Car dealerships are creating initiatives to hire, train and retain techs
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August 20, 2018 01:00 AM

More dealerships are creating initiatives to hire, train and retain techs

Alysha Webb
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    Downtown LA Motors, a Mercedes-Benz store in Los Angeles, assigns mentors to its service techs.

    A few years ago, the Greater Memphis Auto Dealers Association surveyed its 54 members about job vacancies for service technicians. The responses were alarming.

    Member dealerships identified about 200 immediate openings for technicians — nearly four per store. As veteran techs retired or left for other careers, there weren't enough qualified candidates to replace them. Tech training costs were high, as the closest instructional programs were out of state.

    So the Memphis dealers decided to "take the bull by the horns," says the association's president, Kent Ritchey. The association affiliated with a local technical college to create a tech training program, which will enroll its first students next month.

    "We realized if we didn't do it, no one else is going to," says Ritchey, president of Landers Auto Group, which operates six franchised dealerships in Tennessee and Mississippi.

    As dealerships face quicker turnover and shorter tenure among service technicians, along with growing customer reliance on — and demand for — service business, filling a tech vacancy by raiding the store down the street is no longer good enough. Instead, dealerships and dealer groups and associations are developing innovative ways to find, hire, train and keep service techs.

    "Dealerships across the country are having trouble recruiting and maintaining technicians in long-term career paths," Jonathan Collegio, senior vice president of public affairs at the National Automobile Dealers Association, told Fixed Ops Journal. "There is a general worry that the baby boomer technicians, upon retirement, may leave a vacuum that is hard to fill."

    Gaining an edge

    What dealerships are doing to overcome the tech shortage

    • Subsidizing the auto tech program at a nearby community college or trade school
    • Assigning master techs to mentor new ones, and paying them based on how apprentices perform
    • Paying for techs' toolboxes and certification exams
    • Defining a clear career path for techs, from lube tech to master tech

    Techs are leaving their jobs sooner. The median tenure of dealership service technicians dropped to 3.8 years last yearfrom 4.2 years in 2016,according to NADA's most recent Dealership Workforce Study.

    "This is where we are seeing a lot of those baby boomers who have 20- or 30-year tenures dropping off," says Fleming Ford, vice president of people strategy at ESi Trends, which produces the annual workforce survey for NADA.

    The turnover rate among dealership techs also increased, to 27.2 percent in 2017 from 25.1 percent the previous year.Wage growth among techs was less than 2 percent during that period, Ford notes.

    Millennial techs — generally, those born between the early 1980s and early 2000s — want to hear from top management about the dealership's mission and how they fit into it, Ford says. Younger techs also seek a clear career path from the quick-lube lane to master-tech status, she adds.

    Return on investment

    The Memphis dealers association is partnering with the William R. Moore College of Technology, a 100-year-old training school in the city. The college closed its auto tech program in the late 1990s because of a lack of funding, President Skip Redmond says. The dealers association provided $500,000 in seed money to restart it.

    "We were the perfect match," Redmond says. "We had the flexibility to create a program specific to the dealers' needs."

    The association is spending $2 million to buy and remodel a former dealership in Memphis to house the tech program. It hopes to raise $1 million more from automakers and suppliers to equip the facility, Ritchey says.

    "We can't do this without them," he says.

    The first class of about 75 students will start the two-year program next month in temporary classrooms, Redmond says. When the permanent center opens in about a year, he expects enrollment to rise to about 200 students.

    Graduates will earn an associate degree along with tech certification, and will be placed in internships at area dealerships, Redmond says.

    Neal Goldman, left, fixed ops director of Downtown LA Auto Group, says young techs such as Greg Corral, 20, get "golden" coaching from senior techs.

    LAcarGUY, a group of 11 new-vehicle dealerships based in Los Angeles, looks to graduates of nearby community colleges and technical training institutes as entry-level techs. Then it assigns each new employee a mentor, usually a dealership master technician. The mentors are paid based on the productivity of the apprentices they train.

    After the first year of mentorship, each dealership identifies a shop foreman who can help techs with problems, says Rick Cuesta, the group's fixed operations manager. LAcarGUY also sends technicians with community college or trade school educations to brand-specific training programs and gives them toolboxes worth as much as $5,000.

    Finders keepers

    Employment consultants offer dealerships these tips for hiring and retaining good service technicians

    • Work closely with technical schools and community colleges
    • Offer current employees financial incentives to refer tech candidates
    • Operate an apprenticeship program that pairs new and master techs
    • Provide meaningful on-the-job training and support
    • Ensure that the general manager directly inform techs of the dealership's mission and vision

    Source: Hireology, ESi Trends

    In all, LAcarGUY can invest as much as $7,000 in a first-year technician. But Cuesta says such spending pays off.

    "Give them a good environment and lots of support, and we find they are pretty loyal," he says.

    Aaron Dreiling, service director at Toyota of Hollywood, an LAcarGUY dealership, disputes the notion of a tech shortage. Instead, he says, "there is a shortage of people who know how to grow them, take care of them, and respect them."

    Dreiling says he hires many graduates of the auto technician training program at East Los Angeles College, a community college in Monterey Park, Calif. Techs who start working in the dealership's express lube lane must begin taking online tests to obtain National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence professional certifications.

    Dreiling requires his techs to pass all eight tests. If they need to, they can try multiple times.

    "I pay for everything, whether they pass" or not, he says. "As soon as they get [the certifications], they get serious raises."

    Four of his 21 service techs make at least $100,000 a year, Dreiling adds.

    Clear the path

    That kind of clear career path is crucial to attracting and retaining good dealership technicians, says Adam Robinson, CEO of the employment platform Hireology. Stable pay and appropriate work-life balance are other crucial elements, he says.

    "Dealers can innovate in all these areas today and be more successful in the search for tech talent," Robinson says.

    Group 1 Automotive, which operates 173 U.S. new-vehicle dealerships, said this year it is creating "a well-defined path for career advancement" for its techs, and rolling out "a new, flexible work schedule featuring substantially more days off over the course of a year to attract and retain talented service ... technicians." The public company did not respond to a request for comment.

    Robinson also thinks the industry needs to update the service tech's job description.

    "If I am going to sell the future of automotive technicians as a career path," he says, "the thing I am going to focus on is that cars are more computer than mechanical."

    At Downtown LA Motors, a Mercedes-Benz dealership in Los Angeles, newly hired service technicians' first assignment is often to greet service lane customers. That helps techs learn about the dealership's operations as well as the work habits expected of them, says Neal Goldman, fixed operations director of Downtown LA Auto Group, which operates the dealership.

    Like LAcarGUY, Downtown LA Auto hires graduates of East Los Angeles College, which Goldman calls "a great resource for us."

    One of those graduates, Greg Corral, 20, is a quick lube tech at the Mercedes-Benz dealership. He came recommended by Adrian Banuelos, chairman of the college's automotive technology department.

    Corral says he "always wanted to work around cars" and aims to keep moving up the service tech ladder at the dealership. That will mean passing Mercedes-Benz's online tech program and benefiting from the dealership's in-house training, Goldman says.

    "The experience of working on cars and having a shop of service techs you can consult and learn from is golden," he says.

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