Hiring in Trades: Building Maintenance Technician Interview Questions

Finding the right employees, whether it’s a building maintenance technician or skilled workers in another trade your commercial clients rely on, remains one of the most significant challenges for business owners and hiring managers.

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Hiring the right technician for building maintenance roles presents unique challenges, especially when their work directly impacts the safety of others.

For example, if a salesperson fails to close a deal, it’s disappointing but not catastrophic; they can simply move on to the next opportunity. On the other hand, a mistake from a technician, such as incorrectly certifying an elevator as safe, could lead to far more serious consequences than just losing a few maintenance contracts.

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The Consequences of Hiring the Wrong Building Maintenance Technician

• Financial: onboarding and training a new employee means buying new equipment and tools, plus time out of a manager’s schedule. ‘According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire can cost your business 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings.’ (Business.com)
• Organizational: introducing an employee who turns out to be the wrong fit can heavily impact the company culture. The organizational costs include: ‘Clients or customers lost due to their mistakes, the impact on the mental health and stress levels of their co-workers, and the extra time spent by other team members to redo their poor work.’ (Business.com)
• Productivity: productivity is closely linked to employee well-being so if neither your new hire nor your existing employees are thriving, work isn’t getting done efficiently. 

If you paid close attention to the consequences above, you’ll have noticed that a few of them have more to do with the personality of an employee than their work experience. 

That’s because in a customer-centric, teamwork-based world – soft skills rank just as high as hard skills. This is especially true when you consider that you can teach practically any skill to someone who is eager to learn, but you cannot teach someone how to have a good personality.

So, how do you ensure you’ve got someone who can balance technical expertise with a friendly attitude, who can be confident in their skills but also open to learning new things, and can hit the ground running? 

That’s what we’re here to explain!

Join us as we break down how you can hire the right technicians for your company.

Let’s get started!

How Do You Hire the Right Candidate?

Before the interview: make sure you know how to recruit and retain technicians.

Hiring a technician in fields like building maintenance, HVAC, or plumbing differs from hiring in other departments.

Technical skills are straightforward to outline and quantify from the start. For instance:

For a senior building maintenance role requiring ventilation system upkeep and supervising a junior technician, candidates should meet specific criteria:

• 4+ years of experience
• Completed OSHA training
• NATE accreditation

Evaluating soft skills is more nuanced and falls into two categories:

• Problem-solving abilities (e.g., handling unexpected appliance malfunctions)
• Physical capabilities, like climbing and managing heights or lifting 60-70 lbs.

These skills usually come with experience, so they can be included in the job description if not hiring an apprentice or junior technician.

Check out our interview with Shannon Tymosko and learn more about her own journey and the fantastic advice she has on offer, too!

Job Summary of a Building Maintenance Technician

Our service business manages four-story luxury residential buildings in a downtown location. Each building has 10 apartments and we’re responsible for servicing the central heating system, built-in appliances, and other miscellaneous assets. As these are luxury properties, they require 24/7 support and maintenance. 

The successful candidate will be part of a two-person maintenance team, alongside a Senior Maintenance Technician, and they will be responsible for servicing plumbing, electrical, access control, HVAC appliances, and any other duties assigned by the building manager.

The hardest, by far, to quantify are teamwork-related soft skills or the cultural fit of your building maintenance technician.

Before the Interview:

• Define the soft skills you’re looking for by including specifics in the job requirements. For example, mention teamwork with a senior technician or occasional customer service tasks like upselling.
• Note that many applicants will focus on experience requirements and may overlook soft skills.
• Review credentials and job history of top candidates before the interview. Don’t discount applicants who don’t perfectly align with your expectations; they may still be worth considering.
• Save time by sending candidates a problem-solving scenario beforehand, filtering out those who aren’t qualified (e.g., unable to perform HVAC performance tests).

During the Interview:

• Avoid using the interview to rehash the applicant’s CV. You should already be confident in their technical qualifications.
• Focus instead on determining if they’re the right fit for the role.
• Start by discussing their previous experience, but pay close attention to how they behaved on the job.
• Evaluate their ability to build relationships with coworkers and align with the company’s values and brand.

A Building Maintenance Technician Interview can be Divided into Three Main Parts:

1. Work Ethic
2. Cultural Fit
3. Customer Service Prowess

Teamwork is incredibly important and can make or break your business. “The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Entreprenuer

No matter how skilled a technician is, the plain truth is that no one likes to work with a jerk and absolutely no one wants to hire one. To get around this, you need to put yourself in the customers’ shoes and decide if this is the kind of person you’d want working in your home or business premise.

While the way technicians interact with customers differs from the rest of your staff – mainly in that they’re often face-to-face with customers–the technician you do hire should ideally be “a people-person,” in much the same way that you’d expect someone in sales or marketing to be.

