In this episode of Owned and Operated, John and Jack break down the full playbook for hiring HVAC and plumbing technicians—from sourcing to retention. They dive into the real-world challenges of technician recruitment and share the strategies they use to keep a steady pipeline of high-quality candidates. From building a branded hiring engine to managing seasonal swings, this episode delivers tactical advice and real SOPs that help home service businesses grow their field teams with intention.
They cover why recruiting never stops, how to build a budget that supports year-round hiring, and why onboarding and retention matter just as much as the job offer. Whether you’re scaling a team or trying to fix your hiring funnel, this episode is packed with practical frameworks and firsthand experience.
🔹 In This Episode, We Cover:
Building a technician recruitment process from scratch
Why continuous recruiting beats reactive hiring
How to structure compensation to stay competitive
The role of onboarding in long-term retention
Using recruiters and internal plans to scale hiring
Planning budgets around seasonal employment needs
Leveraging branding and sales tactics in hiring
SOPs and examples that drive real technician results
💡 Special Thanks to Modernize!
We've been using Modernize for our water quality leads, and it's been a game-changer. If you’re serious about growing your business with better water quality leads, HVAC leads, or home improvement leads, check them out:
🔗 Get Quality Leads Here: (https://modernize.com/pros/leads/wilson)
💼 Shoutout to Quick Staffers LLC
Need trained HVAC & plumbing CSRs at a fraction of the cost? Quick Staffers LLC specializes in placing top-tier global talent with the best SOPs and scripts.
🔥 Get $1,000 off your first placement here: [https://www.quickstaffers.com/]
💡 Shoutout to Avoca AI!
Avoca is helping home service companies level up with 24/7 AI call handling, performance insights, and targeted coaching.
🔗 Book a demo: [https://www.getavoca.ai/partners/oao]
🌐 More resources: [https://www.ownedandoperated.com]
👤 Hosted by:
221 Transcript
Jack Carr: [00:00:00] How to hire technicians from start to finish. How do you find tech good technicians? Most of 'em are already at Wilson Company, so what does the process look like? Is there any secret sauce to getting a good technician at Wilson?
John Wilson: I, I think people always say, like, always be recruiting, but like, let's go further on that.
Yeah.
Welcome back to owned and operated. Uh, we're chilling, we're talking. We're about to dive into today is how to hire technicians.
Jack Carr: How to hire technicians from start to finish.
John Wilson: Okay. What
Jack Carr: I mean,
John Wilson: that's a okay,
Jack Carr: because like the back end's easy. So you've got like seven steps. Yeah. Okay. The back end's not too bad.
It's like retention and, and how much do we pay 'em and things like that. But the beginning. Is, how do you find tech Good technicians? Mm-hmm. Most of 'em are already at Wilson Company. Totally. I'm in Akron, Ohio. I'm like, man, I got two [00:01:00] technicians. How do I get my third? I'm not gonna steal 'em from Wilson.
Where am I gonna get 'em from? Yeah. So what does the process look like from the top to getting a good technician at Wilson? Because we don't do it right at Rapid. We're trying, but we're not there yet. Help out John. Help the people.
John Wilson: Okay. Okay.
Jack Carr: I was nervous. Okay. Like, oh gosh, that was a lot of responsibility. Yeah. No, but, but for like, seriously, so we we're going through a process right now where we had one technician, we had to let go for reasons, uh, was our top tech unfortunately. And then recently we had another tech, or probably our second, nah, maybe our third best tech out of five or six.
Um, he's leaving because the hours don't work for him. Which he lives an hour away. Makes sense. But mostly like he has a big farm that he runs. So this is kind of, I don't wanna say it's a side job. He's a really good technician. He's [00:02:00] young, he's 19. He's bought, you know, a ton of stuff recently, like new truck house, whatever.
But he still has a farm that he runs and that's a big operation. And he's not used to being away in the summer from the farm. And so I think that weighs really heavily on him. Um, I don't blame him. I get it. If that being said, I don't like it. I think it's a really shortsighted move. Um, but neither here nor there when it comes to hiring technicians.
Mm-hmm. So we have a,
John Wilson: well, can I ask like, just like some dumb questions? Yeah. Let's
Jack Carr: hit it.
John Wilson: How much money do your technicians make? Like lowest, highest pick and pick a trade? HVAC, plumbing. Yeah.
Jack Carr: I mean, we'll focus on HVAC here. Okay. But they're making good money. Plumbers are making. Regularly upwards of 45 to $50 an hour.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
Jack Carr: It, some of it's dependent on commission.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Um, but the HVAC techs aren't far behind. They're just structured a little differently. And obviously we just came, he started with [00:03:00] us in November, so we gotta see that nice cold snap, but we didn't have an overly cold winter. And then he's been trudging through.
