Has your ulcer finally settled down now that your summer help has returned to school?
Students are a key part of the farm labour pool, but many make you want to tear your hair out.
They’re no-shows on days you really need them, grind the gearbox out of expensive equipment or can’t find the enthusiasm for work they lavish on their Xbox.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. Just ask the guy whose ability to find and motivate student employees made him a millionaire.
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Greig Clark was only 18 when he founded College Pro Painters in 1971. In just a decade, he expanded it to 550 franchises with $40 million in sales and more than 4,000 employees. It’s been 20 years since he sold the company, but Clark vividly recalls how he stumbled on the secret of getting great student workers.
College Pro was supposed to be a sideline. Clark had a good job on a survey crew but it didn’t pay enough to cover his university costs. A buddy suggested house painting – Clark would hustle up jobs during the evening and the buddy would paint. When his friend suddenly opted out just before the first job, Clark had to find someone fast.
Dave was one of the names he got from a student employment centre. He was more than a little eager when Clark called and asked if he could come to an interview the next day.
“He’s like, ‘I can come over right now – I’ll be right there,’ ” recalls Clark.
“It seemed I had just hung up the phone when here’s this 16-year-old kid on my doorstep with the sweat pouring off him from having biked over so fast.”
Dave had done some painting, but he had something Clark valued more.
“He had huge doses of eagerness and commitment,” Clark says.
“He worked for his stepfather and hated it because he worked long hours and got paid almost nothing. So he inspired what would become the classic College Pro formula – a little bit of skill but a hell of a lot of commitment and drive.”
So that’s Tip 1: Look for the keeners.
Tip 2 is related: hire their friends.
“First, their friends are likely to share their values and second, because the lead friend feels responsible for all the others, he’ll be on them to do their best,” Clark says.
Tips 3 and 4 follow naturally, too: don’t waste eager beavers – challenge them and reward them.
“We pushed responsibility down,” Clark says. “A crew foreman got a copy of the customer contract. He or she would have to get the job done within the budgeted hours and get the customer to sign a quality card. If they did those things, they got a bonus. If they brought the job in under budget, they got a bigger bonus.”
The bonuses weren’t huge – a kid making $200 a week might earn another $20 or $30 – but College Pro embraced a culture of achievement. For example, Clark dubbed their 1-800 complaint line a pride opportunity area.
“I told our people that if you do a great job, that person may or may not tell their neighbours, but if there’s a problem and you fix it well and fix it fast, they’re going to be your greatest advocate. A complaint is an opportunity to excel because most people handle complaints terribly.”
You don’t have to talk to Clark for long before you’re thinking, ‘this would be a great guy to work for,’ because it’s obvious he really cares about inspiring people to challenge themselves and achieve more than they thought possible.
That caring comes through in his final tip on interviewing young people.
“You can’t learn much asking a 17-year-old about work experience because they won’t have much,” Clark says.
“But you can look for life experience: ‘What did they do when they came to a key fork in the road?’ This is the stuff that tells you what they’re made of.”
Look for something, such as making a sports team or passing a tough exam, that required the students to choose to really push themselves. Then call the coach or teacher who watched them wage that battle.
“Right away, the kid is going to think, ‘holy man, this guy takes it really seriously,’ and that will mean something when you offer them the job,” Clark says
“And second, you’ll probably find out something from the person you call that you can use to motivate that person.”
As an 18-year-old, Clark knew nothing about human resources – and he knew it. So he stuck to a simple formula: look for keeners, hire their friends and offer them challenges and rewards.
Apply that formula to your farm and your ulcer will thank you.
