Blueprint for Excellence

Finding and developing exceptional service managers is critical to operational success in pest management. Use NPMA’s new guide to develop the essential competencies that transform good managers into outstanding leaders. 

Robyn Rydzy

Members of NPMA’s Employee Recruitment & Retention Committee have carefully evaluated and determined the key professional skills that highly effective pest control service managers use in their role. 

“Longevity in the company” and “great service technician” are not on the list. 

That’s not to say those particular qualities aren’t laudable, but they have, at times, clouded consideration of more important management skills—a problem that the committee hopes to help employers solve with the NPMA’s new Guide to Hiring and Developing Pest Control Service Managers.

“We’d heard from multiple members from different size companies that a major challenge is identifying a person who’s ready to be promoted into management. If you’re really good as a service technician, it doesn’t always mean you’re ready or equipped to become a manager,” says Liz Bicer, NPMA director of workforce development, who served as a staff liaison for the project. “You could have someone who’s been with you for a year who’s ready to be promoted because of their aptitude and ability to demonstrate that they can lead as a manager. But they are sometimes overlooked because of their short tenure with the company.”

The guide is meant to give more structure to a hiring process that can sometimes be rushed to fill a sudden management hole in the team or based more on a “gut feeling” about an applicant than on their measurable management skills.

“Most of the time, if we are either hiring from outside or promoting someone from within, they’re going to have two to three strengths that are easily identifiable,” says Ryan Olson, owner and chief operating officer of Olson’s Pest Technicians. “But those two to three strengths might cloud me from being able to look deeper into other aspects that might not jump off the page with a candidate. So, this guide helps make sure you look at the whole candidate.”  

In doing so, it not only defines the core skills needed, but also explains in detail how to go about finding and hiring for them, from creating an effective job description to evaluating an applicant’s interview answers.  

CREATING THE JOB DESCRIPTION

The first order of business is to take a closer look at your company’s current job description for service managers and see whether it includes all the core competencies outlined for that position. Are any of the skills from the guide missing from the job description, or could they be explained more clearly? 
“Steal the guide’s language,” Bicer suggests. “Use it to fill in any blanks on [your] job listing.” Being thorough in this stage of the hiring process allows applicants to know exactly what you want.

The guide also explains how to use the interview process as a much more productive step than merely getting to meet potential candidates and see if you “click.” Employers can lean on the scenario-based interview questions listed, then consider whether applicants demonstrate the sought-after skill sets through their answers. 

Prioritizing those skill sets that fit the unique needs of your company can HELP YOU NOT ONLY HIRE THE RIGHT PERSON BUT ALSO KNOW WHERE TO FOCUS YOUR TRAINING once they start the job.

REVIEW REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

The guide prompts employers to figure out the absolutely necessary skills needed for their service managers to do the job well. This sounds like an obvious step, but it can be overlooked in the rush to fill an empty position or promote from within. Olson says he learned that the hard way. 

“We had a guy who wanted to be a manager, and we really needed someone. ... We made a rash decision and didn’t look at the candidate as a whole—we just looked at one or two areas and then focused on the good and ignored the bad,” he says. “Eventually that ‘bad’ surfaced to the point where we couldn’t ignore it anymore.” 

While a set amount of experience in the field is not among the skills listed, there are performance indicators regarding financial skills:   

• Finds cost-saving opportunities
• Understands profit margins
• Analyzes financial data effectively
• Makes financial calculations and comparisons

In conducting research for the guide, the committee found that many company owners expressed a preference for their managers to be licensed technicians or to have a certain amount of time in the industry. When pressed for a reason, those executives said that it wasn’t so much about the years of experience as it was about earning the respect of the technicians they’d be managing and understanding the nuances of the positions they’d be overseeing. 

Both can be accomplished during onboarding once the right service manager is hired, Bicer says. Even when companies hire from outside the industry, they can still put that new manager through a technical training regimen, even requiring them to get their pest control service technician license and to shadow current techs in the field. 

“In one company’s instance, the person was learning the technician role for six months, and the supervisor learned that the team was respecting this new manager,” she says. This indicated that they were “ready to lead.” 

BE FLEXIBLE WITH SKILLS

Although the guide defines several key skills for a successful service manager, it acknowledges that “each company may have different expectations about which skills a candidate should already have versus which can be developed.” 

Establishing skills-based minimum requirements and target expectations for the job helps the employer to create structure around a candidate search and stay objective through each application review and interview.

Olson says the guide was written with the knowledge that it’s unlikely to find an applicant who excels in every defined skill, so prioritizing those skill sets that fit the unique needs of your company can help you not only hire the right person but also know where to focus your training once they start the job. “If I have a strong candidate that checks six boxes,” he says, “I know I need to spend a little time pressing into x, y, or z, to make sure they’re well-rounded and ready for the position.” 

You can offer targeted training for those promoted into a service manager role from within the company, too—but that tends to be rarer. “[Employers] spend a couple months in most cases with new technicians training them, but when we promote, we kind of just turn them loose,” Olson says. 
Also, sharing the guide with current technicians or other staff members who might have their sights set on a future in management is a great way to make sure everyone understands what skills are expected in the service manager role. Current team members can even use the skills assessment tactics to help pinpoint areas that need improvement. “The intention of this guide is not a performance evaluation,” Bicer says, “but it’s a tool to really grow and support your team.” “It’s not only a road map and framework for hiring someone today,” Olson says, “but it can be used as a framework for professional development for your leaders tomorrow.”

Your Road Map to Management Success

NPMA’s Guide to Hiring and Developing Pest Control Service Managers is a step-by-step solution to hiring service managers with the competencies needed to excel as a leader in the field and to create a common reference point for the skills expected of a service manager at the company.

First, the guide defines the following key skills for pest control service managers: 

• Customer focus
• Communication
• Staff training and development
• Adaptability and problem-solving
• Leadership and management
• Financial acumen
• Project management

A sample job announcement describes the position, includes a bulleted list of core responsibilities that highlight those seven key skills, and explains the qualifications needed to be a successful candidate.
The next section of the guide offers sample interview questions specially designed to draw out the applicant’s proficiency in each of the key skills. Most importantly, “what to look for” cues help an interviewer objectively and thoroughly evaluate an applicant’s response to each question.
 
Finally, the guide helps employers assess the importance of each key skill to their organization, then set an applicant’s proficiency levels for their must-have and nice-to-have skills. Easy-to-use charts are included to allow the hiring team to visually assess each applicant objectively, using the same metrics and parameters. 

To access NPMA’s Guide to Hiring and Developing Pest Control Service Managers, visit npmapestworld.org/hiringguide.