March. Yeah. Yeah. April, well,
John Wilson: in May, I mean May this year was, yeah,
Jack Carr: I mean May We had a blast of a May. Yeah. You guys had a cold front. We didn't. We had some challenge
John Wilson: with retainment in HVC during May, because it was May and it was 40 degrees. Yeah. So we actually had a couple people like switch careers, like fully like out of hvac, which, you know, that's, this guy's doing that has happened almost annually because it's like HVAC is tough.
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Jack Carr: And I think that was, that was a little bit of it. And so he, I mean he was generating $35 an hour plus after commissions, which is not amazing, but it's shoulder season and like going into the, like the boom months where he is gonna make, you know, 40% in three months of his yearly salary.
Is what I, and I explained that to him, but he's, he broke it down, said, Jack, I had to pay someone on the farm $5,000 to pull this hay in for me, because I'm working from, I leave my house at seven, I start my first job at eight and I don't get home till six or seven at night. Hmm. So, I mean, it is what it is.
It's kind of the industry like you are gonna work some OT in summer. It's. Summer. [00:05:00] Um, it's not crazy, but it was too much. So he's changing careers, he's going facilities maintenance, still fixing things, but he thinks it's gonna be a strict date. It's not gonna be a strict date. I've come from facilities maintenance, but, uh, and
John Wilson: the benefit of having a job for him is like consistency in the winter.
Jack Carr: Yeah. It must be off season. Yeah. Around like the, the six to nine other months of the year that he needs it. Yeah. So you know, it is what it is. It's hurts. 'cause like you, you train somebody and you hold them through like the shoulder season. You make sure they have jobs and they're making money only for them to leave.
Right. But for summer, yeah, we, but it's not personal a few
John Wilson: times. Yeah. I think people are just living their
Jack Carr: life. So what we're doing to try to fix that. Oh, do you have any more questions first?
John Wilson: Well, I mean,
Jack Carr: because it's not a money monetary thing, so recruitment,
John Wilson: like, I think if we sum up recruitment Yeah.
It's the same, and I'm just going to always emphasize this. You gotta think of it like these are your inside customers. Mm-hmm. It's a sales process. [00:06:00] So are we being as thoughtful about our Google My Business listings as we are, how we show up to recruits?
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So, hey, to customers we're 24 7. We're fair prices.
You know, all, all the different like. Value adds. Like why choose Wilson if you're gonna pay us money? Well, same back for recruitment. Like why choose us? Great pay, great benefits. Yep. Uh, new vans, clean facilities, good uniforms. Like what, what are the, what are the things that you bring to the table?
Flexible time off. Lot of holidays, I, I don't know what they are for you, but I think that's where I was going was like, Hey, what's comp Or the vans new? The benefits good. Like actually good. Compare, compare. Like are they like good for benefits? Isn't like, are you investing a lot of money? It's are your competitors' benefits?
Better
Jack Carr: question for you on that. I mean, I had this very long discussion with our HR [00:07:00] person, how do you view a benefits truthfully outside of, specifically outside of like health benefits and how much percentage you're paying versus how much percentage your team is paying. Do you view that as a high driver to your company?
John Wilson: It comes up a lot.
Jack Carr: Does it? Because. We were talking about things like life insurance and 401k match. I know we've had this chat offline on in some of our, our other groups. Um, and for us, I don't have anyone who's ever asked about life insurance.
John Wilson: Oh, yeah,
Jack Carr: yeah, yeah. You know, or dental or vi vision, or it's like when a credit card company.
I thought, I thought you meant
John Wilson: like healthcare.
Jack Carr: No, I, I mean like outside of healthcare, when a credit card company gives you like. Free rental insurance and you just never use it. 'cause you don't know it's there half the time. Yeah. But also it's super low value in your life. Um, almost feel like some of the benefits that we provide are like that.
And is there ways that we could showcase that and use that money towards other things?
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: But that's internally that we're dealing with. [00:08:00] Do you see that?
John Wilson: That's a good question. Um, I actually, dunno, that's a good question. I, I think where we struggle. Is explaining benefit, like the benefit of the bene, the cost of the benefits even.
Yeah. Um, for compensation. 'cause what we really try to tie down is how much is someone actually making.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. So
John Wilson: we have, uh, obviously a big team and people are either on like a base plus commission or they're on a task pay model. And right now we have some people asking like they're on the task pay model and they wanna go hourly, like the base plus commission.
And you, you have to do a lot of education because if you like, Hey, I will pay you less money if you want to be paid less money. Like sure, great. But like you need to know that
Speaker 3: here's, you're asking for
John Wilson: $30 an hour and right now you're making 60. [00:09:00] Like do you understand the math of your current compensation?
And we find a lot of people don't like they think. They think they're being dicked over or they think, uh, like a lot of different things. But then you, you start diving into it and it's like, oh yeah, you make $65 an hour. Yeah. So I don't know, like I can help you do the math, but I dunno, like that's what the compass, so we wanna do the same with benefits where we call it, uh, effective hourly rate.
