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Employer Quotes
The quotes below are from employers in this industry: Transportation
They are talking about this topic: Occupation-Specific Skills
The quotes below are about this issue:
Basic mechanical skills and aptitude. Mechanical skills and aptitude are essential in candidates, and yet they are often missing as schools move toward specialization. Broad mechanical training is essential.
| "I'm not as concerned about if they have a diploma or not. As long as they have the certificate and they have the training. Then, at least I know that they've gone through the program and they're capable of doing it. They've seen the basics. They have some type of understanding of the theory of what they're going to be working on. And then once I get them in the store, then I can bring to the training group. And, I mean, they will go through 160 hours a year in training just to be in the store. So, I mean, it's something that you can bring them along it as you get them. But they've got to understand the basics." | Central |
| "Because as someone who runs a shop you need to know about the repairs..." | Central |
| "Just two quick points. What the education industry can do is don't lose focus on the basics. I know there's a lot of drive, like we said earlier, to go manufacturer-specific, but when they're in college they're learning the basics, and after that, they can go to the direction that they want and I think some of the basics are getting lost." | Metro |
| "I think it's easier for us to maybe teach them the people skills. It's easier, I think, to find somebody that'll talk to a customer and look presentable than it is to find somebody that's got talent under the hood, for me." | Metro |
| "A lot of the training is vehicle-specific now and it did not used to be that way when I graduated from [technical school]. We didn't have manufacturer specific programs. We went to learn about cars and about the systems that they use. And makes and models aren't that much different. What they do and how they do it isn't that much different. Some of the training trains that into people to feel that way and the manufacturers have taken a hold of some of the education to do exactly what they're talking about. They can take these college kids and start to train them for their model specifically. So these kids are already ready to go for our make and model, go right from college into their industry where they go up through the General Motors program, they're not going to come over to BMW because BMW isn't going to want them, they got their own program. So the colleges are already starting to train people to be exactly specific and training their minds to think exactly specific when there's a lot bigger world out there and they aren't that much different." | Metro |
| "You have to hire two guys now, to do one guy's job. You got to have one guy maybe diagnose it and then tell the other guy what to do because he either doesn't have the ability to do that, taking it down, putting it back together, or he doesn't want to do, one of the two." | Metro |
| "They don't grow up with nuts and bolts in their hands and right now, they're starting from square one where they didn't used to be that way. I see that that's the gap with people, the kids that I hire. The natural skills aren't there." | Metro |
| "There was the comment about kind of the rudimentary skills or the basic technician or mechanic type skills. And then you add the IT skills on for creating that well-rounded technician." | Northwest |
| "IT ability, okay. However, if you're going to be an auto tech, it's still hard work, it's still dirty work, okay? Who gets a dirty day in IT?" | Northwest |
| "The technician can't just be a brainy person. They've got to work with their hands, too. That's where the shortage is." | Northwest |
| "But it sounds like it's a combination of kind of the IT stuff...having some affinity or ability in IT...but also it's a nice combination of hands-on mechanical stuff, and automation, and IT, and use of computers." | Northwest |
| "Back to basics...what do you need... You need spark, you need fuel, you need compression...back to the basics. This is what you need to make it run if you're working on an automotive vehicle. If it's electrical, you need Ohm's Law. You need to know how it works. But at the end of the day, if the teacher's there he should be showing you. `Here's what I found. This is how we got to the shortcut to get it fixed.' And it should be second nature to the new technicians that come on." | Northwest |
| "It's hard for us to find qualified people, knowledgeable people that are willing to do this job. So it's a struggle every time we have somebody leave or retire to find somebody...even somebody with mechanics training, has the knowledge to come into the parts industry too, but there's a little gap there with experience in the younger people." | Northwest |
| "Granted, you're still going to still be in digging in the engine and doing stuff like that, but it's not like it used to be." | Northwest |
| "A lot of our people know how to fix cars, whether they're investigators, or upfront support office people...managers...whatever." | Southwest |