Straight Answers About Hiring for Independent Auto & Diesel Repair Shops

Because the good ones aren't looking. If a technician has the skill, the experience and the attitude, and he wants to work, he's already working somewhere.

When I started Technician Find eight years ago, shop owners would tell me about the "old days" when they'd put an ad on Craigslist on Friday, interview on Monday and have somebody in the bay by Wednesday. That doesn't happen anymore. A lot of shops haven't adjusted, so they keep chasing the same recycled techs around the job boards with every other shop in town.

After 8 years and more than 80,000 applications, I see the same three problems over and over:

1. No applications. The ad isn't reaching working techs, or it reads like every other ad on Indeed.
2. Unqualified applicants. About one in four applications will be qualified. That's normal, which is why you need volume.
3. A janky hiring system. Applications sit for days, nobody calls back, and good techs ghost you because they're also talking to two other shops.

The third one surprises owners the most. I once pulled up a shop's Indeed account while the owner was telling me every applicant was junk. Seventeen applications had never been opened. He scrolled for a minute and said, "Oh, that guy looks pretty good."

Here's how I think about it. The technician shortage is a grizzly bear, and there's nothing you can do about it. But you don't have to outrun the bear. You have to outrun the other shops in your area. Check applications every day, call every candidate with real shop experience within 24 hours, and tell a more compelling story than the shop down the street. The dealers can always outspend you. You can always outculture them.

Post it on Indeed, but don't count on Indeed to find your tech.

Indeed is the best applicant tracking system out there. It's a two-click application, and we've tested about a dozen other systems that don't come close. But Indeed is terrible for sourcing. The techs who see your ad there are the ones looking for a job, either because they don't have one or because they're about to lose the one they have. Throwing more money at job boards is what I call Post, Pay and Pray.

So we use Indeed to collect applications, not to find people. We find techs where they actually spend their time, mostly on Facebook. They aren't job hunting there. When the right ad catches them, we send them to Indeed to apply.

A few things that make it work:

• Write a long ad. Longer ads nearly always beat short ones. Techs are skeptical, they skim, and they're looking to catch you in a lie. The extra space answers their questions.
• Put the pay in the ad. When there's no number, serious candidates assume you're just fishing.
• Use real photos straight from your phone. Stock photos flop, and AI images get torn apart. Techs are trained to spot what's wrong in a picture.
• Let them text you. Adding a text option has improved response rates by 20% or more for us.
• Hand your team referral cards. One owner had been looking for a tech for a long time. He handed out referral postcards at a team meeting and hired two techs within a couple of weeks. His guys said they just didn't think about it until they had the card in their hand.

Techs are watching even when they don't apply. A certified master tech once told a shop he'd followed their Facebook page for two years before applying.

Start local, then go get them. In a small market, the techs you want are already working, and there aren't many of them.

We start every campaign within a 25-mile radius of the shop. In a small town, you can fish out that hole quickly. I reviewed one small-town campaign where the ads had been seen 1.5 million times and almost 14,000 people had clicked. The ads were doing their job. The problem was that everybody who wanted to work was already working, and we hadn't done enough to shake them loose.

When that happens, I look at three moves:

1. Open the door to less experience, if you have the people and the systems to bring someone along.
2. Get referral cards in front of people who know your local techs: your team, your front counter, your networking groups, even a local parade.
3. Go outside your area. Once we're recruiting more than 50 miles out, it makes sense to offer relocation assistance. We look for cities within about 500 miles that have the most techs with the skills you need, and run ads in those cities.

Relocation doesn't have to mean backing up a Mayflower truck. I've seen shops rent a truck for the tech, give him moving money, or let him live rent-free for six months in a double-wide 200 yards from the shop. Keep the ad language general and negotiate one on one, because you might do more for a rock star than for an average tech. And when you advertise outside your area, you're selling your town as much as your shop. Pitch both.

