ATAEs HEAR TECH TRAINING IDEAS

Technicians will benefit from new training push.

January 31, 2004—Automotive trade association executives learned about several service department recruiting and training initiatives at their meeting Friday:

• Next month, Automotive Retailing Today plans to start a Web site—autojobstoday.org—which will have general info about jobs in the auto industry for guidance counselors, educators, techs, parents, and military representatives, said ART executive director Denise Patton-Pace. A downloadable brochure—to be translated into Spanish later this year—will be available. The new site will be formally announced at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

• The Institute for Automotive Service Excellence (ASE) has recently started testing and certification for service advisers, said ASE’s Trish Serratore. Test areas will include communication skills, damage analysis and estimating, product knowledge, and sales and people skills. More than 5,000 service advisers were certified last year; the test has been incorporated into some manufacturers’ training.

• The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Partnership for Jobs program—encouraging the use of alternative labor pools such as vets and the disabled—has identified the auto industry as a high-growth area for jobs, said Sue Allison, deputy director of the Business Relations Group. Starting with a federal budget of $11.5 billion and $15 billion spread throughout the states, DOL plans to fund programs that connect workers and employers in innovative ways. The first program to be funded is AYES (Automotive Youth Educational Systems), which offers tech training at technical high schools through a partnership of automakers, local dealers, and high schools.