This is video is a part of my Field Nation series where I explain how you can add an employee technician to your Field Nation company profile. Field Nation calls this adding a Managed Provider. Field Nation has an article on how to do this (linked below) but it is missing some very important steps. This video shares the secrets I use to get my new employee technicians activated quickly!
I have performed jobs for Field Nation alternative clients in the freelance IT tech industry since 2000, on Field Nation since 2010, and on Work Market since 2011. Field Tech Academy wants to give you the secrets of 20+ years of experience how you can succeed as an Independent IT Field Tech.
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Video Transcript:
Congratulations! You have grown to the point that you now have
other technicians working for you.
In today’s video, we’re going to be talking about how to add your employee technicians to your Field Nation profile as sub techs
so that all of the
jobs can be managed by you.
The pay will come to you
and you have control of their accounts and you can assign tickets directly to those technicians
or request swaps.
Field Nation has a page where they explain how this process works.
There’s a lot more detail to it and some unspoken things that I’ve learned over the years
that I want to share with you today.
Let’s get into it.
I actually need to add a new technician that I’ve just hired.
When you try to add a technician, you need to realize that it’s going to take a few days
to get them actually activated if you do everything correctly.
If you don’t do it correctly,
they can sit in limbo
for weeks
until you realize these different things that you need to do to get them activated.
I’ll include the website address for this article in the description of the video, so it’ll be down below
you can jump directly to it
just in case you want to reference it as well.
The first and most critical step in this whole process is you need to make sure that you’ve changed your Field Nation profile
to allow you to be a provider company.
Until you do that, you will not be able to add new technicians.
When you’re logged into your Field Nation account,
you’re going to actually go up to your icon.
You’re going to select that
and you’re going to go to company settings.
Next step you want to do is to go to features.
This is the key item right here. You need to make sure that you are
enabled to be
a service company.
if you are not yet,
you’re going to have the option here to enable this.
This will send a message to Field Nation
and it will take a little bit of time
and they will get an approval over to you.
Once you’re enabled, then this article will actually apply to you.
You’re going to go through a similar process. You’re going to hit your icon just like I showed you.
You’re going to go to company settings, which is where we are at.
They’re going to go down and you’re going to select managed providers.
This will show you a list of any existing employees and providers that you have in your account.
Obviously, throughout this video there is personal information, so I am blurring out those sections.
Just like the article says, we’re going to go to
managed providers
and we’re going to hit add provider.
Field Nation has this new security feature where it’s going to constantly ping you to verify your identity.
Once you’ve
added that managed provider in your company account, then you need to log into
that profile’s account
to finish filling it out
so that you can request access and actually get it approved.
You want to use a company email address
or an email address that you have access to
because Field Nation is going to send an invite to that
technician
and you’ll need that invite to actually go in and activate their account and finish setting it up.
When you click the link, it’s going to take you to a place to set their password.
You want to set this as a password that you know
and can control. That way you can get into their account since they are your employee.
Now that we’ve added their password, we’re going to go into the account.
Ok, account’s been
successfully activated, now it’s going to give us the option to log in.
In that activation email from Field Nation, they’re going to list what the username is that they created.
They don’t give you the option to create the username,
so you’re going to have to use what is in that email to log into their account.
Again, you have to have access to their email because they’re going to send
a security verification.
So I have some
email rules set up in my Gmail account, which is a company account,
and I have these rules set up in my employees accounts
so that it will forward these security verification emails
to me
so that I can get into their accounts.
If you get this message saying user does not exist or is already activated,
then you can just select the Field Nation icon.
This is part of the process of the things that you need to fill out
to get them activated.
You want to
upload
a photo of them,
and I make sure that I take a picture of them.
We want to get something from chest up so you have room to crop it down.
You want to make sure that you have them in a professional looking shirt.
You want to have them smile
so they don’t look like an ax murderer.
This is an image that the buyers are going to see. So you want this to be professional and clean looking.
You want to verify the types of work are correct. You did select this during the creation process.
You want to go into the profile
details, make sure all of this is correct
and you want to select the terms of service.
You have to accept all of these until you do these things. It’s never going to be eligible to be activated.
I don’t have this employees photo quite yet. So I’m going to create the profile without the photo.
After you hit continue,
you’re going to have an option for profile details. And these are recommended items.
You want to add any licenses or certifications that this employee has. So if you know what those are, you want to get those added in.
You want to order a background check and a drug screening as soon as possible.
Now we’re into his profile.
We’re going to select here.
Go to my profile.
So again, the Field Nation article
gives you the basics,
but this guy is never going to get activated if you don’t do these extra steps
that I’m explaining.
There’s nothing else here.
This guy would sit in limbo
forever.
You need to go in and flesh out as much of this as possible.
The two critical, critical things that have to be on here that I have found in my experience,
skill sets and equipment.
Adding all of these skill sets and equipment
is kind of tedious.
You can’t just copy and paste a list of items.
You have to
select them and type them in one at a time.
To simplify this, I made a spreadsheet where I can at least
copy and paste the items one at a time.
So you’ll see I have a skill set list.
I have a list of equipment that’s nearly 100 different items.
if you want to save some time, I have this list available on my website at fieldtechacademy.com under my products list.
I’ve got a
Field Nation skill set and equipment list. It’s $10.
Save you lots of time trying to do this on your own.
And of course I have consulting options. I have a full client list that you can purchase and
organizer layouts to organize the work vans.
A lot of very useful stuff on the website.
Let me show you how we actually go in and add the skill sets.
You’re going to go to edit.
Now, like I said, there’s no
way to just select
a bunch of radial buttons or checklists. You have to literally type in or copy and paste every single item.
Drives me
bonkers!
