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Finding Experienced employees
- Thread starter creativeations2010
- Start date
Constructive criticism - It looks as though you may be better suited with four people instead of one person that can do it all. You job description currently says "Looking for a sole proprietor that wants to run their own business for me- Must be willing to work hard for me learning every aspect of the business then leave after 3-5 years and become my competitor.
I also think that you are looking for someone that doesn't exist - how are you going to find a competent graphic designer, customer service person, installer, and production person who is actually good in all areas- That person does not exist - what you will get is a half *** employee that doesn't have time to be good at any one position. Perhaps you need to hire per project or part time until you are in a position to bring on more full time employees -
Person A job description -
Looking for a part time / freelance graphic designer that has 2-5 years experience Adobe Creative Suite. Previous large format design experience preferred but not required blah blah blah - You can have a designer work from anywhere - I have an extensive list of designers all over from nashville to nyc that specialize in high end, low end and range in fee from $20/hr to $75/hour. Just have to be very specific of what you want and have to be detailed with customer expectations - it works well but out of all the qualifications listed in the job description this seems the one that would weed out most potential candidates.
Person B Job description - Inside sales associate Part time / full time - Ability to work closely with customers with regard to pricing, design ideas and order processing. Must enjoy fast pace environment blah blah blah this person could also help with marketing promotions in their downtime or help put some processes in place to help you be more efficient.
Person C Job Description - Looking for production associate - someone who has previous experience working in a sign shop, running cutter, printers, post production a plus but not required blah blah blah
Person D Job Description - Looking for installers to help install graphics, signs, blah blah blah - outsource
I also think that you are looking for someone that doesn't exist - how are you going to find a competent graphic designer, customer service person, installer, and production person who is actually good in all areas- That person does not exist - what you will get is a half *** employee that doesn't have time to be good at any one position. Perhaps you need to hire per project or part time until you are in a position to bring on more full time employees -
Person A job description -
Looking for a part time / freelance graphic designer that has 2-5 years experience Adobe Creative Suite. Previous large format design experience preferred but not required blah blah blah - You can have a designer work from anywhere - I have an extensive list of designers all over from nashville to nyc that specialize in high end, low end and range in fee from $20/hr to $75/hour. Just have to be very specific of what you want and have to be detailed with customer expectations - it works well but out of all the qualifications listed in the job description this seems the one that would weed out most potential candidates.
Person B Job description - Inside sales associate Part time / full time - Ability to work closely with customers with regard to pricing, design ideas and order processing. Must enjoy fast pace environment blah blah blah this person could also help with marketing promotions in their downtime or help put some processes in place to help you be more efficient.
Person C Job Description - Looking for production associate - someone who has previous experience working in a sign shop, running cutter, printers, post production a plus but not required blah blah blah
Person D Job Description - Looking for installers to help install graphics, signs, blah blah blah - outsource
creativeations2010
New Member
No worries, I'm not taking it personally. I was in need of this reality check. Everybody had some great points and I appreciate it! These forums are a great resource and I wish I had taken advantage of them earlier. Thanks everyone!
ExecuPrintGS
New Member
What school is actually teaching this? I would love to know... everyone locally who is a graphic designer that we have ever talked to doesn't have a clue how to set files up for wide format printing.
Id love to know a school that actually does so we could pursue some of those students.
rjssigns
Active Member
What school is actually teaching this? I would love to know... everyone locally who is a graphic designer that we have ever talked to doesn't have a clue how to set files up for wide format printing.
Id love to know a school that actually does so we could pursue some of those students.
NWTC. Programs within degrees are driven by the employers needs.
Rick
Certified Enneadecagon Designer
I'm guessing no one ever worked at a mom and pop store before...
I had to know everything... engraving, router, silkscreen, cut, print, design
slap it on vinyl, install at the shop... I even had to clean up the joint.
She doesn't do all of that, this is a digital print shop. Most of you are self
taught and learned how to run the equipment and applied vinyl to stuff.
The production of it is fairly simple.
I'm guessing her shop grosses 100-150k a year max.
There is no luxury of hiring a specialist employees at those numbers.
If she was doing 400k a year... maybe
If you know your equipment really good, then any designer that can rub circles
on their belly while tapping on their head while singing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" can
be taught how to run the equipment. It's trained monkey work. I get being "certified"
and taught, but it's still getting a degree in button pressing. This is digital print...
the stuff most newbies strolling in start off with.
If you don't know your equipment well, you need to master it in order to teach it.
If you find where your bottle necks are, get a system in place, you might be able
to get away with a designer who sorta knows production, or a production person
who sorta knows design. I'm thinking the first one is a better way to go.
I had to know everything... engraving, router, silkscreen, cut, print, design
slap it on vinyl, install at the shop... I even had to clean up the joint.
