How To Attract, Hire and Train Good Service Technicians And Other Employees

For many years, people in the oil heat industry (and other trades) have complained that it is extremely difficult to hire quality service technicians. When my parents purchased Hart & Iliff in 1971, it was a well established company (founded in 1889) with a stable workforce including a number of service technicians with over 20 years of experience.

By the time I entered the business, following the death of my father in 1987, several of the old-timers were nearing retirement age and my problem was how to replace them. I quickly discovered that it was, in fact, very difficult to find good service technicians. Initially, I attempted to solve my problem by hiring technicians who had worked for other oil companies. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that, in general, hiring experienced technicians is not a good idea. If they couldn’t make it with another oil company, they wouldn’t make it at Hart & Iliff, either.

Once I came to this realization, I began to study and analyze the problems associated with finding, hiring and training service technicians. Over a period of 14 years, little by little, bit by bit, I developed and refined the details of a program to successfully find, hire and train quality technicians.

This very successful program has recently received a great deal of publicity in the oil heat industry. In fact, the January 2003 issue of Oilheating magazine, the April 2003 issue of Oil & Energy and the April 2003 issue of Fuel Oil News (the three national oil heat publications) all contain an article I wrote discussing Hart & Iliff’s unique hiring system. I was also asked to speak about the program at the Atlantic Region Energy Expo, a national oil heat convention that attracts more than 5,000 participants. If you would like a copy of the article, give us a call and we’ll be glad to send you a reprint.