In this episode of Owned and Operated, John Wilson is joined by Jack Carr from Jackquisitions to break down how to hire the perfect employee—the true A-player who moves your business forward. From defining success to matching personality to role, John and Jack share a 4-step playbook to build an offer A-players want, market the job like a product, scope roles tightly with clear KPIs, and screen for the right behavioral fit.
They dive into why you should treat hiring like marketing & sales, how to position your Indeed post (lead with “No On-Call,” Guaranteed 40 Hours, etc.), why unrealistic comp bands repel talent, and how scenario-based interviews reveal coaching temperament. John shares real examples from running a $30M HVAC, plumbing & electric company and the QA Tech role that slashed callbacks.
Together, they unpack:
• Offer first: Would you choose you? Comp, benefits, trucks, safety, facility
• Market the job: Indeed ≈ GMB—headline your differentiators to get seen
• Tight scope + KPIs: Roles people actually want, with success metrics in the post
• Personality-to-seat fit: Coach vs. closer; stress tests & scenario questions (QA Tech example)
🎙️ Host
John Wilson
🎙️ Guest
Jack Carr
💼 Special Thanks to First Internet Bank!
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OAO 244 Transcript
John Wilson: [00:00:00] The video is not how to hire an employee. The video is how to hire the perfect employee, the A player that moves the business forward. What's does success look like? What do we think that candidate would look like?
Jack Carr: But it's also like, Hey, you
John Wilson: are the right personality type for this exact role. Totally.
Who is the human being and what are the attributes of that person that would make them successful?
Jack Carr: Because that's another part of it too, right? Is how you're managing your Indeed profile. You just let it sit for weeks. Nobody's gonna see it.
John Wilson: What we want to have is clean expectations. Is our compensation good?
Is our benefits good?
Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I am your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a $30 million HVAC, plumbing and electric company in Ohio. Today I'm joined by Jack Carr from Jack Acquisitions. Today we're talking about how to hire the perfect employees, the ultimate hiring guide. Make sure you watch till the end, 'cause the last one's probably the best.
What's going on, John? Let's do it. Hiring people, man. 20, 25. We're here. It's a weird hiring year.
Jack Carr: [00:01:00] Yeah, no, I mean it is, it is definitely a weird hiring year. Uh, I think it's because of leads have been weird, but. How do we hire people is the real question? Yeah. Going into 25, the best people, right?
John Wilson: So 2025 is weird.
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So we're gonna be talking about the four steps to hire the perfect employee. The ultimate hiring guide. So step one
Jack Carr: sweet. I mean step one, before you start [00:02:00] even looking to post on Indeed or you start going out and you know, ruffling feathers at, at the supply house, first step, best step is to take a look inward.
Yeah. Say what does my company actually offer? Start doing some market research. Start trying to figure out. If you were a technician, would you choose? You? Would you choose you?
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And then how do you make that happen? Yeah. It's like how do you change your offering before you start offering to make sure that that's applicable?
A great example that I always see is if you had some money to spend towards, Hey, we offer a, um, life insurance policy. Yeah. For all of our people. Do technicians actually want that? Do they sign up for that? Do they know that? Do they know that? Yeah. And making sure that you figure those items out before you start.
Because if you start, you're gonna waste some time. You're gonna waste money spending on deed for not the best technicians.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Like, is your pay good? Is your benefits good? Like, can you hire, can you retain? And to me this, [00:03:00] uh. I think the framework for hiring that just makes a ton of sense to me is hiring is marketing and sales.
It's, it's just marketing and sales to internal customers instead of external customers. So when we're thinking about hiring, it's the same thing. Like, Hey, why would a customer wanna work with us? Why would a technician wanna work with us? Mm-hmm. Why would a call taker wanna work with us? Yep. Like what are the features and benefits of working with Wilson?
So they've got great pay, they show up on time. The pricing's good, like it's all the same thing. It's just a different customer base. The technician, the employee. Yeah. So yeah, I think we all put a ton of thought into, uh, how we're thinking about how we show up to customers, our pricing, how we price jobs, how we sell jobs.
Mm-hmm. Is the same thing. Is our compensation good? Is our benefits good? Are we physically in a safe location that people want to show up to work? Or are we in the cheapest place we could find? Like, do the trucks look good? The do I have to drive
Jack Carr: around in a heater, do drive around, gonna break down drive That could endanger my life
John Wilson: long.
