The Real Solution To The Industry's Talent Shortage

When I ran an installation business we hired techs without a higher education. We trained technically and customer relations.

Several honored us by eventually leaving and starting their own company with the knowledge we provided. We stayed friends

Many very successful alarm companies started from a tech and a sales person joining forces.

Set Better Standards

More oversite

Pay for better Management

More Incentives to those who perform , less to failure

Expect More , Accept less of the Incompetence

Train More , Expect ongoing Training as with any apprentice

You want the Best , than Expect and hold accountable for the best

Better communications and transparency

Stop the numbers game of racism in the work force thru mandatory hiring and you will get better performance

one standard , not selective standards

If you want the Best , YOU have to expect all to perform at the best and allow room for failure and correction

Instead of walking around with chips on shoulders and feeling s for someone to hurt and agendas contrary to the mission .

start the process of Goals , Achievement , direction ( lacking in the schools )

Start the Higher levels of Expectation s ( zero Tollerance for higher paid people )

the less you make the less you expect , the more the more oversite

Higher standards produce better outcomes

cff/ppp

wish you the best

When hiring people, i rarely consider college completion as a hiring standard for me. I am one of those weirdos who think the whole 4/6/8 year University deal is one of America's biggest scams (with a few specific exceptions: Doctors, CPAs, etc)BTW, I have a 4 year degree that is completely useless. Bacherlors degree with a major in General Business! Woopty Doo!

I usually put very little weight on this when looking at resumes and going through the hiring process. From my experience, having a college degree has very little benefit in this industry.

I agree that hiring entry level people is a good strategy. I believe in instilling the vision of the company into entry level people and letting them know that the more impact they have on the company's growth, the more they will be rewarded financially.

I would say that the only painful aspect about hiring entry level people is that you sometimes have to find a diamond in the rough. We usually have to sift through a bunch of people who arent qualified before we find the perfect one. Our hiring process is slow and painful, but it has paid off.

This article brings up interesting side point of lack of modern/reasonable people in management in the Integrator section of the security industry.

That's another interesting problem that I often think about and wonder will it slowly resolve as people retire/sell their companies and more consolidation happens, survival of the fittest type situation.

I am curious what others opinions are.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of good managers at many integrators(regional & national), but there are still is a lot of "old school" style managers across North America that make it hard for some talented people under them to thrive/rise, which in turn makes it harder to implement mind set & programs as described in this article.

Owners need to have a long range mentality. I suggest doing a through background check on prospective hires. Then spend the time to really get to know your employees. One of my clients could easily earn mid to upper six figures a year from his integration business. However, he has focused on building the business and rewarding hard working loyal employees. As a result, you have a a guy with a GED earning between 100-175k (bonus pool included) a year as lead network technician. If their are good years, the owner will fund the bonus pool with 250 to 600K and apportion it to leads and techs. A 1 year tech starting at 30K received a 15K bonus in his first year. His turnover is low and he can cherry pick good techs from competitors. However, its hard for a lot of owners to give up the large salaries and settle for the 250K a year. To sum it all up, owners need to think about what kind of organization they want to be responsible for and how they want to incentivize people to create that organization. Anybody can run a business it takes a leader to create an organization that becomes larger than themselves.

NOTICE: This comment has been moved to its own discussion: This Is One Hell Of An Integrator - "You Have A A Guy With A GED Earning Between 100-175k (Bonus Pool Included) A Year As Lead Network Technician"

update the the image from wire-puller with hammer on belt.

I always looked at what kind of person the applicant was, not so much what their experience level or education. Were they honest, did they want to learn, did they seem to be team players. If the applicant said they grew up on a dairy farm, that could be an automatic hire. I knew they were used to hard work, responsibility, could run and repair equipment, and were able to deal with problems.

In my experience, a university degree is nothing more than a 4 year basic intelligence and attendance test. It's an imperfect test of whether someone is reasonably functioning upstairs, and can counted upon to "show up" for a long-term goal. Companies cannot legally test candidates for these things, but universities absolutely can....so companies delegate that filter to universities.

That said, in the last 2 decades I have seen the critical thinking abilities of the typical college graduate decrease, yet their relative sense of self-importance increase.

Excepting certain very specific jobs, field experience is far more valuable to me now. In my time, I've hired many college-educated software developers, who nonetheless needed assistance with the most basic networking and even database tasks. In contrast, structured-cabling techs nearly always are very good at the IT side of things as well.