Lack of experience isn't a deterrent in dealerships' recruitment strategy

For service departments struggling to find technicians, here's a suggestion from Automotive News' 2023 Best Dealerships to Work For — start at the beginning.

Honorees described to Automotive News a service department recruitment strategy of seeking and nurturing trade school talent. A couple expressed a willingness to hire and develop even rawer candidates with no formal automotive training but an interest in the field.

Dustin Ciccarelli, general manager of Suburban Subaru of Troy, a Lithia Motors store in Michigan, was surprised by the enthusiasm he encountered when he visited the Oakland Schools Technical Campus-Southeast high school during the 2022-23 school year. He thought the visit to the Royal Oak, Mich., location would be done in 15 to 20 minutes; it ran more than an hour.

"I'd say about 70 percent of the class wanted us to contact them for work here," he said.

Unfortunately, many of the students were too young, according to Ciccarelli, though he said he's looking into how the dealership could employ 17-year-olds.

This school year, the Suburban Collection group within Lithia plans to send personnel to visit more than 10 technical high school and college campuses in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to Ciccarelli. He said the two schools he called to arrange visits were "ecstatic" to host the dealership and feature the perspective of a real-world employer.

Otherwise, "it's just your teacher telling you what it looks like outside," Ciccarelli said.

He plans for Suburban Subaru to make a return visit to the OSTC-Southeast campus, this time bringing along two Suburban Subaru lube technicians who once studied there.

"Lithia in this area has really dialed up what we're looking to do and what this looks like when we attend these colleges," he said.

Recruiting from schools won't fix an immediate need for technicians, but "the only thing that you can really do is is start them young and then progress them through," Ciccarelli said. "You've got to find them young."

Porsche North Scottsdale in Arizona, a Penske Automotive Group dealership, recruits hard from the area's Universal Technical Institute. Porsche North Scottsdale General Manager David Zoloto estimated that probably 80 percent of his staff attended UTI.

The dealership recruits UTI students or graduates, starting graduates as apprentice technicians and students as service department valets until graduation, Zoloto said. The valet job gives the student "a foot in the door" and a chance to see the opportunities. It also gives the retailer a chance to spot candidates with a suitable work ethic, he said.

The dealership pairs fledgling technicians with experienced mentors for a few months per mentor to round out the technician's abilities and offer them education from more than a single instructor.

"It's done really, really well for us," he said.

Zoloto said such "born and raised" technicians don't bring "bad habits" to the store and are willing to serve as mentors for the next wave of rookies. "We did it for them," he said.

It also seems to have fostered retention. Zoloto said the average service department staffer is a 15- to 18-year veteran of the shop. All of the retailer's Gold technicians — Porsche's highest rating — are "born and raised," and both of its shop foremen worked their way up from valet jobs. "That sends a wonderful message," Zoloto said.

Prospective entry-level technicians might be deterred by the cost of buying their own tools and a toolbox for the job. Dealerships told Automotive News they cover this expense for newcomers.

Zoloto said Porsche North Scottsdale will reimburse UTI tuition and buy around $2,500 worth of tools for new staffers who commit to the store for five years. "They've all stayed," he said.

Faulkner Subaru Harrisburg Service Manager Joie Bollman serves on advisory boards of the Pennsylvania Automotive Association and local high school and college technical programs, connections that steer technicians the store's way, according to General Manager Doug Jones.

He said Bollman's work with the community college and the dealership's reputation mean "we generally get the top one or two picks in the [automotive] class, which is really nice."

But Faulkner Subaru isn't afraid to recruit technicians even greener than that. Unlike many dealerships, Faulkner Subaru will take candidates with no vo-tech experience, but an interest in becoming a technician, and develop them internally through a nine-month, three-phase program at the store, Jones said. The first six weeks involves learning the basics, the next eight weeks offers a more detailed education and the final 22 weeks grants the technician their own bay and sees them working on state emissions and inspection licenses, he said.

"We've had a lot of success with that," Jones said.

He said a few of the dealership's B- and C-level technicians started with no traditional vocational training.
The store also runs technical school graduates through this program, but they might skip the second phase and jump right from the introductory six weeks to the final stage with their own bay, he said.

"All that together makes hiring technicians kind of — I wouldn't say easy, but a lot easier than others," he said.

Faulkner Subaru has even recruited technicians when it was fully staffed and "farmed them out" to other stores in the 30-location Faulkner Automotive Group, he said.

"We find starting them takes time, but as the years go on you got yourself a nice staff of technicians that ... you train the way you want them to be trained," Jones said.

Devin Antonovich, service manager of Lithia Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram of Great Falls, also is open to recruiting technicians for electric vehicles outside of what he called the classic repairer with "busted-up knuckles" and "$50,000 in Snap-on tools."

"I've hired some great young guys and given them a chance based off of they're interested in cars, first of all, [and] are very techie-savvy," he said.

Younger technicians who find themselves passed over because of a lack of experience have a shot with the Montana Stellantis store, he said.

"We're looking for the guys outside of that realm that we can start on our express track and move them from a lube technician to an apprentice technician and start building their EV and electrical vehicle knowledge because they all have that drive to learn more about technology," he said.

"Our new generation of people, that knowledge is inside them. We just need to bring it out into the workplace, because some of these guys might end up doing something they might not like and go down a different path in life. And what we're looking for here is career technicians."

Antonvich said he's always armed with a pocketful of business cards and on the hunt for recruits, even to the point of embarrassing his family by stopping to pitch a job to a stranger.

"Just be relentless with it," he said of recruiting.

"Whether you think you're recruiting or not, you really should be at all times."