Need to Hire a BAS Professional? With 21,015 BAS Job Openings, you’d Better Read This!

Skip Freeman,  Senior Technical Recruiter, BASI Solutions, Inc.

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On August 10th, the Association of Controls Professionals reported there were 21,015 BAS job vacancies in the United States. This is up 3,000 vacancies since June.

Why the increase? People are coming back from vacations, and school is starting. Everyone is settling back in. As they do, they are assessing where their workforce is and, in particular, the forward-thinking firms are looking at their 2020 needs, especially the 1st quarter.

• September thru January are the 5 top hiring months of the year.
• How are you going to attract top talent?
  
• You control primarily one variable out of five that determines whether a candidate will accept your job offer or not.

The 5 questions you must ask yourself when hiring are:

1. Does the person I am interviewing have the skills (both hard and soft) that I need?
2. Are they open to my geography?
3. Are they willing to leave their current company? (98.3% of the BAS talent is employed.)
4. Are they affordable? (How much you can pay them depends on how much you can charge your customers.)
5. Moreover, are they interested in my story? In other words, why should a person gainfully employed, head down, and working hard quit a perfectly good job and come to work for me (and possibly have to relocate?)  If a candidate meets the first four criteria, point 5 determines whether you will land them or not.

Let’s face it…most jobs are basically the same. Seriously, how much different is a BAS Controls Technician’s role from one company to another? Sure, the controls you sell or use may be different than what they have been doing, but that’s only a matter of learning a new technical skill. If you need someone with the same skills, it gets even harder in terms of job differentiation.

People change jobs based on emotion. Your story is what makes them feel good (or not) about you and your company. Hiring is the same as sales, “People buy on emotion and justify on logic.”

Good candidates want the following:

• Challenge
• Advancement (Doesn’t necessarily mean promotion. It can be increased responsibilities.)
• Work/Life balance
• Better pay (Of course, it must be within your budget, i.e., affordable.)
• “Sexy” projects (A well-known building, brand named Data Centers, projects that go beyond HVAC, etc.)

“Why? Why should I take your job and join your company?” is the question rattling around in your candidate’s head.

It is around these 5 elements that you craft your firm’s story.

Articulating these 5 elements well is what makes your story unique, increasing the probability of winning that elusive new hire.

PS: WARNING – hiring managers, whatever your story is, it must be true. Honesty is a key ingredient in the retention recipe for keeping good employees.

About the Author

Skip Freeman is a Senior Technical Recruiter (Headhunter) at Building Automation & Smart Industry Solutions (BASI Solutions.)

As a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with a BSME, Skip served 10-years in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers before serving in Field Sales & Leadership roles in specialty chemicals, water treatment, HVAC, and industrial equipment.

Today, as a recruiter with BASI Solutions, Skip focuses on helping companies hire the best & helping the best get hired in:

Connect with Skip and follow us at BASI Solutions to stay up-to-date on the latest jobs and career advancement opportunities.
Skip can be reached at Skip.Freeman@BASIsolutions.com