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Owned by Chris
Proven templates, strategies, training and top-level networking to help independent auto repair shops hire quality staff faster.
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563 contributions to Technician Find Community
15h •
Stop asking techs to “tell me about yourself”
“They feel like you really studied my resume.” That’s @Brett Beachler, talking about the techs he interviews. Brett owns Beachlers Tire & Automotive Center in Peoria, Illinois. A family shop, open since 1951. He shared this on our last EasyBench call. The reason has nothing to do with his job ad. It’s what he does in the few minutes before an interview. I think it's brilliant and he gave me permission to share it here in the community. Brett had four tech interviews on the calendar. Before every one, he did the same thing. He dropped the candidate’s resume into an AI tool built to think like a technician. Told it what position he was hiring for. It handed him a full interview guide built around that one guy. Where he’s worked. What he’s done. How he’d fit at Beachlers. Brett’s problem with the standard interview sheet? “It’s not molded and fit to the guy that’s coming in.” This one is. Here’s why it works on the tech. Most shops ask him the same three things. Tell me about yourself. Why are you looking? Where do you see yourself in five years? Brett asks about him. How you interview a tech tells him what kind of boss you’ll be. Generic prep says generic boss. Here’s why it works. “Tell me about yourself” gets the answer he already gave the last three shops. It’s polished. It’s rehearsed. It tells you almost nothing. Ask something like “Why’d you leave the Ford store after 14 months?” and you get the real story. He hasn’t practiced that one. Custom questions don’t just impress him. They tell you who you’re actually hiring. Here’s a test for every question on your sheet, with AI or without it. Could I ask the next guy this, word for word? If yes, it’s a screening question. Keep two or three of those so you can compare candidates. Everything else should only make sense for him. Now, Brett will tell you he’s “not a very creative individual.” He even wonders if ChatGPT is dumbing him down a little. Here’s how I see it.
2d •
Show Him the Worst Week. Every Other Shop Shows Him the Best One.
"Up to $150K." You've seen it in tech ads. Maybe you've run it yourself. He's seen it too. Usually it meant "if everything goes right." The big number is the one he believes least. The small number is the one he's actually asking about. What happens to my check when the board is empty? I know a shop owner who answers that before the tech can ask. First interview, the owner pulls up the pay sheet and plugs in the tech's ASEs. In this plan, the flag rate climbs with certifications. Then the owner walks him through a bad week. On purpose. Before anything else. Here's the math. Swap in your own numbers. Say you pay $40 a flagged hour. Your tech has a rough week: 28 flagged hours. That's $1,120. But he was on the clock 40 hours, and the plan guarantees $30 for every one of them. That's $1,200. The plan pays whichever is higher. Floor wins. Next, the break-even. At 30 flagged hours, the two lines meet. Past that, every hour he flags puts more in his check. Then a good week. 50 flagged hours. $2,000. And one question from the owner: "How can I help you get there?" Only then does the year come up. Fifty weeks like that is $100K. He can check it on his phone. That's less than $150K. It's also the only big number he'll repeat at home. Promising a ceiling costs you nothing. Guaranteeing a floor costs real money. He knows the difference. The bad week tells you something else, too. I'll come back to it. Steal it by Monday: 1. Build the two-column sheet. Bad week on the left. Good week on the right. Same tech, same plan, both outcomes. Three yellow cells: ASEs, hours on the clock, flagged hours. Everything else is formula. Not a spreadsheet guy? A legal pad works. 2. Show him the bad week first. Then stop talking. Let him sit with it before you say a word about the good week. 3. Set the floor for the bad week, not the average week. Set it too high and the floor becomes the paycheck. If your best tech is standing on the floor every week, you didn't build a floor. You built a recliner.
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7d •
Your Hiring Process Scores a 3 Out of 10. Here's How I Know.
You posted the ad. You waited. You got three applications. Two weren't qualified. The third never answered when you called. So you posted it again. Same result. You've been telling yourself it's a shortage. It's not. It's a score. Ten yes-or-no questions that measure how well your shop actually hires. Not what you think you do. What you actually do. Most shops I've talked to about this score between a 3 and a 5 out of 10. Half your hiring process is leaking candidates to the shop down the road. 241,842 open technician positions every year through 2029. Training programs graduate 42,000. Every qualified tech in your area has about six other shops trying to hire them right now. A broken hiring process doesn't just slow you down. It eliminates you. The shops that lose candidates fail at the same three things. The job offer isn't compelling enough to get a second look. The ad never reaches the techs who aren't actively searching. Or the shop takes three days to call back an applicant who already has two other offers on the table. Most owners don't see it because nobody has ever shown them where to look. That changes at AAPEX this year. I'm running a session: "You Need a Tech. NOW! A 90-Day Hiring Plan for Independent Shops." Every person in the room gets a printed scorecard with those ten questions and a 90-day plan to fix what they find. I'm going to ask every shop owner in the room to pull out their phone and apply to their own shop. Right there. In the room. Same clunky application. Same broken link. Same confirmation email that never comes. You are not hiring a technician. You are selling a job to a tech who already has one. If he can't find your ad, can't apply in two minutes, and doesn't hear back for a week, he's not waiting around. He's already working at the shop that figured this out. If you're going to be at AAPEX, come to this session: https://www.aapexshow.com/event/you-need-a-tech-now-a-90-day-hiring-plan-for-independent-shops/
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8d •
One Question. Every Month.