So like, hey, yes, you get task pay or you get like base plus commission, but. If your base is 30 bucks an hour and your commission is $8,000 a month, you're not making $30 an hour. Yeah. Like, you know, I'll help you do the math, but you're not making 30 bucks an hour. What we're trying to nail down now is the effective hourly rate of the benefits.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: So, hey, if you're in that scenario, uh, we can do the math, but someone's probably making 70, 80 bucks an hour, and so they're making 70, 80 bucks an hour compensation, [00:10:00] and then probably another $20 an hour of benefits. It's a 200,000 investment into that person. So that's something we're trying to work through now, so people understand what's actually happening inside their compensation.
Jack Carr: Are you planning to extrapolate that into uh, like time off and flexible days or anything like that as well? I don't think that, you know, six days off would add that much to an hourly. Just 'cause you're adding an extra at
John Wilson: mm-hmm.
Jack Carr: You know, six to 48 hours.
John Wilson: Well, there's six holidays, there's 10 vacation days.
Yeah. I mean, it's probably something. It's a lot. I mean, that's almost a month.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: You know, it's three weeks.
Jack Carr: Yeah. I mean, so to to step back, I mean, I, I think that we are doing a lot of the things correctly. We were trying within our means, because I, I do, I mean, Chris h Hoffman talks about a lot. Like he didn't start off day one offering everybody a hundred percent.
It takes a while to get there. Uh, we're doing the best we can in the situation, the size we are. Uh, we pay very, very well. Uh, a lot of it's heavy commission, [00:11:00] which. We have to be, because I think that that's the way we flow. We don't really have issues with that. Right? This is kind of the first person that we've ran into that we've actually got on board.
Once they get on board, it's the explanation front that's hard. Like, Hey, this is your commission. This is what our other guys are doing. Once the $6,000 checks start clearing, they, it's not a big deal anymore. Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's just getting through that first phase. But now the question is how do we hire better from the top?
And so from what that looks like for me right now is we have a recruiter. Full time. Yeah. And we are, we've been optimizing, so I was super embarrassed actually when we did the workshop last. I was like sitting in the back while you were talking about recruiting and like, Hey, let's look up what your company is and let's look up and, and, and you're like, I bet Jack's doing it wrong or something.
I was like, nah, I'm not John. And I look it up and I'm like, let me see what mine's looking like. And you know, it, it was our, so when you buy a business, right, you don't actually buy the business name. You buy essentially a parent company and then DBA it. Or something of the sort, right? Mm-hmm. [00:12:00] They're running the ads under our parent company name, and so everybody, we have five locations, everybody on Google, like they know rapid response people.
You could Google us and see our thousands of reviews that we have. When you Google the parent company, it's like
John Wilson: Jack Cars, HVAC service,
Jack Carr: LLCs. No Google Business, no anything. And so like, that was a big wake up call that I needed to step up and own this department more on the hiring side. But we went through and fixed that and we, we've got our, our applicants are through the roof.
The, the recruiter is doing an amazing job at bringing those in.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm. Uh,
Jack Carr: the problem is, is actually the conversion between applicant putting application in and stepping in the door.
John Wilson: Yeah. Sit rate.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So, okay, so you have a good, so I'm just gonna make the sales. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have a good book rate, correct.
Booking the first call, but you, they cancel. Correct. So if, yeah. Does that make sense? And so, so then like, you know, [00:13:00] if, if, if we're just unpacking this the same way that we unpack a service call.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
John Wilson: Okay. Well what do we do in between that screening phone call, which like customer calls in, they have a problem.
We book the appointment. That's the screening call. We're gonna go out the next day, what happens? Will they get a video or they get an email saying like, Hey, here's Wilson, here's what we're all about. Here's what to expect on your service call. So we have value builds in there to make sure that they really understand.
It's, it's a book rate problem. You have the book rate to sit rate problem. Yeah. Yeah. Like every sales organization has that.
Jack Carr: So we fixed Yeah, that makes sense. We fixed the, the, the key component, which was like. Hey, they can actually Google and see who we are. Mm-hmm. But that's the expectation that they're going to do the work, rather than you removing some of that friction.
Yeah. And saying, Hey, we have your email. We're gonna send you this off. This is what a day in the life looks like. This is why you wanna work here. This is the reasons behind everything to make sure that they're coming in.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: That's pretty simple too.
John Wilson: [00:14:00] Yeah. And then once they get in, it's the same thing, you know, next to our, like, we're next to our members for certain path members.
Yeah, I know there's others out there, but those are the two that we're members of. You've got the like six steps, like, Hey, make sure you park at the right spot. Knock on the door, right? Here's how you greet. Same thing with an interview, like we've talked about our process for interviews, but we have a six step like, Hey, we're gonna sit here, we're gonna talk about our core values.
We're gonna walk over here, talk about your growth plan. We're gonna look at the call center. We're gonna go now we just put this review wall in, which is really cool. Yeah. Which is super cool. Yeah, that's really cool. So like, hey, here's the training room we invest in you, here's the review wall. Our customers love us.