Yeah. If, if someone's not willing to invest in my [00:04:00] safety with, uh, newer vehicles mm-hmm. What else are they not willing to invest in? Yeah,
Jack Carr: I think that's huge and I think it's a forgotten step. I mean, it, it sounds silly, but like, oh, we know that technicians are paid $32 and we're gonna offer health kind of a half.
Yeah, yeah. Half healthcare. Yeah. And then that's all we're gonna do. Yep. But a, I, I guess this moves kind of into step two though, is Yeah. Um, it's actually showing that and being forward with that. There's, and there's kind of two ways marketing it. It's
John Wilson: you market it. So how do we build something that people want?
Then how do we tell the whole world about it? Step two, branding and sales. How do we introduce the world to the fact. We have jobs.
Jack Carr: Yep. I mean it, it's funny 'cause during the workshop we were comparing indeed to like an aggregator, but they're very similar or indeed to GMB or indeed to Gmmb. Excuse me.
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. And it, they're very similar, like GM B it's your storefront. Yeah, yeah. For customers. Indeed is your storefront. Yes. For technicians. Yes. And for recruiting. I mean, not only technicians, but anybody you're gonna hire. Yeah. Um, and so making sure that as you [00:05:00] go through Indeed, you are looking and, and curating your post.
Yeah. To
John Wilson: show that and to be forward. Yeah. And then well e even on the feature side, like GMB is gonna be like, Hey, here's the times we're open, we run weekends, no on-call. You know, good price. Like whatever your GMB attributes are.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Indeed's the same thing. Like I think just look at your job compared to everyone else's job.
What do they say? Mm-hmm. What do yours say? Like, do they say no on call? Well, we, we did this yesterday. Yeah. Like I don't have on call, but we don't put that on our job description, like on our job title. So like we're doing it wrong, like we need to go do that because the next two people next to us all said no on call.
So if I was someone looking for somewhere to work, I'd be like, well, I don't wanna do on-call. That sucks. We got rid of it in the first place, but we're not advertising it.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And then there was another one we looked at, which I found extremely interesting, and that was. Guaranteed 40 hours or is a guaranteed work week.
Yes. Right. And so I, I was thinking about that from the standpoint of if you are a [00:06:00] technician and you're leaving your current company
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Why are you leaving your current
John Wilson: company, especially in 2025?
Jack Carr: In 2025 in a shoulder season? Yeah. You're looking for stability. It's because I don't have stability where I'm at.
Yeah. I don't have full job board. Yep. And they only put me on one job today. So if I see that. They're guaranteeing a 32 or a 40. Totally. Like that's a win. Mm-hmm. Like, that's what I'm optimizing for. 'cause that's why I'm leaving. Yeah. So, uh, making sure that whatever those benefits are that you came up with, maybe it is No, no.
On call. Maybe it is the, the how much you're gonna spend. Maybe it is the, the, the medical, the dental, whatever, the 10,000 things you could offer. Mm-hmm. Once you come up with those things, step two is to be very forward.
John Wilson: Yeah. Right.
Jack Carr: It's to show the world. That's what you do. And make sure that, um, people are seeing it.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: because that's another part of it too, right? Is is being good with your, how you're managing your Indeed profile. If you just put something up there, you put no paid behind it, you just let it sit for weeks, nobody's gonna see it.
John Wilson: Well, I mean, even worse than [00:07:00] that, like I've talked with people that are like, dude, we just cannot find anybody.
I'm like, oh man, yeah. What are you like, what are you doing? Like, that sounds like a serious issue. Like, you know, it's gonna hold the business back. And they're like, well, we put a yard sign out in front of the building. And then I'm like, and what else? And they're like, well, that's it. I'm like, well, how many, like one plumber a year probably drives by your facility.
Like that's the most ridiculous thing in the world. So just make sure you're where people are looking. No one is looking on your side street where your business happens to be located for a job. Like that's, that's a ridiculous thing now, unless we're gonna put one out front of our shop. 'cause now two people moved onto our street, so we'll try to grab their text.
Better pay.