There's one question I wish more shop owners asked themselves. Not every quarter. Not every year. Every month. "What decision am I avoiding because I don't feel confident?" Sometimes it's hiring. You need a tech but you don't know where to find one worth hiring or what to offer. So you keep pushing your team and hoping someone walks in. Sometimes it's pricing. You haven't touched your labor rate in two years. You're not sure how customers will react. So you absorb the hit and tell yourself next quarter. Sometimes it's a conversation you've been putting off. With a tech who's been coasting for months. With a client who drains your team every time they roll in. With yourself, about what this business actually needs from you. Every shop owner I talk to has at least one decision sitting on a shelf somewhere. It's rarely because they lack courage. It's because they lack certainty. Those are two completely different problems with two completely different solutions. Courage can't be manufactured. You either white-knuckle it or you don't. But certainty? Certainty can be built. You can pull your numbers before adjusting your rate. You can find out what shops in your market are actually paying. You can call an owner who already made the decision you're weighing. You can run a 30-day test instead of a permanent commitment. Every one of those steps turns guessing into knowing. The owners who build the healthiest shops don't wait until they feel 100% certain. They pull the data. Ask the questions. Do the homework. Close every gap they can. And then they move. Not at 100%. At 80%. That's not recklessness. That's a system. 100% never arrives. One more thing about that shelf. Shelved decisions don't sit there quietly. They compound. A bad decision has a cost. You can measure it and move on. A non-decision has a running cost. Every month it sits on the shelf, the price goes up. And the confidence to make it goes down. That empty bay isn't on pause. It's running a tab.
1 like • 8d
Here's the prompt. Paste it into any AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, whatever you use). If you're a Copilot user, paste it there and the answers will be sharper because it's already trained on your shop. Takes about 10 minutes. Nobody sees your answers but you. ____________________________________________________________ "I'm an independent auto / diesel repair shop owner, and I want to work through something with you. There's a decision I've been putting off. I haven't made it yet, and I want to figure out why, and what it would actually take to move. Here's how I'd like you to help me: Step 1: Ask me what the decision is. Just one question. Let me describe it in my own words. Don't assume you know what it is. Step 2: Once I describe the decision, ask me: "What would need to be true for you to feel 80% ready to make this call?" Help me list the specific things I'd need to know, see, or have in place. Not 100% certainty. Just 80%. Step 3: Look at my list from Step 2. For each item, ask me: "Do you already have this, could you get it within a week, or is this something that would take longer?" Help me sort what I already know from what I still need. Step 4: Based on what I've told you, help me see the gap honestly. What's actually missing vs. what I might be using as a reason to wait? Be direct with me. I can handle it. Step 5: Help me identify ONE action I could take this week that would move me closer to 80% ready. Not the whole decision. Just one step that reduces the uncertainty. Step 6: Then ask me this: "What is this decision costing you every month you don't make it?" Help me think through the real cost. Not just money. Time, energy, team morale, lost opportunity, the weight of carrying it. Ground rules: - Talk to me like a fellow business owner, not a therapist or a consultant. - Be direct. Don't sugarcoat. I get enough of that. - Don't tell me to "just be brave" or "trust my gut." I'm looking for clarity, not motivation. - Keep your responses short and practical. No essays. - If I give you a vague answer, push back and ask me to be more specific."
1 like • 8d
@Rob Morrison totally fine with me. From what I've heard this book club is amazing. I'd join in a heartbeat if it wasn't at 6:30 AM Pacific time🥱
10d •
The List He Doesn't Know He's Burning
Keeping a list of people you'd hire is one of the smartest things a shop owner can do. Most never get that far. Someone gives notice, they scramble, throw up an ad, start from zero. The instinct to build that list before you need it is exactly right. The method is what's costing you. There's a version of this that makes perfect sense on paper. Keep a job ad running even when every bay is full. Applicants come in. Save the good names. When a spot opens, call the best one and skip the whole circus. The problem it's solving is real: by the time you have an opening, the good people are already gone. But the same three months that look smart from the owner's side look very different from the other side of the ad. A tech saw the post. He updated a resume he hadn't touched in four years. Thought about it on the drive home. Maybe mentioned it to his wife. Maybe spent his lunch break filling out the application instead of eating. Then nothing. Not a rejection. Not a "we'll keep you on file." Nothing. He didn't learn there was no opening. He learned this shop doesn't call people back. Techs tell me this when I ask why they stopped looking. Three months of that ad is three months of techs in one market quietly filing the same conclusion. And the pool of techs in any town is not large. They trained together. They talk to the same tool truck guys. They're in the same Facebook groups. The owner is building a list. That part is real. But the people on that list are building one too. And the owner never sees it. He thinks he's collecting names. He's also handing out an impression, and he never finds out what it was. The techs who matter most are the ones who respond to an ad once in five years. They answer with the most to lose. A bad experience hardens them permanently. So when a bay finally opens and the owner calls the top name on his list, it should be an easy conversation. Instead it's a cold call to someone who already decided something about his shop.
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@chris-lawson-9625
Founder - Technician Find | Host - Blue Check Shops | I help Independent Automotive Repair Shops Find Good Employees Faster!
Active 10h ago
Joined Nov 22, 2022
INTP
Oceanside, CA
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