Hiring Movers: Qualities and Skills to Look For

In order to succeed at any level in this business, you need quality movers. But the nature of the business, the hard work that they have to go do every single day, it creates a challenge. When you are looking for movers, you have qualities, right? They're individual qualities as a person, as an employee, and then you have their skills of, you know, moving furniture and things like that, right? So what are the qualities in the skills that we're looking for? Because it's important as we go out and start to do our recruiting efforts that we have a criteria, right? And when you have this criteria, it's going to basically allow you to just run them through a filter to make the whole process easy. When you are looking for movers, you have qualities, right? Their individual qualities as a person, as an employee. And then you have their skills of, you know, moving furniture and things like that, right? So what are the qualities and the skills that we're looking for? Because it's important as we go out and start to do our recruiting efforts that we have a criteria, right? And when you have this criteria and it's going to basically allow you to just run them through a filter to make the whole process easy, right? They match the criteria or they don't match the criteria, they move on to the next step in the hiring process. Make sense? So let's talk about the skills that movers have. Now. They don't need all these skills, but it's important that you identify the criteria and your criteria is different at different times. You might be looking for just drivers right now you might be looking for just helpers and helpers that don't even have much experience that just can lump, right? It depends on what you're looking for at the moment. So before you ever go to place an ad, which we'll talk about, you want to establish what your criteria is for what you're looking for now so that you can sift through everything quickly, right? So lumping, right? Just somebody that could just pick up stuff and move it, right? And there's nothing wrong with that because if you have a cooperative, helpful, you know, lumper with good qualities, which we'll talk about in a minute, that listens, that's coachable. You could put two of them with a well qualified driver, right? Crew chief. And you're good, right? So let's just talk about. I'll just run through all these different skills. Loading, right? Loading is something totally different. To be able to load a truck is a learned skill. It's not something that someone just knows how to do naturally to be able to, you know, come into a truck and identify the furniture that you have and you know, come in and start to build out the base. If you have an attic, what to put in the attic, right? What you can't stack on top of other things, what to do with the mirrors, what to do with the flat screen TVs, right? Do they put them in between mattresses? How are they strapping it? It's a learned skill to load a truck, but you really only need one person on a job that's skilled at loading a truck. Packing, right. Packing dishes, packing china, packing stereo equipment, all kinds of packing. An additional skill, Assembling, disassembly and reassembly. Right. The ability to go in and disassemble a bed, reassemble a bed, take the mirror off the dresser, whatever it might be, and inventory. Ing. Not really a word, but you get it. Inventorying. To be able to go in and do an inventory of the items. So whether it's a long distance job or a storage job, you're going to be doing an inventory of everything, right? So whether you're doing it electronically or whether you're doing it with a inventory sheet and the roll of stickers to where you're stickering an item, writing down what it is and then writing down the condition that it's in, if it's worn, if it's scratched, all of that, that's a skill, right? And this is obviously stuff that you can teach, but you need to identify what your criteria is going into the hiring process. Padding, right. Being able to pad a dresser, being able to pad a chair. Estimating. Right. If you're doing any type of flat rate, if you're doing any type of long distance move, if you're doing anything that's not basically like an hourly rate, then you need someone on that job that's going to be able to go out there and estimate how long it's going to take before they start the job. So let's say you give somebody your inventory list and it needs to be broken down by room for this exact purpose, right. You've done an inventory, whether it was an on site estimate or whether it was over the phone. And your whole estimate is based off that inventory. Well, you want someone that's going to be able to go out there and basically walk around the house with your inventory, go to each room and say, yeah, this is about right. This is going to take us eight hours, right. Otherwise you have no basis for revision. You want someone out there that's your eyes and ears that could estimate the job. Creating, you know, creating is a whole nother skill. You could have your entire company with nobody that knows how to create and outsource it every time, which is totally cool. Right? But it is another skill that, you know, if somebody comes to the table and they know how to create, well, there's, you know, an additional service that you could be, you know, charging extra for. So if you don't know what creating is, creating is basically