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View Full Version : Everyone thinks they can do this job



Ken Rowe
02-02-2010, 01:02 PM
I was driving to my first inspection this morning and received a call which had been transferred from my office. Seems a gentleman had seen the sign on the back of my pickup and called to inquire about a job.

I told him I was hiring, but only experienced inspectors. He stated he had been framing houses for the past 15 years so inspections should be easy for him. He got mad when I told him he didn't have the experience we were looking for and that I'm in the process of hiring 3 inspectors with several thousands of inspections under their belt and a structural engineer with a PE license.

Maybe we just make this job look easy?

Rick Hurst
02-02-2010, 05:10 PM
Ken,

I like it when they say, "I live in a house."

Like that qualifies them to be a HI.:rolleyes:

rick

Dan Harris
02-02-2010, 07:08 PM
I told him I was hiring, but only experienced inspectors. He stated he had been framing houses for the past 15 years so inspections should be easy for him. He got mad when I told him he didn't have the experience we were looking for

Maybe we just make this job look easy?

Ken .. Send them your test, and tell them you require them to pass it with 100% without looking up the answers :)

Billy Stephens
02-02-2010, 07:32 PM
Ken,

I like it when they say, "I live in a house."

Like that qualifies them to be a HI.:rolleyes:

rick
.
I lived in a House once ( liked The Car Better. ) :D

* till The Boss told me to take it back to the office. :mad:
.

Matt Fellman
02-02-2010, 09:34 PM
Especially in today's market you can pick the cream of the crop. We've run a couple ads in the last year and been absolutely overrun with extremely qualified people. Lots of out of work city inspectors with a lot of certs and experience.

Ken Rowe
02-02-2010, 10:57 PM
Well, there's really nothing "hard" about this job if you don't count the long hours, extreme liability, laying awake thinking about what you have missed, ridiculous crawl spaces and attics, personal danger, butthead clients and agents, insurance payments, licensing, CE, scheduling... But wait, you don't have to deal with any of that if you are an employee! Can I work for you Ken!

You can't work for me, but we do have a couple offices in Arizona. If you're interested I could set you up. :D Since the company takes on the liability I don't worry about if I missed anything. I do go back in every once in a while to make sure I turned the oven off or the heat back down. lol. I don't worry about personal danger. If it looks dangerous I don't do it. My safety comes first. We don't have much for crawl spaces here. The ones we have are either old with a 4" space between the joists and dirt or new with a concrete floor and 4 feet of clearance. I don't worry about clients or agents. I just tell them like it is. What they do with that information is up to them. Insurance is taken care of by the company as are the CE payments and scheduling. I think the hardest part for me is cramming all the knowledge from houses built from the 1800's to today and all the different systems and such into my tiny brain. The inspection stuff goes in and the important stuff like baseball stats and my wife's birthday go out.

Ken Rowe
02-02-2010, 10:59 PM
Lots of out of work city inspectors with a lot of certs and experience.

I've had two "city inspectors" take my test. One was doing home inspections on the side. The highest score was 44%. I turned them both away.