The Hiring Approach That Builds Better HVAC Teams
You’re never going to find good employees if you keep hanging on to bad ones. It’s a simple line, but it’s the reason most HVAC companies stay stuck — hiring too fast on gut feel, then waiting far too long to admit it isn’t working. That hesitation doesn’t just cost money, it drags down your best people and stalls growth right when you need it most.
In this episode of Cracking The Code, Dr. Ron Collier, President of Collier Consulting, breaks down how contractors can build stronger, more reliable teams by fixing hiring at the source. He explains why attitude and work ethic matter more than technical skill, how to sell total compensation instead of competing on hourly rate, why consistent 90-day evaluations catch problems before they become expensive, and how to spot the early warning signs of a bad fit before it costs the business tens of thousands of dollars.
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00:00:00:07 – 00:00:08:07
You’re never going to find a good employee if you keep hanging on to a bad.
00:00:08:09 – 00:00:37:08
Welcome back to Cracking the Code, where we break down the biggest challenges facing contractors and give you real world, practical solutions you can actually use. I’m David Holt, third generation HVAC contractor, educator and business coach with Contractor University. Today we’re tackling a topic that every contractor deals with, but very few contractors feel confident they’re doing it well. It’s all about hiring and hiring.
00:00:37:08 – 00:01:08:15
So let’s be honest, most contractors hire way too fast based on a gut feel, and then they hold on way too long when they know it’s not working. That hesitation costs time. It costs money, and it puts pressure on your best people. So today, we’re bringing in someone who has spent decades helping businesses get this right. I’m thrilled to be joined by my friend, Doctor Ron Collier, president of Collier Consulting.
00:01:08:15 – 00:01:36:20
Ron has worked with organizations across industries, helping leaders build stronger teams, making better hiring decisions, and creating accountability systems that actually work. Ron, welcome to Cracking the Code. Thank you, David, and it’s my pleasure to be here. So before we jump into hiring, and why don’t you give us a little background on yourself and how’d you get into this whole consulting gig and, and focusing on HVAC guys and all that kind of stuff?
00:01:36:22 – 00:02:16:09
Well, actually goes back to my days at Purdue University. I spent a lot of time in instructional development, and so I began to work with a lot of companies, particularly the military, in certain instances, developing standard operating procedures, consistency in the in the companies, and started working with a lot of service businesses and also retail businesses. And then whenever I graduated, I was offered a position with the train company to be their training coordinator, and my goal was to train their HVAC contractors and how to make money.
00:02:16:14 – 00:02:48:09
As you know, we teach a lot about technical training and service training and install training, but there’s very, very little business training. And so that’s what I was hired to do was developed business best practices, business workshops. You know, computer assisted instruction and things like that. And that’s what moved me into the contracting world. When you look at contractors specifically, especially in the trades, how is their hiring approach typically different from more structured organizations?
00:02:48:09 – 00:03:19:00
You mentioned the military. I mean, I know my dad was 21 year Navy guy. So the hiring approach in the Navy, totally different than the hiring approach that Holt Service company, the business my grandfather started. So what kind of what kind of things do you see there? One of the main things that I found in, in looking at companies across the United States and being with now close to about 6000 contractors, is the number one problem that they had was really getting the correct personnel.
00:03:19:02 – 00:03:44:21
You can have the correct product. That’s not a problem. You can actually develop processes, but it takes people within your company that’s the real deliverable, or the people in your company that are going to deliver exactly what your expectations are. Number one, they don’t train, they don’t hire the right personnel. And then number two, they don’t train them to act in the way that the company wants them to act.
00:03:45:00 – 00:04:10:18
Yeah. And, you know, it’s amazing how many people in our industry expect people to hit a target that can’t even see, you know, thinking about getting the right people in. Let’s let’s kind of start with hiring. I mean, most contractors that I run into and even back when I was on the national board at the education, I was in the educational group there back in the 90s when I was in that role, people used to say, I just can’t find good people.
00:04:10:20 – 00:04:35:03
Well, they’re saying it still today, aren’t they? Right? Well, they’re still saying it. And and it’s always going to be the issue. But within an HVAC company you need to always be hiring. So that means that whether you’re advertising on your trucks, whether you’re advertising on the door, whether you’re running ads, you’re always hiring and you’re looking for the right people.