taking very fragile items. Let's say a chandelier, right? And you basically build, you know, a whole box for the chandelier to where the chandelier is hanging at the top of the box and it's boxed in, right. Or you're creating glass, all done typically with wood. So it's a very carpenter type thing to do. And you know, we didn't really have, you know, occasionally we'd have somebody in a city that knew how to do it or a long distance driver that was good. Otherwise we outsourced that to somebody else. But it is a skill. Driving, right? Do they know how to drive the truck? Do they have a clean driving record? And communicating somebody, and it doesn't always have to be the driver has to be able to communicate with the customer, right? Has to be able to go over the contract, go over the paperwork, collect payment, you know, discuss where do they want things. Somebody needs to have good communication skills. So these are the skills. And guys, let me know if I missed something too down below, if I missed any skills here. But these generally are the skills that we look for in a mover. Doesn't mean that the people that you hire have to have these skills. We'll get to that in a minute. So now we want to look at qualities, right? As an individual, what qualities do they have? And these are really pretty simple, right? I mean, you don't have too high of expectations, or at least I don't. And maybe I've seen people that do have really, really high expectations, which could be making it much more challenging to find guys and keep them there consistently. They need to be respectful, right. To you and the customer. Good hygiene, right? Just good hygiene. You know, some people I talked to somebody not too long ago says they need to be clean cut, no facial hair. And I can understand the, you know, the logic there. However, you know, facial hair is kind of like the new men's. You know, more than half the guys you see it might even be more have beards, right? So to like, you know, say that your movers can't have that. You're just eliminating more possible good recruits that you could have working for you. Helpful, simple. They just need to be helpful again to the company and to the customer. Cooperative with the customer, with their other teammates on the truck, right? With dispatch, cooperative. They need to be a team player, right? They need to. There's no way one guy could go out and do it, all right? He's going to have to have at least one more person, if not 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, whatever it might be. But typically between 2 and 3 per crew. They have to be a team player, right? They have to know how everyone on that crew is going to play their part to have a successful move for the customer. And physically capable, I'm not even going to say strong, just physically capable to. They don't have to put a dresser on their shoulder and walk down the street with it, right? They have another person to lift that with them. There are hump straps, right. They don't need to be able to carry all the boxes, there's dollies for that. But they need to be physically capable to do their part of it, right. You don't need big jacked guys. You need, you know, physically capable but that are mind to not bang into walls, right. That are not dragging stuff on the floor. They're just physically capable, they're reliable, they're going to show up. I mean that's, it's hard to know that in an interview, but that's what you're looking for. And they're coachable, right? The same way that you coach your sales team to improve, those of you in moving sales academy, like the process of enhancement training and taking them through that process of making them better, you do that with your movers as well. You don't just hire them, throw them a shirt and say either go swim or sink. You want to be able to coach them on the things that they need improvement with. And so whether that's, let's say you establish that particular set of movers or particular one mover is causing a certain type of damage. You want to be able to retrain them and coach them on that. Let's say you're getting some feedback from customers on the way that they're handling certain things, you want to be able to coach them on that to help them improve. But if they're just not willing to listen and they know it all, you know it's going to be really tough unless they're perfect and don't make mistakes for you to work with that individual, right? All right, so now these are the qualities that we're looking for, right? We've got the skill set and we've got the qualities. All right, let me know down below if there's more qualities you're looking for. I'd love to hear about it. Let's get the discussion going. But now, as we bring in applicants, this is the mover applicant quadrant. There's four types of applicants that are going to be coming in, and we're going to talk about, you know, getting the applications and running through the whole process in a minute. But I'm just kind of laying the groundwork here to simplify this, right? Because, you know, sometimes we. Everybody's guilty of it. We make things bigger and more complicated in our minds than they need to be. And if we're able to just kind of take things and lay them out and it's just step, step, step, one foot in front of the other. If this then that. You guys hear me talk so much about process, process, process. Because when you have that, it takes all the mental trying to