marketing, painting contractor, business coach

5 Places I Find Painters

It’s a Thursday afternoon and I’m sitting here on my back deck saying, “Wow, we got lucky.”

And then I realized we didn’t get lucky, we put effort into our hiring this year.

We put in a lot more effort than we ever have.

I want to share with you the five places we found painters.

1. I group these all together: Craigs List, Facebook, “Want” Ads which recently came out a few months back.

But be specific on these. Let the person looking at your ad know what you are expecting from them.

Also, let them know what your company stands for, your company values.

Ask your painters what they love about your company and then use it in that ad.

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We are looking for people that like teamwork.

It is built on that, people who are punctual, who love their job, just really dig deep into that.

2. Job Corp:

They have 125 different locations in the United States currently training 6,000 students.

There is probably one fairly close to you.

I have recently visited one of the Job Corp’s in Massachusetts and I was shocked.

There are 15 painters being trained at that one time.

They are there to finish high school.

They are also there for trades, masonry, carpentry, painting, and a few other ones I didn’t venture into.

I was able to sit down with some of these students.

I actually saw them working, two of the kids were practicing cutting in a full wall inside the shop.

One of the students was painting some furniture for the carpentry division, and the other ones were all prepping, priming, and caulking the back of a building, hands on.

We hired one of those students.

3. Vocational schools:

Local vocational schools around here don’t have a painting department.

I reached out to the vocational school, talked to the person who heads the trades, and told them who I was and what I was looking for.

About 2 weeks later he called me up and said, I have five students who are interested in the painting trades and we have questions for you.

So we had a group interview one afternoon, all arranged by the vocational school, at the vocational school.

We talked, they all had resumes which shocked me.

Everything they were involved with at school, so it was great to see ROTC, honors, there are other curricular activities, soccer, football, etc and also their work history.

We did end up hiring one, he came on the field, he was familiar with our tools, ladders.

He is working out great, and he came in as an entry level painter.

4. This is a store employee.

Yea I know you already go in there and ask, “Hey, do you know anybody looking for a job?”

These employees at the store and maybe the paint reps are an extension of your business.

Treat them all year long as an extension of your company.

Buy them doughnuts, buy them lunch, maybe tip him, maybe buy him a gas card or something like that.

Maybe when you are having a company outing, invite them.

All they can do is say no, and if they show up all the better.

We actually took some of their employees with us when we had a golf outing.

We needed a few other people, a paint rep came out also and they joined the crowd.

It was a great time, and it also helped us bond a little better.

Not only do they look for employees for us, If someone comes in and was looking for a painter, a lot of times our card gets passed first.

5. Call your old employees.

If you have been a painter for a while, you’ve gone through a few employees in the painting business.

Call them up, the ones that you liked, maybe they left for some other reason.

An example, I went through my list and I had a crew leader who left a few years ago.

Great painter, he had left to work for his brother.

His brother was doing some different kind of work, he was doing church work.

I reached out to him about a month and a half ago.

He came back on our crew 2 weeks ago because he was really tired of driving so far.

The day he walked in was like the day he never left.

He hit the ground running, running a crew, and is actually working with a couple other guys he still worked with two years ago.

I’m Ron Ramsden. I help painters work on their business so they don’t have to work in their business.

Have a great day.

About the Author

Ron Ramsden is the owner of the successful Ramsden 1-800-PAINTING, who implemented the DYB SYSTEM, and crushed it in 2015, and now coaches other painting contractors around the nation to do the same.