Diesel is harder. The heavy-duty dealers are putting a full-court press on that work, and the competition for diesel techs is a blood sport. You'll need the reach of social media and usually a bigger daily ad budget than a general repair search. Don't count on a big sign-on bonus to pull an entrenched tech loose, either. Techs don't leave a shop where things are okay just for a bonus, and the ones who will are going to leave you for the next bonus six months later.

Most of the shops I work with hire within eight weeks. Some do it in two.

When I went back through six years of our client data, here's what I found: about 20% of shops hire within two weeks, about 60% hire within two to eight weeks, and about 20% don't make a hire or hire in eight + weeks.

The fast 20% aren't lucky. They jump on applications the day they come in. Their pay and benefits are competitive. And they're good at telling the story of their shop. I call that selling the dream.

The shops that don't hire usually aren't competitive on pay, are in a rural area and won't offer relocation, or have a reputation problem. We once sent 4,000 people to a shop's application page and got one application. Tool truck guys were bad-mouthing the shop, and it had six Better Business Bureau complaints it had never answered. No ad fixes that.

What speeds it up:

• Check applications at least once a day, twice if you can. Don't rely on email notifications. They can land in your promotions folder or don't show up at all.
• Assume every applicant is talking to two other shops. I can't tell you how many shops sleep on an application for three days, call back and hear, "I took another position."
• Keep it moving. Phone interview, in-person interview, working interview, with no gaps in communication where the tech wonders if you're still interested.
• Stay in touch after the offer. Between the handshake and his first Monday, his current shop counteroffers and his friends and family get in his ear. Touch base every 24 to 48 hours until his toolbox drops in your shop.

If you're staffing up, give yourself a couple of months of runway. January through May is usually the busiest season for techs making moves. September and October are also good months for moves, but good techs change shops all year.

First, make sure an advisor is what you actually need.

The first question I ask is this: if your car count went up 20% next week, what would break first? If the answer is production, another advisor will just sell more work into the same backlog. If it's the front counter, an advisor is the right hire.

Compared to technicians, service advisors are easier to find. You'll generally get more applicants for an advisor ad than for a tech ad, and you usually won't need a referral bonus to get enough of them.

What matters:

• Hire a salesperson. A good advisor knows how to sell and isn't afraid to take an estimate and present it.
• Write the ad from their world. Every advisor who's worked in a bad shop knows the customer who's mad before you say a word and the tech who's frustrated because the job is taking longer than quoted. Start the ad there.
• Watch the title. The title sets the salary they expect. Call it "Assistant Manager" and you've walked into a manager's salary band. Hire at the advisor level with a management track, and show them the roadmap.
• Don't rule out people from outside the industry for entry-level counter roles. For CSR and assistant advisor positions, a great attitude can be the experience that qualifies them.
• Look at your own techs. Some techs near the end of their careers, whose bodies are beat up, would rather write service than wrench all day. This is tricky though. Personality profiles for good techs and good service advisors are very different so you need to be sure that the tech has the aptitude for the role. 

Ask the questions that tell you why he's looking and what he wants next. Most shop owners never ask them.

On the first call, I want two answers:

1. "What's going on that has you checking out new opportunities at the moment?"
2. "If we were sitting down one year from now, and you looked back and all your personal and professional goals had been accomplished, what would that look like?"

The first tells you the pain. The second tells you the dream. Does he want to buy a house? Get married? Make lead tech? Pick up a couple of ASE certifications? Stay on those answers like a dog on a bone. If your shop can solve the problems and help him get there, build that into your offer. When techs ghost you after a good first call, it's usually because you skipped this step.

These questions show the tech that you care about his life and about him as a human being. They also show that you want his life to work inside and outside of the shop. 

A few more I like:

• "What about the ad interested you?"
• "What time does your shift start, and what time do you usually show up?" Coming in early shows ownership.
• "What do you do between ROs, while you're waiting for the next car to be approved?" You're looking for initiative.
• "What questions do you have for me?" It shows whether he's taking the decision seriously.
• "What scan tool are you running, and how long have you used it? Walk me through how you’d diagnose a knock in a 2019 Toyota Highlander.” Swap in a vehicle your shop sees a lot, and listen for a confident, step-by-step answer."

