Charles Bailey
Kentucky Service Company, Inc.

From time to time it is necessary, through retirements, reductions, or people just moving on, to replace management personnel. Management personnel are from the foreman level all the way up the management line. The process of identifying replacement personnel can be daunting to say the least. Where do we find suitable candidates? If we do not have a suitable candidate within our organization, where do we go?

The third in the series of “Management Pulse” surveys provides some insight into these questions.  114 EASA members responded to the survey.

Survey Results:

• Of the 114 member respondents, 64% responded that they promote from within rather considering “outside” candidates. 3% responded that they do not promote from within their organizations. 33% responded that they sometimes promote from within as opposed to considering “outside” candidates.
• When searching for candidates outside of the company, here’s how respondents indicated they would “very likely” locate candidates: 42% of 111 respondents indicated that they would use word-of-mouth referrals from employees or others in like industries. 16% of 106 respondents indicated they would use newspaper classifieds. 26% of 103 respondents indicated that they would use ads in industry publications. 16% of 104 respondents indicated that they would use listings on their company websites. 21% of 103 respondents indicated that they would use advertisements on job search websites. ​(Click the chart above.)
• It was clear through respondents that they were less likely to use newspaper, company website or job search websites. (Click the chart above.)
• 62% of respondents indicated that they do not attempt to find candidates only in the motor repair industry.
• When searching outside of the company for candidates, headhunters and other executive recruiters were the most likely to be utilized for these searches.
• Other service industries that are considered for candidates are from mechanical services, engineering services automotive industry, HVAC industry and facility maintenance industry.

As stated above, replacement of management personnel can be a daunting task, but with very good due diligence in researching candidates, the correct person can be located and hired in order to further your business.

Utilization of networking for ideas can provide a big help for this process. For instance, I personally have not had good luck with job search websites. The one I used did not have a good applicant filter and I had hundreds of applicants from non-industrial backgrounds.  So I wouldn’t recommend that for our industry.

The next Management Pulse topic will be “Health Care Benefits. Watch for this in early September, as well as periodic surveys and corresponding articles over the next year. The data that is collected is of course of much better use with a larger number of members responding to the survey.  Thank you to the 114 respondents of this survey as without their assistance, it would not have been possible to obtain the data.

Categories: Technical topics

Tags: Management Pulse

Rate this article:

No rating

Print