Thread: ? about finding good help

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Maybe it's just me, but i've been kinda looking around for a good tech.. someone to possibly pick up all my collision work for me, so that way I can concentrate on all the other things I have going on.. But I stopped and thought about this for a few min, and thought to myself that there is really not anyone out there that i know that i'd want to put into this possition.. then I thought about all the other shops and their employee's, and still their was no one that i thought i could put into the possition. Not that I was going to try and take someone from a shop, it's just seems to be that there are really not a whole lot of qualified tech's out there.. everyone out there that I even thought about considering is in their mid 40's or up.. which is ok,, it's just that i'm only 25, and it made me realize that there is not a whole lot of tech's in my age bracket.. the one's that are close in age, I wouldn't want them to work on my own ride, so especially not someone else's.

Then this brings me to another question.. where does this leave the future of body repair, I was talking about this to a friend who is working at a big production shop, and he's thinking about getting out of it all together... he just was complaining about how things have changed, and how the insurance adjusters are beating down their estimates, and that it was getting harder to make the money that he has come accustom to. and he's been doing this for like 30yrs now. so he's seen the changes over time. and he even said that there are not many new techs coming in looking for jobs, but like he said, unless someone is really in to cars what are they going to want to get into the business for.. alot of the youngsters are going for jobs that pay about the same or more and have to do much less work. Which I believe is true. I own my own shop and i'm not making alot of money.. I just love cars.. but my more recent attitude has been if i'm going to do this i'm going to work on the stuff that more interests me.

amen,I'm 27 and run a body shop and can't find any good help what so ever.Any one who is my age sucks (around here) no desire to put out a good product.As long as they get a paycheak there happy.when i was learning this trade i took alot of pride in my work but no one seems to care anymore.kinda sucks

which is why i've been going after the custom work... i'm hoping to get more into rods as time progresses.. and as far as collision work goes.. I start to hate it more and more as time progresses. argueing with the adjusters about what needs to be done for a proper repair... all they are worried about it seems is getting the prices down...

so is it just me or do alot of other people see these same issues

and sorry for the novel here...

trust me i know how adjusters suck.I have thought screw it why not go get a job working for the ins company and wright tics all day.You dont have to woory if its done wright or on time or how much it costs.Just wright them and forget it.But i have an addiction to cars and i cant screw shops and feel good about myself.so i'll keep plugin along and see if i can't do more custom stuff.But collision was a good learning exprience.

I have tried to get help too. I have a small body shop and I do lock work. Most prospective bodymen cant focus for a whole days work. Even the guys from Vo Tech dont seem to be any better. I think with any trade you have to want it, more than any other thing. For sure it aint like on TV where they build a whole car in 60 minutes. So what else will they do with their time?

You guys are the kind of guys that I wish I had in my town...I'm only 17, I love cars, I don't draw a paycheck at my current job, I work for my ride and my job...Explain: 1/2 my check goes into my ride, the other 1/2 goes to fuel to get to my job... I don't know much about cars but I was hired at my shop because I picked up how to build 2 different gm trannies, and just about any small block in about 2-3 weeks. Also have done rust repair. Did some R&R due to the fact that we are a tranny shop. Have done some grills, Westin step bars, tires ect. I have a little experience here and there and I learn really fast.

Don't give up, you guys are what gives us youngins our start! GL hope, you find what your looking for...There might not be as many youngins today that want to learn, but there are a few good ones out there.

I was picked up at my shop, not knowing hardly anything about cars. I was given the chance to show what I can do purely out of chance. Right place, right time.