Then get ready for the question he'll ask you: "I'm talking to two other shops. Why should I go with you?" I ask every new client that on our onboarding call, and a lot of seasoned owners fumble it. "We treat our people like family" doesn't work, because the shop down the street says the same thing. You need a one- or two-sentence answer that could only be said about your shop, and you need to deliver it with confidence. The best answer I've heard came from an owner who told the tech to bet on him: he'd lost plenty of times, learned every time, built his business anyway, and wanted the tech with him for what came next.

Remember, you're selling the tech on your shop as much as you're deciding whether he's right for you.

Get him in the bay. Some techs have five years of experience. Others have one year of experience five times, and you can't tell the difference from a resume.

A paid working interview is the gold standard. Ask the tech to take a day off from his current shop, pay him for the day, set up a few jobs, and lay out the tools. Watch whether he knows his way around a vehicle and whether the wrenches fit his hands.

If you can swing it, do three days:

• Day one, he's finding the tools and figuring out the flow.
• Day two, you see how he works and how he gets along with your team.
• Day three, you see his real work style. Does he show up on time? Does he come back from lunch when he said he would?

The shops I know that do three days have had phenomenal results. If you can't, one day is better than nothing, and even a morning helps.

At lunch, send him out with your crew, on you, and don't go yourself. People let their guard down away from the boss. The next day, ask your team what they thought.

A few other things I've learned:

• Don't trust a thin resume either way. A lot of techs leave their current shop off so their boss doesn't find out they're looking. Talk to anyone with a year or two in a professional shop, and use the phone interview to make sure the gap isn't hiding something.
• Ask for references from techs. "I know you're going to do your homework on us. I'd like to do my homework on you, too. Can you give me two of the best techs you've worked with who can put in a good word about your work?" When you call them, ask if they or anyone they know is looking.
• Expect strong diagnosticians to undersell themselves. Some don't want to get stuck eating every tough diag job in a flat-rate shop.
• Don't treat certifications as proof. I've talked to techs with certs galore who couldn't flag 20 hours a week. I wouldn't make ASE a deal-breaker.
• Start him a little below what he says he's worth, with a 30-, 60- or 90-day probation. You can always go up, and you can make the raise retroactive if he lights the shop on fire. It's very hard to take money away and keep a happy tech.
• Always double check employment laws in your state to make sure your working interviews and hiring workflow are compliant. 

Decide exactly what you're hiring for before you write the ad. The title changes everything.

The minute you put "General Manager" on a position, you're in a different salary band. If what you really need is someone to run the counter and grow into more, hire an advisor with a management track. Show them the roadmap and the milestones. You're not on the hook for a GM salary on day one, and you get to see whether they have the aptitude.

When it really is a GM, here's what I've seen work:

• Build the person before you look for them. For GM searches, we build a detailed profile of the ideal manager for that specific shop: fears, frustrations, hopes, where they are now and what they need to be to work well in your culture. It often runs 50 pages or more. The GM seat is that critical.
• Tie the bonus to gross profit, and open the books. The owners I know who handle this best know their P&Ls and share them with their team. Everyone understands how the front of the house and the back of the house get bonused, and nobody complains. A gross-profit bonus only works if you're transparent about the numbers. Transparency and accountability on the numbers is the difference between hiring a true manager and hiring a glorified babysitter.
• Have your answer ready. A good GM candidate will ask the same thing a good tech does: "I'm talking to two other shops. Why should I go with you?"
• Write a real job description, not a list of tasks. I made that mistake on one of my own hires. I gave her projects instead of a job description, and that was on me.

Owners always ask me whether a manager will learn everything and leave to open their own shop. I've heard dozens of stories where techs, advisors and managers did it. A lot of them see everything that's involved and say, "I didn't realize you do all of this stuff! I thought you just got paid more." Plenty of them leave, find out it's not so easy to run a shop, and want to come back.

