How do you find and hire good maintenance technicians?

Warren

According to a survey conducted by UpKeep, 80% of maintenance managers are able to retain good technicians. They do this primarily through keeping maintenance operations organized and their facilities safe to work in.

However, the survey did not inquire about how managers find these technicians and how they vet them.

At your organization, how do you find and hire good technicians?

Do you use job boards or referrals?
Do you look for specific certifications or experience?
Do you do reference checks or team interviews?

JimGlanfield

I have hired maintenance technicians for many years. First and foremost is their job history. They must have several years working in the field they are hired for. Secondly, they must have good references and the hiring person must verify with the reference. Thirdly, what is the reason they are leaving or want to leave their existing or previous job. Fourthly , they need a good experienced manager that has the knowledge to train them and ensure they can communicate properly and understand exactly what is required of them. Last of all, give them the respect they deserve and a fair market salary with bonuses for giving the over and above performance, and treating your business like it’s their own.
If you stick to these rules, you can ensure a long term, high quality maintenance technician
who can save your organization literally hundreds of thousands of dollars by making repairs and knowing when things need maintenance. He can make repairs that you would have to farm out to contractors at 5-10 times the cost.

Regards,
James

SummitLogistics

JimGlanfield are you hiring? I wish all managers we're like you! in all seriousness the last employer I was working for readily took advantage of me. I was more trained and qualified than most of the people I work with, and the quality of my work was always top-notch. I was always looking for something to do or putting in recommendations of things that need to be done, while others would just sit in the break room for hours waiting for their shift to end. I was grossly underpaid and was promised more and never received it, I kept doing specialty work that no one else could do and the department ran off of several of my certifications before I said that was enough, and I decided it was time 2 start my own company. It was the mistreatment that led me down that path. I know this is a little bit of the opposite of your post, but this is coming from a good technician who had a crappy manager. But then again as you said, a good manager we'll put together and keep together a great team

Lvillarreal1976

I came from the production floor before I went into maintenance and learned that promoting operators within the company to be in my maintenance team has been real successful. I also understand that it’s the maintenance team that makes us successful therefor showing them respect and having an open dialogue in resolving break downs and doing PMs in a correct manner helps them evolve to key technicians. I’m proud in the team I have and as long as I show them appreciation and gratitude I know they will continue to make me shine.

Rob-UpKeep

Lvillarreal1976 I love the culture of gratitude and respect you foster. I can also see how promoting operators might be an operational challenge in the short term—you must hire someone else to fill their spot—but a win in the long term. They understand that they work for a company where they will not remain stagnant if they work hard, therefore they stick around.