It's not only in the body shop field, but all over the automotive field. I've worked in dealerships (GM) for 25 years, and it keeps getting worse and worse. The labor times go down, the dealer doesn't want to pay for the shop tools or the training, and the customers have the idea that all you do is plug the "gizmo" in and the thing diagnosis itself and the fix takes minutes. The newbees come in from votec and want top dollar to start, and most don't know to change oil properly. When was the last time your hood, door and gas door were lubed during a service? The insurance company doesn't want to pay for anything, and leave you with the job of telling the customer that their repair isn't covered.
Funny how all this started when the corner gas station stopped the service bays and started selling candy, soda and stuffed animals. No more real grass roots, hands-on training, just some instructors idea of whats the way to repair a car. When you started pumping gas, you got to hang around with the guys - sometimes. You had to clean the toolbench at the end of the day and put the tools away. How many had to "compound the floor" with a 2x4 and clay speedy-dry? THEN you got to work on the cars, but only when the mechanics could watch you and train you. One of the guys would always send you out to the pumps for a small amount of gas in a styrofoam cup to prime a carb ( if you were smart, you used a double cup so the gas would eat thru it just after you handed it back to the old guy). Most of the newbees don't even know what a carb is today.
Now before I get jumped on like the Marines, there ARE some good schools and some great, new people coming into the field, but they are the exception. The hot rod field is now the "tuner" bolt on and go. Gain 100 horsepower with NOS, bolt on a body kit (not fabricate body panels, just bolt-on). But when it blows up because it ran too lean, the car stays broken in the driveway until someone can afford a new or reman engine assembly because they don't know how an engine works. Then they need to find someone that can change the engine for them.

Nice (?) to see things haven't changed much. I sold my body shop 4 years ago and much of the industry had the same complaints "back when" just like you guys today. Last figure I saw for the automotive repair industry said 35,000 new techs were needed per year to keep the industry going. BTW, it's not just the auto tech fields...............Bill Gates has some of the same complaints about finding good help. What we see is the "trickle down" effect of an attitude of entitlement that permeates our society......................too many people think they should be paid, or given benefits, or whatever to sustain them just because they exist. But that's another discussion that's way too big for here.

Back to the topic at hand. The insurance industry does what comes natural. They try to minimize their costs and maximize their profits. How they do it can easily be called into question, but the bottom line is the shop owners and vehicle owners are the ones that let them get away with it. Interestingly (to me anyway) is that the collision repair business is following the same failing model as the healthcare industry. Simple reason for this. Most medical institutions, like most body shops, are run by technicians (yeah, though educated in a different way the Doc really is a tech), and not by business minded people. There are exceptions, but it's not the norm. A while back here we had another thread going back and forth about body shop vs insurance wherein one guy made the comment "you can't make money with a pencil". This is a technicians point of view, and if you prefer being hands on with the car it makes sense. But how I made my money WAS with the pencil............well, in more recent years a computer really. Managing the business side of the deal is critical, and was a full time job. If you don't lean that way it may be hard to fathom, but that gets back to my point that technicians understand and do what they know best. Running a business has a different skillset and attitude than just owning your job. To wrap up this point, if body shop operators ran their deal like a business, they would all tell the insurance guys "enough!!", and charge a fair and reasonable rate to make a profit. If nobody repaired cars for a couple weeks across an entire market area the insurance guys would get the message in a hurry. But they know, as do we, that ain't gonna happen, so they enjoy their power that's been handed to them by the shop owners.

Now, listen to yourselves. You value your skills and work ethic. What makes you think you're unique? There are other guys out there your age that are just like you. And guess what? Many of them are complaining that they can't find a good place to work. They're tired of working for some slug who doesn't appreaciate them (at least that's what they think). They don't like the working facility, conditions, whatever. The old saw has always been to complain about not being paid enough, but in reality that's more of an excuse. While everyone would like to make more money at any given time, it's been demonstrated time after time for many years, that in an employee value hierarchy working conditions usually hold the first 3-4 positions before you get to pay rate.

Finding good employees is a job. Depending on your situation it could be a part time job, or a full time job. If you want to be successful in getting good employees you need to be looking all the time. How hard you look will depend on how big you are (or want to become), how smart the other guys looking for talent are, and what size talent pool is in your area. Here's the mistake most people make. They don't start looking for workers until they have a hole to fill, and then they wonder why they can't find anyone. If you're always keeping in touch with the market, you'll always be talking to someone about their employment situation. What happens is, you may not hire them today, it may be a year from now before situations change to where a person is available, but it will happen. That's how I built my team's top performers. Then I worked for the future by staying in touch with the votechs and competed for the best students. We'd do the half day OJT thing. That way I got a guy I could mold to my system and had the chance to earn his loyalty from an early age. Between the two methods I always had a good crew (once I figured out what to do to be successful). Sure, there was always someone at the bottom of the totem pole, and it was my job to determine if they were trainable up, or needed to be replaced out. That's part of molding a team. BTW, some probably think that's hard hearted, but in reality, the rest of the guys (especially if they're high quality techs) don't want a slug on their team either. They want to work with like minded people who perform as they do (hint; that's where you often get good techs, they leave other situations where the "boss" didn't surround them with good team members). And yeah, a team can be as small as two people. If that sounds like too much work then keep doing what you've been doing (you do know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result don't you?)