One more thing. A lot of coaches sell the absentee owner as the goal. In my 20 group, the owners always say things run more smoothly when they're meeting with their staff regularly and have a finger on the pulse of the business. Like the old saying goes, the best fertilizer is the farmer's own shadow.

Enough to be near the top of your market if you want top talent, in a way you can explain in a few minutes.

I can't give you one national number. Pay depends on your market, the skill level you need, and what the tech has to produce to earn it. That's why we run a comprehensive salary survey for every shop, usually covering 25 miles around the shop and wider when there aren't enough shops nearby to compare. Be careful with averages. If you ask an AI tool or look up national averages, you'll get a low Bureau of Labor Statistics number, and you're probably not looking for an average tech.

Here's what I've learned about pay:

• If you want top talent, be within 15% of the top of your market. Average won't cut it.
• Advertise at the level you want. If you advertise for an A-tech, you'll get A-techs, B-techs, and C-techs to apply. If you advertise for a B-tech, A-techs won't apply.
• Make the top of your range real. Use what a tech in your shop has actually made. "Our top three guys made this last year" is believable. "Make up to $250K here" isn't, and techs see right through it.
• Keep the range tight. A huge spread sets off alarm bells for an A-tech. We usually keep it to $20,000 or $30,000, like $90K to $110K or $90K to $120K.
• Post an annual number. Annual figures get more clicks than hourly rates.
• Show the path. When a solid B-tech sees the top of your range and wants it, walk him through how production and efficiency get him there. Every pay conversation should cover three numbers: the floor, the break-even, and what's possible.
• Start lower and ramp up. Many shops start a new tech below where he wants to be and move him up after the probationary period, 30 or 60 days out, if he's hitting his hours. Put it in writing and have regular check-ins, or six months later you'll each remember half the conversation.

Pay matters, but it ranks third. Techs leave over respect and growth before money, and I've seen techs take real pay cuts to go somewhere where they aren't treated like a number. It works the other way too. One owner had a tech who was leaving for $3 an hour more at the dealer. He sat him down, walked him through his whole compensation plan, and showed him he'd actually be taking a cut. The tech stayed.

On sign-on bonuses: I haven't seen evidence that they attract better techs. If your competition is offering them, you may need one. I've never recommended more than $5,000. Go higher and techs call BS, because they know about the strings attached and the games dealerships play when they offer unusually large sign on bonuses to lure techs in.

I don't pick a side. I've seen profitable shops on flat rate and on hourly, and I've seen struggling shops on both. I know owners who pay straight salary, flat rate and hybrid plans. The plan alone isn't the answer.

What I care about is whether you can explain your plan. If a tech sits across your desk, hears how your pay works, and walks out not understanding it or being able to explain it to his wife, you lost him.

A few things hold true no matter which plan you run:

• Flat rate is a trigger for a lot of techs. I get so many angry, crusty comments about how unfair it is. If you run flat rate, be ready for that conversation, and show the path to the top of your range through production and efficiency. Also be ready to have a conversation about organized workflow and fair dispatching that supports flat rate techs.
• Flat rate can punish your best diagnosticians. Some hide their skills because they don't want to get fed every tough diag job while someone else gets the gravy work. If you're not flat rate, say so in your ad. That's a real selling point to a dealer tech.
• A guarantee needs accountability. A salary or a guaranteed rate isn't a paycheck no matter what. If the deal is 40 hours and he hasn't hit 40 once, he can't get the salary. Hold regular check-ins so he always knows where he stands.
• Put it in writing. Otherwise he'll remember that you said he'd be at $40 an hour in 60 days, and you'll remember the part about the hours he had to hit.
• Know your state. For example, California and New Jersey give you a lot less flexibility than Texas.

The simplest plan I've heard from an owner is "You tell me what you want to make, and I'll tell you what you have to do to make it." If you can say that and back it up with numbers, the label on the plan matters a lot less.

Usually it's respect. Money is the excuse.

