Unlike so many other jobs that have vanished or gotten shipped overseas, companies still need workers in local or regional warehouses. It’s the only way to keep shipping times reasonable between getting the order and delivering it. Of course, a bad hire at a warehouse is just as damaging as a bad hire in any other business. The question becomes, what skills should a warehouse candidate have?
1. Physical Health
Granted, physical health isn’t precisely a skill, but it’s something that some people protect and promote better than others. Working in a warehouse often means long hours and tough physical labor. Candidates may spend their time lifting heavy boxes. Doing that right is a skill and employees can injure their backs if they do it wrong. They may also walk for miles in the course of a single shift. Candidates should know at least a little about proper nutrition or food choices will undermine their health, which can undermine the company.
Takeaway: Candidates should have at least decent physical health and show some awareness of how to keep it.
2. Good Organizational Skills
Warehouses are often huge and use complex systems to manage where things get stored. A good candidate should demonstrate good organizational skills. You can do some preliminary testing for this. You can also include techniques for good organization into new candidates’ training. Candidates without good organizational skills will take a long time to learn where things go. Even worse, they’ll often fail to spot it when things end up in the wrong place.
Takeaway: You can teach someone with okay organizational skills to have better organizational skills. You struggle to get someone with bad organizational skills up to speed.
3. Computer Literacy
Like most other business ventures, warehouses rely on technology. They use it to track orders and inventory. They may even make changes to how products are stored directly in the computer system. That means a good candidate must demonstrate computer literacy. The bad news on this front is that around 60% of millennials have poor work-related computer literacy. That means you must ask specific questions about a candidate’s understanding of how computers work, experience with basic database manipulation, and comfort level with using handheld devices.
Takeaway: You can’t assume that because a candidate is young that they understand the relevant computer technologies.
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Warehouse candidates don’t need the kind of advanced skills that some professions require, but not it’s not wholly unskilled labor either. Candidates need an understanding of maintaining and keeping good health. They must also possess reasonably good organizational skills. A good candidate also needs some basic computer literacy in terms of databases and using handheld devices for scanning products.
Getting too many candidates without these crucial skills? Let Timpl connect you with a better-qualified group of candidates.
