AutoVitals is joined by Fred Gestwicki Jr., owner of Fix-It With Fred, and Roxanne Doche, VP of Marketing for Promotive, to discuss proven strategies for attracting and retaining automotive technicians. Watch the recording to learn:
- The importance of having the right benefit options
- Weekly team meeting best practices
- Benefits of the 4-day work week
- How to effective recruit great technicians
- and more!
Episode Transcript
*This transcript was generated with Artificial Intelligence. Errors may occur. If you identify an error, please contact us at [email protected]
Lauren Thunen (00:00):
And today, as I’m sure everyone already knows, we are going to be talking about how you can overcome the technician shortage. Massive problem affecting our industry. We’ll get into more of the specifics, but joining me, we have Roxanne from Promotive and Fred from Fix It with Fred. So why don’t you two introduce yourself,
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (00:19):
Ladies first.
Roxanne Doche (00:20):
Alright, so my name is Roxanne and I am the head of marketing here at Promotive, and Fred here is one of our customers. So I’m excited to have this conversation and apply some practices that we’ve used in Freds shop.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (00:37):
My name is Fred Jr. I’m the owner of Fix It for Fred Auto Repair that is in Canton, Ohio. If you go, I’ve heard that before because we have the Pro Football Hall of Fame. That is our thing. And ironically, when Roxanne and I both joined this AutoVitals was not aware that I was a client of Promotive. So it was not a setup. It’s not a Promotive commercial. This is about our industry.
Lauren Thunen (01:02):
There you have it. Yeah. So Roxanne, can you just tell us a little bit more about why Promotive came into existence, just to set the scene and tell us a little bit of the emerging industry trends and challenges that Promotive is a trying to address in terms of the technician shortage?
Roxanne Doche (01:19):
Yeah, I think it all kind of goes into one, right? So Promotive was founded to solve the problem or to help solve the problem of the technician shortage. So I think one trend, I’ll just kind of dive right in right now, but one trend we’re seeing and everyone’s talking about is the evolution to technology and EVs, right? So this I think is both a positive and a negative. The positive is we’re getting new types of techs in the industry. We’re getting an interest in technology, we’re getting more momentum than we’ve had in the past. And then the flip side of it is obviously the training and education that comes with it. Unfortunately, I know Fred mentioned Covid earlier in our pregame here, but that really hit our technician shortage and we lost a hundred thousand techs in that two year period. And now I think with Tesla and all the sexier vehicles, we’re getting more interest in more people wanting to enter the field. And with that, you’re also seeing significant age gap between the experience techs and the new techs.
Lauren Thunen (02:27):
That is a crazy statistic. A hundred and thousand techs in just two years, which goes along with tech force reports that, and I’m sure all of you guys on this webinar feel it in your shops that the demand is outpacing the supply five to one and it’s only looking to grow. So Fred, what are the specific challenges you felt? These are just statistics in your shop that and why you’re on today?
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (02:49):
Well, thinking about it that way, if we go back 10, 15 years, when you’d have a job open in your shop, you create a position, you put out an ad, you get all these applicants, and then you sift through the applicants to figure out who you’re going to hire. So the company is who’s making the decision and the people that apply, you have multiple people waiting to see if you’re going to hire ’em and they’re excited. And in today’s world, it’s quite the opposite where being there’s such a shortage, you just hope someone applies and you hope someone that’s done this before applies. And then if you give them an offer, you’re hoping that they’re going to accept it. You’re hoping you didn’t just get ’em a raise at their current job with your offer. So the shift has really changed to where instead of the employer being who chooses to work at the shop, the employee has a lot more power in that decision making because they have the thing, there’s not enough of, there used to not be enough technician jobs now there’s not enough technicians. So I’ve struggled with finding people and then when you find people filter out and get the quality that you want and then retention. So there’s the three parts of that.
Lauren Thunen (04:04):
Yeah, no, I mean that’s a great point. Whenever the supply outweighs the demand, then whoever has the demand, basic economics, they have the power. So Roxanne, how are you kind of helping shops and promotive helping shops take back some of that power that employers used to have when looking for staff and navigate the new challenges that we’re seeing currently?
Roxanne Doche (04:30):
Yeah, I mean I think it just comes down to basics. Just educating the shop, take a look at your culture, take a look at what you’re offering, helping them to be a little bit more competitive because the market is competitive. So why would the technician want to work for you? I mean, I think it kind of comes down to that, right? And so coaching the shops to stay on the edge and really stand out.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (04:57):
I have something for what Roxanne just said. I realized when you interview people and you get in a conversation, a lot of times benefits come up as a question. Do you have dental? How often do you give out vacation? There’s just all these different facets of benefits. So in the spirit of trying to make it where I have a little bit more say as to who works here, instead of being at the mercy of the workforce, earlier this year I went to a selectable benefit program. I realized there’s probably 15 benefits people ask for. As an employer, you can’t really just afford to give 15 benefits. I mean, I’m not the size to be able to afford that. So I realized maybe since person A wants this benefit, A person B wants benefit B, person C wants benefit C, why not have a group of benefits and let ’em pick two, why not have another group of benefits and let ’em pick one and then have a group of benefits that you just get. Just everybody gets those. And that flexibility with your benefits for listening to the people that apply, listening to what matters to those potential or potential hires and seeing if you are providing what they’re looking for when they’re out looking for a new job in the workforce. If you’re not providing what they’re looking for, they’ll keep looking until they find it,
Roxanne Doche (06:17):
Right?