Over the years I've found three things that attract techs and also make them leave: respect, growth and money, in that order. Respect and growth without the money is a hobby. Money and growth without respect makes him a hired gun. Money and respect without growth is a grind.

When a tech leaves, the reason he gives is usually money. What it really comes down to is usually respect. He feels like a number. There are three layers of management between him and anyone who can make a decision. His ideas get ignored. Or he's been working around a broken lift for three months.

What I hear from techs over and over:

• They're tired of the drama.
• They're tired of being asked to do shady stuff.
• They got let go out of the blue, without ever getting feedback, thinking they were doing fine.
• Their boss threw them under the bus. Techs read a shop's one-star reviews and how the owner answered them. One told me he'll never interview at a shop that blames its techs in public.
• They don't understand the pay. When an owner won't share at least the basics of how the numbers work, everybody feels underpaid.
• They reported to someone who'd never turned a wrench, and didn’t know what they did or how to remove obstacles and support them.”

Techs rarely quit on a whim. The pressure builds, and it usually comes to a head on a Friday afternoon. He's disgusted with himself for tolerating it so long, and that's when he starts looking.

The shops that keep people hold regular one-on-ones. They ask, "If you were in my shoes, what would you change? What would make your job easier?" And then they fix it. If a tech tells you the lift is still broken and you do nothing, he won't tell you anything the next time you ask.

Hiring matters too. If you hire a skilled tech who doesn't fit your culture, he'll wash out in 90 days and poison your team on the way out.

A schedule they can live with, an owner who treats them like people, real pay and benefits, and a path forward.

Here are the things I've seen attract techs when we write ads:

• A family-owned shop with no micromanagers
• A clean, well-lit, well-run shop where you always know where you stand
• Lots of work and lots of variety
• A flexible schedule and real work-life balance
• Good pay and benefits (if they're really good, we put them in the headline)
• Advancement, paid training and a chance to grow skills
• Being appreciated, an open door and good reviews

Right now, the schedule is the one I'd lead with. Techs are tired of working Saturdays. A five-day week or four 10s is a huge benefit, and it's one of the first things we put in ads. Know that four 10s changes your workflows, not just your sign. A couple of shops I've worked with went to four days and then went back, but most that switch love it.

Full benefits matter more than many owners think, especially to the seasoned techs you're trying to hire. Not many independents offer them, and a smaller shop often can't match a dealer's package. That's okay. You win on what the dealer can't give: an owner who remembers his birthday and lets him leave early for his kid's Little League game.

Some of the best benefits I've seen are about the tech's life outside the shop. Shops have bought Dave Ramsey's SmartDollar program for their team, paid for Audible and started a book club, and hired a life coach. One shop found the coaching cut down on the outside problems that came into the shop.

Training only works if you do it right. Techs ask for training, you pay for it, and then they don't go. From what I've seen, two things get in the way: the training happens after hours, and it isn't tied to anything that affects their paycheck. Tie it to pay: for example, when he can do alignments on his own, he gets a dollar an hour raise.

Two rules for your ad. Only list what you'd be comfortable talking about in an interview, because techs talk and the tool guys will find out. And cut the filler. A Costco membership doesn't belong in a tech ad.

Build a bench before you need it, so you never start from zero.

Most shops treat hiring as an emergency. A tech quits or gets hurt, they scramble, they hire, and then they forget about it for two or three years until it happens again. By then, nobody remembers what worked.

The fix is to keep five to ten good techs warm at all times. When someone leaves or retires, you make a couple of phone calls instead of starting a new ad campaign.

