AAPEX panel addresses auto service tech shortage, education

LAS VEGAS — Most tire dealers and auto repair shop owners say their top challenge is finding qualified automotive technicians to fill a job opening.

There is a shortage of technicians graduating from vocational education schools and experienced workers are leaving the industry.

Yet on the other side, there are accusations that the industry itself is driving qualified technicians away by offering low flat-rate pay and condemning eager vo-ed graduates to work only on mundane maintenance jobs.

These issues were addressed during a panel discussion, entitled "Service Professionals General Session — Automotive career pathways: The road to great technicians," during the Automotive Aftermarket Products Expo (AAPEX) last fall in Las Vegas.

The panel of industry veterans comprised Kyle Holt, president of S/P2.org; Chris Chesney, senior director of training, Advance Auto Parts; Jill Saunders, curriculum developer for Toyota Motor Sales North America; and Donny Seyfer, executive officer of the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF).

Mr. Chesney opened the discussion by noting that when a shop owner doesn't have a candidate in mind when an employee quits, the job vacancy could cost a shop as much as $15,000 a month in profit.

"At the end of the day, you can't afford to just go out and find somebody when you need to go find somebody. You always have to be involved in this (recruitment) process," he said.

With all the technology incorporated into newer vehicles, auto tech students need critical thinking and STEM skills, the panel agreed. The days of teachers sending a disruptive and/or failing student to the auto shop class down the hall is no longer a viable option.

Mr. Holt said that scenario is still played out in many high schools today.

"That's still absolutely going on. And do not expect it to change unless you get involved with your schools and tell them that needs to change," he told shop owners in attendance.

Mr. Holt said the industry can't necessarily blame auto technology teachers for producing entry-level job seekers with low skill levels.

He and others on the panel advocated putting auto technology training under a STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) program.

Today's kids don't play tactically, Mr. Chesney noted, so educational programs need to provide them opportunities to get hands-on experience with vehicles where they can relate the technology they learn with the physical parts.

"They won't hang around for a long time if you don't give them a way to take all of that knowledge that they're gaining and put it into action," Mr. Seyfer added.

On the other side of the debate, a school instructor in the audience complained that well-educated auto tech students aren't getting the motivation to stick with a career in the industry. Oftentimes an internship or first job involves working every day on the "lube rack."

"Forty percent of graduates from automotive programs who enter the industry are leaving the industry in the first two years. That's not sustainable," Mr. Holt said.

"The fault in this whole thing is not you (teachers), and it's not the student. It's us," Mr. Chesney said. "It's the industry. It's the shop owners. It's those of us who've been in the industry for a long enough period of time and never seen a change of business model, in many cases, since we got into the industry."

"We've got to recognize that those (auto shop) instructors out there are vitally important to the future of our industry," Mr. Holt said. "They're going to shape those young men and young women who are coming into our industry and try to push them toward us.

"We've got to be there to lift up the school, lift up the instructors, help support them and find the financial resources, the equipment, the in-kind donations that we can make. How can we expect our students to be ready to work on 2018, 2019, 2020 vehicle models when we're giving them a 1983 Saab to work on?"

Mr. Chesney also advocated skills and knowledge testing so a vo-ed student can earn a certification.

A new technician with a certification has proved his/her mastery of skill and is marketable to a shop owner, he said, "which means you can raise your prices, and you can pay your technician a livable wage based on the skills that they have just proven that they have."

Mr. Chesney added, "Flat rate was meant to pay for warranty repairs. It had nothing to do with running a business, and all the businesses that follow business models that have been promoted over the last 40 or 50 years were leveraging flat rate to enrich the margin in the business."

The panel encouraged shop owners to reconsider how they pay their techs and whether they have to buy their own tools.

"What I challenge shop owners in this room to do is look in the mirror and modify your business model and learn or read about becoming a servant leader," Mr. Chesney said.

"If you can understand what servant leadership is in the automotive industry, that you serve your production team in a way that allows them to do the job they were trained to do and you pay them for that.

"It's not flat rate; it's a fair wage. It's a livable wage. You can charge for that. The biggest problem we have as an industry is our business model for shop owners."

