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Hello and welcome to the Warehouse and Operations as a Career Podcast, I’m Marty and I’d like to thank you for clicking in with us today! Let’s see, I’ve gotten behind on a few questions that’s been sent in, let me see if I can get a few of them answered really quick!
I liked this one here, a gentleman asked, “how would you recommend I get into warehousing”. I’m not sure what his work experiences are but he goes’ on to state “all the good companies are wanting someone with experience.”
When we’re looking for work and we’re cruising all the job boards and classifieds of course the first thing that catches our eyes is going to be the pay rates. Now this is where human nature will kick in a little, of course we want the job paying the most. If we see two postings for order selecting paying X number of dollars an hour and one right beside it paying $5 more we’re putting on our shoes and heading out the door to fill out that application, right? Almost always, that higher paying position is going to be in a heavy productivity role, it’s paying more because theirs a lot more responsibility & experience required to hit those pieces per hour numbers or quotas.
I feel we can be there within a year though, all we need is to learn how to reach those numbers, it can be done in just a year or 12 month, all we need to do is have a plan. I’m not exaggerating or talking a lot of self help talk here, it really is up to us and all we need is that plan in place. I reached out to the gentleman and he hasn’t gotten back to me yet so let’s make a couple of assumptions and develop a quick plan and set our goal of getting a warehouse job and making at least 5 more dollars an hour in less than 12 months. There’s typically 2080 regular work hours in a year, if we increase our earnings by $5/hr that’s a $10,400.00 increase year over year, and that’s before any overtime. Now if your shaking your head right here I’m pretty sure you’re not going to reach our new goal, you’re probably already setting yourself up and accepting that first rate of pay.
Ok, so how do we get started? We need to first target a warehouse, industry or company that has the position we’d like to learn. Wither its order selecting or forklift driving, maybe inventory control or maybe we’re interested in transportation, delivery driver is another really good job! And don’t forget about all the Production and Manufacturing facilities out there, operating machinery and assembly work are great Career fields too! Let’s look for any open position they have, we’ll need a general labor position or utility task, any entry level position will do or anything that meets our present skill levels. Remember this job is just to get us past HR, we have to be an employee to get started with our plan. Don’t worry about the pay rate. I know that’s a whole lot easier to say than to do. We’ve all got bills and responsibilities and we need to make x number of dollars a week to pay them. If we can let’s think it through though, yes, we’re worth more than what we’ve just been offered but we want even more than what our experience is earning us right now. If we’re out of work, take the job, I really believe we’re going to start getting increases within our first 3 months, if there’s any way possible ride it out, its going to pay off. I was speaking with a young lady last month that said no she couldn’t work for less than x dollars an hour, a dollar more than shed ever earned before. We’re out of work, any income is better than 0, lets take the position and see where it goes, what we can make out of it!
I’ve found Produce companies, Grocery distribution, the Big Box retail distribution centers or maybe the institutional or foodservice broadline facilities to be Great “foot in the door” warehouses. Almost every large Manufacturing company will have utility positions open too.
Once we’re on the inside or and we’re an employee we put our plan into action. Let’s be on-time for every shift, 10 minutes early even. We’re going to speak up at every start up meeting, even if it’s just a yeah or to add a let’s go do this to the conversation. This alone will get us noticed by our boss. We’ll do our job well, observing every position around us, there’s always positions that touches ours. Like if our job is to bale cardboard and shrink wrap, the sanitation positions that cleans up the cardboard probably pays a little more and maybe they utilize the scrubber machine or single pallet jack too, Ah, a piece of equipment! Equipment usage generally will bring us better earnings! So, we wait until we can do our task really well, within a month I bet we can be really good at it, remember, we’ll have to work a little harder than the other balers because we want to make more money than a baler. Let’s go to our boss, I always suggest making it towards the end of the shift when the day’s stresses and pressures are off of them. And we’re not going to ask for a raise, this is important. Rarely can our supervisor or lead grant us a pay increase and even if they like us a lot there’s no incentive for them to go ask their Manager or V.P. for money for anyone. We’re going to say something like hey boss, I’ve been here about a month and I think I’m doing a pretty good job as we’ve never had to talk about anything or had an evaluation of any kind and I’d like to throw my name in the hat for a sanitation position if something comes up, it looks interesting and I want to learn all our positions. We’ve expressed our desire for a raise and kept the conversation within his powers. We’ve possibly even set him or her up for an at a boy from their boss. It’s so much easier for them to go tell their manager that hey so and so has been doing a great job and they’ve expressed an interest in sanitation, I think they’d make a good hand. Money’s never been brought up; our immediate boss has just conveyed to their manager how great they’ve trained us and how their bringing us along. Everyone’s won or at the very least both bosses now know that we’re wanting more, more responsibility and more money! I believe we can expect that first promotion within a month or so, as soon as there’s an opening! We just repeat this part of our plan until we reach our goal position and pay rate. I know that’s a bit simplified, but it can honestly work just that way. My point being, we need a job, and we ought to go into it with a plan, making more money will come if we plan and want more money because we’re willing to do more every step in the chain for it. If you’re in a situation like were talking about and you feel your stuck, send us an email and we’ll talk about how to maybe get around the wall that’s holding you back. We’d be happy to offer up any experiences we can and one of us has probably had to work around the same thing before!
I’d like to go over Equipment operation again real quick too. I received a phone call today from a young lady that wanted to know how much it cost to get her forklift certification. She had called 2 different places and had gotten two prices and 2 different stories about the class. We’ve talked about equipment certifications a couple of times here on the show, but I’d like to remind everyone that experience will get us our licenses and I honestly don’t know of any real short cuts there. Our employer will train us and give us our 29cfr1910.178 training for free. I think those paid courses are great as a safety class or a refresher course but please do a little research on what your getting for your money. Going to class, without any experience on the machine, is going to get you a nice laminated card to carry and they may give you a few addresses to staffing companies but your going to hear that their looking for experienced drivers. Think about it for a minute. We know the equipment can be dangerous and we’re going to be carrying a heavy load with it running around a warehouse full of racking, product and people. Those jobs are just no place to start our warehousing careers. Again, their great career jobs that our employer will work with us, train us and certify us when we’re really ready. Check out OSHA.gov on line if you’d like to see what all is actually in the reg, I think you’ll be amazed with it. Powered Industrial Truck training or 29cfr1910.178, and you can just enter that into your browser too, it’ll pull up the standard, was created to protect us employees and our employers. By following its instruction and training you’ll have a productive, prosperous and Safe Career! And if you know me at all this is where I’ll throw in my to never, never ever get on or even touch a piece of powered equipment or machine that you haven’t been trained on. Just stay away from it.
Well I won’t go on and on today, I hope you found the episode interesting and I said something that’ll help you somehow. Send in any questions you may have about your positions to host@warehouseand operationsasacareer.com and we’ll do anything we can to help you out! Remember we’re on Facebook and Twitter everyday @whseandops & if you’re an equipment operator check out the Facebook group Warehouse Equipment Operators Community, you can get almost any question answered their as well!
Have a Safe and Awesome week out there!!!