Jack Carr: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's funny. No, I, I mean, it makes sense. I think about a lot. The one that we hear, I hear a lot is, oh, I told my technicians that there's a signing bonus.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: And that's all. And I'm going, yeah, that's good. It's a good first step or a good additional step. Yeah. But that's not the only step, like mm-hmm.
You gotta, you have to be in front of people. Yeah. Like, it's like word of mouth. You can run a business on word of [00:08:00] mouth. Mm-hmm. It's great business. You're not gonna be able to scale. Yeah, so same things apply. It's a lot of the same concepts as scale and marketing, and number two. And then number three, probably one of the most important decisions you can make in your ETA journey is which SBA lender.
You are gonna pick a lender who will be in your corner to get you closed on the deal, as well as set you up for future expansion. That is why we partnered with Alan Peterson from First Internet Bank. He and his team take a how can we approach as well as I personally know they specialize in home service acquisitions.
Mention the show or my handsome bald head and receive a reduced good faith deposit, as well as a detailed deal review and maybe even a buy-side. Prequalification, no strings attached. Head on over to Alan FIB. Dot com. That's A-L-A-N-F-I b.com, or click the link below to get connected.
John Wilson: Is your job description relevant?
Like do you know what you're hiring for in the [00:09:00] first place? Yeah. We make this mistake a lot. We do. We still make this mistake. Mm-hmm. Uh, now we've gotten so much better at it over the years, but what we really like, what do we want? And is it realistic? Hey, I want a, the best HVAC installer slash service guy slash sales guy who can also pick up the phone for me and work part-time, like, yeah, it's crazy.
I, I'll listen to some of the job descriptions that people put together and it's, it's. Like 15 literal, different, completely different jobs. And, um, but they're like, yeah, like just hire the, pick up the phone on the weekends at the nights. That'll be great. Also, if you could dispatch during the day, and it's like my guy, no one wants that job.
Yeah. And if somebody does accept that job, they're desperate. They're gonna leave in 30 days when they find something not ridiculous. So make sure the job description is relevant to, uh, like what you actually need them to do. And make sure that it is a tight enough [00:10:00] scope of responsibility that you know if they're doing a good job or not.
Yeah. And if you're doing 10 different people's jobs, no one can know if you're doing a good job or not. You're just gonna, you know, you're not gonna do a good job.
Jack Carr: So from an applicable, um, idea here, does that, does that look like, uh, I know a lot of times we see, hey, I want you to be a comfort advisor. I want you to sell units mm-hmm.
Or sell product or sell something, then I also want you to service that, that mm-hmm. Product fix it. Then I also want you to, if you could install it too,
John Wilson: that'd be great. And then by the way, do you think you could help pick up the phone? Like just like that happens a lot. Like I know service managers being compensated like.
You know, base plus bonus, 90, a hundred thousand dollars. They're part-time call taking. They're part-time dispatching. I don't think that's the best use of that salary. Parttime parts people. Yeah, part-time parts people. Part-time. Fleet manager. Like that's not the best use of that salary. So what's the job description?
How am I gonna hold you accountable? How am I going to measure you and [00:11:00] what does success look like for your position?
Jack Carr: So that's a good point. Do you put that on your job description? Absolutely. How we measure, we the metrics measure, like what you're expecting them to do.
John Wilson: A hundred percent.
Jack Carr: That's, we need to start doing that.
Yeah.
John Wilson: So we, because what we do, what we want to have is Kleen expectations. Like, hey, what you can ex what that tells, what I hope that tells the applicant is, what you can expect from us is we are an organized. Business, we know what success looks like for your position and this is what it looks like. If you do these things, you will be successful.
Yeah.
Jack Carr: And when driving top talent, like there's also, it also calls out a lot of not top talent. Yeah. Because if somebody looks at that job, they're like,
John Wilson: ah,
Jack Carr: I'm
John Wilson: gonna be held to a standard.
Jack Carr: And well, even, even if, and not only held to the job standard, but like. Hey, if I'm a, if I can only do $800,000 a year as a ca mm-hmm.
And your thing says 3 million, I'm not even applying.
John Wilson: Yeah.
