Not every important hire works in the bays or at the service counter. Congratulations to Grove Street Auto Group in Franklin, MA on hiring a Financial Operations Administrator! 🎉 As a shop grows, so does everything happening behind the scenes. More transactions. More paperwork. More numbers that need to be right. Having the right person managing financial operations gives the rest of the team room to stay focused on running and growing the business. It’s the kind of hire customers may never see, but the whole operation benefits from. Congratulations to Grove Street Auto Group and their newest team member!

The best job application I've ever read came out of a prison cell. My team and I have generated at least eighty thousand over the last eight years. March of last year, a man named Derek Wilson emailed our service inbox. He wanted to know where a technician could get help paying for tools. I sent him a scholarship guide I put together. A simple PDF and a comprehensive list of links. I forgot about it before lunch. Five months later he wrote back. He'd applied. He won. The 2025 Hourglass Tool Scholarship. First person ever to get it from inside a facility. He wasn't asking me for anything. He was writing to tell me what he'd done with what we sent. Nobody follows up on a free PDF. We've been sending that guide out for years and I can count the replies on one hand. That's not cynicism. That's the base rate. He mentioned a few other things in that email. An associate's degree in automotive repair technology. Teaching assistant in the shop program by day, entrepreneurship classes at night. And nineteen months left. I told him to keep going. I told him that when he got out, I'd see what I could do about getting him in front of a good shop. That was a soft promise. I meant it. I had no plan. A year went by. Then last month a second letter came in. Derek didn't ask for anything. He sent a packet. Cover letter. Formatted résumé. Three references, including the instructor he worked under for two years, with a direct phone number. And the scholarship announcement, so I wouldn't have to take his word for it. Everything a shop would have had to drag out of him. Answered before anyone asked. What he can do: ALLDATA. Hawk Eye Elite alignments. R134a and R1234yf. Drivability and diagnostics. ABS. Body control modules. Brakes, steering and suspension. What he's earned: AAS in Automotive Repair Technology. Section 609. Entrepreneurship certificate. OSHA 10. Forklift. Flagger. What he did with the time: three years as a student tech. Two-plus years as a teaching assistant, writing estimates for customers, running shop safety, keeping tool inventory, proctoring exams, and teaching other people to diagnose.