A few weeks ago I wrote a column about one of the biggest challenges facing the office imaging dealer community—finding good people.
Shortly afterwards I received an e-mail from Paul Schwartz, president of Copier Careers, a staffing company for the office imaging industry, who shared with me some of his observations about the roots of this dilemma.
Copier Careers has more than 70,000 people in its database that it tracks every month and what’s happening on the employment front is something it watches extraordinarily closely. From Schwartz’s perch at the forefront of the hiring line at Copier Careers, the current situation is rooted in an interesting combination of coincidences or events. “A couple of things happened the past few years, which are more consequential than anything else in our 25+ years in the industry,” he says.
It all started with what happened with the economy in 2008-2009. The independent dealer channel and the OEMs themselves had no idea where the economy was heading, and because of that Copier Careers noticed that fewer people were receiving additional OEM training something that was more commonplace before the economic bust. “They stretched the rubber band tighter and tighter with their existing people,” said Schwartz. “There was this whole [concept] of make do with less. Then all of a sudden they got used to that and it kind of became the norm.”
Copier Careers noticed that clients who used to hire what Schwartz calls “bench strength,” put on the brakes.
“Before ’08 and ’09 if we had a strong OEM trained technician in their backyard, they hired them because they were thinking they’d grow the business and if they were OEM trained it would save them a lot of money,” recalled Schwartz. “Then theyy started hiring on need, but not future anticipation.”
As a result Copier Careers’ metrics showed that the average number of calls went up, the average number of hours technicians and sales reps worked went up, and productivity per individual went up.
“Then all of a sudden the economy got better and at the same time, MPS and MNS kicked in and dealers and OEMs looked at it and said ‘I can go and sign up more devices and organically grow my business by large multiples,’” says Schwartz. “We had clients who in big years would grow their business, 5, 10, 15 percent, now all of a sudden we had clients growing at 50, 80, 150, 200 percent because of MPS and MNS. At the same time they still had the same service force in place.”
Complicating matters was the service force had the same skill sets they had before MPS and MNS, which made those skills dated in the job market.
“The industry went from a break-fix mentality to an MPS/MNS mentality,” notes Schwartz. “Plus they hadn’t added to their field force, which exacerbated the situation of not having enough people.”
It’s not as if people weren’t available. With layoffs, mergers, and acquisitions there was a pool of talent available, just not the right ones. “Those individuals tended to be break-fix people, not what we call ‘hybrid technicians,’” says Schwartz. “Technicians that might be 60% break-fix and 40% some kind of networking skill set or a combination of that. Those three things all came into play—the shortage of people, the evolution of MPS, and the existing field force’s skill set, one that wasn’t always applicable in an MPS/MNS environment.”
That brings us to where things are today.
“We’re out there doing what we do and dealerships have internal recruiters doing what we do and the truth of the matter is, there are not enough people out there that are trained in the skill set they have to have,” maintains Schwartz.
This has created what Schwartz calls the greatest shortage of job candidates that Copier Careers has ever seen. “It’s not that there’s less people, it’s that there’s less people with the right skill sets for what a modern dealership has evolved into,” points out Schwartz.
He agrees with my point about recruiting young people right out of school although he’s mostly referring to service techs. “At some point the option becomes taking people off the street or out of technical school who possess networking skills and teaching them break-fix skill sets or taking those with break-fix skills and teaching them networking skills,” states Schwartz.
Or a dealership might hire someone who doesn’t have either skill and train them.
If someone needs a tech or sales rep, Copier Careers, can usually fill that need from its huge database. But the talk track with clients has changed compared to four or five years ago.
“If someone was a Canon, Ricoh, or Toshiba dealer, we didn’t have to have a conversation much beyond that,” explains Schwartz. “We went through our database and pulled people with Canon, Ricoh or Toshiba certifications and made sure it matched. That was a given. A few years ago some of our more forward-thinking clients started telling us that they would be willing to live with someone with break-fix skills who wasn’t specifically trained on the equipment of that dealer’s OEM as long as they had certification on a OEM or some sort of networking A or A+ certification. They at least need the ability to work in a network environment and the ability not to mess it up. That was a tipping point.”
These days when Copier Careers has that conversation with a client and the client says, ‘I need a tech who is trained,’ Schwartz adds that it’s a given that they’re looking for a hybrid trained technician unless it’s a production print tech or something more specific.
Schwartz says there are still good people out there and Copier Careers can find them. “We’re still able to pull it off, but it’s more difficult and takes longer because there’s less of a group to pick from.”