Jack Carr: Like I'm looking at that going, that's crazy. That's not even possible. Yeah. But that technician that's doing 4 million, he's like, oh yeah, I can hit that. Yeah. So you're breaking in [00:12:00] confidence
John Wilson: right out the gate. Totally. And the, the video is how to hire the perfect employee.
Yeah. The video is not how to hire an employee. The video is how to hire the perfect employee, the A player that moves the business forward. So you have to set standards that you like. What does the A player look like? How do we set these, uh, standards and how do we, how do they know how they're gonna be measured?
How do they know how they can win? Like. People need to know what they're gonna make. You know, we, we were looking at a job description, uh, yesterday during the workshop. The, the compensation was 60 to $250,000.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: My
Jack Carr: quick take one to 3 million. Like, it could be, that's anything That's
John Wilson: crazy.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Like, that's crazy.
Uh, and the, the employer's probably like, I think I'm showing that there's some opportunity here and the average employee's gonna look at that and be like, I know that when I apply for this job. They're gonna try to push me at 60. Yep. They're gonna try to get, they're gonna try to pay me 60 for 250 worth of work.
Jack Carr: Yeah. And or the other thing I always [00:13:00] wonder is like, is it a $60,000 position or is it a 250,000 position? Totally. Like, those are completely two different expectations. So four
John Wilson: times,
Jack Carr: yeah. Change. Yeah. So, I mean, I, I don't even know how they come up with those numbers. It doesn't make sense.
John Wilson: Number four, most important in my mind is we have.
Created a good compensation and benefits program. Mm-hmm. We've got a place that is good to work. We have new trucks, we have like a clean office. We have core values on the wall. Like we've done the thing, we've told people that the job exists. We've, you know, advertised it, we promote it on Indeed or ZipRecruiter or wherever, maybe a front out sign out in front of the building.
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Open phone, no missed calls, no missed customers. As we think about all of those things together, who is the human being and what are the attributes of that person that would make them successful? Like what's gonna make them tick? We're here to identify A players, so something that. We've just learned, you know, we've hired hundreds of people and something that we've learned in the failures is that we ignored the parts that made them tick.
They had a great resume. They had the perfect background. They were well talked inside our interview. Mm-hmm. But we hired them for a position that we expect sales they committed. They said, yeah, I can hit that expectation. That's in the job description. [00:15:00] I'm totally down for that. But when we dive into their motivations a little bit, like they're not money hungry.
They're not motivated by money. They think they can hit that. They like the idea that there's an aspirational dollar amount that they can drive, but like what makes them tick isn't dollar. So they're not aligned. With what we're trying to do,
Jack Carr: what comes to mind is when you hire a comfort advisor who's sales only commission forces a base a hundred percent.
And, uh, they, they force a base or, uh, a job comes in at 9:00 PM at night. There's two types of employees. There's one that's commission driven, that's hungry, and it's gonna go, yes, I'll take, send me that job, job, I'm gonna be out there, I'm gonna go sell that. And there's, then they're like, ah, put it on tomorrow.
John Wilson: Yeah,
Jack Carr: put it on my schedule tomorrow. And then. Between 9:00 PM somebody's, somebody's a player shows up, sells them the unit, and tomorrow you get a cancellation.
John Wilson: Yeah, that's perfect. So I think when, when we've started doing job descriptions, especially jobs that we've never hired for before we take, uh, I, I think like an ounce of preparation is [00:16:00] worth a pound of like post.
Yeah. So we. We take some time and we're, we just think through like, Hey, here's this job description. Here's how we've decided to compensate this job. Here's the benefit. Here's everything about this job. Here's the, you know, the metrics. What's a success look like? Mm-hmm. And what do we think that candidate.
Would look like, would look like. Yeah. Uh, and it's not always the same. Like you don't want a sales hungry like alpha driver in your accounting seat, right? So you can't use the same archetype for every position in your company. Yeah. You want someone pretty compliant in your accounting seat. You want someone dedicated, you want someone who's, who's gonna be detail oriented.
That's a totally different. Like profile of human being Yeah. Than a sales manager.
Jack Carr: Oh, a hundred percent.
John Wilson: And like a sales manager is a totally different profile from a salesperson like sales manager. They need to be a coach. They need to be kind of an alpha. They wanna win, but they need to be a coach.
