Guides / Running the work
Hiring painters
Hiring is the constraint on most painting companies that want to grow, and interviews are close to useless for it. Painting is a skill you can watch someone perform in two hours, which makes assessment far easier here than in most trades — if you are willing to pay for the two hours.
Where they come from
Overwhelmingly, from the people your current crew knows. A referral bonus paid to your own painters is the highest-return recruiting spend available, because good painters know other good painters and will not recommend someone who will embarrass them.
Beyond that: suppliers and paint stores know who is looking, other local companies' layoffs are real, and job boards work but produce the widest range of quality and the most screening work.
Assess by watching, not by asking
Pay for a half-day working trial on a real job. You will learn more in two hours of watching someone cut a line, mask a room and clean up than in any interview.
What to watch: cut-in quality, how they prep, how they handle their tools and the customer's property, whether they clean as they go, and whether they ask when unsure rather than guessing. The last one predicts more than the first.
Pay them for the trial regardless of outcome. It is a few hours of wages against a hiring decision that costs months if it is wrong, and it tells a good painter something about you.
Be honest in the advert
State the pay range, the hours, whether work is year-round or seasonal, and what you actually expect. Vague adverts generate volume and waste everyone's time, and someone who takes a job under a misapprehension leaves within a month.
In a market where everyone is hiring, the companies that fill roles are the ones that answer the questions the painter actually has.
The first week decides retention
Most people who leave a painting company leave early, and usually because nobody told them anything: where to be, what the standard is, who to ask, how they get paid, what the tools situation is.
A short, deliberate first week — paired with a lead, clear standard, explicit expectations — costs very little and is the difference between a hire and a vacancy you fill again in six weeks.
Getting them onto the schedule and the job detail without an IT exercise helps. The crew app opens from a link because a new painter should be working, not waiting for an email invitation.
Keep hiring when you do not need to
The worst time to hire is when you urgently need someone, because urgency makes you accept the first available person. Companies that stay in contact with good painters they could not take on last season have someone to call.
Questions
Where is the best place to find painters?
Referrals from your current crew, with a bonus attached. Good painters know other good painters and will not recommend someone who will embarrass them.
How do I assess a painter's skill?
Pay for a half-day working trial on a real job. Watching someone cut a line, prep and clean up tells you more than any interview — and pay them whether or not you hire them.
Why do new painters quit quickly?
Usually because nobody told them anything — the standard, who to ask, how pay works. A deliberate first week paired with a lead costs little and prevents most early departures.
Where this stops being arithmetic
Aerys prices a job from your own catalog and production rates, sends it with an accept link and the invoice already attached, and then compares what the job actually cost against what you quoted — by task, while the job is still running.