The bottom line is you want to work with people who are capable of being friendly to customers and who work well with others. This being said, spotting a bad apple isn’t as easy as asking them “Would you tell a building manager they’re an idiot for messing up the central heating system?”

Hopefully, no candidate would ever answer “Yes!” to that, but even so, your questions need to be a bit more tactful, too. In order to gauge this, you need to ask qualitative, open-ended questions, where there’s no right answer, but simply two or more ways of doing things.

Work Ethic Questions:

The purpose of a work ethic question is to help you assess whether an employee is intrinsically motivated to do a great job or if they’re the kind of person that will do the bare minimum necessary to avoid being flagged by management. 

Answers that highlight regrets or mistakes are also very important because they show a person is capable of managing a situation that has gone wrong and learning from it. 

For example, someone who answers that they’ve “never made a mistake in their life”  is probably being less than truthful. Sure, there may be a bit of bravado there, but it can indicate they don’t trust you as their manager. 

Even worse, it demonstrates they’re not able to admit their mistakes and are therefore unable to (and haven’t) learned from them; either way, this can spell trouble and indicate they won’t recognize your authority or that there’s likely to be problems managing them in the future. 

Examples of “Cultural Fit” Questions:

1. What is something about you that people would find unexpected? 
2. What’s the biggest issue in the building maintenance industry these days?
3. How do you stay up to date with tools and best practices? 
4. How would you let a colleague know they’ve made a mistake?
5. Is there a course or accreditation you don’t yet have and would like to attend?
6. How do you feel about using digital tools on the job, like a quoting app or inventory manager?
7. What do you like to do in your free time? (this can seem personal, but who knows, if your team shares hobbies it can lead to great team-building opportunities).

Cultural fit questions will depend a lot on the kind of business you’re running or working for. Building maintenance companies come in all shapes and sizes, with some being more formal and straight-laced, while others are more of a down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth type.

This should be reflected in your cultural fit questions and the candidate should be briefed about it beforehand, to avoid any disappointments when they show up to work in sweats and a t-shirt while everyone is wearing a button-down.

Customer Service Questions for Your Building Maintenance Interview:

1. What is your idea of a great customer experience? 
2. Have you ever dealt with an upset customer? How did you manage the situation?
3. How would you react if a customer mentioned you in a negative review?

Depending on the sector your business operates in, technicians might not have to deal with customers every day.

The same way a residential plumber might have, but it’s still a good idea to ask a few questions about customer service because it paints a detailed picture of the kind of candidate you’re looking at.

If you need some more ideas for inspiration, check out these field technician interview questions.

Patience, kindness, and politeness go a long way in dealing with building managers, tenants, or any other kind of shareholder. At the same time, if you’ve breached an SLA and sent them late on a job, you’ll appreciate having someone who can pacify an upset property manager.

Not to mention, these are people who others enjoy working around so they’ll contribute to a positive company culture. 

The Most Important Question to Ask in an Interview

Do you have any questions for us?

If you only have time for one question, this is the one you have to ask because it tells you more than anything else about the person in front of you. 

• Did they put in the effort to research the company beforehand or are they asking basic info about it now? 
• Are they interested in the company structure? That’s a good sign that they’re in it for the long term and want to know if there are opportunities for advancement in the future. 
• Are they asking about the business culture? Excellent! This means they’re also interested in being a good fit for the role, rather than just looking to fill in a position. 
• Are they asking about pay? They shouldn’t have to because the salary should be listed in the job ad so everyone is on the same page from the beginning. 
• Are they asking any technical questions? Great! They’re detail-oriented and passionate about specifics.  

As long as the candidate demonstrates interest, that’s all that matters. If someone lacks any curiosity about the place and people with whom they’ll be spending 40 – 60h every week, it could very be that they’re shy or introverted, but at the same time it could demonstrate a lack of interest; a point worth discussing further. 

It’s equally important that you’re transparent when answering the questions they have for you. Of course, you want to talk about all the great things your company does and offers but avoid exaggerations. 

Just like you wouldn’t want them embellishing their resume, they don’t want to be misled either. If a tough question comes up, answer it honestly and then focus on the positives of the situation.

They’ll appreciate your truthfulness more than a dishonest answer.

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Think Outside of the Box when Hiring for Building Maintenance Jobs

We hope you’ve found the points above helpful, but, of course, there’s always more to learn!

Consider asking potential employees if they’re familiar with using field service management software. Are they open to using new technologies on the job? That can say a lot about an employee and how they’ll fit in on your team.

Do you have a multi-trades service business? We have Electrical and Plumbing interview questions!

If you’re ready to take your building maintenance technician interviews to the next level, download this customizable questions template. With over 40+ questions, you can standardize your hiring process and be confident in bringing in new talent.