The one daily constant over the past year in my email inbox and on my phone is that I have been flooded with messages from integrators desperate to find new employees, especially in-the-field installers/technicians. It makes sense … the smart home/home automation market is on fire and without great employees, it’s hard to grow.
Many integrators have told me their revenue growth is being hampered because they just can’t find quality employees. It’s one of the reasons we upgraded our great new CE Pro Job Board that has hundreds of job postings and resumes by the way.
Also, almost universally, the integrators I speak with don’t have good things to say about their hiring “luck” with millennials. I hear stories about poor work ethic, huge sense of entitlement, etc.
I think one of the problems is that millennials simply don’t want to be called an “installer.” I mean, what young person do you know who would say their ideal job is to be an “installer?” For that matter, who wants to grow up and be a “technician?” No one.
I can relate. I recall years ago starting out working for a contractor and my official job title was “helper.” When you are 16 years old, it was OK. But it certainly wasn’t a job title I wanted to keep for very long.
Related: Get Ready for Millennials-Driven Economic Boom from 2017-2030
So I am proposing that all custom integrators immediately dump the terms “installer” and even “technician” as official job titles in their company. Terms like “specialist,” “engineer,” “network engineer,” or even “tech specialist” are what we need to call these valuable employees.
Those job titles sound important … and they are important. These different job titles will create a greater sense of pride for your team, attract better talent and increase productivity I believe.
I know what you are thinking … why should we have to “baby” millennials like this? I mean, is the trashman a “sanitation engineer”? Well, we have no one to blame but ourselves. We caused it be helping create a generation that is way smarter but also entitled. We gave them smart phones, hundreds of channels of TV and lots of other comforts. We have to live with that now. So let’s use their massive brainpower for the industry and get them onboard now.
Am I wrong? What do you call your in-the-field specialists?
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