Lauren Thunen (06:18):
Yeah, I mean that’s a great strategy, right? Because again, when you have lots of options, you want even more options. That’s the greatest place to be when you have the freedom to choose. So essentially you’re saying, Hey, instead of looking for an employer that fits exactly what you’re looking for here, you can tell me what you’re looking for and let’s see how I can match that versus trying to find the one outstanding employer that has everything that still they’re going to be sifting through a lot of junk to try to find the one shop that has exactly what they’re looking for versus
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (06:50):
Right? Yeah. We’re not hiring, competing with nationwide chains or nationwide dealership chains like AutoNation has however many dealerships, you can’t go to AutoNation to go, Hey, you guys don’t offer massage allowance. Would you be willing to do that? They’re going to laugh at you and be like, I got to go up seven stories to find that answer, man. Go to the mecca of AutoNation. And that’s something that one of my employees that was important that they had a massage allowance and that’s one of the group B benefit choices. If they don’t want a boot allowance, if they don’t want eyeglasses allowance, if they want a massage allowance of 40 bucks a month, cool. You just got to produce a receipt and get reimbursed. And that benefit is important to that employee. That’s something that if they choose to leave, they say, you know what? I’m going to get another job. When they’re interviewing, they’re choosing to leave those benefits that are important to them. You’re making it where the comfortable place, the place that has what you want is your place. So if they have someone that leaves, they’re giving up that thing they want and you’ve got the ammo in the fight of should I stay or should I go?
Lauren Thunen (07:56):
And Roxanne, in terms of the split, so when you’re talking to technicians, is that really what folks care about these days? Is the benefits or how does that compete with pay workplace culture? What are the priorities that when you talk to technicians they’re looking for in their prospective employer?
Roxanne Doche (08:11):
I mean, I think it’s a package, right? I feel like you have to be competitive in your pay, especially now when you are kind of competing with the dealerships and the larger corporations that have the resources to snatch them up early and pay them well. So you have to make sure that you have competitive pay. If you’re looking for a master tech, you’re not going to find that unicorn. You’re looking for 60, $70,000 a year. So you definitely have to do your research and know what your area is paying and be on the top of that scale. I think benefits are really important too, but Fred had a great point. I mean, what’s important to one tech isn’t important to another, and now with the generational gap, you’re going to see a difference in priorities, right? So the younger techs aren’t really going to care about that big comprehensive healthcare package.
(09:00):
They’re going to want massage benefits. But I mean I think it’s beyond that too. I think you need to look at what’s your tool allowance or what other benefits are you offering, what type of enrichment education training opportunities. A lot of shops now are establishing mentorship programs, which I think are really great and innovative just because you have that generational gap and you’re providing a new type of growth path for the more experienced techs and giving them something to look forward to, something to challenge them. And then you’re also helping the newer techs learn from the old school people that know the basics and do the basics really, really well.
Lauren Thunen (09:50):
No, it looks like you wanted to say something
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (09:52):
It Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Lauren Thunen (09:53):
Well, Fred, I was just going to ask based on what Roxanne was saying, so obviously you changed your benefits allocation and how folks could select benefits when you were in that year, that was worse than Covid in terms of trying to find new technicians. What were some other changes that you made in your shop that were really helpful to get you to where you are today?
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (10:13):
So this wasn’t during that timeframe, but I revised how I do it. I do a weekly team meeting. Every Wednesday I’m closed for 12 to one. The phones turn off the building’s locked. The only people that can access are the parts delivery guys. There’s a separate parts delivery entrance. But outside of that, we meet about business. And the reason I saw that as an important retention tool, I used to have it as a team meeting where it was just kind of like hang out, talk about stuff. And now I come with an agenda because today’s workforce wants to be a bit engaged with the company they work for. They want to make sure that company’s doing good, they want to know what direction it’s going in. And a lot of times they have good ideas. So take that meeting and start it with what’s a positive thing that happened in your last week.
(10:57):
It could be at home, it could be at work. Just one good thing. You have seven days to pick from you. You have to have a win for the week. And then the next thing, does anyone have anything for this meeting? Let them go first. And when you work in a place where you know your voice is not only heard, you don’t just hear the words but do something about it. That’s really important. Today’s workforce, I see a lot of times during quarterly reviews when you ask people, what’s your favorite thing you hear? I can tell you that we need something and you ask me some questions and if we need it, you get it. As dumb as it is, just if you have a need and you have a reason and it makes sense, then we’ll do it. And another thing I did is I did switch to the four 11 business hours, four days a week open seven to six, Monday through Thursday.
