Now, more than ever, public and private employers must strive to become “Employment Destinations” to set themselves apart in a competitive market.  

Bob Stanton, a retired fleet manager, shared some insights on the challenges of recruiting (and retaining) younger technicians for your team.

According to Stanton, employers should consider:

• Modify their minimum qualification standards. Degrees (for management positions), technical training certifications, and even ASE certifications should no longer be prerequisites. Instead, employers should offer technical training (even if through outside sources), onsite mentorship, and well-defined career pathways to illustrate the employer’s interest in skills development.

• Partnering with high school or technical school skilled trades programs, including donating vehicle platforms for classroom use, paid apprenticeships to students, and even instructional personnel, will pay great dividends.

• Modify working hours to embrace a four-day work week projecting an interest in employees’ work-life balance. 

• Offer paid personal days, including half days, to modify rigid time off policies and vacation accruals. This process will demonstrate an employer’s interest in the employees’ work-life balance.

• Assure the working environment they offer is clean, safe, and well-lit and promotes excellence in tooling, parts support, a strong Wi-Fi connection (a seemingly small thing…but not really), and ready access to the latest diagnostic tools. 

• Their compensation structure includes incentives for increased certifications, higher education, pay-for-performance (many metrics can be used here), safety, and other such activities.

• Modify the rules to allow retirees to return on a part-time basis …sort of a technician emeritus position or status. A retiree may no longer be able to hang on a 95-lb. starter, but they can certainly use their institutional knowledge to diagnose and confirm the starter’s need to be replaced.

• Incorporate a technician recognition program to honor their value to the organization and a program where a seasoned tech can take a sabbatical to serve the community by leveraging their skill for non-profits (churches, day-care, or elder-care centers with vehicles).  This change will demonstrate the employer’s citizenship interest while feeding a young person’s desire to add value to the world.

• Fleets should also aggressively target recruiting from the military. There are on-post career fairs and websites that cater to ex-military or soon to be ex-military in which fleets can/should participate. Veterans know how to follow instruction, are well trained in repair processes such as electrical and hydraulics (two hard to find skillsets), and have a strong mindset about safety. These are all excellent attributes for any fleet operation.

• Overall, consider being like Southwest Airlines -- “Hire for Attitude - Train for Experience.”

As the workforce changes and the competitive nature of the available gets tighter, employers cannot and should not put their heads in the sand.  

By creatively changing their hiring standards and practices to become an employment destination, those employers will win.