May 2021

mused: “Whether over the last 12 months COVID-19 has everybody staying put for a little bit of security, I can appreciate that might be the case.” With all this, Andrew has two front- of-house staff, one doing marketing, and two in the workshop, which is not where he wants to be: “I would like at least another two or even three in the workshop. We certainly have the workload to cater for it. We are at around four weeks’ notice for work at the moment. A lot of it is specialised repairs at the moment, and that is where we do struggle.” Training may be the key according to Andrew as he finished up with us: “We have always given staff the opportunity to train and develop. If they are only at a base level, we have always given them the opportunity via a training package to try and work them up the ladder, build their confidence up and build up their knowledge. Then, at least in their mind, they know if they are approached with a diagnostic job, they have the ability to carry on with that job, rather than being scared.” Reality Gareth Davies is owner at Euro Performance, a German marques specialist in Llantrisant, Wales. He has recently been on the recruitment trail, and we wondered how that went for him: “The reality of recruitment probably is that this is one of the two probable outcomes, you either get a positive or a negative. I don’t believe there is a way to guarantee a 100% positive outcome. However, what we have learned from previous negative experiences where we hired the wrong candidate for a service advisor role. They had worked at a franchised dealer for 10 years. We took things for granted and did not ask the right questions at the interview stage, and ended up having to let them go. We now look at the process and candidate selection in a very different manner. “When we began the search again, the talent pool, through redundancies and franchised dealers being closed was pretty good. With the service advisor role, this time we did not put too many prerequisites in, based on our previous experience. While we are trying to put a vehicle through a workshop here, the process of doing it compared with a franchised dealer is miles apart. We asked for service advisor experience, and they were considered for the higher salary position. Thinking about the situation in high street retail, like the collapse of the Arcadia Group, there will be a large amount of people who have committed a great degree of tenure in a retail job that have all the right qualities we want. They just haven’t done cars – they’ve done knickers and bras. If we can swap that for brake pads and clutches, all the other boxes are already ticked. “We had some applications from the sector where they were casualties of COVID-19 and made redundant, but they did not excite me as much as the left-field talent pool. The successful candidate admitted she knew nothing about cars, but two days in she was knee-deep in process and already demonstrating fantastic qualities. After having done it the other way and it didn’t work, it was refreshing.” Good fortune Gareth continued: “In terms of technicians, we had good fortune on our side. We went with Indeed, and we spoke to one person who had worked at a single independent for 16 years, which is a lifetime. It turns out he had also looked at applying for a role we had open in the summer as well, but had not gone through with it. It is humbling to know people want to work with us.” We asked if he was finding them with the right kind of attitude and approach. As we have seen, others can find techs to fit parts, but not people who are steeped on the diagnostic side. “In terms of our requirements,” said Gareth we first looked for the process. Unless you drill down into what you want, you will end up looking at pages and pages of people who are not what you are looking for, who fall at the first hurdle. Dealer background was advantageous but not essential, because I don’t want to narrow the talent pool. A MOT Tester would be advantageous as well. Also, training is a key factor in our pitch. Sometimes the reason they can’t is that they are limited by their current or previous employer. We asked the guy what he wanted from the role. He told us he was 32 years old and that he had committed all his working life to one business. He continued to do it but he was mindful that technology was going at such a pace that if he didn’t change his motivation and his skill-set but by adding to it, there is a limited amount of the car-parc he could be tasked with working on. He wanted to be in an environment where, and this is key, there is zero pressure on the learning process. “You have to change your mindset sometimes if you want to progress, 10 AFTERMARKET MAY 2021 BIG ISSUE www.aftermarketonline.net Unless you drill down into what you want, you will end up looking at people who are not what you are looking for ”