Because you sent them out for a left-handed screwdriver, like, three days ago.

Hiring and mentoring apprentices can revolutionise your business, bringing fresh eyes, new ideas, and buckets of enthusiasm to every job. Not to mention an extra set of hands that you can teach to do the job right from scratch. But how do you sort the right candidate from the one who’ll kneecap themselves. With a router. On day two. Filming TikToks.

“The key thing is work experience,” says Matthew Scrimgeour, Apprentice Program Manager at Fairbrother, a commercial and industrial construction, joinery and facilities management company that operates in Tasmania and Regional Victoria. “You need to get the young person out on-site, see what they’re like, and give them some tasks—the cream jobs, the ordinary jobs. That is by far the best way that we find the stars that stand out from the crowd.”

Fairbrother has form: a national Australian Apprenticeships Employer Award-winner for 2020, the family company took on its first apprentice in 1974. In 1996, Fairbrother hired its first female apprentice. By 1998, its 100th apprentice started. By 2020, Fairbrother had trained 388 apprentices in carpentry and cabinet making.

“The most important criteria is attitude: that they’re willing to learn, and to take good, robust criticism, because apprenticeships are hard,” says Scrimgeour. “When they’re halfway though, usually the going gets tough. If they don’t have that real desire to do it, they’ll bail.”

Josh Furness agrees. Production Manager at Kent Saddlery, in Stanthorpe, Queensland—Small Employer of the Year at the 2020 Australian Training Awards—he says you can mostly tell if a recruit is a good fit with your workplace culture “straightaway”.

“For example, the latest work experience kid that we’ve had, she was hand stitching, and I needed a different set of glasses because I’m now 50,” says Furness.

“She grabbed them and opened the glasses case and took the glasses out and handed them to me. In my experience that indicates someone who is willing to learn.”

The best indicator of an apprentice’s ability to stick with it, says Furness, is solid parental support.

“It’s super critical,” he says. When it gets hard, the business can support them, “but not like someone in their immediate family can, or can a mentor in their circle.”

“It just helps them when they return home at the end of the day to know that it’s worthwhile; just to recharge their batteries. It’s not just all about having an ability or skill.”

The long-term upside of apprentices, says Scrimgeour, is the “massive potential” to grow your business. Fairbrother retains around 75 per cent of their recruits—or about a dozen each year—after the apprenticeship ends.

“If they start going places, with your business name on their shirt,” says Scrimgeour, “they’ll take you places too.”

“Look, not every chippy out there wants to get to 50 people or 150 people,” he says.

“But you can go from one or two guys to five or six and double or triple your turnover with really good apprentices. And if you stage them nicely – say you get a first-year this year, and you’ve got a third-year every year you put one on – that can be a massive building block to move your business in a positive direction.”