When you’re trying to add someone new, or add yourself as a new tech,
you’ve got to do this.
Being in the technology world, I don’t understand why they have it set this way.
We’re going to select
in here. I’m going to grab one out of my list of 300 items.
You’re going to notice the first thing I paste out of my skill sets list
is a piece of equipment.
But as you can see,
someone created this
under the skill sets list.
It’s not a skill set, it’s a piece of equipment, but whatever.
So this is stuff you would never really think about logically. Copy. Paste. There’s another thing. It’s a ladder. Again,
what happens is you get a buyer
that creates these skill sets on their side and gets added into the Field Nation list.
So it doesn’t really make sense
from our perspective,
but it’s
an available item. So I’m going to select it. So if that buyer is searching for that skill set,
then my technicians and myself
will show up as
a
tech having those items.
Even though it’s not a skill set.
For example, let me grab some actual skill set items.
So we can work on 70 volt commercial grade sound systems.
So that’s a skill set.
And there’s another item,
70 volt sound systems in general,
and there’s another item,
70 volt.
And if you enter 70 volt,
then you can see all of these related items.
So you could theoretically paste the 70 volt
and then go through
and paste it and select the next one, paste it, select the next one.
So another way you can do it. Access point.
So you can do wireless access point.
This part is incredibly tedious,
but you got to do it or your tech is never going to get activated. By doing this,
I can usually get people activated
within just a few days.
Then 5 hours later, when you get done putting all the skill sets in, then you get to put the equipment in.
Same concept.
paste.
if you’re copying and pasting out of the list from my website, then most of the items will pre populate. You’ll see the gray
box on the bottom here.
So if you paste it in, this pops up and all you have to do is hit the Enter key and it selects it.
Copy, paste,
shows it in the gray box, hit enter.
Do it over and over again.
Of course, my list is not an exhaustive list.
It is
a copy of what is on my profile.
And where did I come up with some of these items?
When you are applying for a service call,
if a buyer has listed something
that
they say that they need and they list as a requirement, as a piece of equipment,
then you have the option in that moment
when you’re applying to add that to your profile.
So a lot of these things have been added based on a buyer’s specific request.
And that’s a good thing because then you’re going to have more and more pieces of equipment and skill sets in your profile.
It’s going to make your profile look
more fleshed out.
And as you’re doing this like every 20 or so items, you probably want to save this and then go back into it and start adding again just in case there’s some weird glitch. You don’t want to lose all your progress.
On my skillsets list,
It’s almost 300 items, so you don’t want to get
150 into it and then have a glitch and it not save.
All right. Again, all the copying and pasting. Now you have your equipment list for this technician.
One thing I would say is please make sure that you’re only adding skill sets
and equipment that you actually have in your company,
or, you know, one of your technicians has.
You know, be honest.
If the technician has any licenses or certifications, you want to add those.
I never really mess with the employment or the education side of things.
You could theoretically go into the resume and add their employment history,
show that they’ve graduated high school, that they’ve maybe got an associate’s degree, a
bachelor’s degree, etc..
If you’re in an area that’s still
requiring proof of vaccination,
you can add that here.
You can add any languages.
So if you do have a technician that is bilingual, then that’s a great thing to add because there will be
certain areas that that will be beneficial.
Now that you’ve added their skill sets and equipment and fleshed out their profile,
this is when you can actually go in and request marketplace access for your employee
and now you’ll actually be able to get them activated in a short period of time and get them out doing work.
keep in mind that when you add your new technician, they’re not going to have any ratings.
They’re not going to have any completed jobs.
Just like if you were a new technician trying to get started by yourself,
you’re going to have a really hard time getting buyers to assign jobs to a profile that has no ratings, no history.
if you’re an established technician or an established company,
you’re going to have relationships with your buyers.
You’re going to have a lot of buyers that are giving you repeat business and coming back to you because you’ve taken care of them.
That’s your opportunity to really get jobs assigned to the new technician.
You’ll be able to go into each individual ticket and request a swap to that provider.
Once you’ve done a few of those, then you’re going to have a history under that techs profile.
Then, that’s where it gets a lot easier to get the tickets assigned under their profile because then they have a history, then they’ve shown that they’ve done jobs, they have ratings.
Now we’re ready for the final step.
We’re going to go into our profiles. You’re going to select on your icon.
You’re going to go to company settings, which I’m already at,
and you’re going to go to manage providers.
we want to actually
select
the option to request access for this new technician.
Wow.
He’s already active.
I literally just
finished
putting his skill set and equipment in
and he is already showing active right here.
I didn’t even request access.
Filling out their profile and adding the skill sets and adding the equipment, doing all these extra steps,
gets them activated more quickly.
And that’s what you want as an employer. You want to be able to get your techs in and get them in the system.
In case yours was not yet showing active,
let me just show you that final step.
You’re going to go to the dots over here.
You’re going to go to marketplace settings
and you would select this toggle
to turn their marketplace access on.
This last one,
again, just to refresh from earlier,
I leave this off because I don’t want my employees to know
what the pay rates of the jobs are.
This also blocks them from requesting tickets on their own.
But if you have a technician that you trust and you have a good relationship with, and you want them to be able to request access, and you want them to be able to see the pay rate,
then you would toggle this on.
So that’s the process to get a new technician added to Field Nation and get them activated.
If you got value from what I shared, please like the video and subscribe to the channel
and check out all my other videos on Field Nation and Work Market and
our van loadout for all the tools that we carry.
My goal with Field Tech Academy is to help you
as an individual or as a company
to be able to make more money, to optimize your profiles, to be efficient in this marketplace. We also provide a list of Field Nation alternative clients in our Direct Client Package that can give you many more clients!
Let’s get you out in the field making money.
I’ll see you in the next video.