00:04:35:05 – 00:05:00:00
You just need to find the people with the right attitude. That’s why I say, you know, profit is an attitude. If you really want to make money, you’ve got to have the right attitude within the company, and you’ve got to have people that that share that, that have the right work ethic. It’s kind of funny, David, that some of the best salespeople I’ve ever hired, believe it or not, were teachers and hired a lot of teachers during the summer.
00:05:00:00 – 00:05:27:12
They’re off. And you know what? They’re great communicators. We don’t have to have a degree in HVAC. We don’t have to be a technician. You know, we don’t have to have a chiller degree to to go out and sell residential products in the home. So we want to be sure that they have the right attitude. And also to I think important is whenever we’re attracting people, we have to show them what I would call total compensation so many times today and which is wrong.
00:05:27:16 – 00:05:48:03
Contractors are just competing on hourly rate and we should never have hourly rate. If you want to hire a person tomorrow, if you say you can’t find good people, then just post in the supply house. You know service technicians wanted $120,000 a year and see if anybody comes to your door, and we need to show them a total compensation package.
00:05:48:04 – 00:06:13:18
Yes, a great technician could earn maybe 100 or $100,000 a year in the industry today, but these are the things they would have to do. When you bring a candidate in, you lay out a total compensation package. Take a look at your best tech. If your best tech is making 90,000 100,000 a year, then you need to say to a technician, this is exactly what you’re capable of doing.
00:06:13:19 – 00:06:48:04
We don’t just focus on hourly rates. We took us on total compensation, including indirect costs, direct cost 401 kHz insurance. Because today people don’t just make, you know, 25 or 30 or 35 an hour, they make probably closer to 50. So you’re saying I could come to Austin, Texas, where you’re sitting right now and I could put up a billboard somewhere around there that says Holt service Company is now hiring HVAC professionals, starting pay 120,000 plus full benefits, and I probably could get 1 or 2 people come work for me.
00:06:48:06 – 00:07:10:22
I bet you could. I bet I could to. And I’ll tell you another technique that I’ve used in the past that’s worked pretty well is I’ve gone into the business classes in high schools. What you need to really say to high school people right now, because a lot of people do not want to go to college. You walk in and say, you know, how many of you would like to make 75 to 100,000 a year?
00:07:10:23 – 00:07:27:08
How many of you would like to have your own vehicle? That means you wouldn’t have to pay for a vehicle. You wouldn’t have to pay for gas. You wouldn’t pay for insurance. How many of you would like a career? We’re probably you could go and live anywhere in the United States and get a job, probably within a week.
00:07:27:10 – 00:07:48:13
I mean, if you like the beach. How about living on the beach? If you like to ski. How about living up in the mountains? And I guarantee you, most of the people in the class would raise their hands. Then you go and say, well, if you become a service technician and or get into the HVAC industry, these are the kind of things that are available.
00:07:48:13 – 00:08:09:18
What are they doing wrong in the hiring process? Well, well several things. Number one, they allow a lot of these people now to just fill out applications and things like that. Prior to the interview, online person should actually come into the office, pick up the application, fill out the application right there, shouldn’t take it home while they’re there filling out the application.
00:08:09:19 – 00:08:34:13
I personally think you need to see how they’re dressed. I think you need to see perhaps the vehicle that they drove up in because, you know, if their vehicle is really, really in rough shape, then your service truck is going to be in worse shape. And then once that application is is filled out, then be sure that we do really check everything on their check the references.
00:08:34:15 – 00:08:58:18
So many contractors just have to have the application and just throw it in the file and don’t really check the references, because that’s going to give you a lot of great information to ask during the interview process itself. Let’s say that that the client that the person and I have have decided, you know, that that they are a good fit for the company and I am going to make them an offer.
00:08:58:18 – 00:09:29:22
And maybe we had discussed somewhere around $30 an hour as maybe their starting pay. Whenever I do a final and maybe offer them the job. And I think this really helps is instead of saying, you know, I know that we agreed on 30, but I tell you what I’m going to do, I’m very impressed with your resume. I know you’re doing a great job, so I’m going to actually give you $32, because I know that you’re going to show me that you’re worth that.
00:09:30:00 – 00:09:50:10
And so by giving them a little extra, it actually immediately sort of puts them into the frame of mind is, wow. You know, they they do have a lot of expectations for me. Well, I think one thing that the contractors also need to emphasize to new hires is they have mandatory training. But I think that’s essential in a company.