Here's the warehouse you'll always be taking care of. Boom interview. So like, that's the six steps of like, you know, closing each objection door,
Jack Carr: which is cool 'cause we've been, we've been building that for customer retention or internal customer retention policy. Yeah. Is like, we built the training room to try and do this.
We put in VMI to try and do this or as partially for. Convenience sake. Right? Because VMI is is helpful to have stuff on site, but [00:15:00] it's not so incredibly helpful above and beyond outside of, hey, it's really, really convenient for technicians and for They love it. Yeah. Yeah. You, uh, as, as the owner. And so that's interesting.
Do you have VMI? We just got it. Yeah, it's, we we're like a step below. So it's not vendor managed inventory. That's it's, I mean, ghost Warehouse
John Wilson: tech love a good, we actually, we, over the years it's been a, it's been a while. Um, two years, but we used to lose text because, uh, we couldn't keep a good warehouse.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, it matters, you know? Yeah. I need to take a real video and send, it's gonna inconvenience their day. It's gonna inconvenience their mm-hmm. Like, it matters. It's a real issue. Definitely. We lost some in HVAC. We just like, we're the studio like, this is for the listener, I guess, but we have two buildings.
It's like a campus now, and there's a, the building we're in is the HVAC building. We just took it over in January. Um, we put a lot into it. There's a second VMI that's just hvac. Mm-hmm. Which like, that's a, you know, on the table. [00:16:00] And then there's equipment in the back. So like HVAC building. Yeah. Which is pretty fun.
And, um, that was a big win. 'cause before that we were losing, uh, hvac, rightfully so. Like we were doing a bad job. Uh, we were losing HVAC techs to like, no equipment on site. Not enough equipment. They had to wait around too long and they're being paid task pay.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
John Wilson: So like, hey, these guys are like, you know, task, pay the benefit to the company.
Is downtime's covered. Mm-hmm. You know, your exact cost of margin. Uh, so it's a win for the company and for the technician. They make a well above normal hourly rate. Yeah. So like, should be a win-win. But if we fuck up our part, like they have a right to be annoyed. Yeah.
Jack Carr: And I think that's probably honestly a big portion of our miss on the backend.
Yeah. Is not, it's tough. It's not that specific example, but it's, it's going through improving. Right. As a technician, what are your big three? Worries. And it's like, Hey, I'm not gonna have enough jobs. Do you have me on a commission? So how do you prove to the technician in the interview that you'll have enough jobs?
John Wilson: We pull up services
Jack Carr: [00:17:00] through whole the year. And so that, that's like, hey, locking down that process so that they're able to see it. Um,
John Wilson: some of it's confidence.
Jack Carr: Yeah, too. Confidence of like the interviewer.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: But like, how do you explain it? But when I was doing interviews, I would pull up ServiceTitan.
Now I'm actually not sure what they do, but like. We, if someone asked us if we were slow, now, we would have almost too sophisticated of an answer.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Well, I, I
John Wilson: don't, like, we would start walk, like, if someone asked me that, I would start walking through our funnel, which I don't think would be helpful.
That's not right that way. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, but I think just showing ServiceTitan would be like, yeah, no.
Jack Carr: Realistically though, I think at a point it, it's less like you don't become a too. A campus business if you don't have enough.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think people ask us a lot less than they used to. Yeah. But I'm also not in the interview, so, you know, I don't know.
Jack Carr: Yeah. As a smaller company, I think it comes up more like, Hey, am I gonna get laid off in three months when it's [00:18:00] shoulder season? Yeah. Yeah. So, but yeah. So it's, it's going through, it sounds like, and really hitting the big reasons for why the tech should work for you guys. Yeah. Taking their objections and then,
John Wilson: and figuring out ways to close them as a process.
Jack Carr: As a process versus as waiting for them to ask. Right.
John Wilson: And what I would, what I would do is move upstream from the recruitment process. What, what we've done is we have, uh, sorry. Our, our HR stack, we have, uh, HR generalists. So she heads up that team and she has three recruiters reporting to her.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Uh, Krisa, Abby and Diane.
So guys. You guys great. I think they listen and, uh, and they're, they are great. They're awesome. And, um, so, uh, they report, and what we provide them with is, you don't have to do it annually like we do, but you can, we provide them with an annual budget of hires.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: So [00:19:00] basically in October, I'm gonna be working on 2020 six's hiring plan, which I understand is like a big lift.
Who knows, obviously there's a lot to figure out. Yeah. Um, you have some, like how much are we gonna retain? How much, you know, there's a lot going on there, but we do our best. I don't think it's perfect, but we do our best. But that gives recruiting time to plan, because recruiting, uh, we're just gonna make this marketing again.
'cause I think this is gonna help people. I, I think people always say like, always be recruiting, but like, let's go further on that. Almost said double click, but I knew John would make fun of me
Jack Carr: double on that. It's no secret that my office here in Nashville is almost completely empty. So how do I support my team as well as have great growth metrics?
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John Wilson: So, uh, always recruiting. So there's planned recruitment and there's reactionary recruitment.
