How to Hire Great Field Technicians

Our Methodology for Hiring Field Technicians

The Katapult Pro method of data collection is a little bit different from pole surveys of yesteryear.

When it comes to bringing reliable utilities to people, we believe that step one is making sure you get all the information you need, as quickly and safely as possible, so your team can make great engineering decisions that positively impact the communities you serve.

We put a pretty big emphasis on scalability. In the past, we watched field heroes who could memorize a hundred pole tags in the morning, estimate make ready costs down to a few hundred dollars (at 45 MPH) in the afternoon, and make it to their favorite gas station for their first meal of the day—or as I call it, “Dinner.”

We do love our legendary field stories and John Henry-esque heroes. Almost as much as we love the future promise of LiDAR that gets us everything we need from a car, drone, or plane.

In reality, however, we needed a way to grow a young team to quickly capture high-quality data—safely—without months or years of experience.

Our field workflow leverages photo documentation and two-person teams so that you can hit the ground running quickly in the market you’re serving while providing back-office engineering and design from wherever your designers are working. You can check out more about our field process here.

Getting The Right Person

There are two non-negotiables in hiring: getting the right people, and making sure they’re in the right seats. 

If you can’t commit to getting these two things right, you should probably consider subcontracting. The impact of having the wrong people—even if they’re in the right seats—can be fatal to your culture and business.

Getting the right people requires you know your core values well. Core values aren’t a list of buzzwords or aspirational attributes. They’re the qualities present in all your staff. They’re the things that you hire, fire, reward, promote, and make tough decisions based on.

They aren’t found by accident. Just because you all use iPhones or fish on the weekends doesn’t make those things your core values. And permission-to-play items like “integrity” and “honesty” probably aren’t core values either.

When interviewing potential field technicians, the temptation may be to take these cultural cornerstones a bit less seriously. Do I really need this tech to have a Grow Or Die mindset? Do I need them to put People First? 

Not everyone on your team will have the same impact on company culture as others. It’s up to you to determine what the bar is. However, holding all staff to the same standard is a critical component to building a lasting culture where all staff celebrate the same values that help the company reach its potential.

Here are 3 quick steps to make sure you’re looking for the right people:

1. Know your core values: If you don’t know what they are, you can probably get a sense for them by looking at the traits of your most successful and culturally impactful team members.

2. Communicate core values to candidates: It should be clear that if a candidate doesn’t share your core values, it will probably drive them nuts to be a part of a team that emphasizes those things.

3. Be consistent: Hire, fire, promote, incentivize, reward, and celebrate staff based on core values.

Getting The Right People Into The Right Seats

It’s not enough to make sure you have people that align with your company’s core values. They also need to understand, enjoy, and have the bandwidth to be a field technician.

In Katapult Pro, this means the ability to work independently and with a team, drive long distances, hike outside for many hours a day, take great pictures, ask questions, navigate stressful situations, and maybe even stomach gas station fare and fast food.

The interview process should screen for simple job requirements by asking questions like:

• How do you feel about the outdoors?

• Are you generally comfortable working with phones, cameras, and computers?

• Do you enjoy being on your feet and hiking for long stretches?

But there are also more subtle things to evaluate, such as:

• The ability to work peacefully and constructively in close quarters with a partner

• Driving safety record

• Good judgment and communication when working with angry property owners

• The ability to grind away at a repetitive task for long periods of time

• Not being scared of bugs, briars, or traffic jams

High Turnover Jobs

Jobs with lots of driving, long hours, and brutal environmental conditions lead to more turnover for field technician roles than your team sees in other areas of the business. Here are 4 things we’ve done to mitigate this at Katapult:

1. Partial Weeks - we try to frontload the week so 2-4 really strong field days can set up design and engineering teams for success.

2. Summer Internships - work often ramps up in April and May, so you can find talented engineering interns who are hungry to work OT and offer lots of value with their limited experience. It can be a great growth opportunity and a way for them to evaluate your business for future, full-time employment.

3. Hybrid Roles - fieldwork offers a break from a day-to-day OSP design job, and some staff jump at the opportunity to take on a day or two per week in the field.

4. Culture First - we work hard to find field techs that resonate with our core values and give them opportunities to celebrate those things with us in the office—however infrequently the chances arise.

The right people in the right seats set the trajectory for success. 

It’s easy to cut corners when hiring field staff. Their role in the office looks different, their team dynamic can feel like its own subculture, and their daily challenges tend to take the form of thorn bushes, extreme weather, and suspicious homeowners. 

But who we hire, how we invest in them, and the way they affect their environment matters, whether they spend their time in the field or in the office. 

Thanks for reading! We’re working on training to help the right people get acclimated and onboarded quickly so they can provide immediate value from day one. For more information, give us a shout at hello@katapultengineering.com!