Mercedes-Benz Accelerates Efforts To Produce Repair Technicians

Cars & Bikes Mercedes-Benz Accelerates Efforts To Produce Repair Technicians Dale Buss Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I am grounded in autos but range broadly. Following New! Follow this author to stay notified about their latest stories.

Got it! Sep 30, 2022, 11:39am EDT | New! Click on the conversation bubble to join the conversation Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Mercedes-Benz USA is getting creative in efforts to recruit and retain repair technicians for its . . .

[+] dealers. Mercedes-Benz USA For many years, every automaker and its dealers have searched and dug high and low for people who want to be technicians repairing cars, trucks and SUVs in the back shops of the retail outlets. They have done everything from relentlessly poaching one another’s best wizards to creating official programs to scout for candidates from maintenance experts leaving the U.

S. military and its complicated vehicles behind. Now, Mercedes-Benz and its U.

S. dealers are trying to change this frustrating status quo with a new, multifaceted effort to address the industry-wide shortage of technical talent that works at the high-school, vocational-college and young-adult levels and incorporates aggressive awareness-raising and partnership efforts. The programs are designed to provide a wide range of classroom and hands-on training to people at every career entry point and to demonstrate the high-tech systems, equipment and processes involved in keeping Mercedes-Benz vehicles on the road.

Now there’s even a company-sponsored “Mercedes-Benz” major at some community colleges. “What we started to realize is that our dealers haven’t been able to keep up with their technician [requirements] due to retirements and turnover,” Lisa Rosenfeld, general manager of the German automaker’s Mercedes-Benz Academy in the U. S.

, told me. “Much of it, we realized, was because young people just aren’t getting into the field of automotive technology anymore. It’s not seen as attractive.

There’s the perception of the grease-monkey kind of role, and nothing could be further from the truth. ” So far, Mercedes-Benz has 60 U. S.

dealers connecting with 64 high schools and 70 dealers partnering with 57 colleges. Nearly 240 students have become interns or apprentices under the new effort over the past two years. Mercedes-Benz dealers employ about 6,000 technicians nationwide.

MORE FOR YOU Computer Chip Shortage Could Drag Through 2022, Prolonging High Prices A 600-Mile Goodbye To The Beguiling Polestar 1 The Game-Changing Mid-Engined, Right Hand Drive Corvette Is Eating Into European Supercar Sales In Japan Broadly, the perception of car-repair careers by American young people is two big steps behind today’s reality. Many of vocation-selecting age still don’t even give modern autos credit for being the rolling computers they are, much less understand that the EV revolution is moving automotive transit into another new era of technological wonder — and the basis for great jobs fixing cars. But it’s not like its technician shortage sneaked up on Mercedes-Benz and its dealers.

The company has conducted an intensive, 17-week training program for technicians for several years, which has recruited many high-school students, ex-military maintenance technicians and others. It enjoys a 98% hire rate with dealers. But Mercedes-Benz leadership saw that this program wasn’t enough, and then Covid interrupted it.

Coming out of the pandemic, Rosenfeld, who joined the company in 2019, and others knew they needed to step things up with “more opportunities to get into schools and communities and with parents,” she said. Partnership is a crucial component of the new programs. Mercedes-Benz created a new program aimed at high-school students and one aimed at two-year colleges and vocational schools.

“We have three-way connections, involving our dealers,” Rosenfeld explained. “Everyone has a role to play. Schools are responsible for taking our curriculum and promoting it.

We will give faculty the core e-learning courses. And we ask our dealers to participate locally with career days, going to schools and making presentations to classes, donating some swag, maybe bringing students on a dealership tour each semester. ” Community colleges, which increasingly are leveraging direct relationships with companies of all sorts, are an important part of the new Mercedes-Benz alliance.

America’s two-year schools are leading something of a renaissance in vocational learning as the cost — and effectiveness — of four-year college degrees come increasingly into question, and Mercedes-Benz is leveraging that revolution. “When a school commits to creating a ‘Mercedes-Benz major,’” Rosenfeld said, “we donate a vehicle so they have the ability to give those students not only e-learning but also hands-on experience. And we will train faculty.

We require dealers to offer students at least one internship or apprenticeship each semester. That gives them a real filter to a pipeline of talent. ” Mercedes-Benz executives and dealers also understand that their best repair-technician candidates are going to want to work on the latest vehicles and tech systems — and in the auto industry now, that means all-electric and hybrid vehicles.

Mercedes-Benz’s new EQS all-electric vehicle platform is still only just working its way into the luxury automaker’s U. S. model lineup.

But the automaker is already dangling the technology. “We’re not giving colleges [EVs] yet, but we make sure we’re covering the technology in our e-learning,” and dealers can give would-be technicians test drives, Rosenfeld said. “They can see the cars and technology in them are exciting.

When they get into the car it’s very different from theory or being in the neighbor’s garage. ” Follow me on Twitter . Dale Buss Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.