That's how we think about it. Planned recruitment is next June. I know that I have this many members. I'm roughly projected, I have this many members. I could be off by a little bit, but like yeah, A guess is, you know, directionally correct is better than not trying. Um, so I will need 12 HVAC service techs in team eo.
Yeah. That's somebody we have.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Okay.
Jack Carr: I'm [00:21:00] just saying if you went, if you need another 12, that would be
John Wilson: Oh, oh, oh. Uh, yeah, that would be inconvenient. Um, but yeah. So, so hey, we need 12. Mm-hmm. Right, right now we have eight or nine. Uh, so like, you know, you figure out where you are, where you wanna be, and if it's planned, then they have months to figure it out.
They have months to ramp up their outbound effort, figure out their communication. Post jobs everywhere. That is how we have had the most success.
Jack Carr: Is there hiring there? Is there any secret sauce which makes like, that all makes sense, right? Is once again, be intentional about how you're doing and planning and
John Wilson: yeah.
Jack Carr: You have the reactionary one, but it seems like
John Wilson: I know that I need leads in December. Yeah. So, so it's like branding versus lead gen.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So like branding, I'm investing branding dollars today to get leads next March.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: Makes sense. It's gonna rise. The rise all boats. Lead gen is, I need leads today.
Mm-hmm. So it's sort of the same [00:22:00] thing. You have the plan, you have this long term, let's keep the cycle going, let's go. And then you have the reactionary like, Hey, so and so just quit today. Uh, yeah. Sorry. We, I just remembered like a, a quit story. Someone, we hired somebody like a month ago and they, they were literally smoking weed.
Weed is legal in Ohio.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: So I don't, like, I've never had a thing with weed, but like. Smoking weed at work is like, all right,
Jack Carr: probably frowned upon.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. So like this dude's lighting up in a customer's house and the customer catches him, weed catch him. And we're like, Hey man, you're gonna need to do a drug.
Like it was a, she said, he said type thing. Uh, he's like, I wasn't smoke weed. Customer said that was, that was weed was absolutely weed. You can walk in my house. It was weed. So we were like, Hey, we're gonna need a drug test. Like she's the thing and he, he, he quit the next day. He's like, well, if you guys are looking over my shoulder, I'm like, you're lighting a blunt in someone's house, dude.
Like, yeah, we're gonna ask about it. Yeah. We're not looking
Jack Carr: over your shoulder here, buddy. Yeah.
John Wilson: Yeah. The, the text was, [00:23:00] it was hilarious. Well, if people are gonna look, if you guys micromanage here, what the fuck are you talking about? That was crazy. Um. So, yeah. So, hey, weed guy in the basement quit today. We gotta replace that, uh, seat as soon as possible.
Mm-hmm. So part of the, part of the best part of like recruiting all the time and using a plan strategy is you can pull up hires faster and react faster. Yeah. Because it takes 60 days to place, like it's 60 days. Yeah. So there's no like shortcut to that that I, that I can find. I mean, we have scale signing bonuses at scale
Speaker 3: scale,
John Wilson: but you know, if I need.
It's hard. And, and I think also just really creating a cycle of onboarding. Mm-hmm. Like we onboard every two weeks period and every cohort is three to five people. Yeah. It's every two weeks. 'cause we have some plan turnover, we have some regrettable turnover. Company hits a certain size, people just have to leave for something.
Jack Carr: It's a numbers game. Yeah. There's, it's a numbers game that
John Wilson: happens. [00:24:00] We've had two people lose a parent
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: In a different state in the last 30 days. Nothing to do with us. They had to go. Yeah. Be with their family. Makes total sense. Um, so like, it just happens. So like you have to keep this constant funnel.
You have to keep going. So planning, recruitment over the course of a year, setting really hard, like we will onboard every two weeks. Uh, and don't like break that.
Jack Carr: Yeah. '
John Wilson: cause it really gets hairy when you break outside of those two weeks. Like we do a terrible job onboarding when it's off. We call 'em off cycles.
They're, they're rough.
Jack Carr: Yeah, I'm good. And with that though, so is there any strategy that, that you give, so recruiters, right? They naturally have the ability to go into the backend of LinkedIn or Yeah. They're using, you know, uh, indeed plus or whatever the, the expanded model is smart service and they're going in and actively.
Messaging people. Yep. What, what is the, the best strategy that you found that actually works to have recruiters do all, all just [00:25:00] utilizing everything at their disposal.
John Wilson: Yeah. I think dream scenario, I, you know, I'm all about the, uh, generalist of specialist expert thing.
Jack Carr: Yep.
John Wilson: So you have one recruiter.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: On one hand, like, it's always fun, just like looking at it from different sides. I think. You gonna say
Jack Carr: something insulting right now? Is that why you're prefacing that? I'm
John Wilson: not going to say something insulting. You only have one. No, I'm not. I'm not. We
Jack Carr: shoulda have a $40 million business that you could have three.
Okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool.
