Should You Work Here?
The company owner is its main salesman. He personally handles all of the major accounts – even when he is on vacation with his family. The owner has his hands in every inch of the business. In a recent twenty minute span he was out in the parking lot by the service trucks yelling at a technician for his dirty van, back in the warehouse screaming because he couldn’t find a component in the staging area for an upcoming job, by the dispatcher asking where Don is and making a pit stop by Michele’s desk to check on a receivable. The owner routinely takes on work that is beyond the capability of the technicians and installation work when the company employs no installers. Yes, he’s even been out in the field installing a job himself.
The company described above needs a focused product to sell, smart business systems and competent people to make the company go.
As a hard working technician who wants to professionally develop on board a ship with a destination, how do you know whether or not your owner is capable? Or, if you are trying to hook up with a company to get you there, how will you be able to recognize a competent captain?
Read Built to Sell. This is an easy to read story about a business owner who desperately wants to sell his business and enjoy his family and life. To help envision what sort of shape his business is in think: 1973 Ford Pinto for sale. Proceeds to finance my daughter’s education at Harvard. What does Aerosmith say? Dream on, dream on, dream on.
While this is a work of fiction, it is an example of real life businesses and their often misguided owners. The business owner gets a family friend to help him turn his company around and make it into a desirable and sellable company.
The process in which this company turns around is the map you need to help identify a competent company to work for. The author, John Warrillow, weaves this process into eight steps. While some of the steps will not pertain directly to your quest, the ones that do are enough. Here are the first five:
- Create a Standard Service Offering. This means selling a service that your company is really good at.
- Create a Positive Cash Flow Cycle. You’ll hear it on the street if the owner doesn’t have positive cash flow. “Sorry Bob, XYZ Mechanical is three months behind payment. You’ll have to get a check if you want this item today.”
- Hire a Sales Team. John recommends at least two salesmen. Competition upholds a healthy atmosphere. Consider it a humongous red flag if the owner is the company salesman.
- Stop Accepting Other Projects. This one might be the key. Your company needs to do what it is wired to do. If you are trying to perform work you are incapable of, everyone suffers.
- Launch a Long-Term Incentive Plan for Managers. This is a very cool one. You need your manager to be engaged and relatively happy at what he is doing (remember he is your career’s primary ally).
Items six, seven and eight are not really relative to your mission.
For the most part, owners are sincere people who want to do right by their family, self and you, their team member. To be brutally real however, many are not cut out for this role. This doesn’t mean that you disrespect them, make fun of them and talk about them behind their back. It simply means that you shouldn’t be working for them.
Pick up a copy of John’s book today and get yourself on a ship with a destination that helps your family, personal development and career.
You? You’re the General Manager?
“Wow! How can that be? It seems like yesterday when we’d just graduated from tech school, got a job, got new tools, got uniforms and got to work lugging senior technician’s tool bags. Where has the time gone? And now you’re the general manager of Kent Mechanical?”
Yesterday was twenty-five years ago and if Bill had kept in touch with Bob he’d have known Bob was on the way up and destined for positions of greater responsibility. If Bill had kept in touch with Bob maybe he wouldn’t still be working for PT Mechanical and climbing ladders with knees that belonged in a museum. If Bill had kept in touch with Bob maybe he’d be more aware of opportunities that other techs took advantage of.
Should you keep in touch with a guy like Bob in hopes of riding along on his coat tails to bigger and brighter things? No. You should keep in touch with Bob because Bob is the type of person who wants to make himself better. He wants to know all about the latest technology and he wants to become the best professional that he can be.
A general manager position would never be a fit for Bill nor would he ever want to be a manager of any kind. But Bill could have been a technical trainer…if he had wanted to be. And if he had pursued that path of professional development and stayed in touch with Bob, most likely Bob would have considered hiring him. Or could have hooked him up with a decent company.
The point is, if you want to make the most out of your career, hang out or at least stay in touch with guys like Bob. Have a cup of coffee with them every once in awhile. Send them a congratulations note when you hear of their promotions. Be a sponge when they offer advice and ask them for help when you need it.
“Not bad advice Dave. Now about that bit about lugging senior technician’s tool bags around…”
Informational Interviewing:Preparation
What is Informational Interviewing?
You recently met Bob at Ohm Supply. Bob works for Sparks Mechanical, an electrical contractor. Bob dresses like a Marine and drives a brand new truck. You figure Sparks Mechanical is a pretty decent company, you’d like to learn more about it. So you ask Bob and he agreed to meet you one morning next week for coffee. Bob is a senior technician and a polished professional, so you don’t want to waste his time. When you meet with him, be prepared and keep the meeting to under one half an hour.
Here are links to two lists of questions that you might consider asking Bob: Your Manager & Your Employer.
Informational Interviewing: Who do you talk with?
What is informational interviewing?
You can talk with people who are already in the position that you are interested in or you can talk with the company’s owner-managers.
People in same position – You will learn the most from this group. You should concentrate most of your efforts with them. There is a ton of useful information available from people who are already doing what you plan on doing. Or if it is a position that you are thinking about, you will get a much more clear picture of its day in and day out activities.
Where do you find people to talk to? A good place to start is a trade association. For instance, if you are a HVAC tech, you would contact RSES. The folks who work at trade associations will gladly provide information. After all, they would like you to join their organization. They should be able to hook you up with a technician in your town who would enjoy helping you out.
Once you’ve done one informational interview, ask that person if he knows anyone else who you could talk to. My daughter once spent six months doing informational interviews, talking with over forty people. Each new contact came from someone that she had interviewed. We’ll spend more time on this part in the future.
Owner-Managers – When you go to talk with these folks remember, you are a student, you’re there to learn. Although you know a lot of stuff and probably busting at the seams to tell people in positions like these, don’t. Learn don’t tell.
In the future, we’ll break down each group and provide you with suggested questions to ask.
Landing a New Job: What is Informational Interviewing?
Informational interviewing is when you go out and talk to someone who is in a similar position to one you are contemplating. It could be that you are considering a certain career or job or company. You need to know more about your specific area of interest.
The term informational interviewing is a mouthful. Don’t worry about that. I am only using it to make sure the search engines can find us, because technically that is what you call it. You can also call it asking questions.
Let’s say that you’ve been driving 1969 Chargers all your life. Or at least in the summer time. But over a period of time, the 1970 Cutlass 422 has caught your fancy. Before you buy one however, you want to know more about it. It’s highly unlikely that you would just go out and buy one before you did some research. Even if you give yourself a thumbs up after performing general research into the 442, you still need to research out specific cars. You know this. I don’t have to tell you. Hell would freeze over before you buy the 442 without doing the research.
If you perform that much leg work prior to buying a car, don’t you think you should log some time to investigate the career, line of work and company that will provide satisfaction and food and rent and bills and vacations and, well, that 442? Sure you do!
A few cool things about informational interviewing:
- You are not interviewing for a job
- You are learning a ton of stuff
- A lot of people are getting to know you
- You are building a network of connections
Stay tuned and look for future posts beginning with Landing a New Job: Informational Interviewing…
