If you only ask "Tell me about your experience"… you deserve the hire you get. I mean that. Because here's what happens. Somebody walks in, shakes your hand firmly, says all the right things about flat rate and diag hours, and you think — this is the one. Three months later you're walking on eggshells around them. They won't follow your processes. They blame everybody else when something goes sideways. And the rest of your team is giving you that look. You know the one. You've been here before. And the problem was never that the candidate lacked skill. The problem was you interviewed for the wrong things. I've talked to hundreds of shops over the last seven years. The ones who consistently hire well — and keep those people — don't ask better technical questions. They ask better human questions. Here's what they screen for (before skill ever enters the conversation): THE 3 THINGS THAT MATTER MORE THAN SKILL 1. Communication and presence. Can they explain something clearly? Do they make eye contact? How do they handle a question they don't know the answer to? One shop owner told me recently: "Personality, eye contact, how they talk — more important than knowing how to write an estimate." He's right. You can train your POS system. You can't train someone to tell the truth under pressure. 2. Structure tolerance. Do they thrive with SOPs and written expectations, or do they create "eggshells" every time you try to hold them accountable? Here's the thing lots of owners miss: people freak out when expectations aren't written down and they get corrected later. That's not a discipline problem. That's a communication problem you created. But — and this is important — the interview is where you find out if someone wants structure or fights it. Big difference. 3. Training buy-in (agreed BEFORE the hire). This one's non-negotiable. You must get agreement on training expectations before the person starts. It's hard to change people after you have them.

Most shop owners interview technicians the same way every other employer does. Sit down. Ask questions. Shake hands. Hope for the best. Then three weeks later they're wondering why the guy who "nailed the interview" can't balance a tire without fumbling around like he's never seen a wheel weight. You've heard me call it "all hat, no cattle." (hat tip to my Texas friends!) They talk a great game. They've practiced their answers. They might even sound like they wrote the ASE study guide. But talking about fixing cars and actually fixing cars are two very different things. That's why the best shops I know don't just interview. They invite candidates to work. And the ones who do it well make it feel like the easiest, most natural thing in the world. No pressure. No weird tests. Just one simple line: 👉"If you ever want to see what a day feels like here, we'll pay you for your time." That one sentence does three things at once. It shows respect. It removes risk. And it tells the technician everything they need to know about who you are as a shop owner. The shops that run even a one-day working interview? They hire faster. They hire better. And they almost completely eliminate the "bad hire" that looked great on paper. The ones who do a three-day working interview? Phenomenal results. Almost zero regrets. You get to see if they show up on time. Come back from lunch on time. Whether they actually know their way around a bay — or just know their way around an interview. Stop hoping your gut feeling is right. Let the work speak for itself. By-the-way... This works for techs on your bench too. Have you been keeping in touch with a tech for a year or two with no forward momentum? Shoot them a quick text with that simple sentence and see what happens. Here it is again so you don't forget: 👉"If you ever want to see what a day feels like here, we'll pay you for your time."

Want to know the fastest way to create more emergencies in your shop? Make an emergency hire. I know. That sounds backwards. You're short a tech, the bays are stacked, phones are ringing, your service advisor is drowning, and you've got a customer in the lobby giving you the look. So you do what any reasonable shop owner would do. You hire the fastest person available. Not the right person. The fast person. And for about 72 hours, it feels like relief. Then reality kicks in. HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE IN A PANIC I call it The Emergency Hire Domino Effect, and once you see it, you can't unsee it. ➡️Domino 1: A gap opens. Somebody quits. Calls out. Goes on vacation. Or you just grew faster than your team can handle. Doesn't matter how it happens — suddenly the shop can't breathe. ➡️Domino 2: The pucker pressure hits. You feel it in your chest. Cars are backing up. Customers are waiting. Revenue is walking out the door. "We're losing customers every hour" — sound familiar? ➡️Domino 3: You lower your standards. Not on purpose. You just… stop vetting as hard. You skip the reference check. You ignore that gut feeling during the interview. You tell yourself, "I just need a warm body in that bay." ➡️Domino 4: You overpay, overpromise, or both. You throw money at the problem because you're desperate. Or worse, you ignore the red flags — the attitude, the outside drama, the skill claims that don't quite add up — because you "need someone now." ➡️Domino 5: They slow everything down. Wrong parts ordered. Constant questions. Sloppy workflow. Your service advisor is now babysitting instead of selling. Your best tech is picking up slack instead of producing. ➡️Domino 6: Comebacks start piling up. Warranty work eats your lunch. Customers who trusted you are now frustrated. Your reputation — the thing that took you years to build — takes hits you can feel but can't always measure. ➡️Domino 7: Your good people pay the price. Your A-tech "steps up" again. And again. And again. Until one morning they don't step up — they step out.

I stopped waking up to fires. Not because the fires stopped. They always come. But because I finally had a team that grabbed the extinguisher before I even smelled smoke. I had a hiring pipeline that didn't depend on luck, or desperation, or that sinking feeling in my gut every time a tech gave two weeks' notice. My team ran the day-to-day. Not perfectly. But competently. Confidently. Without me hovering over the shop floor like a helicopter parent at a Little League game. I made more money. And I worked fewer frantic hours. I got healthy again. Not "I'll start Monday" healthy. Actually healthy. The kind where your kids notice. The kind where your spouse stops worrying. I wasn't "trying to be consistent." I was consistent. And the weird part? None of it came from a lucky break. Or a perfect hire. Or some magical marketing campaign that fell out of the sky. It came from something so boring I almost didn't do it. THE STORY ABOVE COULD BE YOUR 2026 RECAP STORY I know what you're thinking. "Chris, it's Super Bowl weekend. The Olympics just kicked off. I've got wings to eat and games to watch. Why are you hitting me with this right now?" Because this is exactly the kind of weekend where micro momentum gets built — or lost. Stay with me. Here's the truth about most shop owners I talk to. And I've talked to over 500 of you at this point, so I'm not guessing. You're grinding. Hard. But you're not always compounding. You "do a lot." You work long hours. You put out fires. You answer every call. You stay late. You come in early. You skip lunch. You miss the game. And more often than not, at the end of the year, you look up and wonder why nothing really changed. Here's why. You're confusing motion with progress. You treat hiring like an emergency instead of a system. You let the shop's chaos steal your personal discipline. You rely on motivation instead of structure. You set goals in January… and never look at them again. Hard truth? If your life and business feel out of control, it's usually because your days are out of control.

Your potential best recruiter already knows which technicians in your market are about to quit. He sees inside 20-30 shops every single week. He knows who's miserable. Who's underappreciated. Who's one bad Monday away from walking out. And nobody's asking him. I'm talking about your parts delivery driver. Here's what most shop owners don't realize: That guy dropping off your filters and brake pads? He's a mobile intelligence network. He hears the complaints in every bay. He sees which shops have angry techs slamming hoods. He knows who just got passed over for a raise. And right now, he's sitting on information that could solve your hiring problem—while you're posting another job ad that 75% of technicians will never see because they're not looking on job boards. The math is brutal: For every shop desperately posting on Indeed, there are dozens of wanna be techs who see the ad and very few serious technicians even scrolling. And those very few serious techs who actually see your ad? They're probably just checking what their skills are worth so they can negotiate a raise where they already work. So while your competitors fight over the same 25% of the talent pool, the delivery driver knows about the other 75%. The question isn't whether this approach works. The question is: Why haven't you bought that guy/gal a coffee yet? What's your experience with parts drivers or tool truck guys? Have you ever gotten a lead from one of them? Drop a comment below—curious if anyone's already tapped into this.