(11:43):
I’ve seen mixed reviews from owners. I’ve seen some owners say that’s because an owner doesn’t have work-life balance. And I’ve seen people say that’s just a way to get out of work. But imagine what it was like. I had an employee that recently left. He’d only worked for me as an adult and he needed to go try the dealership. And when he decided to leave when he was with me in 14 calendar day days, he worked eight. That’s it. Okay. And his new place, he works five days, one week, six days. The next, he’s working 11 out of 14 days regardless of how it’s viewed. An employee that has four days, they work and yes, they work more. And then three days off, it gives you another one of those tools. To the best of my knowledge, there’s one other shop locally and it’s a two main shop that does four day weeks and there isn’t another one.
(12:39):
So if you leave me and you’re going to stay a mechanic, you’re working Fridays, all that stuff you currently do on Friday, it’s what you want to do because your wife left and your kids left and you’re just at home doing what you want, all of it. Is it worth the change that you’re getting going somewhere else to work Fridays again? So thinking about from the employee perspective, a lot of times top tier owners or top of level management, don’t think about what it was like when you worked somewhere. I think about what does those people think? They’re not the owner, they don’t have as much skin in the game, they can just go get another job and nothing changed with these customers. And you got to think of it that way. Think what are they thinking? What’s going through their head? What kind of obstacles make them leave or obstacles prevent them from joining and just pave the path. Make it simple.
Lauren Thunen (13:32):
Yeah, no, I’ve heard again, like you said, a lot of mixed reviews on the four day work week. To me it sounds great. Obviously you’re working more in one day. How have your customers reacted to you guys being closed on Friday? Any positive, negative, just same old
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (13:47):
I’ve had. When you say your customers, okay, I’m going to answer that as people that I service their cars, I’m not going to consider potential future customers or people that have found us for the first time. But of my customer base, I lost zero. Not a single customer. I have customers that used to always come in on Friday and because they were off Fridays, and the response I got from them was, congratulations, welcome to the team. I’m glad you’re off. I’m glad you do that for your employees. That’s awesome. You give ’em more family time, nothing but positive from customers. Now, I’ve had a few boomer customers, customers that maybe saw the tail end effects of the great Depression that they’ll work more, make more mindset. People that would call and leave a voicemail on Friday. And when you call ’em back Monday, well, I got it fixed over the weekend.
(14:38):
I’m like, oh good, I’m glad you got it fixed. Well, if you’re open Friday and Saturday you could have fixed it. I’m like, probably not because the cars I did Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday would’ve been scheduled for Friday and Saturday because what I noticed, I went to a four day week. I had zero factors but one to change. I had the same staff, I had the same customers, I had everything the same. I got 18% more production out of the same staff over a quarter. It took a three month sample versus a three month sample, and it was 18% more hours, 18% more profit because they didn’t have to start their day five days a week. They didn’t have to come back from lunch five days a week. And the customer, when you get a customer that’s very positive, which is almost all of our customers, it’s all of them. They ask, how has it affected your people? They ask, what do you do on Fridays now? So I’ve had a very positive feedback from our existing
Lauren Thunen (15:31):
Customers. That’s incredible. And yeah, you mentioned 18% more production. That’s another side of overcoming the technician shortage is how can you be more effective and more profitable with the staff that you have? Even if you’re running with an open tech position, how can you get more done? Is there anything else that you’ve done as well to be more efficient in your current processes so that when you are down a man, you can still get through the cars and work you need to?
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (15:58):
Well, some of that does fit in your culture. As bizarre as it is the standard auto repair shop, you have the advisors versus the technicians and it’s either a tug of war or some sheep headbutting each other, whatever you want do. But if you take the mindset where the advisor, their job is try and make the technician’s job easy and the technician, their job is to try and make the advisor’s job easy. And if that’s kind of the mindset and the focus and the owner’s job is to help the advisor and technician jobs be easy, where all you’re doing is helping each other, it creates a better efficiency. Where, for example, at my shop, we take the parts out in the shop to the tech, they get delivered in the parts department and we take ’em to the tech for the cars they’re working on.
(16:39):
They have less walk. And then another thing, when the advisors or the technicians done, they actually pull the car around when they’re test driving and they’re done and they park it by the office so the advisor doesn’t have to move it. At the end of the day, we pull all the cars in the shop, any cars that are still by the office, the advisors pull ’em in the shop in the morning. If we need a loaner, the technician brings the loaners. Those little things where you’re avoiding two people doing the same path to do the same job. And another exercise, which I try and do this about once a year, I just set up a table in the shop, take my laptop out there and work all day in the shop. I just sit there all day and the first hour or two, they get weirded out, but then they realize you’re not staring at ’em and just take notes, look and see, look and see if somebody is making the same path every day over and over and they’re just used to it, look and see if it would benefit to move the scanner cart from here.
(17:36):
Maybe it should go over there because I’m noticing they’re doing that. And about once a year I usually watch that. And when they see that, you find a few quick wins, quick easy things. Hey, I noticed you’re doing this. If I got you this, would it help? Just situations like that, that’s where you, just watching from the outside, you can actually see different efficiency gains just visually watching ’em work.
