New-school solution for recruiting auto techs

Most people can count on one hand the number of things that the pandemic made better — digital retailing, certainly; the possibilities of remote work, perhaps.

But hunting for auto techs?

Yet at Magic Toyota in Edmonds, Wash., a fluke of circumstance, some innovative thinking and a solid assist from COVID-19 have allowed the dealership to build its own pipeline that now provides a steady flow of highly trained technicians to staff its huge, new service department.

By what magic has a dealership on Puget Sound solved one of the most vexing problems to plague dealerships? It turned the dealership's conference room into a classroom, hired a full-time instructor, worked out an innovative tool deal and recruited young adults to earn a living while they learn for free.

The process began nearly three years ago as Magic Toyota prepared to move into a new facility, going from 28 bays to 54, which was going to require many more bodies in the service department. In addition, Toyota's two-year complimentary maintenance plan meant there was more need for lower-level technicians to process basic orders, said Peter Chung, the dealership's general manager.

"We used to do what everybody else does — scour trade schools, go out and try to acquire techs from neighboring dealerships," Chung explained. "But what we found is that the people who will leave other dealerships to come work for you are the same people who will leave your dealership to go work for someone else."

While recruiting at one local trade school in 2018, Chung ran into Matt Stroud, who had worked at Magic Toyota years earlier as a master technician and had moved on to teaching auto repair. Rather than simply hiring some of Stroud's students, Chung asked him to come back to the dealership as a part-time employee — this time to teach. Stroud could use the dealership's conference room and service bays as his classroom, and the students he would teach could learn the craft at the dealership.

"And the relationship grew," Chung recalled, saying that the store began hiring Stroud's students, using their experience as a recruiting tool at first. But there were several issues to work out, including student retention — "Initially, if 10 came in, maybe four stuck it out," Chung said — and the costs for the students to purchase necessary tools.

To address the tool issue, Chung and Stroud reached out to Toyota's regional office in Portland, Ore., to craft a leasing arrangement with Snap-On tools. Under the lease deal, the technicians receive more than $8,000 in tools upfront and lease them from the dealership at $25 a week for four years, at which point they own them for a maximum total cost of $5,200. If a student leaves the program before then, the dealership retains the tools, Chung said.

"We also made it to where if they upsold specific items — like cabin air filters, wiper blades, alignments, tires — we would give them a spiff toward the $25 a week," Chung said.

"So really a lot of these technicians, they were doing what we wanted, which was upselling the items that we wanted upsold, but at the same time they were paying for these tools, and they were also accelerating the payments for the tools."

Some paid off their tools in as little as two years.

Magic Toyota's in-house school was growing and developing but might have stayed a part-time thing were it not for the COVID-19 outbreak last year. When schools closed, "Matt had no place to teach," Chung recalled. So he asked Stroud to come teach full time at the dealership, hiring him at a wage that was less than he would have made as a master technician in his shop but nearly matching what he was making as a professor at the nearby trade school.

In a typical year, Chung said Magic Toyota retails about 2,400 new and 1,500 used vehicles, though business was impacted in 2020 by COVID-19.

Stroud said his job as an "in-house professor" is extremely rewarding from a personal standpoint.

Not only is he helping bring new technicians into the business, his skills as an instructor and his role as a master technician allow him to help all of Magic's techs increase their certification levels and thus earn higher pay. And, he says, his experience is infinitely repeatable at any franchised dealership, where senior techs with a wealth of experience and knowledge have to leave the business when the physical demands of the job grow too daunting.

"I think this is the only way we have a future now," Stroud said. "The benefits are rewarded to all of us — technicians get what they need, and the business gets what it needs to go on to the next generation."

He said other dealers should scour their own senior technician ranks for those who have communication skills, then train them to teach, mentor and be staff development coaches among their fellow techs.

"Every single dealer should have an in-house instructor to bring their techs up, otherwise, they're going to fail" and either grow bored or leave for greener pastures, Stroud said. "Really, my main and only goal is to improve the business from the inside and build the legacy."