New Job Opportunity

Some of you may have seen my posts on starting in thile auto field professionally in April at a dealership. Now one of my old office job managers who has owned a small Indy shop with her husband for 8 years reached out to me and we met for lunch yesterday to talk about me going to work for them.

This interests me for several reasons. More friendly culture, more training attention from a long time master tech, gauaranteed 40hr pay plus a tiered system where the more hours you work the more your hrly rate goes up, not married to one car line.

My hang ups. I just started at the dealership in April and the manager had to pull some strings to get me in there so I'd feel bad leaving so soon, he just bought me $500 worth of tools.

So really, I'd just feel bad leaving now because I feel indebted to the manager.

I guess I could give him $500 for the tools and apologize for leaving.

I'm going to hang out at the small shop for a few hours next week to check out the operation and the people.

Thoughts?



Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

Definitely worth considering!

How small of a shop are we talking about? One thing that immediately comes to mind is a difference in benefits and available time off. The smaller the shop, the more important it is that everyone be there every day. Even taking a morning off for medical reasons can be a big issue. Ask about uniforms/insurance/401K and the like if you haven't already.

I also find there's more pressure on the techs to produce with fewer comebacks at smaller shops. Bigger places can afford to absorb some mistakes and unbilled hours, but a small operation will really feel the hurt at the end of the month. Not saying you make a ton of mistakes, just something to consider.

On the plus side, you're likely to work on all kinds of stuff. :silly: Indy owners have a (bad?) habit of taking on any job that'll fit in the shop doors.

I've never worked at a dealership and wouldn't want to. But I have learned the value of training over the recent years and you have access to Nissan training at the dealer. What kind of training are they going to offer at the new job? Some parts suppliers offer training. Worldpac and Advance/Carquest CTI ate very good. Orielly's SMP/BWD training is ok. ATG training is excellent, I just took their new GM class this week. And we get more ATG training but branded as Denso through Ken Smith auto parts.

bruce.oliver wrote: ATG training is excellent, I just took their new GM class this week.

Same! I love how the newer ATG manuals are written. I think a lot of the fuel trim and VE testing stuff works well on other makes, too.

All good feedback for me to think about. My current company also has a Chevy and Toyota shop. One of my friends just started at Toyota as an advisor and he was talking to his service manager (who used to be a parts guy at my shop) about bringing me over and he said he would hire me on if I was open to leaving the Nissan shop.

Their shop has 20+ techs and they work on teams. A lot more turnover going on over there and rumor is that the culture needs an overhaul.

I'm glad I have some options popping up but it's a lot to think about.

A bit off topic, but what is it with some people being terrified of off brand cars? I asked one of our seasoned guys to take a look at where he thought a leak was coming from on a Civic I got, and as soon as he saw it was a Honda he said, "how the f would I know? It's a Honda," and he walked away. Our foreman gave me a hard time about looking at a rear O2 signal too. "It's a GM, I don't know what it's supposed to look like."

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

Tutti57 wrote: A bit off topic, but what is it with some people being terrified of off brand cars? I asked one of our seasoned guys to take a look at where he thought a leak was coming from on a Civic I got, and as soon as he saw it was a Honda he said, "how the f would I know? It's a Honda," and he walked away. Our foreman gave me a hard time about looking at a rear O2 signal too. "It's a GM, I don't know what it's supposed to look like."

:lol: I find that techs working one car line for long enough come to rely heavily on their product knowledge in order to be accurate and productive. Not saying specialization is a bad thing, necessarily. But some techs that specialize do tend to lose those basic troubleshooting skills in the process.

Not sure about that Toyota dealer. Shop culture usually comes from the top down, in my experience. If the culture is bad, it's likely that someone higher up is at least somewhat OK with that.

The top down is probably the case. One of the new managers has discovered some issues that he is trying to address. Kostly accountability and the fact that with some bad apples, not one person has been disciplined in years to start working them out.

My director got wind of another place reaching out to me and wants to meet this week to make sure I am being moved forward where I want to be here. It's good to see that there are some retention efforts in play. We will see how that meeting goes.

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk

Good for you man, I'm happy opportunities are available for you and that your current employer is actively working to invest in you.

My boss called me in on Friday and told me that they are promoting me from wuick Lane and putting me in the shop, so it looks like I'll be sticking around at the Nissan store!

Sent from my Moto E (4) Plus using Tapatalk