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Home » Short Technicians?  Here’s your fix

Short Technicians?  Here’s your fix

    Every dealership is short skilled technicians, unless they are either shrinking or don’t know how to add more capacity (ie. opening extended hours because of facility size restraints).

    The best plan is to build your own technicians inhouse because;

    • They are more likely to stay long-term if you incubate them from birth (as a tech)
    • They know the product they service inside and out
    • You know what you’ve got for an employee
    • Less turnover.

    Building your own techs is a long(er) term play, but if you don’t start today, you’ll never get to a point where you have enough techs.  Besides, if you get 6 months in and do the notes I have below at scale, you’ll crush it.

    Playing musical chairs with other dealerships’ technicians never really works out.  You get a tech from one dealership, and someone from another dealership takes your tech.

    Also, it’s more common than not, that Journeyman that are hired from other stores via job ads are usually not the long-term techs you want, or they are short-term anyway.  The sit-and-wait for a resume to come in wastes time, and put 0 control in your hands to ramp up business.

    If I were going to farm my own technicians again at scale, here are the steps I’d take right now;

    • Get a list of every skill set the dealership needs, and build a training path, from Lube tech, to your most skilled Journeyman (ie: Diesel/Transmission/EV tech).
    • Match the training map with each tech in the shop, so you know where they are at in their training/certification journey.
    • Have every single technician working on a training of some sort to be upgraded, with a timeline of completion for each stage.
    • Build the business to be able to support and handle a few technicians in school. So if you need 12 technicians, I’d have 14, and 2 always in school. 

    The isolated few months no one is in school, you can put your most junior techs in one bay, or work with a Journeyman for a handful of days. But I assure you, you’ll usually always be missing a tech for some reason each day (school, sick, holidays, etc.)

    • If you do this right, even during busy season, you can allow techs to go to school.  This allows you to have that much more skilled labour for the months and years ahead. 

    Many dealers won’t allow techs to go to school during busy season – but by executing this correctly, you won’t be short any techs, since it’s part of how you set up and do business in your service dept.

    • I’d hire Seasonal Tire & Lube techs.  Check out @Crystal Nicholson’s posts on the how-to execute.  Hiring Seasonal techs allows you to trial-run potential budding Lube & Tire techs for an apprenticeship program, and get the best ones. 
    • Seasonal Lube & Tire techs also allow you to;
      • Take in a ton more volume of retail customers during busy season.            
        • Allow you to scope all the customers your competitor can’t get in a reasonable timeframe.
        • Get all the lost customers your Service BDC is calling to get back in.
        • Getting your customers in a reasonable timeframe, so they don’t go elsewhere, where it’s faster (ie. Tire & lube joint)
      • Offload the light-weight work from Journeyman to Seasonal techs, so you get to crush real work and real hours with your Journeyman.
      • Create a roster list of Tire & Lube techs for when you grow the department, lose a tech, or want to add more for the next busy season.
    • Pay for school costs when techs leave to get trained. Make it part of the culture they are always in training and in school of some sort.
    • Ensure every tech is moving along and going into school on schedule. You should have this all organized and going to the techs to get into school – not them begging to see if they are allowed to go to school.

    You can really bang out of the park your Service Department’s retail sales, if you dial this in.  Parts Department follows your Service Department’s retail sales as a 1:1 ratio.  This makes a big impact. 

    —-

    You have a Sales BDC as your growth engine in your Sales Dept.  What do you have in your for Service & Parts Dept as your growth engine? 

    A: ____________

    A: Dealer eBDC