Top automotive technicians keep clean stalls and follow repeatable processes from intake through road test. Chris Collins and his guest explain how these habits reveal who will perform well and what to ask in interviews to spot them.
Service managers, general managers, service advisors, think to your best techs that you've worked with in your career, that there are striking similarities between them. All. Right. So there's always exceptions. You could pick this list apart, but when we think of, like, the best of the best of the best, almost all of them have all of the things on this list. So if I'm interviewing or I'm trying to capture some talent from another place, I would want to look at these things. Right. I think that there's questions you could ask during an interview that'll help you to kind of uncover this stuff. But in general, being able to identify who the top techs are can help you to cut through some of the clutter. Because I think in this day and age, we have to definitely get away from the whole, like, we're hiring somebody with a pulse to come into the shop, and that's not exactly where we want to be. It's not a guarantee you're going to get better.
Okay. So I'm going to read them, and then you say what you were thinking. Okay.
Okay.
So the first one you had was a clean stall.
Yeah. So all the really top performing technicians that I know, they look at every second as money. And if they have a clean stall and everything's organized, the tools always go back into the same spot. The box is pretty clean. They've got the little area where they like to use for their, you know, if they're putting information, the computer's got to be cleaned off. Everything's got, you know, a really good proximity. I'm gonna guess that they probably do. So the things they put in the places are. Because they're the things that they'll use the most during the day. The. But they've got a clean area, and it drives them nuts. Like, they're the ones that if there's an oil spill, they clean it up right away. And at the end of the day when they go home, it looks really, really good. I remember my best techs. It wasn't a requirement because I had somebody that I paid to come in and do this, but they would mop their area even though someone would come in and zamboni the floors. But it was always the best techs that did that. It wasn't everybody. I thought that was interesting. That is.
But commonality, they take ownership of their space very much. So it's designed for performance.
Yep.
Then the next one was that they follow a consistent system in how they inspect, how they do things, how they get parts.
Yep. So if you watch Your best technicians, from the second that they grab an RO to the second that they start working on the car, they typically go through the same exact process thing every single time.
So what I thought when you were saying that is when you're interviewing a technician, you could ask a couple questions. It would tell you if they think this way. Like, you could say, so what's your process for this? And see if they have a process.
Yeah, like, if I mentally can follow them around the shop, it's a good sign. And I want to hear. I mean, selfishly, I want to hear stuff like are they checking history, are they road testing, are they checking the vehicle out? Or all that stuff has to happen in order for them to qualify as a good technician.
Then if you. So there's probably people listening to this that are saying, well, you could make up a process. What I learned in my CIA interrogation training is people can make up a process going forward, but only people that have really done it can do it going backwards.
And it's not general. Remember, we've talked about that. Like, if you fix something, you can go really in depth on what you had to do to fix the thing. But if you're general about it, means you probably haven't fixed too much.
Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driver Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com now that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins, and I'll see you in the next video.
