Are There Any Good Or Bad Places To Advertise For Help Wanted?

Melissa

I'm getting everything ready to place a help wanted ad. I'm a little nervous because we've never hired complete strangers before. Also, we live in such a highly populated and diverse area, that I don't have any idea what kind of responses we are going to get, if any I guess.

We have 3 big newspapers for our area, and several small community papers, and several zip codes for Penysaver ads, and I was even thinking about a couple of local colleges???? Of course I'll advertise it here on Contractor Talk

Anyone have any tips or good or bad experiences to share?

Grumpy

www.craigslist.org It's free so the most you can lose is your time.

Search around this forum because hiring can be daunting. I know it is for me. I finally found some good people, but I know hiring is not one of my strengths. There is alot of good advice re interview questions etc..

Mike Finley

I'm sure you will get more responses that you think you will, I hope you put something in place to help you weed through them. If not you will not believe the amount of time you can waste talking to the 99 who you won't end up hiring and might miss the 1 that you will.

Melissa

That's right- I forgot about Craigslist! (BTW don't ever forget the 's' and put a .com instead of a .org )

I was going to put in the ad if they are interested to fax or email their resume- that right there should weed out a bit that don't know how to use a computer. Then, the one's I do get, we'll go over to see who has the most experience, and set up interviews with those ones. Think it'll work to not waste so much time? I might even leave off our phone number???

Grumpy

What I have learned is especially when it comes to labor, it is very easy to bull chit. I would probably get passed a carpentry interview as a journeyman, but put me on the job and I am about an apprentice.

When I hire labor, skilled especially, I ask them what they know but I tell them their first day will be the real interview. I tell them I will know right away what they are capable of doing and if they lied, it will be their last day. I also give a gray area when it comes to pay. I tell them if they know what they say they know I could pay $x ammount, but I want to start them lower for a few days or weeks to truly see what they are capable of doing.

Mike Finley

I think anything you do with be better than nothing. I'm not sure how the resume thing would go as a pre-qualifier. I suspect there are plenty of skill craftsman that don't have resumes and don't even have a clue on how to put one together, so I just don't know if that would eliminate some good potential employees.

I use our website to pre-screen and it has worked like a charm. I put our phone number in the ad and gave everybody who called about 60 seconds of my time initially, just enough to explain who we were and how to proceed. From there they had to go to our website and fill out the online questionnaire - not an application, more of a general information gatherer. One of the things I found really helpful was to ask them to describe a set of pre-defined skills on a scale of 1 to 10. This turned out to be more helpful than I had ever imagined. I was then able to read the information they submitted at my leisure and do a follow up call to make sure it was worth meeting with them in person to have them fill out an actual application and do an interview.

I got about 100 phone inquiries and only about 1/2 of them ever followed through to submit on line. Just imagine the time saved in deleting 50 people off your list automatically. That's a lot of time I would have wasted dealing with 50 people who were flakes.

Dave-Raleigh

I think how you word the ad will either help or hinder the quality of potential employees that will respond moreso than where you post it.

Considering that this is the summer time and most people should already be gainfully employed what do you have to pick from on the ones that are left?

Since yoiu are in bathroom/kitchen remodels you could say drug test will be required, 5 year driving record required and a background check will be done. That will cost you a few $ on the ones you do plan to hire but it should stop some of the flakes from responding. You don't want flakes going into occupied residences and causing you potential problems.

I like the idea of responding electronically too but that may eleminate some more experienced people that just happen to not be computer literate.

Woz the Painter

Craigslist sucks!!!!!!!