As time goes by the battle gets tougher for sure. Attitudes evolve and mythology can take root. A couple years before I left the industry a nearby high school was rebuilt. In the plans and in the final construction were some automotive training bays. When the school re-opened there weren't any classes scheduled, so the bays were used for storage. I went to one of the administrators (don't get me started on the money wasted on bloated school administrations) and asked why they weren't contributing to our industry need for techs. In a nutshell the answer was that kids didn't want to be prepped for a job in an industry where they got dirty and didn't make any money. (Of course if that's what they believe, that's what they teach the kids tp believe.............it's called a self fulfilling prophecy) We had a moderately long discussion, but the main thing I hit him with was what my top production people earned just to get his attention. The look on his face when I told him that these "undereducated, car working neanderthals" (the incorrect image they base their thinking on) were making between $60-70K per year, was priceless. I would imagine he wasn't making that. Did that encounter change anything? Not really. There's a whole belief system in place that would take much more than just me to change. As a result, while I'd like to see the business unite and make a concerted effort to improve it's lot, I realize that that is very unlikely.................shop owners are too busy fixing cars instead of running their businesses, so they become "victims"........but they're victims of themselves.

Finding good employees is like mining for gold. First you have to go where the gold is, then, don't expect to find it the first time you swing the pick into the ground.

Well said Bob. Your experience is showing. But it is an uphill battle. Thanks for your wisdom.

From Joe Sherlok's blog this morning: http://www.joesherlock.com/blog.html

"Ford plans to monitor bathroom usage by employees. In a memo to workers at Ford's Michigan Truck plant, management said too many of the factory's 3,500 hourly workers "are spending more than the 48 minutes allotted per shift to use the bathroom."

Jeeeeez, that's almost an hour per day! In my manufacturing plant, if any of my employees had spent that much time in the bathroom, I would have fired them. Or had them drug-tested. And checked for discarded needles in the bathrooms' waste baskets.

After giving this matter some additional thought, I believe that this may explain why every electronic function involving the driver's door (mirrors, seat control, windows, etc.) failed within 10 miles after picking up our last brand-new Lincoln. The door guy at Ford's Wixom plant was probably in the crapper when he should have been properly installing wiring in our door. We haven't bought a Ford product since.

At those automotive subcontractor sweatshop factories in Asia, you can bet that no workers are wearing shirts with company or UAW logos. However ... you'll probably find the company logo on the mandatory catheters and butt plugs issued to all production line workers."

And someone asks why we lose jobs???

mike in tucson

One problem is you have shops that only want someone with experance and the best. Then you have the shop that will not give a $h!t and hire anybody. At some point that kid has to learn from someone and if the Sh!t shop is the only one that will hire him and train him, well here is our problem

I have a 15yr old that wants to turn wrinches as his life goal. I can pass on what I know and send him to school and hope they know what they are doing. But not until he can get into a good shop and someone takes him under their wing and pass on the knowledge will he master the art.

Charles

Here in New York, every county has a votec type school, There are also several colleges with degreed and certificate courses in automotive fields. So there is really no excuse for an employer here to say he can't find qualified help. My son went this training route,went to Sacramento,got a job in a shop,and was well on his way to being the shops top tech within two years.

The last few posts are right, if no good shop is willing to train the kid that comes around asking to learn, then there won't ever be any good techs. You learn your cars from working on them. You can't learn to diagnose and repair a problem by reading it in a book. I'm glad I've had the chance to work in a good shop. I wouldn't mind making my career in the automotive industry. Haven't had votech or any other schooling as far as fabrication or automechanics but I've learned to weld and work metal on my own.

Good thing their are not many younger guys,I always feel more confident leaving my Hot rod with the older guys.Damn kids