AKRON — Jennifer Maher has a lot of tips on how to recruit female technicians, but here's one that won't cost your dealership a cent.
Put the toilet seat down.
"If I'm a female tech and I'm coming in for an interview, … do I go to the bathroom and find that it's a guy's bathroom with the toilet seat up?" Ms. Maher, CEO and executive director of TechForce Foundation, asked during a recent Tire Business livestream.
"That's something that does not make me feel welcome."
Jennifer Maher, TechForce
Women make up 51% of the U.S. population according to the 2010 census, yet fewer than 3% of automotive technicians are female.
That dichotomy helps explain why there's a shortage of qualified technicians in the industry.
"We're not going to solve the tech shortage until you start talking to (51) percent of the population," according to Ms. Maher, who's headed TechForce since mid-2014.
The nonprofit's stated mission is to encourage and promote students into careers as professional technicians.
While no one expects the industry to achieve a 50-50 split, there are ways to draw more women to the field, she said.
The first is to make sure your shop passes the eye test.
"Let's clean up the shops a little so your mother wouldn't mind walking through there," according to Dan Gilley, president and owner of RLO Training, which provides training for automotive service professionals.
Dan Gilley
"If I had on coveralls, maybe I wouldn't mind, but in a lot of shops, if I had on slacks, I wouldn't enter," he said during the livestream.
Cleaning up the place doesn't mean just grabbing a bottle of Lysol and some paper towels. A wall calendar of a bikini model draped across a car doesn't send the right message to female customers — or female applicants.
Female technicians want to know they're going to be treated well, Ms. Maher said.
"You've got to be an employer with backbone," she said. "The minute you see anybody doing anything to make a female tech uncomfortable or drive her away, you've got to nip it in the bud."
If not, you not only run the risk of losing that technician, you risk losing future ones, too.
"All it takes is somebody going online and posting online that it's not a great place to work or it's not supportive of female techs or not open to all ethnicities and you're done," Ms. Maher said.
The No. 1 complaint of both male and female technicians is being "left to rot" in a bay or at a lube rack. That's especially dangerous with female employees, since consumers are predominantly women and research shows that male and female customers "actively trust" female technicians, she said.
"All techs who like interacting with customers say the reason they do it is they like helping people," she said. "They'll say, 'I love making sure that family is safe. I got something running and now they can get to work.'
"How are they going to do that if they're just hidden away in the bays? Women are going to have a different type of style that can help business."
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