While you’re anxious to find fully staff your team, it’s important to avoid the most common snow hiring mistakes.
By hiring employees who aren’t the right fit for your business, you risk losing valuable talent and clients.
Use this article to avoid the biggest snow hiring mistakes and:
By avoiding these top snow hiring mistakes, you can begin to grow your business into a long-term success!
Even in the midst of a hiring shortage, you can’t begin blindly hiring employees out of desperation. After all, employees who aren’t the right fit can cost you valuable clients.
Keep in mind, hiring an employee with red flags can negatively impact your snow removal business’ reputation.
Instead, you can put your least profitable clients on hold until you’re able to find the right employee to fill the position.
Alternatively, you can increase prices on your least profitable clients to offset the cost of speeding up the onboarding process.
By the way, when you choose the best snow removal software, you can easily check client profitability—without spending hours crunching numbers on a calculator.
Instant invoicing
Better scheduling
Manage your clients and employees all in one system
By limiting your candidate selection to the same type of cloned employee, you lose the opportunity to build a dynamic team who can build upon the strengths and weaknesses of one another.
In turn, you’ll create a team with huge strengths but even bigger weaknesses—resulting in a team who shines brightly before inevitably burning out.
Avoid this common snow hiring mistake by using new hires as a way to complete your blind spots.
Which means, it’s important to hire based on the qualities and skills you don’t already have. Remember, you’re creating a team—not a replication of your best employees.
By opening up your selection to candidates with varying strengths, weaknesses, and skill sets you don’t already possess on the team, you can build the most robust snow crew in the area.
It’s important not to easily dismiss candidates who lack experience in snow removal but have excellent trainability.
Look for ideal candidates who:
At the very least, consider hiring candidates like these on a probationary period.
When you contacting each candidate’s references, you can:
Also, background checks will tell you everything you need to know about the candidate’s history—convictions, DUIs, etc.
Since snow removal is a high-risk job with complex equipment, it’s important to do thorough research before presenting candidates with an offer. As a result, you’ll mitigate liability.
Also, it’s especially important to perform background checks if you’re considering a candidate based on a referral or someone you know.
Remember, referrals and candidates you know are often the biggest blind spots! EVERY potential new hire should get a background check before giving them an offer.
If you’re someone with previous snow and ice management experience, then you’ll want to ensure they’re capable of what they claim to have experience in.
Once you’ve verified their references and get back a clean background check, consider paying the candidate for a working interview.
Even though you’ll likely be hiring before the snow season starts, you can still do a mock working interview without actually doing a job at a client’s property.
For example, you could have them demonstrate to you how to operate a snow plow or snow blower based on the experience they claim to have.
Use this working interview (or mock working interview) to find out if the candidate:
Since finding great employees is an ongoing process, you don't want to wait until you’re in desperate need of employees before you start looking.
Instead, keep your team fully staffed at all times by staying in constant hiring mode in order to hire BEFORE you need additional employees.
You never know when someone will quit and you’ll need to fill an open position. Remember, it’s usually easier to find new clients than it is to find great employees—especially in the snow removal industry.
When you become complacent, you can become blindsided when an employee unexpectedly quits.
Even the best snow removal businesses have high turnover in entry-level positions, especially when promoting from within (which is a great morale booster for the team).
Keep the new applications coming with active and updated hiring ads. Almost always, you can use the additional help. After all, the work is there, you just need to sell it.
Delaying to fire a new hire who is the wrong fit is one of the hugest snow hiring mistakes. In order to remain a successful snow removal business, you have to be willing to fire new hires.
When a new hire isn’t working out, it’s best to let them go before wasting too many valuable resources on training.
You can offer a second chance as an opportunity for them to adapt, but realize that not everyone will work out in your business.
Allowing the wrong fit to remain on your crew interrupts your best snow professionals from what they do best. Don’t slow down your crews by keeping a new hire who isn’t working out.
By using new hires to fill in the gaps your current team has, you can create the perfect snow and ice management team for your business.
Remember, every team needs varying talents to complement what your team has/doesn’t have.
Complete your team by hiring the right employees to build upon your existing team’s strengths and compensate for their weaknesses.
As a result, you can develop a great company culture and:
Now, you can avoid the biggest snow hiring mistakes and find, hire, and keep the best snow professionals!
Related: Hiring Snow Removal Employees During a Labor Shortage
Originally published Feb 2, 2023 7:00 AM
Tags: Business Operation, Featured Post
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