Like when, so when we're trying to identify personality, [00:17:00] Hey, this guy messed up, like he's having a bad week. What do you do? How do you handle that? Yeah. Like what do you think? Uh, and how they answer. That's really interesting. We started coming up with very specific examples. So we had a, we have a position right now, it's called a quality assurance Tech.
So their whole job is to close down installs, so we don't have, uh, callbacks. So the day after we install a job, he visits like checks It basically. Good to go. That's wild. Yeah. Yeah. First off, flex. Secondly, right? Secondly, when we think about that role, like what do we need? We need someone detail oriented.
We need someone highly, technically competent, but like. I bet most contractors would stop right there. Mm-hmm. Like, hey, there's one, like really one to two really important things that come next. You're closing up the job. How good are you at talking to customers because you are the last person in that home.
Yeah. Like you gotta be the best, most personable person in the world. And finally, when you find a mistake, and [00:18:00] it is your job to find mistakes. How will you coach that back? Mm-hmm. So what we did is we created some absolute bullshit scenarios. We tried to come up with the dumbest, most annoying possible mistake to follow someone up on and ask, Hey, how would you handle this?
So like one of 'em was. They piped the condensate backwards, so it just went the wrong way. Like, I don't like what? What do you think? Like that happened yesterday. How do you think you'd handle that? And we're looking for someone to say, oh, that's just, how could they po? That's so stupid. That'd be like perfect.
You're not the, you're not the person we were looking for. That's,
Jack Carr: I'm not the person 'cause that's exactly what I said.
John Wilson: Yeah. Well, so would I, yeah. Like, so would I I'd be like, are you serious? You actually piped the condensate backwards. Like totally. Like, so a really, like, are they a fit for the position you want the most patient?
Technically on, honestly too, coaching person in that seat. What a great
Jack Carr: position for some of those older technicians who are trying to get outta the [00:19:00] field. They love coaching and they love showing their knowledge. Like it's a great position. It's a great position. Not for me. Yeah. 'cause I would yell at the person, be like, you're an idiot.
John Wilson: Totally
Jack Carr: still never do that again.
John Wilson: Totally. So like, so a lot of it is how do we find out what's gonna make 'em tick? How do we create some scenarios, uh, so we understand how they're gonna react under stress?
Jack Carr: That's super interesting. 'cause I assumed it was just gonna be like number four was gonna be culture.
Like are they a culture fit? Which is part of it. Like that's a, but that's like a very, I think culture fit. On step four is part of what you're saying. Yeah, but it's a sliver. Yeah. That is a sliver because it's not only that you fit in with the business and people like you and that you're, you work here, but it's also like, Hey, you are the right personality type for this exact role.
Totally
John Wilson: thi this is, I think, the most important and most overlooked step.
Jack Carr: Yeah.
John Wilson: Makes sense. Like what makes you tick as a human being? What makes you unique? And what makes you uniquely qualified for this seat?
Jack Carr: Yeah. 'cause, we'll, we'll do Ridealongs and it's like, hey, this is an installer, it's a RideAlong position.
[00:20:00] Or they do a RideAlong mm-hmm. To see if they're a good culture fit. You know, the other technician likes 'em, they're knowledge, he's a good guy. There's no, they're not, he's knowledgeable. He knows to, I, I have bes with him. Yeah. But then, or, and yeah. And he is good installer, but then he gets started and Yeah.
And there's just something he's just not, it's a good cultural fit, but not a good fit for that role.
John Wilson: Yeah. Yeah.
Jack Carr: Um. For whatever the 10,000 reasons may be. Yeah. And it's just his personality isn't good for exposition that position. Yeah. Wild. Yeah, man, that, that, I'm
John Wilson: glad I brought some, yeah,
Jack Carr: you brought some knowledge even to me on this one.
Not that I'm super knowledgeable, so,
John Wilson: well, I'm glad I brought some heat. That's good. So those are the four steps to hiring the perfect employee, the ultimate hiring guide, uh, 2020 fives, uh, you know, a unique year for hiring. Uh, but hopefully this playbook gives, uh, some tools in the toolbox. Sweet.
Jack Carr: I appreciate it.
John Wilson: If you like what you heard, make sure you check out owned and operated.com. Leave a comment below with a cool benefit that you offer your employees. Look, it's up.
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