Look across your service department’s front line, then in the shop. If you’re one of the average American dealerships, you have a vacancy in at least one spot, probably more.

For those with an opening for a service advisor, you know the strain it puts on everyone else on the front line, and not just other service advisors, as you try to maintain productivity. And if it’s a spot on the bench – or two, or more – it’s painfully evident you can’t make up the lost hours and income with the remaining techs.

It’s important to hire expeditiously, of course. Implementing a stopgap is crucial as your targets account for every position filled. But hiring the wrong person can and will have damaging effects on your team.

So what do you look for in a new hire? What characteristics should be your top concern when you’re searching through applications and interviewing candidates? For both service advisor and technician roles, here are a few traits to seek out for your store.

For Technicians

When you’re hiring techs, the characteristics you need are of the more traditional sort, but not all of them.

Applicable Work Experience

It makes complete sense. You need the techs you hire to bring in their toolbox, pick up a work order, and be able to do it. It’s the skill set a technician develops only through work experience, either at another dealership or an independent repair shop.

Willing to Develop Skills

Cars are constantly changing, and technicians need to learn new skills to stay on top of new technology. Old-school techs may have a problem with this.

Customer Focused

It’s a little off the beaten path from the traditional role of selling as many services and repairs as possible. Today’s successful tech needs to be able to prioritize items with the customer’s patronage in mind, not just making money for today.

Team Player

It’s thrown around a lot these days, and it doesn’t seem to fit the individual technician role. But it’s a trait growing in importance for repair procedures. Many diagnostics and repairs require a second set of eyes or hands, and your techs need to be comfortable helping each other out regularly.

For Service Advisors

I’m going to contest the typical hiring process when it comes to service advisors. You’ll see why.

New to the Industry

Unless you’re hiring for a senior service advisor position because you can’t promote from within for some reason, you want a relatively fresh team member. Someone with an affinity for vehicles is great, but the last thing you need is an advisor going rogue. “I’ve always done it this way” isn’t a response that is going to work for a new hire. Individuals who are new to the service advisor position are going to learn to do it YOUR way, not how they’ve done it before. It also means most of your new hires will be youthful

Technically Minded

You need service advisors who are technical, but not necessarily about cars. What helps more than anything is an ability to decipher what a customer is saying and write it on the work order in a way the technician understands.

Willing to Learn the Product

More than ever, a service advisor needs to have the product knowledge of a salesperson – or perhaps, even more so. You might ask why, and rightly so. But as a service advisor, part of the role is now about educating the customer about how their vehicle works to eliminate ‘no fault found’ concerns before they hit the shop. That only comes from knowing the product and the technology well.