Hey, I’m a contractor and yes, even I have had to learn the hard way to trust my own instincts when I have hired people to do various forms of work for me over the years. We all think we know the good from the bad and that we can discern between the picking of someone good versus bad to work for us. We will never make a wrong decision even when we decide to use someone that was recommended to us by a “friend” of ours—yeah, right.

HUGE MISTAKE!!! In all economic times, whether good or bad you need to watch the people you are hiring in pretty much anything you do these days. Now don’t get me wrong, I am in no way a doomsday kind of guy, and I do still trust people, it’s just that when you or your spouse feel “something” you need to further watch and observe a person or company to see what may come of what you are thinking or feeling.

When a subcontractor wants you to pay them cash for a project as they don’t want to have to report taxes…. HUGE red flag, people. When you are approached to “help” pay for the materials for either a guy or company that will be doing some work for you, don’t do it. You should not finance a project for someone you are hiring. When you are leaving someone alone at your house to do some work, and there will be nobody around while they are there, ask a friend or family member to drop by in passing or even hire someone to drop by even if it’s for a few minutes just to check-in on the person. 

I have always made it a conscious effort to treat people like I want to be treated, and when we’ve built homes for people over the years, while they may have agreed to pay us in a “cost-plus” fashion or even by “time and materials,” I have always had my employees watch not only themselves for accountability but also the subcontractors we hire.

Case in point, we were building a 3,000 sqft. home for a client and I would go over the time cards of my framing contractor’s employees who said they were on our project. My staff thought I was wasting time as the framing contractor we hired was an honest guy, and he was, but his employees I found out were not. There was a five-man crew on the framing portion of this house, and I made it a point to stop by un-announced occasionally to count heads.

Why would I, the owner of his own company, not my subcontractor’s, do this?? Well, I had a feeling. When reviewing my subcontractor’s employee’s time cards, I found that two of the framing contractor’s employees were taking days off from the site but putting down a full days work on our client’s home, and my subcontractor never knew it. When confronted, these employees stated that the client would not know and since the client had money, nobody was being hurt.Trust your instincts, check and double-check.

As always, while I have tons of them, send me topic ideas via email at jwc@residentialmedia.com