Useful Guidelines for Hiring and Training New Moving Crews

Anyone owning a moving business in New York knows that finding a good moving crew represents a challenge. A big part of the success of a business is owed to the people and how well they perform their tasks and hiring and training moving your employees needs to be a priority. The recruitment process for NYC movers takes time but most importantly, organization. Ensuring you get the right people is quite vital. There are many possible channels for recruitment that you can explore in order to create a good selection of qualified candidates but sometimes you may just not know where exactly to start from. This guide is designed to take you through all steps of the recruitment process, why it’s important and how to improve it.

Before you even start the recruitment process you need to ask yourself (and answer) a couple of important questions that will lead you on the road to finding that best team of movers such as how does the perfect crew look like, how many people do I need and afford to hire and when do I need them. The answers to these questions should be able to help you create a plan for your recruitment process.

Hiring the perfect moving crew

One of the most important things to keep in mind when hiring new workers is that they need to go through a multiple step process which will ensure that they are properly qualified for the position. You need to set out the hiring criteria in the beginning and make sure to stick to it. Once you have gained clarity regarding your expectations, it’s time to go out and find your new moving crew. There are multiple methods to do so. Some of them include:

• Asking other employees for referrals
• Posting your announcement on a trusted site like Linekdin
• Posting on social media
• Posting an ad in a local paper
• Posting an ad on Craigslist, Indeed and local vacancy directories

After you put out your announcement, the next step will be going through the applications and tossing aside the ones that don’t fit your criteria. This will be your pre-screening process and will probably narrow it down to less than half the applicants. Following the pre-screening, you should start conducting phone interviews with the remaining candidates. This will give you a better idea of how your potential new employees are really like and most probably you will have another cut. The last step is to schedule and conduct the in-person interviews. This could also include some type of test which will help you take out of the race anyone who does not fit your requirements. If you’re still not sure who you want to hire, check the references of your top options and contact previous employers for character references.

After finishing the recruiting process from which you have hopefully found a good crew, you will have to move on to training them. But before that, you need to keep in mind an important thing – don’t toss the rejected candidates CVs just yet! Things change and you might need more workers in the future and they may improve their CVs in the meantime. Create a database and the next time you’ll have a vacancy, you can contact them and speed up the process!

Training your new moving crew

The moving industry has a multitude of jobs to offer and usually it’s best if you employ people to do a specific task rather than multitasking. If you have hired someone with no previous experience, you need to train them on how to do the job you’ve hired them to do, at least in the beginning. The first point you need to really need to emphasize is the importance of customer satisfaction. Recommendations and reviews weigh a lot especially when it comes to the moving business, considering that people are always looking for reliable movers. It is really important to explain to your new employees how to handle customers. They need to look presentable, clean and professional. Having your crew appear clean sends the message that they can be trusted to take good care of the items they are handling.

Another very important thing you need to pay attention to when training your crew is explaining to them the importance of moving documentation. These are important both for having good organisation on the moving day and protecting the company from potential damages. Your movers need to pay attention to offer customers all the necessary documentation for signing. But the most important part of training your new crew is to prepare them for the job itself. This means going through the entire process and carefully explaining how each step should be done, especially the safety measures. Some of the most important things you need to cover include:

• Packing

You will need to teach your crew how to properly pack items. This is a necessity considering that many people choose to have items packed by their moving company. The best approach is to find packing supplies to train with and offer a packing course.

• Lifting

Another thing you need to teach your crew is how to properly lift items. Lifting heavy objects is one of the main causes of personal  injury in the moving industry. Improper lifting can lead to injury even when using moving straps so if improperly lifting, crew members could not only hurt themselves but also put the health of their coworkers in danger.

• Specific moving

Depending on the type of services your company offers you might need to train your crew for specific scenarios. If you tackle industrial moving, your crew might need to handle heavy equipment or dangerous chemicals.

• Safety

In the end, probably the most important thing you will have to train your new crew is their personal safety. Considering that moves can happen in all sorts of weather conditions and with all sorts of items, safety could become an issue. Having your crew aware of all the dangers and teaching them how to avoid juries or more serious accidents is essential.

About the Author

This article is provided by Michaela Smith who is the marketing director of Empire Movers, a trusted company in the NYC moving & storage services with an experience of over 15 years on the market, member of the American Moving & Storage Association (AMSA).