How to build one:

• Start with what you already have. Go into your old Indeed applications and pull everyone with real experience. They already applied to your shop, and you already paid for those leads. If you leave them in Indeed, you're renting them. Put them on your list and own them.
• Save every good candidate whose timing was off. Nothing makes me tear my hair out like a shop that tosses a good application because they couldn't hire the tech right away. A manila folder, a spreadsheet, or names saved in your phone with "Technician" after them all work. The method doesn't matter. Doing it does.
• Build your bench while you're actively hiring. That's the easiest time.
• Touch everyone every six to eight weeks, and add value when you do. Invite them to a barbecue or a training class. Don't send "Hey, remember we talked?"
• Don't automate the conversation. Techs go deaf to automated messages, and the conversation is where you build rapport.
• Never fake an opening. Everybody hates applying for a job that doesn't exist. Run an ad that says you're fully staffed and want to start a conversation anyway. One shop's "we're fully staffed" ad drew 48 responses from technicians.
• Call it your future team. Nobody wants to ride the bench.
• Tell your crew before the ads go up, so nobody thinks they're being replaced.

Most of the techs you talk to will say "not now." That's where the good ones are. Some of them will catch a horrible week at their current shop, and you'll be the one they call.

Yes, if you have the infrastructure to bring them along. A lot of independent shops don't.

Having a way to develop someone with less experience gives you a lot more options. You don't have to wait for a tech who can hit the ground running. You can hire someone with a good attitude and teach them your system, without the dealer habits you'd have to break in a 20-year veteran. It's simple to talk about and hard to put in place.

What it takes:

• Someone to train them. Trade schools can be a great source if you have an apprenticeship program and techs willing to take people under their wing without sacrificing production.
• A roadmap. Show him how he moves from C-tech to certified master tech: the milestones, the certifications, the tools he needs to own, and what he has to be able to do without hand-holding. That roadmap matters for recruiting and for retention.

Hire for attitude. You can train skills, but you can't train attitude. One shop I know hired a man who had no tools and couldn't speak English. His wife translated at the interview. He was so persistent that the owner gave him a shot. He's now the shop's best producer, flagging 65 hours a week, and he says he's never leaving.

If you're not set up for apprentices yet, don't toss the applicants with a year or two of shop experience. They've worked shoulder to shoulder with techs you might want. Ask each of them for the names of two techs they respect, and you can turn one applicant into three opportunities.

Another thing to remember is that the tech with a couple of years of experience will eventually be a tech with 5+ years experience under his belt. If you're planning on being in business for a while, this fact is a good one to keep in mind. 

One thing an apprentice is not: a backyard mechanic. Holding the flashlight for your dad while he worked on cars isn’t shop experience, and neither is “I can fix anything you put in front of me.”

It can be, if you know what you're buying and you're willing to do your part.

Know what kind of help you're getting. Some services source candidates. Some do full recruiting. At Technician Find, we source: we get good techs to apply, and the shop interviews and hires. I'm sitting in Oceanside, California. I can't tell whether a candidate gives off a bad vibe when he walks into your shop. You can. We shake the trees. It's your job to pick up the fruit, because nobody sells your shop like you do.

How to vet any recruiter:

• Be careful of guarantees. If someone guarantees you an A-tech in a set number of days, or a set number of A-tech applications, be careful. I've talked to the shops on the back end of those promises. A big part of hiring happens on your end, so nobody can honestly guarantee the outcome.
• Ask how they get paid. Many recruiters charge 15% to 20% of the tech's annual salary, or want a big fee up front. Know what you'll owe and when. And what happens to that fat fee if the tech doesn't work out.
• Ask about long-term contracts. If it's not working, why would you want to be locked in for six months?
• Ask whether they'll recruit for your competitor at the same time. We don't run active hiring campaigns for shops within 25 miles of each other.

Know what a service can't fix. We once sent 4,000 people to a shop's application page and got one application, because the shop's reputation was that bad. Another time, I called two strong applicants who had interviewed at a shop, and one said he'd never work there. The owner was on his mobile phone during the whole interview and yelling at people in the bays. We could have sent that shop rock stars for six months, and he'd have run off every one of them.

It's not for every shop, either. If your shop isn't doing about a million dollars a year, the math usually doesn't work.

When it works, it's a partnership. I've hired three recruiters myself. They reached out to candidates two or three times, said nobody was responding, and that was the end of it. The shops that hire fastest with any help they get have a competitive offer, check applications every day, call back fast, and have a strong answer for why a tech should pick them.