with that when I call to set up the appointment.

4. Resume Screening: Again, I break from convention here. Most professional hiring managers tend to look for reasons to eliminate a resume from consideration. After all, this is efficient. They don’t want to waste time interviewing losers. I have found that it pays to look for reasons to interview rather than to eliminate.

If I notice what appears to be lack of stability or some other red flag, I annotate the resume to make sure I address this during the interview. What appears to be lack of stability may indeed be something else altogether. Remember, I am looking for an energetic self starter with strong electrical troubleshooting skills, not a professional resume writer. If I can find what I am looking for as far as minimum skill requirements in the resume, I want to at least talk to this person.

5. Acting Promptly: Speed is essential. The successful manager screens the resumes the day or night they arrive. Ideally, the call is made to set up the interview the same evening. If you can’t actually interview for a day or more, the fact that you have a scheduled interview may keep the applicant from accepting another position until you have met. If you wait to call however, you may as well not call at all. Somebody will already have hired the good ones.

The call to set up the interview appointment is the time to explain why you did not mention commercial laundry equipment in the ad. I simply tell them that when I have mentioned it in the past I learned that people tended to think of coin-op laundries. I then go on to tell them about million dollar washing systems, sophisticated folding and feeding equipment, or whatever happens to be in the plant in question. In other words, I pique their curiosity.

6. Interview Technique: Hiring is time consuming, and you are busy. Yet I have asked you to look for reasons to interview instead of reject. I am going to show you how to get the time back here. I usually show applicants that do not have the skills I am looking for the door within the first 10 minutes of the interview, and I am not rude. Here is how I do it. I take a about a minute putting the applicant at ease, and then I explain that my ad specified electrical troubleshooting skills, and since this is the only real show stopper, we’ll get this subject out of the way first.

Without actually saying it, I have just told the applicant that the interview will end if he / she fails to have the required skills, electrical troubleshooting. I then use the next few minutes to determine their basic electrical knowledge with a simple schematic diagram that I created for this purpose. If you discover that the applicant oversold themselves in the resume they will also know they did poorly. You simply state that you are looking for someone that has this skill highly developed and wish them luck in their search.

My more successful interviews take me an hour or a little over, and this includes a plant tour. I will not go into the format for the remainder of the interview process as it will be much the same as interviewing for a non-technical position. I do highly recommend that you have questions written down to keep you on track. The plant tour is a good time to sell the company and the position. Too often I see hiring managers dwelling on negatives, like how hot or dirty the job can be. They say they have to tell the bad along with the good. Any worthy applicant can see the working conditions without being told. This is the time to make him / her feel good about the position being offered by discussing the unique equipment and how it works, by introducing him / her to friendly people, by pointing out people that have worked at the plant for many years, etc.

7. Salary Negotiation: If you have followed my earlier advice, you have not discussed this issue until you are sure you want to hire an applicant. I personally go so far as to not look at an application that has salary information on it prior to this time as I have learned it influences my interview.

The term negotiation can be very negative. It tends to be seen by some as both sides trying to get the better of the other. I encourage you to find a way to set a different tone. You want to create a win-win atmosphere. I have sometimes paid more than I had to, to hire a strong candidate, and I have never been sorry that I did. I not only hired a star, I created a loyal, positive employee.

When I get to this point in the interview and I know that both the applicant and I are interested in each other, I simply ask what the applicant currently makes or made on his / her last position. This sets the starting point. It should be relatively easy and comfortable to go from this point to finding an agreeable compensation package.

I hope this article helps you the next time you have to perform the difficult task of hiring a technical staff person. It is impossible to cover every eventuality in a short article, but if you need to, please feel free to call or email me with your specific question.

Earl Winter is a past Engineering Vice President for a large Textile Rental Co., and is currently the President of Earl Winter Engineering Associates, Inc. He has over 40 years of experience in maintenance engineering management, much of this in the laundry industry. He has been the Director of Services for a large laundry equipment distributor, and helped develop and teach the U.S. Navy’s school on commercial laundry equipment. You can learn more on his web site www.earlwinter.com, or call him at 770 402-7820. Email at earl@earlwinter.com

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