As you grow and expand your business, so too will many of your employees be looking to advance their own careers. If you’ve put time and effort into recruiting the best team possible, the best way to retain them is to show that your shop offers the best opportunities available to them.
At American Pride Automotive, a shop with six locations based in the Virginia Peninsula, a thorough hiring process ensures that only the most passionate and talented are considered—but the work does not end there, as American Pride realizes that once they find a valued team player, they have to work to keep them.
Vice President Andrew Marcotte and Chief Technical Training Officer Billy Weston share how American Pride recruits these employees and only adds to the fulfillment they receive from the work they do by having the opportunity to move into any role they want within the company.
Focusing on What Matters
To begin with, American Pride Automotive has carefully constructed its hiring process to weed out those uninterested in staying for the long haul. Technical ability is undoubtedly important in the recruitment process, but an individual’s ability to fit within the shop’s culture often trumps everything else—especially for entry-level apprentice techs, who are still looking for guidance on how to navigate the field.
“We have evaluated a series of interview questions that are more designed to pick apart cultural fit versus technical skill,” tells Marcotte. “We’ve been focusing for the last four years now on more of a cultural-based interview—knowing that the raw skills can be taught, but the cultural fit is likely something that somebody can’t learn and change into.”
The shop is able to be selective with who it hires because it rarely needs to fill an empty position. This is largely the result of its apprenticeship program, which pairs up entry-level technicians with mentors in the shop, who are typically shop foremen.
Those who serve as mentors are also deeply involved in the hiring process, with American Pride having each shop’s service director and shop foreman participating in interviews with potential new hires.
Ensuring you’re hiring a good technician is only half of what it takes to keep them on. The other half is how involved the shop is in supporting new hires. This is more likely to happen if your team feels they had some say in who they’ll be training and working with.
“We found a much higher level of buy-in and effort put into new team member success when the shop foremen and the service directors have had an actual say in who gets to join the team,” explains Marcotte. “Because at the end of the day, if they end up struggling in some areas, it’s no longer ‘oh, you guys gave me a bad hire.’ Now it's, ‘You helped me make this decision to bring this person on. You saw potential in them.’”
Know Your Employees
Keeping technicians engaged is not a one-and-done deal, though. A shop must make a constant effort to maintain a connection with its technicians, and understand what their motivations are as their skill sets expand.
To accomplish this, Marcotte’s shop conducts a semi-annual review, consisting of two halves each year. For the first part, employees will do a self-evaluation, with the second part being crafted by their direct supervisor, accompanied by a review of each staff member’s pay.
Alternatively, some shops in Marcotte’s network also conduct regular one-on-one meetings with team members as a way to stay connected with their goals.
This practice has enabled a deeper understanding of where an employee thinks they are in their career and where they see themselves going, and making it easier for American Pride to support them in achieving that.
“If you're assuming somebody is motivated by money, money alone, and that's what you're using as a motivational tool, but they're driven by career growth, skill development, things along those lines, you're not going to have the impact you're looking to have,” says Marcotte. “So being connected and really just knowing those things, however your company comes up with their process of gathering that information.”
Weston holds weekly meetings with all the shop foremen to gain insight into how all the apprentice techs are doing. He’ll check in on their skill sets, opportunities for growth, and any accomplishments they’ve made. The shop always makes an effort to recognize wins from technicians, such as awarding reimbursement for tools as they expand their capabilities.
Be the Opportunity
Recognizing and communicating with technicians is especially important with employees who have been treated poorly in previous workplaces where they were held back from advancing. Often times, this can be due to a high-performance tech being kept in a particular role. Though it may be challenging to fill their spot, keeping them stuck in a position they want to evolve from could lead to you losing them to another shop.
“Most of the people that are coming into this trade have a passion for vehicles. You just have to find a way to keep them excited about it,” says Weston. “You can't pigeonhole them into a general service position and expect for them to continue to have the passion that they came in with.”
Weston himself is proof of what a shop can gain from investing in its technicians for the long haul. He joined the shop as a technician before advancing to a shop foreman, then running a store, and now serving as the brand’s chief technical training officer.
He is far from the only one. Of the business’ over 50 employees, nearly 15 have begun to advance within the company, spanning a variety of roles, including a service advisor or shop foreman going on to run an entire store, a customer service representative becoming a service advisor, and an apprentice being promoted to a flat rate technician.
The cost benefits, the quality of service, the hiring process, the shop culture—it has all been amplified by American Pride bolstering the passions that brought its team to this industry in the first place. The shop has spent lots of time perfecting its recruitment practices, but it is only successful if it’s coupled with employees feeling like they are growing with the business, too.
“At the end of the day, they owe it to themselves to go see what they're capable of doing with somebody who’s going to give them the opportunity,” says Marcotte. “We have so many who are key people within the company who were undervalued where they were previously, and would have never progressed if they had accepted that.”
