Finding the Right Fit
Written By: Ian Clayton
Edited By: Merielle Donaldson
Finding the right shop as a technician can be a difficult thing to do; it can be equally as time consuming and difficult as your wife finding the perfect fit of jeans. As I explained in my previous post, this has been a short but complicated journey for myself. In this post I will go over the pros and (mostly) cons of this journey, why you shouldn’t do what I did, and how to find that perfect fit.
As a new technician you will have so much enthusiasm and energy to get your hands dirty and get to work on the “fun” stuff. But I will tell you now that there is a lot of base building that needs to be done before you can get to that point. The right shop will harness that energy and put you on the right path to get there. But finding that shop can be difficult. I can finally say that after much trial and error, I have finally located a shop that is willing to work with me to make me into a better technician and one who can, in the future, help benefit the business.
Why you shouldn’t jump around as I have:
1) When you do this, you start at 0 every time, with everything. This is the most important point and all subsequent points will refer back to this one.
2) I am essentially a technician of two and a half years with only a year’s worth of experience in any one field. I personally did not just jump between employers within one section of the industry. I started with daily driver consumer vehicles, then went to work on light-, medium-, and heavy-duty diesel vehicles (mostly fleet), then went into exclusively medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, and finally into light-duty trucks (exclusively fleet vehicles). Every time I changed my focus, I restarted with zero or little knowledge or had to re-learn things that I had either never done or had not done for a long time.
3) Your employee benefits will suffer:
A. Health Insurance: Most employers will require at least three months of employment before providing employer-sponsored health insurance. Over the past two and a half years I can say that I have had health insurance for probably a grand total of about a year. This is extremely dangerous, especially in our field and with the way that most of us spend our time outside of work. Let’s face it - most of us in this industry have a need for speed and live our lives both physically and metaphorically “a quarter mile at a time.” Not having health insurance can be financially devastating if something was to happen, and every time you change jobs you start with zero months and coverage.
B. 401(k): Most employers will require six months to a year of employment before providing an employer-sponsored retirement plan. That is, if they even do at all! With only being at jobs between seven to ten months and working for one that did not provide 401(k) benefits, I have not contributed to an employer-sponsored 401(k) plan in over two years! That may not sound like much to you if you are young and in your teens or twenties, but at my age that is less than ideal. Time is your biggest asset when it comes to investing, especially when it comes to compounding your gains. Some companies may even have a vesting period for you to receive the employer match and if you leave before the vesting period is up you get none of the “match” money. (Just as a disclaimer this is not financial advice! I could link to thousands of articles telling you why you should be taking advantage of employer-sponsored 401(k)s, and I encourage you to do some research of your own.) Every time you change jobs you start at zero months and dollars.
4) It’s damaging to your resume. Employers will see this, wonder why you are changing jobs so frequently, and second guess whether it will be worth the cost of bringing you on for you to potentially just leave in a few short months. It is actually very expensive for companies to onboard new employees.
5) Moving your tool box that often is exhausting. So is relearning how to use the tire machine and balancer since no two shops ever have the same ones; how many varieties of these machines can possibly exist? Learning the parts procedures and becoming accustomed to the general day-to-day functioning of a shop is exhausting, and believe it or not things like this do affect your work quality. Every time you change jobs you start with zero knowledge of that new shop.
Now for the very short explanation of what good can come from this – the silver lining, if you will:
1) You can learn about the work that you don’t want to do.
2) You can learn what kind of people you don’t want to work for.
3) You can learn what kind of people you do want to work for.
4) You can learn about what to look for in a well-run shop and organization.
5) Varied experiences and minimal knowledge of certain things can be helpful.
What you should look for and what questions you should ask before taking a job as a new technician:
1) What will the training structure look like? If they do not have a good answer for this you may be looking at figuring a lot out on your own. And importantly, even if a company has a solid training structure at the corporate level, it may not be used at the dealership level. Your employer should have a good understanding as to how to handle and train new technicians, and should be able to explain that process to you in detail.
2) Will I be given a mentor? You need a mentor! As a new technician you need to be working with someone on the daily who has years of experience, knowledge, and tricks that they can pass on to help make you a better technician. There will be another post to come on finding a good mentor.
3) What is the turnover rate and are they constantly hiring? This can be tricky with the ongoing shortage of technicians because virtually every shop is short on techs and are therefore always hiring, but some larger organizations seem to never take their job postings down. This can be a major red flag in terms of how the organizations are run. The law firm that I worked at prior to my career change was constantly hiring and it was a direct reflection as to how the department was run (i.e., high rates of turnover due to a poor working environment).
4) What kind of work does the shop take on and what kind of work is turned down? This can be important to know if you want to stay at a particular shop for a long time while your skills and knowledge expand. If the shop focuses on quick turnover work and you want to be doing engine and transmission work, then you probably won’t want to be working there in five years.
What you can do that I should have done:
1) Ask all of the questions above about shop culture (in addition to many more about benefits and employee reviews that you should be asking)
2) Communicate! I could have avoided a lot of the stress and strain of job hopping if I had just communicated with my service managers and employers about how I was feeling about things. Let your service manager know upfront if a job is too big for you or a little above your knowledge, let them know if it is only your first, second, or third time doing something. This level of communication upfront can alleviate a lot of stress in the middle and back end of the job.
In conclusion, finding the shop that is the right fit for you can be difficult. You have to learn almost as much about yourself as you do about the place you will be working. Finding that right fit will require equally as much hard work, dedication, and communication on your part as it will your employers’. But once you find that shop, your skills will quickly improve and you will find yourself on the path to becoming the technician that you want to be.