Last year was my first year hiring a mechanic. It didn’t go perfectly, but I learned a lot so am much more prepared to hire our next mechanic.
Our first mechanic was a student at a nearby school. An extremely smart, talented kid. The only problem was he was part time; his priority was school this was just a job for him. For this reason, being part time, he gave us part time commitment. When he was there, he was great. But when he wasn’t- we had no mechanic. This was a huge problem.
Eventually he started getting behind on everything, but would never take the initiative to ask for help. It continued to become a problem. Since our equipment is the backbone of our business, it had big impacts on our customer service at the end of the day. We didn’t have the right equipment to get the job done so this trickled up the line and ultimately the customer suffered.
This year, I am searching for a full time mechanic. I want someone full time, so I am sure I have someone there at all times. I also intend to hire a part time kid to assist the mechanic so we have some coverage if that mechanic were to be out sick.
We developed a system to dispatch jobs using our software, which will make us have much more control on what jobs get done when. The crew’s tell the office manager what is broken, which ensures that all the jobs are dispatched and completed.