figure every little thing out every single day. And you just essentially hit start on the process and run it. Step, step, step, step, step. Right? So we want to understand what our criteria is and the four types of movers that are going to be applying. So the first type is experienced. They've got the skills as a mover and they've got good qualities, right? So, you know, you're interviewing them, you determine that they have the skills. They know how to pack, they know how to load a truck, they know how to do it all. And their qualities are great, right? They have a great personality, they have good hygiene, they're reliable, they're respectful in the interview. That's type one. All right? We all know everybody's like, yeah, I want that, right? That is. That's the one you want, right? Then you got type two. They are inexperienced, so they don't have the skills of a mover, right? They've never loaded a truck, they've never packed a box, they've never padded anything. But they have good qualities as an individual, right? They're reliable, they're coachable. You know, they're eager to learn, right? That's type two. Then you've got type three. They're experienced, but bad qualities, right? And this is the trap that a lot of companies fall for because they put experience and skills over quality and personality. And I say that like, as doing it myself for years. You get the. You get the resume in or resume application in, right? And they're like, oh, they worked here, they worked there, they worked here, they worked there. All moving companies are like, oh, jackpot, right? But just because they have experience at another moving company does not mean they're a good fit for your business. You probably have these guys right now today out on a job that you really would like to get rid of because they're the know it all. You know, I've worked for every major company. I, you know, I've been doing this my whole life. But as an individual, as an employee, the qualities aren't there, right? Then you've got inexperienced, no skills, right? No skills. They don't have the skills to be a mover, but they have good qualities. They're a good guide or a good person. Wow. You know, this is great for the interview, but you're like, hey, are you willing to learn? Right? We can train you, right? Because in the, in the interview you want to basically, you know, you don't want to make somebody feel like they have to have the skills because then they're going to lie to you about having the skills. And then when you put them to the test, they won't. And then that kind of creates an uncomfortable situation. So you want to make them feel like it's okay that they don't have the skills because you're willing to train them. But if they're like, yeah, no, this sounds like more work than I really want to put in. Right? Okay, so now we've got our four types, alright, and you probably guessed it already, but type one, you hire immediately, right? They come in, they're an applicant, you do an interview, you establish they're a type one, hire, done. Type two, hire and train, right? In other words, they're not experienced with moving. So what? Right? So what? You don't need them to be a crew chief, you don't need them to be the foreman, right? You need them to go out. And we'll talk about how to get, how to get them into the rotation as well. But if they're eager to learn, then they're a great individual. They're respectful, they're coachable, they're reliable, they have good hygiene, right? Hire them and train them. Type three, they come in, add them to your mover database. Okay, we'll talk about that in a minute. But you know, your mover database is basically a place where you're going to keep all of the information of all the applicants that come in to where when you're in a pinch, when you're in a situation where you need Somebody and you might be willing to put up with, you know, the bad qualities because you just need someone with experience for a busy weekend or for a certain job that you could call on that person. But that's not your first pick or second to come in for the company. Right? Because we all know the bad qualities. That's what causes more problems with customers than lack of skill, right. I've seen more problems caused by attitudes of movers than even damage to the furniture. Right. Type four, keep looking, right? In other words, type four comes in, maybe you establish that there they'd be a great salesperson or something like that, right? Don't force the situation. The idea is to keep the door road, you know, keep it revolving, keep people coming in to where you don't have to settle and you don't try to have to force people into certain positions. But you know, if they're great qualities and you're like, hey, I could use you in this other role, great, but otherwise keep looking. Alright, so that's your, your quadrant, right? So whoever's doing your hiring, show them this, give them this and say, look, this is what's going to come in the door, right? And I want you to establish what type they are so that we can make a decision moving forward and we don't have to over analyze each and every person and we don't end up giving the wrong people an opportunity that's going to come back and bite us. Hey my friend, before you go, you've got to hurry and watch these next few videos over here. They will absolutely help you take your moving company to the next level. Go watch them now and I'll see you over there.