John Wilson: I was not, I mean, I can, I'll, I'll toss a couple, I'll toss a couple consults here. I'll just like sling them. Okay. Okay. So. Uh, on one hand that person is a specialist because they're not like your call taker.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Doing recruitment or like a service manager or a Yeah. They're not, it's not an HR person who's doing HR
John Wilson: special, just specializing in that role.
So like from a high level, you have a specialist, you can go deeper.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Uh, and like you can go much deeper. [00:26:00] Uh, which is like, that's, I think that's the funny thing when whenever you unpack these like different roles, that's what I think is kind of fun is, Hey, I just brought on this specialist. Like, yeah, this is awesome.
And then you start diving deeper and you're like, well, they're recruiting office staff, plumbers, electricians. Mm-hmm. Hvac. Are they a specialist or are they a generalist now? Yeah. And so what we've done is we've taken that a little bit of a step further, and we have, uh, three recruiters. Uh, we have an administrative recruiter, so that's in office or offshore is all done through, uh, that recruiter.
We keep. And that's much more reactive. It's, as you can imagine, yes. It's, uh, hilariously simple to place administrative positions versus like a technician. So, uh, that's a pretty like, high churn, you know, thing. And it, it's just a distraction because of how easy it is. Like if I gave an administrative position to a plumbing [00:27:00] or HVAC recruiter, it's so easy.
That's all they wanna do. 'cause it's so easy. Yeah, it's just so easy. Like we'll do a higher and like. 30 minutes, you know, versus like, you know, it takes work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It takes work on plumbing. Uh, and then the other ones, uh, we divided plumbing and electric and HVAC and drains, I think are the two different ways to do it.
And we did that because HVAC and drains both have service sales and install. Mm-hmm. Uh, and plumbing has sales and install electric. Have sales and install.
Jack Carr: Okay.
John Wilson: So we tried to give them, uh, like four to six positions total to recruit for I think each, yeah. There's, you know, they basically handle 15 positions, uh, which is to me kind of a lot.
Mm-hmm. Anything outside of that, like sort of bespoke stuff, leadership positions I get, I get, uh, a lot more involved in. Yeah. So recruitment, you can go deeper and, and that's where we also found success too, was, hey, if, if this [00:28:00] person's looking at HVAC service resumes all day long. Talking to HVAC service guys all day, she's gonna have a better feel.
Much better. Much better feel.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Because I know we, we have noticed that is that there's a little bit, that we get a lot of them, there's a lot of mediocre quality. Yep. It's not necessarily the person's fault. Right. Because like you said, they're doing admin and they're doing plumbing and they're doing HVAC and they're doing, you know, this, these myriad of positions.
And so to know the specifics to know if an HVAC person is good Yeah. Is much more difficult than totally just like. Random. Hey,
John Wilson: and, and we're at the size where we had to, um, I, I think about this a lot too, where Tommy, uh, mellow, he described a lot the phase that I'm in right now.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Where like they had to take a year and document everything.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: And I mean, shit, you wouldn't have thought even made sense. And literally how do you tell a good resume. Hmm is a thing that we've had to document.
Jack Carr: So we should do a whole episode on this. 'cause I [00:29:00] think about this more than you could imagine.
John Wilson: I don't even think it's relevant
Jack Carr: yet. I think about this so much.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: and I think, I think the, well let me, it's so boring. Let me preface this. It's super boring. It's
John Wilson: so boring. But the reason, like
Jack Carr: I'm bored out of my mind. So the reason I think about it has to happen more than you do is 'cause A, it has to happen. B, I utilize a lot more offshore talent in a lot higher positions than you do.
Yeah. So like my call center managers. Offshore. All my call centers offshore, like inside sales is offshore. Uh, HIR, specialist recruiter all offshore. So like everything you should launch a, a offshore recruiting company, offshore recruiting.
John Wilson: Oh, that sounds like it'd be fun. I know. I saw this domain name recently.
It was available. Is it Quick staffers?
Jack Carr: Oh no, that one's gone. Yeah. Somebody, somebody quickly grabbed that one. Some, an asshole, some bald asshole in Nashville. There you go. This is your first insult that slung your way. I appreciate it. Thanks. But I have two more. I think it was like backhanded somewhere along the line, but, uh, you know, I'm, I'm okay with it.
I enough. Yeah, I think there's a compliment here. It [00:30:00] was partial. Um, but point being is that because of that I do a lot more documenting just because I can't afford to have like the water cooler conversations and, um. Yeah. So point being is that all, like there's a lot more that needs to be documented and I'm even trying to take that step further and going like, how do I hire, I know you were talking about a long time ago,
John Wilson: years ago.
The process, business process.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: The uh, there's a title for it, business process Strategist or. Something.
Jack Carr: But yeah. Um, something just that goes through and just really documents down everything. And with AI now, it's a lot easier than it used to be. Like a lot of times I can go in there and at least get a framework and then I can type everything out.