00:09:50:12 – 00:10:20:02
So many of us just, you know, sort of say, okay, guys, you know, they’ve got some heat pump training next week. If you want to go to it, that’s fine. And it’s not. And it should be mandatory. So and that’s what that’s what new hires need to understand that we we do have mandatory training. And I think that’s actually a huge benefit that a lot of people, especially folks that are coming into the trade, they would want to hear that that that you do have a training plan and that there is going to be an operational impact.
00:10:20:02 – 00:10:38:20
They’re going to be better at their skills because of the because of the training that’s going to be provided. So let’s assume that we did a good job on the hiring side. So we recruited somebody in. We hired them upright. Chances are we might have missed something. And we get down the road a little bit and we know it’s not working.
00:10:38:20 – 00:11:26:06
So we got to look at the higher side. So this is where I think most contractors struggle even more. And I know, I know, it was difficult for me to say, Ron, we’re going to go a different direction, you know. No. So true. And it’s hard. Let me back up a half a second is that we need to evaluate typically every week for the first month, and then from that point forward, starting on the start of the second month, we need to evaluate all of our employees every 90 days, because if we evaluate, you know, it’s we wait contractors wait too long and don’t really allow an employee to know if they’re doing a good
00:11:26:06 – 00:11:48:02
job or a bad job. A strategy that I use is actually to apologize. So I would say to you, David. David, I, I really apologize about not talking to you about the uniform policy. I noticed that several times you didn’t come, you know, with a you were wearing tennis shoes. And I know that the policy is to wear leather boots, and and I apologize to you, David.
00:11:48:02 – 00:12:07:10
I must not have made myself clear, but that is something that’s mandatory. Everyone is going to be wearing boots. Everyone’s going to be wearing blue shirts. We answer the phone the same way. And. But I apologize to you, David. I guess I didn’t make myself clear. You know, that’s a that’s a powerful way to get a point across.
00:12:07:11 – 00:12:26:12
If they fail, the first thing is always look at the process, right? Is the process failing if the process works? Nine out of ten, nine out of ten employees, you probably got people problem, right? What are some of the early warning signs that those tools can help surface for us? That that hire is just not the right fit?
00:12:26:13 – 00:12:50:20
Well, 2 or 3 things. You know, number one, some of the early warning signs has to do with just the time that they work. When do they come to work? When do they leave? Number two, are they really a team player? You know, if a dispatcher says you need to go to this location at 4:00 or 30 minutes before they get off work and they start griping about it, I think that’s a red flag.
00:12:50:20 – 00:13:14:12
Automatically. They just start having a negative attitude and just start griping about all the processes. And why did we do this and why do we do that? They never have solutions, but of course they have lots of gripes about it. They won’t go to training once again. They don’t really participate in team. Like we might have everybody meet for breakfast one morning and they don’t show up, you know?
00:13:14:13 – 00:13:38:05
So I think whenever they become farther and farther away from the team, I think that’s a huge warning sign right there. I find a lot of people it’s triggered with has to do with payroll and filling out time cards and things like that. I mean, service tickets have to be filled out properly, time cards had to be filled out properly, and that’s the process.
00:13:38:05 – 00:13:56:08
That’s the way we do it consistently. And I find a lot of people who are moving away from the company are not going to participate in that. Not at all. I remember one lady, she said, well, she said, I took care of my technician. She says, you know, my technicians just just wouldn’t fill out anything. They wouldn’t collect any money.
00:13:56:08 – 00:14:17:20
They wouldn’t even get the credit card. And so she said, whenever we had our company meeting on Friday morning, I handed out all their paychecks. And inside their paycheck, envelopes were just accounts receivable invoices. And she said, and she got up in front of him and said, look, I know you guys think this is kind of crazy, but I gave you all a little bit extra.
00:14:17:22 – 00:14:43:21
So, you know, instead of clearing like $400 this week, I actually gave John. I gave you like 600, you know, and and of course they were accounts receivable invoices. And she said that was the last time that I ever had a problem with him collecting. They got it. That’s a good learning exercise right there. A lot of people don’t think about what’s the really costing a business to keep the wrong person too long.
00:14:43:23 – 00:15:09:01
I mean, what’s that? What are the costs in that? Well, typically I find that on the average, people keep keep up people anywhere between 3 and 5 months too long. Generally speaking, those those about every three months it cost you about 50,000. Do or take. Holy cow. Is you about 50,000. What what I find that’s very interesting and I haven’t found it once.
