Fixed Ops Journal - December 2017 - 26

FIXED OPS JOURNAL

SCHOOL
continued from Page 24

more than just repairing or replacing a part, he adds.
Mark Lestico, parts manager and fixed ops director at Cerritos Acura
in Cerritos, Calif., concurs. A two-year degree from a community college automotive program is "a must" for service techs to learn electrical diagnostic skills, he says.
"The days of hiring a young person off the street and training them to
become a tech are pretty much gone," Lestico says.
Cerritos Acura has hired at least a dozen Rio Hondo graduates since
Honda began partnering with the college in 2010, Lestico says. He adds
that seven of his 20 service techs graduated from the Rio Hondo PACT
program.

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In house
The Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association has taken a
different approach to tech training. In 2005, association members
paid $30 million to build an automotive training
and education center in Whitestone, N.Y.
The dealer association partners with Lincoln
Technical Institute, a nationwide network of private, for-profit career training schools. About 500
students are enrolled in the 13-month auto technology program at the New York center.
Students with good grades earn internships at
dealerships, says Mark Schienberg, the association's president. That creates "a built-in recruit- Schienberg:
ment" process for dealers, he adds.
"Built-in
The chronic shortage of service techs costs deal- recruitment"
erships a lot of money, says Rob Gehring, president of Fixed Performance Inc., a fixed ops consultancy in Huron,
Ohio. A service department that lacks techs can lose customers who
can't schedule timely appointments, he notes.
Dealership-school partnerships to train service techs "need to be expanded," Gehring says.

Talent competition
Collin Sewell, president of Sewell Family of Cos. in Odessa, Texas,
says service techs have the same skills as computer engineers, making
them more attractive to employers in other fields.
Sewell says his dealership group invests $100,000 in a year of training for a starting tech. Dealerships must offer a competitive work culture and environment to attract and keep good techs, he says.
"There is not a shortage of people who know how to do those things
- there is a shortage of people willing to do it," Sewell says. "The person who can write code for a computer company is ... sitting in a cool
office sipping a cappuccino."
The service and parts department in Sewell's new Ford-Lincoln
dealership in Odessa, due to open next spring, will be climate-controlled and include a locker room and showers.
At the Optimist school's auto shop, teacher Kies seeks something
more basic for his students - more cars to work on. The supply now is
limited to faculty cars that need service.
Kies also hopes to line up internships with area dealerships, although many of his students don't yet have driver's licenses. He says
his class offers students "a pipeline to community colleges and trade
schools."
Kies adds, "Without the Optimist Youth Homes, a lot of them
wouldn't even graduate high school."
PAGE 26

DECEMBER 2017

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Fixed Ops Journal - December 2017