Yeah. Um, or now what we've been doing is training. Like our HR rep who has never really used AI is now really good at creating those frameworks and then typing out what needs to happen. So Awesome. AI's amazing for that. It's getting better. Um. But yeah, we should [00:31:00] definitely do a full episode on that one day.
John Wilson: It's a lot, but yeah, you end up, um, you end up creating a lot of stops around it, including like, what does a good resume look like? What do we look for? Mm-hmm. Here's the three indicators that this is worth the screening call.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Because we had to do that for quick staffers. That's what I'm bringing it up.
It's like we had to, we had to. Breakdown. Like what? It makes a good interview. What do good interviews sound like? So we took clips from people who are successful. This is what somebody who oversees, who is considered a 10 outta 10. Interesting. Here's a nine outta 10, eight outta 10. I dunno if we've gone that far.
That's a good idea. So we've taken the, we make them listen to this episode, those so that they can listen to 'em and they can hear. Because if you're from overseas, hiring overseas, you don't necessarily understand like what makes good. Yeah.
John Wilson: The nuance. Yeah,
Jack Carr: nuance. And so we, we've done that. Um, so we've done like a lot of SOPs inside the quick staffers business, which then helps drive rapid response business.
Yeah. In the same way, just like recruiter SOPs cut over, things like that. So I, I'd love to deep dive that one day because that would be super [00:32:00] interesting to me on like what else you're doing and how else that fits. 'cause I think that as you grow, like that's huge. But back to recruiters, sorry. And, um.
Talent acquisition.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: So we got top of funnel. Yeah.
John Wilson: Setting that plan. It, it's even like, it's the planning stage before you even go to the job post. Mm-hmm. So step one, plan, who do you need a year out from now? And that if that, if you're listening and you're like, I don't know, like, that sounds like hard work, then that's definitely the first place you should start.
Yeah. Like you need to sit down and like start to think about it. Because I know that I always, it's the same with financial budgets. Well, I was like, always, we're growing too fast for that. Well, how? How do you do it,
Jack Carr: John?
John Wilson: I grew 30% this year and we budgeted it.
Jack Carr: Yeah. How do you do it though? Because I know we do it.
Yeah. By like we, we have our goal that we're trying to meet. Yeah. We break that down into what it looks like monthly based on the percent of revenue that should come into by month. Then we break that down into division. How much should HVAC do? How much should plumbing do? Then we break that down into, well, what does that [00:33:00] mean on a.
We sell 70% install, 30% service. Mm-hmm. How so? How many calls do we need? Or how many jobs booked do we need? Yeah. On installs. And we break that down even further. And well, we have to run four service calls for every job. For every install. Right. And so we just like work it all the way back. And what we end up getting to is like, oh, we're short 1.3 technicians.
Short 2.2 technicians, so to, to succeed next year. Like that's what that's gonna look like. And let's look at it on a monthly basis so we know when to hire that person.
John Wilson: We've been using Avoca AI for over a year, and Tyson and the team have just been incredible partners. We've been able to catch more after hours calls, more weekend calls, and book more jobs automatically.
Make sure you click the link below and tell 'em we sent you, we do the same. Yeah, we just start from the other side.
Speaker 3: Okay,
John Wilson: so I think one of us is going backwards.
Jack Carr: Who knows? Oh, let's, let's have another on air [00:34:00] argument. It's probably me. Who knows?
John Wilson: I'm not gonna throw any punches. Who knows? Okay. Uh, but one of us is going backwards.
Jack Carr: I'm curious to, he
John Wilson: might be bald.
Jack Carr: Don't we bust out that bald cap for you? I,
John Wilson: yeah. Yeah. Where'd that go? Um, well, here I, here I must ask you a question. Yeah. Um, okay. So we do the same thing. We just like literally flip it so it starts with number of leads.
Jack Carr: Okay.
John Wilson: Uh, it's a little bit more predictable. That makes sense.
So if, if I think about what is revenue? Revenue is number of jobs. Mm-hmm. Times closing rate, times average ticket. That's it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
John Wilson: So budgeting, so starting with a revenue first budget doesn't make a lot of sense. 'cause then we're guessing at three factors, whereas like we kinda know two of these three factors already.
Like [00:35:00] if you've been on a CRM for a while, like you can pull your historical, like maybe it's improving your average ticket, like you can figure it out. So when we're looking at average ticket. What was the last 12 months? What was the last 90 days? Assuming that we've made operational enhancements in the last 90 days.
Yeah. So like, we're gonna, we're we're gonna say, Hey, the last 90 days is probably the most accurate for the next 12 months. Our closing rate last 12 months, last 90 days, assuming we've made enhancements, so let's like, maybe improve that another point or two to set a goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah,
John Wilson: but we think it'll, Hey, if our, if my closure is 52% in plumbing, I think I can be at 55.
The budget number of leads, we pull number of leads by department, historical, and we look at a couple years of growth. Mm-hmm. And then that's where you make assumptions.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: But the first two, you don't really make assumptions. It's sort of like,
Jack Carr: I don't think's what I'm doing. When we work our backwards, we don't make those assumptions either though, [00:36:00] right?
