Thinking it might be time to hire my first employee, how to in this day and age?

[legacyborn]

Look to see if you have something like a Workforce Investment Board in your area. In our area they get government grants to help put employers and employees together. They supplied an excellent potential employee and paid 90% of his salary for the first 3 months for training. It was very easy.

 

[decalman]

I hire friends only, but they are pretty limited.
I go it alone otherwise.

So what if I'm backed up.
So what if I don't answer calls or messages. So what If I never get back to most people. I'm doing the best I can,
and the world is going to end soon anyway.:Oops:.....I can't believe I said that.

 

[ams]

I hire friends only, but they are pretty limited.
I go it alone otherwise.

So what if I'm backed up.
So what if I don't answer calls or messages. So what If I never get back to most people. I'm doing the best I can,
and the world is going to end soon anyway.:Oops:.....I can't believe I said that.

Sorry to say but you will never grow like that. If you don't answer calls, they will go somewhere else and won't use you. If you are backed up that pisses off the customers and generally they won't use you again.
It's not about doing the best you can, it's about keeping up with supply and demand.

 

[rjssigns]

Get an intern from a local tech college. They need the hours to complete their degree, you need the help.


Your welcome. I'll let you know where you can send the check.:Big Laugh

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

Great replies - Thanks everybody for your thoughts and direction. I really appreciate it.

 

[DerbyCitySignGuy]

Get an intern from a local tech college. They need the hours to complete their degree, you need the help.


Your welcome. I'll let you know where you can send the check.:Big Laugh

We used interns for a couple years and I can't disagree with this strongly enough. Out of the five or six interns we had, they were all pretty much worthless, just in varying degrees. Maybe your experience has been different, but ours was awful. We stopped using them a while ago. There was more time spent fixing mistakes than the amount of work we actually got out of them.

 

[ams]

We used interns for a couple years and I can't disagree with this strongly enough. Out of the five or six interns we had, they were all pretty much worthless, just in varying degrees. Maybe your experience has been different, but ours was awful. We stopped using them a while ago. There was more time spent fixing mistakes than the amount of work we actually got out of them.

That's what happened to me with interns, but stay hopeful there is a useful, smart one out there somewhere.

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

Figured I'd give Indeed.com a try since it is free. I got a few applicants over night so I will look at them this morning and take it from there.

 

[TheSnowman]

I kind of get there seasonally in the summer, and realized that utilizing all the subs that are MM's on this board, I could do way more than if I had to deal with teaching someone every time I needed help, and I didn't have to deal with all the issues you have with employees. When I'm slow, I can make it all work, when I'm really busy, I don't design, or do production anymore, I'm just the guy coordinating it all and dealing with the customer.

That gets harder on installation type stuff, but I just sub out the prints, then install it once it comes in. Generally in the summer I'm here in the office an 8 hour day, then I go home and have dinner with the family and hang out a little, then just spend a few hours prepping the design files, etc, and as long as I upload them to the merchant by midnight, it's game on to be printed the next day and in the mail.

Maybe that's not an option for you, but it's real hard to find competent people these days unless you're paying at a really high scale. Maybe you can do that, but seems like that's generally a hard commitment for most shops, especially for the first employee to test it and see if it's going to work.

 

[myront]

We used interns for a couple years and I can't disagree with this strongly enough. Out of the five or six interns we had, they were all pretty much worthless, just in varying degrees. Maybe your experience has been different, but ours was awful. We stopped using them a while ago. There was more time spent fixing mistakes than the amount of work we actually got out of them.

Yes, I'd have to agree with this one too. We have tried some "graphic design" college students from time to time. Only know illustrator as that's the only thing taaught in college. They expect too high of a pay to start out. The instructor actually tells them do not take a job for less than $15 an hour. In our somewhat rural area cops and firefighters barely make that. 12 years ago I started at $10 an hour as a 20yr military retiree and my career in the military was a supervisor in charge of a graphic shop.

Nothing against schooling but I'll take experience over schooling any day! You want a pilot who has 5000 hrs of actual flight time or a college grad who has 10000 hrs of flight time from a video game

 

[TheSnowman]

So what if I'm backed up. So what if I don't answer calls or messages. So what If I never get back to most people.

I actually kind of agree with this. I have a core group of people that keep me busy. They get top priority and generally an email from them creates a couple days of work for me. The new walk ins or phone calls generally mean people don't know what they want, and want to waste a bunch of my time on a project. Sometimes that can pan out, but I'd say 85% of the time, I don't make near as good of money on those jobs.

Just kind of depends what you want your business model to look like. I just want to pay my bills and have time to enjoy life w/o a ton of headaches. If you are trying to grow to a huge business and have a ton of employees, then you would have issues with that.

I do generally get back with most people if they leave a voicemail, and I do generally answer all my calls when I can get over to the phone if not in a tense moment, but I've also been known to lock the front door to get work done because of all the walk ins wanting scrap vinyl or wanting me to give them a good deal for this or that organization. After 11 years I've just learned what makes me money, and how, and what doesn't. Generally an email makes me way more money, and they're normally from that core group of people that I have business relationships with that come before anything else that would call or walk in.

To each his own...that's the beauty of our country.

 

[TopFliteGraphics]

Thanks Snowman for your reply. I am pretty sure I need to get someone in here to help out. I already sub out all of my printing and most of my fabrication. I need the help with all of the "mundane" tasks around the shop and since I really committed myself to growing the business a year ago, sales have blown up. I ended up last year double what I did in 2014. So far this year, I have tripled the year to date sales in the same period of 2015 (and that was more than twice as much as the year before). After 5 years, people are starting to recognize my truck/logo around town and I have recently landed 2 big accounts that I have been trying to get in the door with since about 2014. I just need to make sure that I can continue to service my clients in the manner in to which they have become accustomed.

 

[truecolors]

My first thought was Craigslist, but I actually haven't had the best luck finding good hires on there. We had a couple of no-show's or people who submitted amazing resumes but didn't know a single thing.

If you have the budget to do so, I would recommend finding a staffing company to do the initial search and interviews for you. Yes, they charge for their services but in my experience, interviewing took so much time out of my day that I'd rather have someone else do that work while I continue mine.

Good luck!