Lauren Thunen (18:00):
Yeah, that’s an awesome suggestion because what might seem very small, five minutes, 10 minutes every single day, you multiply that by every single working day and you’re losing days, weeks, months, just from folks walking back and forth in the shop. So that’s incredible. And Roxanne, so Fred’s mentioned the things that he’s focused on, benefits team meetings, the four day work week efficiency gains. When you guys are looking at a prospective shop customer to help them hire technicians, is there anything else that you’re kind of evaluating and suggesting that they improve before you even start recommending technicians to them?
Roxanne Doche (18:41):
Yeah, I mean absolutely. I think Fred hit on all the things we talk about, right? Communication is probably one of the most overlooked things that are, the lack of communication in a shop is really impacting the reason why technicians are leaving. And it sounds like just having your meetings or not waiting for the scheduled time or review or one-on-one just to communicate. If a tech is doing really well, you want to communicate what your vision for that growth plan looks like. Because when you say the words, then you’re not really leaving anything for assumption. Otherwise they kind of hold it in, they get disgruntled, they start looking. So I think that’s one of the keys. And just don’t ignore the small stuff. I mean, clean bathrooms, air conditioning, a comfortable working space, just kind of being aware of your surroundings and making sure that your culture’s really healthy and your team is positive as a shop owner, it’s your job to keep those communication lines open.
Lauren Thunen (19:50):
That makes a ton of sense. And on the digital shop talk radio, we’ve talked a lot about these team meetings as kind of the foundation of the culture of your shop, and one thing is obviously asking for folks’ opinion, but something that we also suggest for shops is going over the data, going over your inspection rate, going over your average repair order value, going over how much the shop made last week. Because like Fred mentioned, giving employees that transparency that they have a stake in the business is more and more important because again, I’m assuming a lot of folks on this call, you might have started as a technician and now you’re a shop owner. Most folks don’t just want to turn wrenches for their entire life. They want to have some forward trajectory and growth, whether that’s moving into a shop owner, a different business path, but giving them that insight into how you run your business is incredibly effective. And that’s something that I’ve been looking at that auto vitals that our leadership team does, and that’s a big reason why I stay at AutoVitals. A lot of employees are the same across industries. So Fred, do you do anything additionally to share the shot metrics? How challenges, what’s going well in your team meetings as well? Or is it more just focused on what do you need? What can I improve?
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (21:04):
Oh, no, it’s broad spectrum. I kind of follow a pattern and anyone that knows me won’t be that surprised to hear that one team meeting a month, we call it chill week. We always will start a meeting with what’s a positive thing no matter what doesn’t matter. If you need to do that, we need to make sure and just take good day, bad day. Just take a minute and appreciate what you had for the past week. And once a month we just kind of hang out and the conversation happens and just talk about whatever. And that gives a little bit of a social aspect where they get to know each other and get to talk about whatever they got going on. One of my employee’s son is getting married on Saturday and she got to tell us all about the cool stuff that’s going on there.
(21:42):
But another thing, once a month, normally at the beginning of the month, we go over the previous month sales numbers and we look and see what was our KPIs we’re working on, we’re watching our car count, we’re watching our A RO, watching our hours turned, and of course total sales. And we go over like a three month comparison where my technicians have learned from going over that over and over, we want high a RO. The reason we want a high a RO is it’s much easier to hit $20,000 on 20 cars than it is on 40 cars. And that’s where you get a technician that’s like, man, this week we’ve produced a lot. What’s our a RO? But you’ve got to tech talking KPIs because you’re using those terms in meetings. Another thing is when you’re doing business advancements or growth, I’m wrapping my waiting room, it’s got this perforated vinyl wrap thingy that’s all faded.
(22:38):
When I started getting quotes, I let ’em know, Hey guys, here’s what I’m doing. You guys helped me turn a profit. I want you to know what I’m doing with that money. I just bought a loaner car to replace an existing loaner car. And just kind of keeping them in the loop on a sky view of what you’re doing with the business, what your plans are doing. Another common topic is when we get to hiring, we get to where we do a team interview with job shadow where we have the prospective employee come actually be a part of a day. They don’t take any accountability. They don’t actually fix stuff, but they get to see what it’s like and what a better platform to talk about that. They’re doing a team meeting where you’re closed, no one’s going to interrupt, you got an hour. Now clearly I feed them for free, I buy the food, let them pick what they want so they’re already in a happy place.
(23:26):
They get a paid on the clock free meal every week. Another common topic is we review the past week, what was something that we could reuse? What is something we could improve? What’s something that we should scrap and not try again? Any common obstacles you see, you can bring up just you have a platform where you have an hour a week to talk to your whole team, and it helps avoid roadblocks that are repetitive over and over. It helps prevent when you have that employee that’s just going to explode and you just know it’s coming, the day’s coming, it helps you get ahead of that because maybe a discussion is what needs to happen. And it helps when someone’s having a problem and it’s something they haven’t brought up to get everyone’s brain together at once and brainstorm about a solution. It’s those kinds of things. Does that kind of give you a letter of premise of where I’m going?
