A year ago, I wrote about our initial progress with what we call the Collision Repair Opportunity Program (CROP), a response to the industry’s shortage of collision repair technicians. We’ve had some continued success with it this year, so I thought it would be worthwhile to offer an update.
First, a reminder about what CROP is. CROP grew out of a strategic planning session we had in 2012, when “cultivating talent” was among the issues we discussed. Once we created a basic framework for CROP, Max Sorensen, who manages one of our locations, took the lead and laid the groundwork for the project, working with our marketing director Craig Comacho to get the word out to the schools in our area.
“It all starts at the local high schools,” Max says. “We present CROP to the students enrolled in the collision repair programs, as an alternative to tuition-based secondary education centers.”
Graduating high school seniors apply for the internships through our website, just as if they were applying for a regular position with our company. We then select interns through a basic aptitude test and a 3-interview screening process. Our employee who will be serving as that student’s mentor during the program participates in the third interview to help us ensure the two will be a good fit.
The chosen students begin a 9-month internship working with the mentor in either our body or paint department. We provide them with a starter set of tools as well as a workbook that spells out the curriculum.
At the end of the first 3-month “term,” the intern must complete both a written and a hands-on test. Upon successful completion of the testing, they can move on to the remaining two 3-month terms of the internship.
As I wrote last year, Oscar Cantone Corona completed the program in 2014 as a paint tech. Oscar is now working in our paint department, has zero student debt, and kept the tools (valued at about $1,500) that we provided at the start of the program.
We are pleased to say that this past spring we graduated a body technician through the program. Sergio Cerrato works with our A-level technician John Scully as his mentor. It was really satisfying to have Sergio’s proud parents here when we presented Sergio with his plaque for successfully completing the program. And we have another student in the pipeline who is on track to graduate this year.
I can’t say there haven’t been some hiccups along the way. We had one student who five weeks into the program decided body work was not the career he wished to pursue. Although not an ideal outcome, we felt good that he gained some work experience and was able to move on to another profession before he invested years and thousands of dollars pursuing collision repair training.
We keep learning as we go, and know that every student who makes it through the program is one fewer technician that we have to find and recruit through other means.
One of the critical aspects of making a program like this successful is having very qualified, motivated mentors as instructors. They need to be not only quality technicians, but also able to continually convey to the intern what they are doing and why. They need to understand the program isn’t just about “free help” for them, but also understand that overall it won’t unduly hinder their productivity. The time the mentor spends helping the intern learn is generally offset over time by the boost to the mentor’s production provided by the intern.
There are other benefits, the mentors say, in the form of satisfaction of helping another person learn the profession, and of building a legacy, passing along the skills they’ve developed.
We’ve all complained about the challenges of finding new employees in this industry. It’s time all of us do more than talk and actually develop systems and programs to grow more of the talent we need. CROP is serving that purpose for us.