She doesn't do all of that, this is a digital print shop. Most of you are self
taught and learned how to run the equipment and applied vinyl to stuff.
The production of it is fairly simple.
I'm guessing her shop grosses 100-150k a year max.
There is no luxury of hiring a specialist employees at those numbers.
If she was doing 400k a year... maybe
If you know your equipment really good, then any designer that can rub circles
on their belly while tapping on their head while singing "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" can
be taught how to run the equipment. It's trained monkey work. I get being "certified"
and taught, but it's still getting a degree in button pressing. This is digital print...
the stuff most newbies strolling in start off with.
If you don't know your equipment well, you need to master it in order to teach it.
If you find where your bottle necks are, get a system in place, you might be able
to get away with a designer who sorta knows production, or a production person
who sorta knows design. I'm thinking the first one is a better way to go.
Marlene
New Member
seems like you are asking for a lot but not saying what they will get in return. people will want to know both what you expect and what they can expect from you. no benefits like insurance or any mention of pay, paid vacations or anything like that in your ad. the ad is one sided and only seems to be directed on what you want and there's nothing in it for them.
rjssigns
Active Member
Rick makes some valid points. I've been asked what qualifications an employee should have before I'd consider hiring. My response is always the same. I'd base my decision on attitude and personality first. Any experience they bring to the table is a bonus. I can train them what they need to know. I also add attendance. I'm a stickler for punctuality and seeing a job through to completion.
Look for the basic attributes any employee should have, like showing up on time every day and working your scheduled hours. Both of these seem to be in short supply.
Look for the basic attributes any employee should have, like showing up on time every day and working your scheduled hours. Both of these seem to be in short supply.
Good points on everything. If its me, I would always choose the better designer and hope they can be taught the production stuff, but there's no guarantee that any strategy one employs will work if a good organizational and compensation system isn't also already in place.
Our new employee has been here about 4 months now and we chose the candidate who had some sign shop experience and was the best designer of the lot. Once hired, we realized that his previous experience was really limited by the fact that he worked at a failing franchise sign company and the owners were not experienced or good signmakers. So his two years of experience actually was more like only 3-6 months of real sign shop experience. His work ethic, desire to learn, and daily effort has really helped us overcome the early impression that he did not come away with much valuable knowledge in that first job.
We had advertised for experienced help for months and months with nearly no qualified applicants responding. The minute we rewrote the ad and added the words "entry level", we were flooded with responses and nearly everyone had some experience in a sign shop environment. I think many younger workers in America struggle with confidence and self-esteem issues and are reluctant to apply if they think a job as advertised is over their heads. I think that could be an issue with the OP's ad. Its way too detailed and demanding of pre-existing skillsets for anyone but a really experienced person.
The only minor problems we're having is that he like many other younger "designers" I've encountered over the years can get lost in a simple layout and spend way too much time. Even with knowing what we're getting for a job, this occurs too often to ignore, so we gently nudge things in the right direction and use our productivity systems to make sure he's fully engaged in all aspects of the jobs.
The job of shepherding the jobs through and instilling a better mentality about the routine work is one of my most frequent management activities. The other item, and I've seen this in many other work environments with younger workers is a lack of "owning" a project from start to finish. Teaching and encouraging proactivity and effective multi-tasking is something any of us interested in expanding our businesses must learn how to do. I try to do it by both setting a good example, positive reinforcement and hands on, side by side, learn by doing experience. We also reward our employees with gifts, paid time off, bonuses, treats, snacks and a general feeling of being valued. An example of this happened yesterday. We are located in the hottest winemaking region in the U.S. right now and some of our vineyard customers always want to do a little trade work. We all love good wine here, so we'll do it with a portion of a job, but only after the material and labor costs have been covered. We collected on a job and it ended up being 8 bottles of really good wine in the $30-40 range per bottle retail. We gave our employee first dibs at two bottles of his choice and we kept the rest. The sense that he and us are invested in each other and we're not the cruel overlords just out to make a buck off his labor is very evident.
A person who feels valued is far more open to learning and going the extra mile, than one who perceives that they are just the latest fill in until a better employee comes along.
Thankfully, we've seen great improvement from our guy on the little stuff and we couldn't be happier about the overall quality of work leaving our shop every day.
d fleming
Premium Subscriber
My semi-retiremaent aint gonna be cheap! Bait and greens fees cost $$!:Big Laugh
creativeations2010
New Member
The last couple of months I've been really thinking about how I need to fine tune systems and learn to manage employees better. Would you mind sharing some of the productivity systems you use?
Well, not that much to share other than a huge dose of common sense and good communication. With just three of us and a steady $250k per year revenue stream, we feel like we're too small for employing too many technological fixes to our problems.
