Focus on Details to Find Best Job Candidates

There is the old saying, “Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.”

Too often, that could describe the hiring process: Candidates can look good on paper, seem strong, and then not perform as expected. Sometimes, the fit wasn’t right.

At other times, filling a vacant role can be like trying to put a square peg in a round hole. The person may be the right candidate, just not for a particular role. Other times, even if the shop is understaffed, it may be better to keep looking rather than hire the first applicant.

“Desperation is the most expensive hiring strategy in this industry,” warns Chris Lawson of Technician Find.

Lawson helps connect talent with independent shops, and he tells National Oil and Lube News that hiring the first candidate is a “knee-jerk reaction” often made by a shop owner or general manager operating out of fear.

“When they don’t have a consistent flow of high-quality applications coming in, scarcity kicks in, and they grab whatever they can get,” explains Lawson.

Where to Begin

One issue is that too many shops simply have an opening, which makes it difficult to find anyone to fill it. The flip side is that shops may reject candidates who could be a good fit because they’re willing to wait for someone even better to apply. Consideration needs to be given to what the role encompasses.

“I recommend that shops start by mapping out their ideal scene,” says Lawson. “What do they want to accomplish in terms of goals, growth, and revenue, etc. Then, reverse-engineer the skills, experience, and culture fit of the ideal candidate. This process gives them a much more realistic estimation of what they need, so they don’t hire too quickly or even worse, wait too long to hire because they are waiting for a unicorn.”

Lawson says that, based on conversations with hundreds of technicians across the country, the shops with the worst retention are almost always the ones that hired out of desperation.

“These techs tell me they could feel it in the interview— the owner was more interested in filling a bay than understanding who they were,” Lawson continues. “One tech told me, ‘They never even asked what mattered to me. I was just a body with tools.’ That shop lost him in 90 days.”

Don’t Roll with It

Too often, when it comes to hiring, shops and candidates alike just “roll with it,” when the better course of action would be for every shop to have detailed position descriptions for a particular role.

“At Technician Find, we have extremely detailed avatars for each position in a shop that include skills, attitude, talents, fears, frustrations, hopes, and aspirations,” said Lawson. “These avatars also include detailed psychographic profiles for each role.”

Lawson further developed an AI hiring assistant, Jason Perkins AI, specifically for the industry. With it, shop owners can describe their culture, challenges, and ideal candidate, and the AI generates custom interview questions in seconds. It also offers a Mission, Vision, and Values Generator that helps shops articulate what sets them apart.

“Technicians aren’t just looking for a paycheck, they’re looking for a place where they fit,” says Lawson. “With AI, it’s never been easier to create these ideal employee avatars, and once you have them done, you can create compelling job ads custom-tailored for each position, develop custom interview questions, test pay plans, and evaluate candidate fit for specific roles.”

Promoting From Within

There are situations where someone is very good at their job, maybe even too good. This creates a dilemma: Shops must decide whether to promote that individual, but it should be a mutual decision.

“If you have ambitious top performers that you want to keep, you’ll always want to be creating bigger futures for them,” suggests Lawson. “The shops that retain their best people are the ones that ask: ‘What does winning look like for you?’ and then engineer pathways to make it happen.”

Growth can also mean promotions, a new title, more money, better benefits, or even being part of something bigger than themselves.

“Here’s what most shops get wrong: They assume that if someone is a great tech, they want to become a manager,” warns Lawson. “Often, the opposite is true. Your A-tech may want to stay A-tech forever—they just want to be paid like the expert they are. The best retention strategy isn’t always promotion; sometimes it’s creating a ‘master craftsman’ track where they can earn more without managing anyone.”

This plan also helps prevent shops from falling into the “Peter Principle,” a concept that began as satire but isn’t really a laughing matter. It argues that employees are often promoted to a “level of incompetence,” making it hard for them to perform their jobs well and threatening to bring the whole enterprise down.

“It happens all the time in shops,” says Lawson. “Here’s why: The owner feels guilty because someone has been with them so long so they get a promotion. Aptitude, skill levels, and emotional intelligence are usually not taken into consideration, so the employee ends up feeling like a fish out of water and failing.”

This is another reason shops need solid position descriptions for each role and a detailed avatar for each role.

“It’s super simple to tell in a couple of minutes whether or not an employee is going to have what it takes to make it in a new role,” adds Lawson. “Shops should absolutely understand the Peter Principle and implement the steps above to make sure they don’t promote into it. Before any promotion, I recommend shops run a simple ‘shadow test.’ Have the candidate work alongside the current role-holder for a week. Not training—observing. You’ll see immediately whether they light up or shut down when faced with the actual work.”