00:15:09:01 – 00:15:37:21
I’ve probably found it 20 times is that everyone in the company knows their about employee. They just won’t tell you their about employee until after you let them go. And they don’t. They don’t tell you the 15 bad things they did until you get rid of them. We have a set of processes. We’re treating everyone equally, and whenever other people see us treating this person differently than you know, that’s when they, the good employees start slipping away from us.
00:15:37:22 – 00:15:55:08
And I’ve always told my clients, you’re never going to find a good employee if you keep hanging on to a bad one. So true. So what is the right way to let someone go the first time that there’s a problem, I usually the first thing I do is. I admit that it’s my fault that I didn’t train them well.
00:15:55:09 – 00:16:12:00
The second time I bring them in, I usually bring them in with a witness, and I actually write them up and give them a, you know, a written retro man. I know we talked about this 30 days ago. I told you what the problem was, and I told you what you needed to do and you haven’t done it, so I’m actually writing it up.
00:16:12:00 – 00:16:32:15
Then if it happens the third time, I just I really use the terms, you know, we really tried to work together, but I don’t think you’re just a good fit for this company. And here’s the check. And whenever you do, you know, d hire someone or get rid of them. Then it should be immediate and everything needs to be turned in.
00:16:32:15 – 00:16:49:08
Everything needs to be taken care of and done. So right then and there, you get everything you possibly can. Take the keys, check the truck, let them get all their personal information and basically escort them off the property. That’s the way to do it. But it’s the third strike and it’s hard, but it’s the right thing to do.
00:16:49:09 – 00:17:13:17
What’s one I ha moment you wish every contractor had when it comes to hiring and managing and hiring people? I think I think the number, the number one thing is I want to go back to on the hiring process higher, totally based 90, 99% of the time based on attitude and work ethic. And to me, that’s the that’s the moment.
00:17:13:17 – 00:17:35:02
If you’ve got a 25 or a 30 year old person, they’ve developed an attitude over 25 or 30 years, a work ethic, you know, grooming habits, driving habits, whatever it may be. That’s been developed over 25 or 30 years and you are not going to change it. There’s no way to do it. It’s not going to happen, because that’s unless you got 25 or 30 years to change it.
00:17:35:06 – 00:18:01:09
So we need to be sure that we hire people with with the right attitude, and then we can teach them the skills. And then the other moment, you know, in my career in the industry, I’ve been called across the country five times to fire people because I’ve had contractors call me and say, you know, Ron, would you come to my business?
00:18:01:09 – 00:18:18:06
And I said, well, sure, I’d be happy to you. And they said, well, I need you to come and get rid of people because I can’t do it. I can’t do it, I get it. And I said, okay, and I have gone and gone to a company, been in the company, you know, 3 to 5 days. And de hired certain people.
00:18:18:06 – 00:18:46:15
So, you know, when people need to go, they need to go immediately. No excuses. You can’t say, well, I’m too busy or this work won’t get done because it will devastate your company not to get rid of people immediately. You just you can’t let them just keep having this bad behavior and not adjusting to your rules, because they’re not going to do it if you just that they’re not going to change.
00:18:46:18 – 00:19:04:19
They need to immediately be taken out of the company. And I tell you what, and you know what to David company survive. You know, people have said, oh my God, if I lose that guy, I’m just going to go, that’s not true, that’s not true. You’re going to make it. You made it before, you know, you started with two people, now you got five.
00:19:04:20 – 00:19:28:06
So, you know, hey, you made it with two. You’ll make it with four, you’ll make it with five, you’ll make it. And that’s a that’s just real true statement to and I appreciate I appreciate that idea because the, the reality is just like life there are seasons right. And we go through different things. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of craziness in the decades that we’ve spent together in the industry.
00:19:28:06 – 00:19:53:01
And one thing that hadn’t changed people are still people, right? And we’ve got to work with the right kind of people if we expect the right kind of results. So this has been super powerful. Thanks a lot. Ron Mann hiring the right people and having the discipline to make changes when needed. That’s what separates businesses that struggle from businesses that scale.
00:19:53:04 – 00:20:17:14
So Ron, we really appreciate you being here and sharing this powerful information with our audience. Guys, if you’ve got value from today’s episode, make sure, like, subscribe and share this with someone in your organization who’s responsible for hiring, because this is one of those skills that impacts everything. It impacts your culture, your profitability, and your long term growth.
00:20:17:14 – 00:20:31:00
And if you want more practical, real world training like this, head on over to my contractor University. Com. So until next time, this is Ron Collier right there. And David Holt. We’ll see you next time on cracking the Code.