Lauren Thunen (24:20):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing all of that. And I think it’s cool that you have that show week too, because people want to enjoy their employer. They want to enjoy where they work, they want to get free lunches. As silly as it sounds, sometimes it’s a band-aid for issues, but when you’re doing it thoughtfully, people really enjoy getting to know who they work with.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (24:39):
Well, and think about it, most people, you got to buy lunch or pack lunch five days a week. At my shop, they’re packing or buying three days a week. That’s it. That’s pretty cool. You know what I mean? That’s like someone working three twelves and they’re working four twelves or firemen, something like that.
Lauren Thunen (24:58):
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve talked a lot about what you can do in your shop to make it a more attractive place to work, but obviously people need to know that you’re hiring and they need to be able to find out that all of the great things that your shop is offering. So Roxanne, what are some of the innovative recruiting methods and things that you’re suggesting to shops to actually help folks get the interview at the shop and know about all the great things that a shop like fix it with Fred is doing?
Roxanne Doche (25:25):
Yeah. Well, I mean, Fred has an awesome shop and an awesome culture. So definitely marketing that is key, right? But just making sure you’re hitting every avenue and every channel. The majority of candidates that respond to your ads, they’re not qualified. You have a lot of general techs responding to master tech ads, and I think Fred mentioned earlier, this takes a lot of time. It takes time to weed out the unqualified. And then also when you do get that unicorn and they’re responding to an ad, you’re posting it’s speed to lead. That’s our mantra here at Promotive. We have a team of recruiters that are talking to hundreds of candidates every day, and as soon as we get that rare gem, we’re on the phones and we’re engaging. Also, our approach is we really focus on those passive candidates too. Those candidates who aren’t really looking, they’re engaged, we nurture them because things change. Life changes, things come up and something personal happens and they need to make a change or there’s a change in ownership or a leadership and they want to find a new position. So we just really focus a lot of time on those candidates just to make sure we keep them nurtured and engaged and interested. Those are the candidates we want to place in Fred’s shop. We want the loyal candidates who are not job hopping for a dollar more per hour or for free pizza, although you’re giving plenty of that, but
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (26:54):
They haven’t got pizza in probably five or six months. I let ’em pick the Where do you want to eat? You guys pick, but no, I know what you’re saying. It makes sense. Roxanne
Lauren Thunen (27:03):
Makes, and then so you mentioned marketing, your shop culture. How do you advise shops to do that, right? When you say marketing your culture, that’s so broad, is that social media on the website or what’s a good way for shops to get the word out into their local area about how great they are?
Roxanne Doche (27:21):
If that question’s For me, I would just say involvement, just being involved. Photos, videos, that’s a big thing right now and it’s something we do for our shops. So when we do our intake, we’re collecting as much information as we can. We’re trying to get to really understand and kind of feel their culture and bring that into the ads and the promotions that we’re running for the shops. But in terms of what they can do themselves, social media is a great forum because I think anyone looking for a job is probably going to check you out online, especially the younger candidates that you’re getting these days. So culture videos, recording some B roll from the team meetings, putting together a fun little TikTok. I think that stuff just shows, really gives an idea of how laid back or how chill you guys are. So that’s definitely a selling point.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (28:15):
And I think you can get some in-person exposure when there’s a training that’s local and you send your technicians, don’t go to the training and recruit, do not do that. If you as an owner go to training and recruit, that training provider will never allow you again, but there’s no rule against you going with your technicians and everybody there see you hang out with your technicians, see you, how you treat the people that work with you. And if you notice they don’t say work for you. It’s all in the mindset. I don’t say that my employees work for me because now it makes me, I mean obviously I’m writing ’em a check. I think they know, so to say work with you, they have to work with you for you to succeed. Go places where techs go. Take your crew to a race. What’s it cost to go to a race for a person, 20 bucks, 30 bucks? Is it worth spending 30 bucks per person for your team to have a great time to bond together and for your other technicians that are at that race to see how you treat your people?
(29:22):
And speaking of culture, there’s something I do that I left out that I think is probably useful. Do something fun every couple months, whatever that means. We had a race team for a couple years. We were doing endurance racing, that was great. The crew I have right now doesn’t want to do that. They wanted to go golfing, the cheapest event ever, but they loved it. Electric go-kart racing. Go ride a canoe, go watch a movie. Go dude, ask them, what do you guys want to go do? I’m buying, I’ll pay for the whole and you can bring your wife. Let’s go. What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? So it’s those culture rich things that you don’t see everywhere. Those things that are irreplaceable, they’re almost incomparable to other businesses. Those are the things that you post that you were at the indoor go-kart racing, and you have a picture with your team. People go and look at your shop and go, wow, he took him racing. How cool is that?