Mm-hmm. So like when I utilize. Hey, we do 70% in installs, 30% revenue. Yeah. Like then we break down that revenue number, uh, or service number by the average ticket. So that's gonna be worth approximately X percent of the revenue. Yeah. So like we, and we close that X rate, which then drives us backwards to how many leads we need.
I think you are just the, the actual reason why yours is the correct way is because you are owning the lead gen side versus saying how many leads you need side. So like ours is more of a pie in the sky. We have to hit 6 million, whatever, you know, random reason. We need to drive this many leads, this many need to be marketing.
This many need to be TGL flips. This many need to be just raw leads and we close at this rate. So like we, we use all that same information, but I think that we are, we are using that to drive how much we need on the front. You are using, how much you need, how much you have on the front, and how much you know you can get on the front to drive what you're gonna do on the back, [00:37:00] which is the right way.
And it lets you change the target. Yeah. 'cause then you could turn the dial on this side and do versus like guess and say, okay, I need to drive, you know, 70 more leads here. Yeah. That's trying to hit the goal of lead generation versus using the goal of lead generation almost state revenue. Well, it's almost,
John Wilson: but yes.
Like absolutely. It's, it's taking control over leads, which everyone has control over leads. You just gotta figure it out. But you got it. You did. And then, hey, if, if I, if I budget 52% close rate. Then this is what the revenue outcome is. But what if we train a bunch and we do a bunch of ride-alongs and we invest in, uh, AI ride-along, and instead of 55, we're at 60?
Well, the revenue impact is like millions of dollars. Yeah. So that's a part of why we like going bottom up, is because if we're using KPIs to budget, then when you, Hey, if my average ticket rose by 50 bucks. That's a $3 million difference. Mm-hmm. Like literal, $3 million difference. [00:38:00] So when you're looking, when you're, when you're measuring like that, you get to see, hey, this is what this enhancement looks like.
Yeah. Now how do we go chase that? How do we get 60% close rate? How do we how add $50 to average ticket, is that a price increase? Is that new services? Is
Jack Carr: that Definitely any market? It's interesting. I, I think we need to, I'm gonna retry the exercise from bottom up instead. See
John Wilson: we have most of the data.
Jack Carr: We have all the data.
You have all the data. Yeah. So you
John Wilson: look at years of leads, you could now leads is where you have to assume that you'll succeed.
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
John Wilson: And this year we were a little bit more cautious, um, didn't end up being necessary 'cause we killed it, but we were very, we were, we were really concerned in October, um, that.
With like AI coming to search and like what that was gonna do to Google's lead flow, which seven, eight months ago Google was 60% of our leads. It's no longer. But that was a [00:39:00] real concern. So we were like, okay, we have to be conservative on our leads. Um, but the other ones were like, kind of, it was, it was, uh, almost embarrassing how straightforward it was.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Because it's like this is our close rate and I didn't have to make something up. Um. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Always feels good. Sweet. So we've broken down the recruitment process to,
John Wilson: well, and, sorry, we got onto that 'cause we're talking about budgeting for hires. Yeah. So that's how you do it. You roughly figure out how many exactly leads you're gonna have to run next June, so you can figure out the team size that you need.
Yep. It might be off by one or two.
Jack Carr: And, and to, to extrapolate a step further, you also need like. You will have a ratio of service text to installers. I mean, that should actually tell you. So you don't even need to extrapolate because you'll know how many units you're installing and how many physical could go in, in this period of time.
And um, how many people need to do that. Right. So Sweet man. Yeah. Super helpful. That's always, I really in depth on recruiting. [00:40:00]
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's like everyth else that comes out to be just
Jack Carr: Yeah. Branding and sales. Just like every other part of the business. It's like how do you brand yourself and sell yourself as a company to, to your technicians and like, is what you're offering to the market good?
Like, is your position good? Is your comp until AI turns, everyone's into plumbers and then we just have a slew of plumbing and HVAC and electricians beating down your door. It does
John Wilson: kind of feel like a to take over potential
Jack Carr: outcome. That's what they're saying. I not, that's not me. This is not Jack saying that's what the.
The interwebs is saying.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. Just like the only jobs will be hands-on jobs. Yep.
Jack Carr: Which everyone goes straight to plumber, so that'll be the day that's gonna be, that's gonna be interesting. We'll see. We'll see. Sweet man, that was good. Yeah. I appreciate it. If you like what you heard, I will, I will sub, you will sub, I'll sub to this one.
I'll sub, I'll, I'll sub to this. I, I would like this video
John Wilson: too, if
Jack Carr: you like what you heard. You like that John said that I was right for [00:41:00] once, if you like that. He, he said that he loves my bald head. I don't, I don't remember that. You don't remember saying of that? Oh, well, if you like any of that, subscribe and follow for more and make sure you check out, uh, the workshop@ownitoperated.com.
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