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Is your company considering providing EV charging services for your employees or customers? If so, you’ll need to hire facility maintenance staff with EV charging experience to check and maintain your charging stations. With these tips, learn how to hire the right people for your workplace EV charging stations.
Start by Hiring an EV Charging Consultant
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Before you start the hiring process, assess your customers’ and employees’ interest in adding electric vehicle charging infrastructure to your facilities, as the US Department of Energy (DOE) advises.
Then, investigate all the challenges you might face during the process. Rest assured, though. Providing EV charging services at your workplace is well worth the effort, as ChargePoint’s Pasquale Romano has discovered in his 15 years of building one of the world’s leading charging networks.
While background research beforehand is always prudent, hiring an experienced EV charging consultant can help you cut costs and avoid costly mistakes. As rental property owner Andrew Campbell points out in his Canary Media guest post, adding EV chargers to a commercial property can get complex.
Without the expertise of an EV charging consultant, your business can run into many roadblocks – from potential code violations to the costs of rerouting your entire electrical system, even those of neighboring businesses. An EV consultant can help you “plan, develop, and manage [your] project while finding savings through incentives and avoiding preventable pitfalls,” as consulting firm AEI advises.
Since your EV charging consultant won’t likely be a permanent employee, treat them like any contractor.
- Evaluate their EV charging technology experience and expertise.
- Read reviews of their work.
- Ask for references.
- Seek advice from other companies about their experience with each prospective consultant.
- Interview each prospect about their experience with businesses with similar needs to your own.
Find Operations and Maintenance Personnel for Your Charging Stations
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As the DOE guide cited earlier recommends, your company should find knowledgeable people to handle your EV charging operations and maintenance needs. Unlike your consultant, your EV charging operations and maintenance personnel will likely be permanent employees, so you’ll need to look at their long-term potential.
You might already have a facilities manager or a sustainability point person on your staff who can handle the complexities of maintaining your EV charging equipment and overseeing the day-to-day operations. If you have someone in mind who’s a good fit, consider hiring an assistant to help them handle their other tasks.
However, you might need to hire specialists with training in people and operations management and EV equipment repair to handle your customer, employee, and fleet EV charging operations, depending on the size of your facilities and the number of people who will use them.
Hiring EV Charging Station Maintenance and Repair Personnel
If your company already has automotive technicians or electricians on its staff, you could also pay to train one or more of them in EV charging station maintenance and repair. Otherwise, you’ll need to advertise your position on online platforms and in local publications.
While your charging station maintenance and repair staff don’t usually need a university degree, they do need extensive training in the specifics of EV charging technology. Qualified candidates should have a certificate from an EV-specialized trade school or proof that they have completed at least two years of on-the-job training from a qualified EV charging technician.
Other qualifications your EV charging technician candidates should have include the following:
- The ability to troubleshoot, diagnose, repair, and maintain EV charging infrastructure using both computer diagnostics and electric tools
- The desire to keep accurate, timely documentation for repairs and maintenance tasks
- Knowledge of basic electrical equipment safety protocols
- A passion for excellence in customer service
- The ability to communicate easy-to-understand instructions to charging station users
- A willingness to attend continuing education sessions to keep their skills up to date
- The ability to work with limited supervision and attention to detail
Hiring EV Charging Operations and Management Personnel
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If your facility is large enough – or if you need to create and administer employee charging policies – you might need to hire someone with experience in management and operations. At a minimum, this person should have solid management experience and excellent organizational skills. Other qualities your EV charging operations and management staff should have include the following:
- Collaboration skills: To succeed in this role, a candidate must collaborate with your legal team to implement policies that reduce liability and with your security staff to prevent theft and vandalism.
- A general knowledge of EV charging technology: Although an EV charging operations and management candidate won’t need to know all the technical details that a repair and maintenance worker would need, they need a working knowledge of the technology. As the DOE piece points out, management personnel need to know how a vehicle’s battery size, type of vehicle, and its owner’s commuting distance impact how much time an employee’s car needs to spend charging.
- Communications skills and empathy: Management and operations personnel liaise between customers, employees, and the brand. Whether scheduling charging times for employees or handling charging station customer complaints, the candidate must communicate effectively with the public. But that’s not enough. EV charging station managers need the ability to put themselves in their customers’ and fellow employees’ shoes to create a welcoming environment.
- Analytical and reasoning abilities: Management and operations personnel need to be able to analyze customer and usage data, calculate the rate at which your company will need to charge employees or customers, and plan for any needed expansion.
- EV charging risk management experience: Management personnel should also have the foresight to detect, assess, and manage potential risks that might arise during your facility’s operations. For that reason, a solid record of risk management is a must-have for an EV charging facility manager.
Build a Network of EV Charging Professionals to Ensure Hiring Success
If your company is just starting toward a more sustainable workplace, you might not have any connections among EV charging professionals. Attending events where you can hear from some of the industry’s top experts can help you build your network quickly.
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At an EV Charging Summit event, you can meet industry professionals with connections to some of the finest talent in the business. If you’re hunting for top talent, attend the next event and get a jumpstart on the hiring process today!