Lauren Thunen (30:24):
Yeah, no, most definitely. When folks are looking at what jobs to apply, they’re on your website, they’re on your social medias, especially if you have a hiring page, putting those front and center to show like, Hey, this is why people work here. And something that we do at Auto Vitals when we’re looking higher is we have quotes and testimonials from folks that actually work here in a similar role reminding applicants like, Hey, this is why I chose to work at Auto Vitals. We see a lot of shops do that on their recruiting site of these are why the techs that we do have, the service buyers that we do have been with us for 5, 10, 20 years, whatever it may be for your shop.
Roxanne Doche (30:59):
Yeah, that’s a great point too, Lauren, because I think having a built out about us page, and I know it’s hard for shops, especially if you are seeing a lot of turnover, but I know a lot of people will go to that place first. Just get an idea of what kind of skill level do the techs that are working there currently have? What’s the background of the owner? I think that’s really important too.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (31:24):
I have a question for Roxanne. Sure. Have you, hang on, I lost it. How odd is that those employer review sites like Glassdoor and different places, is there a benefit to having your employees review you on those for the online visibility? How are your thoughts on those kinds of things?
Roxanne Doche (31:46):
Yeah, I mean I think it’s always good to have because as you know, searching for yourself, if someone’s searching for your business name, those are the sites that are going to pop up. Or even when Glassdoor is actually connected to Indeed. I dunno if you knew that. So if you’re advertising on Indeed, it kind of feeds into Glassdoor. So if you are advertising on Indeed, I think it’s important to have a built out Glassdoor page as well.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (32:11):
Cool. I just thought that was super relevant for prospective employees to see. You have a 4.9 Glassdoor rating, that’s kind of cool. But the people that currently work at your business can review you on Glassdoor.
Roxanne Doche (32:24):
Yes. And people who don’t work at your business anymore can as well.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (32:30):
But I mean to start one, build it out and send the link to all your current staff and hope you don’t get a one star. I’m just saying that might be a good start for someone that’s like, well gosh, how do I start that? Just type some stuff and get some stars. It’s just like a Google review.
Roxanne Doche (32:46):
Yeah, I mean you could even work it into one of your team events where you kind of do a little drill and you’re like, everybody take your phones out and the momentum’s really high and everyone’s happy. Then you push them for your reviews. That might be a good time too.
Lauren Thunen (32:58):
Yep, yep. Awesome. And then Roxanne, are you saying, you mentioned Indeed posting job postings on Indeed. Are there any places that shop should absolutely be posting jobs that you find not everyone knows about? Or is it typically the usual suspects are the best places still to be posting jobs for technicians?
Roxanne Doche (33:19):
Yeah, well, I mean unfortunately most techs or the good techs aren’t really looking on job sites. That’s the problem. And the ones that are, they’re probably going to Google first and they’re just saying mechanic jobs near me. That’s the other thing I found too in my research is they call themselves mechanics. They like to be referred to as techs, but if they’re searching for a job, they’re typically searching for mechanic jobs. But yeah, there’s really no secret sauce. Fred can tell you the indeed ads indeed might be the more popular job board with this demographic, but you’re weeding through way more unqualified than you are qualified.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (33:59):
Well, and when it comes to trying to find people, not hire them, but just find them total strangers, find out you exist. You got to figure out is this something you’re capable of doing and do you have the time to do it? And if you can’t say yes to those two things, pay somebody to do it because that is the hardest part. It is. You get the right person in front of you, you know how to interview ’em, you know how to figure out their mechanic. But in my area, my county’s 250,000 people, I don’t know them all. There’s hundreds of thousands of people I don’t know. So how am I going to get their attention? Like Roxanne said, they’re not looking on Indeed. So how am I going to get ’em to even know I’m here, they’re not going to bring the car here.
(34:45):
Hopefully then I don’t want to hire ’em if they do. So that whole, that’s what happened for me, that’s what caused me to hire promotive is because I was like, there’s a lot of stuff I can do, but get a total stranger to find out my shop exists and I’m hiring and potentially do that when they might not be looking for a job. I don’t have that skillset, I just don’t. And that’s okay. And there’s plenty of people that are good at that. Go for it. I’m glad you know how, but that’s where a lot of people get frustrated and stuck. I’ve been running this ad for six months. I’ve paid indeed 2,500 bucks and I don’t have two applicants. And they’re both oil change guys. It’s not cheap. They’re cheap fishing with dynamite, you know what I mean? Just throw the stick in, didn’t get any fish, throw another one in. You wouldn’t have a company like you do if it was a simple system to get applicants.
Roxanne Doche (35:38):
Yeah, I think the key too is building relationships. I mean, you had some great points, Fred, when you were saying when you take your team out. So some of these events where techs happen to be and they talk to your staff, and one of our best sources right now are referrals. Like I said, we’re talking to hundreds of techs every day. We’re building relationships, we’re putting out resources, people are downloading our content, they’re responding more passively. And then we’re just having those conversations and just building those relationships because when the time comes that they are looking to make a change, those are the texts that shops want to hire.