We have a three stage job board that we manually update at the beginning and end of every day. It takes only a few minutes, but puts all three of us on an even footing about the status and progress of all of our jobs. As we're doing that, we're talking about material needs, task assignments, turnaround times, etc..
We also employ a decent work order that we all try to thoroughly and accurately fill out.
When a job is finished, we each make sure all the financial and contact info is correct and handed in to the office manager in a timely manner.
Sounds super organized right? Well, then the calls and walk ins start, then the emails come in and before you know it, we're lucky to keep it all straight.
We all do pretty well working together and are more profitable than our predecessors on about the same revenue with less volume thanks to better efficiency, charging what the work is truly worth after factoring in overhead, etc., less material waste and we rarely have any major issues or drama to deal with.
ExecuPrintGS
New Member
Help wanted
I do agree the ad would be a bit scary as far as all the duty"s and requirements needed! You probably just want to make it clear what your looking for but the average Joe or Jane may think your a dictator to work for,just saying. I also live in a small town and in Small Town America a 9.00-10.00 dollar per hour job is a great starting wage! The average wage say for our county's work force is 12.00 per hr.! Skilled trade around 15.00-18.00 ph. Remember the old saying you only get what you pay for.
I do agree the ad would be a bit scary as far as all the duty"s and requirements needed! You probably just want to make it clear what your looking for but the average Joe or Jane may think your a dictator to work for,just saying. I also live in a small town and in Small Town America a 9.00-10.00 dollar per hour job is a great starting wage! The average wage say for our county's work force is 12.00 per hr.! Skilled trade around 15.00-18.00 ph. Remember the old saying you only get what you pay for.
If you work retail there is a store on every street corner, work production and there are factories everywhere all with a large pool of qualified people... This business is different, sign and printing shops aren't as commonplace and it's hard to find people with solid experience, especially in smaller communities. Take away the mom & pop/ father & son/ sole proprietorship sign and printing companies and there isn't much left, most areas like yours and mine aren't saturated enough to have a pool of experienced people in this industry. Where I live (about 200 miles north of you) there are maybe 3 other stable places within commuting distance of me that actually have full time employees. Once someone has experience and likes what they're doing they pretty much stay put unless it's a true step up in wages and benefits, and those jobs don't open up very often. If an experienced person goes to a new job and it doesn't work out it could be a long time before something else opens up in a small market area, we "employees" in this business are cautious like that. I've been where I'm at for over 13 years, love what I do, but don't like who I do it for, yet I'll probably be here till I retire just because new jobs in this field don't come up very often, and when they do they want to dump entry level wages on you regardless of experience. So from my perspective as someone who understands what you're looking for, has the experience to do it and half a desire to change employers I would probably dismiss the ad without some sort of wage/ compensation information... Just a point of view from the "worker" side
Personally I think a much better option for a small sign shop than posting a help wanted is to
keep your eye out for young high school graduate that may be wanting to get into a trade.
It could be friends kid or their niece/nephew, someone you go to church with, whatever.
That way you at least have a good idea that they have a good head on their shoulders.
Ideally it will be someone that is computer savvy, mechanically inclined, artistic, and
has a drivers licence. Tell them that your looking for an apprentice for a trade that's mostly clean, mostly
in air conditioning, artistic,etc.
Have them come in to help out for a couple weekends so that they can make sure they
like the work and that you can make sure they're a good fit......
I find that like most Trades, you learn 80% of the trade in the 1st year or so but it takes 20 years to
master the rest.
I would rather train someone from the beginning the right way than having to break them of someone
else bad habits .
keep your eye out for young high school graduate that may be wanting to get into a trade.
It could be friends kid or their niece/nephew, someone you go to church with, whatever.
That way you at least have a good idea that they have a good head on their shoulders.
Ideally it will be someone that is computer savvy, mechanically inclined, artistic, and
has a drivers licence. Tell them that your looking for an apprentice for a trade that's mostly clean, mostly
in air conditioning, artistic,etc.
Have them come in to help out for a couple weekends so that they can make sure they
like the work and that you can make sure they're a good fit......
I find that like most Trades, you learn 80% of the trade in the 1st year or so but it takes 20 years to
master the rest.
I would rather train someone from the beginning the right way than having to break them of someone
else bad habits .
LOL, You would hate my shop then, The guy that handles the walk-in is here everyday & on time when we open the doors, but my shop guys know what needs to be done and by when,
and they stay late without even being asked & are willing to work weekends if needed, so why should I be a tight @ss about when they show up?
rjssigns
Active Member
Odd comment about hating your shop. I don't. You are quite fortunate to have those type of workers.
At the end of the day its your shop. Run it the way you want.
Yeah I probably could have worded it better.
Yes I am lucky, I have guys that make me look good and make my job easy, they know what needs to be done
and do it with little to no "hand holding" from me. Thank you.