The Cost of a Bad Welding Hire (and How to Avoid It With Temp-to-Hire)

With welding, you don’t want to take any chances. A welder who lacks the right skills, approach, or attitude can set your company back with serious consequences, from failed inspections to legal challenges after a part fails in the field.

Below, we discuss the cost of a bad welding hire and how you can reduce your chance of bringing on the wrong person for the job.

What a Bad Welding Hire Costs

A CareerBuilder Survey of 2,379 hiring managers once found that the average cost of a single bad hire was $17,000. That survey was in 2016, so you can assume the average cost has gone up quite a bit since then due to inflation. When you consider lost productivity, compromised work quality, impacts on team morale, the time and financial cost of recruiting and training another worker, and the time coworkers have to spend assisting the bad hire, it really adds up. What’s more, costs can be quite a bit higher for some roles than others.

A bad welding hire is likely to be especially expensive. The work comes with serious safety hazards — not only for your employees, but also for anyone who uses a poorly completed product. Rejected parts and failed certifications can really add up, and field failures often cost even more. 

The Additional Cost of Each Bad Welding Job

Rework occasionally happens with any welder, but the wrong candidate will give you consistently lower-quality work that brings long-term financial, legal, and brand-related consequences for your business. Welding issues lead to more delays, increased overtime, and intense pressure on the whole team.

Sometimes a bad welding job leads to visible issues, like porosity or cracking. Other issues are hard to catch until inspection, or worse yet, until a part fails in the field. Lack of fusion, undercut, overlap, distortion, and warping are all common problems that can compromise the strength or safety of a weld.

A single shop mistake can set you back with emergency repairs, long-term brand damage, and potential liability. If the welder you hire doesn’t have the right skills or rushes too much, you’re much more likely to end up bearing these costs.

How to Avoid Bad Hires

Regardless of how you choose to hire a welder, you will likely want to take these steps to avoid a bad hire.

• Temp-to-hire staffing. Temp-to-hire gives you a chance to try out a candidate before committing to them for a long-term position. We’ll explain more about how it works below.
• Screening. Resume reviews and prescreening interviews can sometimes help you avoid a bad hire. A staffing agency can help you with this part of the recruiting process.
• Skills testing. Skills testing is extremely important when you hire a welder. You need to make sure this person truly knows what they’re doing and how to prevent costly welding issues.
• Competitive pay. The best way to get a quality candidate is to offer competitive pay, benefits, and working conditions that attract experienced welders. Good welders usually know what they’re worth. 

According to Indeed, the average welder in Utah earns $23.05 per hour, but an experienced welder might command wages of $31.72 per hour or more. Some companies pay significantly above that to attract quality candidates, especially for more difficult or otherwise undesirable welding jobs. Welders in Salt Lake City often make more than those in other areas.

Why Temp-to-Hire Can Be a Great Option For Finding Good Welders

Temp-to-hire is a working arrangement where the employee starts out in a temporary trial role before you hire them full-time. There’s often a set trial period, such as three months, to see how the employee performs and fits into the company culture.

You can easily arrange temp-to-hire roles through a staffing agency. One of the advantages is that the staffing agency is the primary employer until you hire the employee for a permanent role. They can handle payroll and benefits at this stage. If the temp-to-hire employee doesn’t work out, you won’t have nearly as much paperwork to deal with.

Looking for a good temp-to-hire welder in Utah? Contact LG Resources today. In the past decade, we’ve placed over 20,000 employees with over 2,000 local business partners like you. We know how to attract top-notch skilled labor, and we’ve filled many welding positions. Just complete our employee request form and we’ll be in touch soon.