Lauren Thunen (36:22):
Absolutely. And you mentioned to a lot of folks looking online, searching mechanic near me, if you’re hiring and those search terms are not on your website, make sure you get with your website, make sure you get with your website provider. So your ranking in your area for common search terms that folks that are looking for a job. And if you don’t have a website or you don’t have a very well-built website, I would suggest too, that’s definitely something to take a look at as more and more folks, again, they’re not just going to walk into your shop these days, they’re going to find it online first, making sure your Google My Business pages in order, making sure the reviews on your Google My Business page are positive because again, really good technicians, mechanics, they don’t want to go work for a shop that all of the reviews are like this shop screwed me over because we know that’s not true. You just got one angry Google Review from someone that didn’t understand why they needed their shops and struts done. We know that all the shops, especially on this webinar, are great shops, but just making sure your Google reviews and your website reflects how great you are.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (37:18):
Well and respond to ’em
Lauren Thunen (37:19):
Yourself,
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (37:20):
Type it out and make sure your building looks nice. Make sure your bathroom’s clean. Make sure when the technician shows up for an interview, they don’t walk in and go, customers come here. What they’re looking at the technician is evaluating, is this a place that’s going to have enough customers for me? Is this a place that has the facility I can fix cars? Do I trust this person that owns it with my family’s wellbeing because they’re going to be the one paying me? And I mean those are the things going through their head. And you absolutely have to look at the customer picture. Like you said, Lauren, if the customer’s not coming in and leaving happy, they’re not going to come work for you. They’re not going to save your business.
Roxanne Doche (37:59):
And I think if you have a team that’s just friendly when you are bringing someone in for an interview, if your techs are stopping to say hello and people are just generally happy, that leaves a really, really great impression as well.
Lauren Thunen (38:16):
Awesome. Well, we’re getting to the last couple minutes of the time that we have planned here. So I’ve put a message in the chat, but if you have any questions for Fred or Roxanne, please throw ’em in the chat. The first one we have is from Sal. Hey Sal, how’s it going? He said, what if the shop looks like it doesn’t have enough business because we schedule accordingly and are
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (38:38):
So I think I understand what Sal’s saying. He’s saying when you look at the building, the building doesn’t look busy, but he turns all the out every day. Is that kind what he means?
Lauren Thunen (38:50):
That is my impression, Sal. If you meant something different, just type it in the q and a.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (38:54):
I mean, I think if you were to interview and pull up your schedule and be like, look, I’m booked. You can physically show ’em proof. I just make sure when my loaner cars aren’t used, I park ’em by the shop. My truck I don’t use a lot, I park it by the shop. I’ve probably got six or seven cars that are just extra cars that are parked by the entrance of the shop where people drive by and you’re always busy, even if we’re caught up on air quotes. But you got to think the customer perspective too, Sal, you don’t want to look so busy. Customers don’t want to come in because you’re too busy. So I think in an interview situation, you could tell, just get in front of it. I realize that it looks like I’m not busy. You went out and there’s an empty shop. We’re good at scheduling, we’re very efficient at what we do. We only accept excellence. And if you look at my schedule here, I’m scheduled 10 business days out. So that’s why we’re interviewing you to see if you’re up to the level that we need you and kind of use that as a positive lure where they’re like, man, these people aren’t playing. If you’ve got that kind of shop, Sal, I think you can make that clear in an interview by showing them proof.
Lauren Thunen (40:01):
Yeah, Sal just added that they schedule three cars a day per technician and average hours per car three hours.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (40:07):
That’s my man. That’s almost same as I do brother. That’s exactly worth about three hours a car, three cars per tech. Love it.
Lauren Thunen (40:15):
And I would argue too, again, a technician, they want to walk into the shop and they want to see that it’s not chaotic. They don’t want to work somewhere where they’re just going to be manically turning oil changes. They don’t have time to go through and fully inspect the car because the next 10 cars are already here and folks are yelling in the waiting room. There’s a balance between, of course, you want to demonstrate you have enough work for them, but you also want to demonstrate like, Hey, we have our ship under control and we’re scheduling you the right vehicles at the right time that you have time to actually go through and make some significant money off of these vehicles versus just turning loss leaders. Any other questions from anyone? Throw ’em in the chat. If not. I did have one more question, Fred, for you. I wanted to ask, obviously you’ve been using AutoVitals for a long time, digital inspections, workflow management. Do you bring that up in the interview process when you’re talking to new folks or how do you work that into again, why you’re a great shop to work for?
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (41:16):
Ask them first. Have you ever done a DV? I ask them that way, not Have you done a digital vehicle inspection? Everyone calls it DVI. I’ve yet to meet someone that doesn’t say DVI. And if they go, what’s that? Now you have another obstacle. They’re going to have to learn a whole system, a whole different way of inspecting cars. They’re going to have an accountability. There’s a picture of what you said was good and the technician, I always bring it up. I actually show ’em an inspection. I offer to send them a text and that way you get their phone number, text them an inspection, and I show ’em the workflow management. I use shopper for my point of sale. I show him that the technician I hired through Promotive had never used AutoVitals, but had used shop wear. So it made it kind of nice that he already knew how to navigate through that software.
