Dealers' ads for service techs need major repairs to be effective

If your dealership has openings for service and body shop technicians, you're probably feeling the effects of the growing technician gap. The National Automobile Dealers Association estimates that its members face a shortage of 37,000 technicians each year through 2026.

A review of hundreds of ads on job sites Indeed and Monster shows that dealers are offering signing bonuses and all sorts of spiffs to lure technicians. Several dealers tell me they've had technician jobs open for months, underscoring the difficulty of recruiting qualified, motivated fixed ops help.

It's only natural to think that a help-wanted ad touting a big salary will attract a lot of applicants. But do you really want technicians who change jobs based on the size of the paycheck and the number of perks?

Emphasizing pay and benefits in help-wanted ads is not the best strategy, says Lee Harkins, CEO of M5 Management Services, a consulting firm that specializes in fixed operations. In fact, Harkins says, the job ads dealers post for technicians need major repairs.

Writing more effective ads will do little to solve the industrywide shortage. But if your technicians are generally happy and satisfied with the working conditions, it might help you to solve your shortage.

"The big point is to write the ad from the technician's perspective, not yours," Harkins told me. "What the technician wants is what improves his or her quality of life."

That idea meshes well with a study by the Carlisle & Co. consultancy that found about one-fourth of the 35,000 dealership technicians it surveyed plan to leave their jobs within the next few years. A much higher percentage say they are deeply dissatisfied with their jobs.

Harkins offers a list of topics that should not appear in your dealership's technician help-wanted ads: anything to do with your store's 401(k) plan, paid holidays and vacations, bonuses, pay rates and what your store's top technician earned last year.

Harkins also recommends killing signing bonuses for technicians.

"In a business, if all the employees are only focused on the money, they have no desire, no fire in their belly, to take care of the customer, because it's only about the paycheck," he says. "If they're focused on money, I think you are going to lose and the store is going to lose."

What does Harkins recommend including in a technician ad? The experienced technicians most dealerships seek are used to working under a flat-rate pay system, Harkins notes. They're also looking for a shop that promises a fair distribution of work, he says.

A high retention rate for service customers is worth touting, he adds, because technicians earn more on customer-pay repairs than on warranty work. Harkins advises fixed ops directors to mine their shop's data on the ratio of customer-pay to warranty work and the mileage on service customers' vehicles.

"The longer a customer keeps a car, the greater the opportunity there is for the store to get customer-pay work," Harkins says.

Technician candidates also want to know what a service department's work environment is like.

"Technicians don't want management by fear," Harkins says. "They want to have input and be able to voice their opinions about things. They want to know that management receives criticism fairly."

With Harkins' help, I wrote a prototype help-wanted ad for an experienced technician at an import-brand dealership. Harkins says you'll attract and retain good help if your ad reads something like this:

"We have an opening for a skilled technician. We offer:

• Fair work dispatch.
• Daily production goals for each technician.
• Customer-pay work that is 60 percent of our business.
• Open communications with team members.
• Excellent work/life balance.
• Excellent parts inventory with an 80 percent off-the-shelf fill rate.

"If you are sick of no communication with management, large amounts of warranty work and a poor work/life balance, we want to talk with you."

What technician wouldn't apply for a job like that?