In addition to retaining new auto techs in the industry, there is the problem of a lack of high school students who view vehicle repair as a career.

"Stats show only 6 percent of all students in America are even considering any type of career tech education," Mr. Holt said. "We've done such a great job of steering every student toward a four-year program. ...

"Now we've got to share that 6 percent with cosmetology; we've got to share it with HVACR; we've got to share that with welding. That's a really small number to pull from. So yes, every shop needs to be thinking about, 'How am I going to fill that pipeline?' But we've also got to be filling that pipeline of students coming into the career tech education for the transportation industry."

Mr. Holt said the automotive aftermarket is competing with diesel repair and collision shops for automotive students. The diesel maintenance industry has an advantage in that it is paying better and usually doesn't require techs to buy tools, he said.

"We better get our act together in terms of growing our own techs and working together as an industry segment because the other industry segments are already beginning to align and try to create the same thing," Mr. Holt said.

"There are a lot of industries that would love to have our students — our entry-level cast-offs that we forced out of the industry."

The panel also noted this trend is sparked by all the Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) features on newer vehicles that require repair and recalibration after a collision repair. Collision shops are vying for experienced master techs because they need someone to service all the ADAS features.

Mr. Chesney said this may provide an opportunity for a mechanical repair shop to partner with a collision shop in their market, especially if it's a small community. Instead of competing to hire a master technician, the collision shop could send jobs to the repair shop's master tech for service work.

The NASTF's education team is working on a program called "The Road to Great Technicians," creating industry collaboration to address the technician shortage.

The industry has been very poor at retaining students who complete programs, with close to half leaving the industry within the first two years, according to the NASTF.

The team, led by Ms. Saunders and Mr. Seyfer, has been gathering industry input to create a career path for technician development and career cycle "to bring a level of professionalism and clarity so that those who might consider an automotive career can understand all of the requirements and amazing opportunities that are available," the NASTF said.

The team already has developed an entry-level skill-set recommendation that can be downloaded at the nastf.org website. The team is gathering information on all available apprenticeship and mentoring programs in the industry; creating a training and competency framework for each developmental level of the technician career cycle that the industry can "hang" their training programs on; and addressing the opportunities that exist for senior technicians and create a resource to encourage them to stay in the industry in other capacities.

"We have to show young technicians a career path," Mr. Holt said. "That's the thing The Road to Great Technicians is working on is how do we show them not just, 'Here's a broom, start sweeping' or 'Welcome to the lube rack and never shall you see the light of day again,' But what do you need to do to get to that next level."

S/P2, which provides industry-specific online training, has been working in conjunction with the ASE Education Foundation on creating a mentoring program that it said is accessible and scalable across the nation. It has created courses on how to be a mentor, what's expected of them, how to pick and compensate a mentor, etc.

"We've got to have industry and education joined at the hip," Mr. Holt said. "Students want to tear into an engine, but the shop doesn't want that on the first day. We're giving the mentoring program away at sp2.org."

Toyota's Ms. Saunders said the auto maker is trying to create ways to attract students to its car dealerships.

"We're trying to come up with some creative solutions for this. We need 1,400 new technicians a year to keep our Toyota and Lexus dealers supplied. …

"We don't get enough technicians to fill those 1,400 technician (jobs) every year. We're trying some creative solutions, trying to partner our dealers better with high schools and post-secondary programs, get them in touch with where they should be recruiting from."

She said she is working on a program to help people transition from military service back into the workforce. Military veterans have a technical aptitude that they can apply in tech training. They can go through a training program, get paired with a dealer for an apprenticeship for 38 weeks and eventually become a certified technician.

Meanwhile, Advance Auto Parts is a partner in the development of a business high school in Colorado. Mr. Chesney said the pathways-to-technology early-college high school will partner with a community college and with industry. The school is expected to open in the fall of 2020.

The students will spend the first two years on project-based learning along with required high school curriculum, he said. They then choose one of three career pathways — automotive technology, business or engineering — to focus on for the next two years. Then they spend the final two years on college courses and graduate with no debt.