(42:01):
And when you tell him the stuff you have, have you used Google Drive? They’re like, yes or no. Well, we use that for all of our internal documents. That kind of raises your professionalism up where they’re like, all right, this guy’s paying money for software just to talk to customers. This guy’s got two or three or however many different resources that you’re paying for them to have. Show ’em. If you have identified, show ’em. If you have Proman, show ’em. If you pay for OE manufacturer stuff, take ’em to the special tools cabinet, open it, make it not look like crap. You don’t want it to look like a grenade went off. And yeah, all those things, Lauren, those are all amenities for a technician. Those are amenities. Those are the loaner cars. Those are the techs to pay. Those are the shuttle service. That’s what those things are because the technician that’s good will want to do a DVI because the good technicians I’ve interviewed, when I mentioned DV, I ask them, how do you feel about inspections? And they’re like, oh, it’s the only way to win. You can’t sell work without an inspection. I’ve got to have a good inspection. I’ve got to have a good advisor, and I’ve got to have good parts suppliers. And that’s what they care about is those three things.
Lauren Thunen (43:06):
That makes a ton of sense. Well, last two minutes, Roxanne, do you have any last tidbits of advice for the folks on that might be looking for technicians or one point that you just really want to nail home for the audience?
Roxanne Doche (43:19):
Yeah, I think you hear everyone saying it all the time, but always be recruiting, right? Don’t wait for an open position to come up because as we’ve been talking about, it’s hard to find that good fit for your shop. So just always have feelers out, be out at industry events, educate your team, and if you use Indeed or your running ads, just have them run constantly or call Promotive and we can do that recruiting for you.
Lauren Thunen (43:50):
Awesome. And then we have one more question here from Roy. He said, I posted a template of my Health Wanted ad on one of the Facebook groups to judge me on. They were saying that text do not care about our 300 plus five star reviews, paid lunch and so on. I was thinking of taking it off my ad. Should I keep it also, we are on a first.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (44:09):
I got my hand up real bad. Yeah,
Lauren Thunen (44:11):
Let’s go Fred.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (44:12):
Unless you’re going to hire those owners, who cares what they think? Really? And I have a feeling I know what happened is he went to his peers, he or she went to his peers and said, here’s my ad. I’m having trouble. What do you guys think? And they looked at it as owners. They didn’t look at it as prospective technicians. I have yet to have somebody not like the reviews, not like the four day workweek. You ask the wrong crowd.
Roxanne Doche (44:40):
Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. I feel like adding your reviews is so important or even a link to them. You don’t have to brag about them, but let them read themselves the good, the bad, the everything, right? So adding your link in culture, maybe it’s just the wording on how you’re phrasing it. There’s a lot of, I don’t want to say negativity, but everyone’s like a pizza party’s not going to save everything. So just saying like, well, we have pizza lunches, but instead, Fred had some great points of his team meetings. The communication, the environment that you’re creating for your team to work together. I think those are the things you want to focus on versus the actual takeaways of it.
Lauren Thunen (45:23):
Roy said, copy that I posted I would want to see when I was a technician. Thanks, y’all technic. Love it. Of course, Roy and too, if you ever always test too, you can run one copy for a couple months, see how many clicks and responses you get, and then test a different copy or test different copy on different sites and see what works best for your area. There’s no one size fits all, but that sounds like a great listing to me.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (45:48):
Me too.
Lauren Thunen (45:51):
Great. Okay, well, we are one minute over. Anyone.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (45:54):
I have something gold
(45:57):
For those that are like, I can’t hire somebody. Stop being the owner. Pretend you’re a technician that’s never been to your shop, doesn’t know you at all, and only has what they can find without driving to your shop to choose you and ask yourself, honestly, if I were a tech working at this other shop and I was going to apply, would I even apply there? Would I work there? Would this make me happy? And it’s really hard to disconnect yourself like that, but that’s where most owners fail is they just list out what they need from ’em, and that doesn’t attract. You’ve got to be the technician that’s looking and ask yourself, would you work at your own shop with what you’ve presented?
Roxanne Doche (46:40):
That’s great advice.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (46:41):
Thanks, Rob.
Lauren Thunen (46:43):
Yeah, that is it. Let’s call it there because that was a great last tidbit. Act like the technician. Thank you so much for Roxanne. Fred, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your experience with everyone today. It was a great episode and I’m sure we’ll have you guys back on. Oh, what did Tammy say? Just before we
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (47:02):
Get off, she wants to know if you’re going to send a copy available after the call.
Lauren Thunen (47:05):
Yep, we will. Everyone who’s registered and attended you will get the recording. It’ll also be on the Auto vitals YouTube channel, so check it out there. Usually it takes us a couple hours after to get it processed and uploaded.
Fred Gestwicki Jr. (47:17):
Awesome.
Lauren Thunen (47:18):
Awesome. Well, again, Fred, Roxanne, thank you both so much. It was a pleasure. Fastest 45 minutes of my week and I’ll catch up with you guys via email. Thank you everyone for joining. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you everyone.