As more retailers attempt to “grow their own” car audio installers, or train them from scratch, there may be a need for a standardized, day-by-day guide on how to do that effectively.
Tony Dehnke, Owner of 12v.Biz and a leader of several industry forums, suggests that an industry trade group or collective create a 12-week ‘bootcamp’ course that retailers can run in their own store to train their green recruits.
The bootcamp would include videos, interactive tests and instructions for the trainee on day 1, day 3, day 30 and so on. Dehnke, explains that a trainee might watch a video in the morning, then take a test and perform some prescribed hands on work in the afternoon. You, as a store owner, need only follow the guide.
“I’ve talked with a couple of people about it. I do think there’s an opportunity to build a program that has daily and weekly tests along the way,” said Dehnke, adding, “The way I envision it, your new hire comes in; maybe it’s day three, you’ve shown him around the store, and he’s shadowed the different positions in the store. You tell him ‘We’re going to start you training two hours a day from 9 to 11 and you’re going to be on this computer and go through these modules.`”
Then there’s a set of physical trainings to do in the store. Maybe one day you make 100 solder connections. The next day you are given a challenge to look up a vehicle in a vehicle guide and find the wiring diagram that has the rear seat entertainment system for this vehicle and then identify which wires are part of it and their purpose.
As the weeks go by, he said, the candidate would start to interact more with vehicles. The program would suggest on a certain day you have a lead installer book 3 hours for a car that might normally take 1 hour because they will do a step by step walk-through with the trainee. “You need to expose them to a couple of Hondas, a couple of Chevys, VWs etc. so you can see how they react to these different vehicles and installations. Do they have the aptitude to figure this out or do they get frustrated and start throwing a screw driver across the bay?” said Dehnke.
“There’s very few retailers that would have the resources to build a program like that,” he noted.
“At 12 weeks, the biggest thing that should be determined is whether that person is a personality fit for your business; that he or she has a personality that can learn and wants to learn; that the person has been able to accomplish a certain set of skills, level of organization and to understand documentation, soldering, the ability to assemble dash kits, flash modules, prep wiring harnesses and take a car apart,” said Dehnke.
“In a lot of jurisdictions, 12 weeks is where you lose the ability to fire without cause. If you are five months into someone, it’s harder to let them go and often more costly to the business,” said Dehnke.
This ‘boot camp’ would not be free and it could be set up on a per trainee or monthly fee structure. But manufacturers might help with the cost as part of their VIR buy ins. “It is common in other industries for these programs to have a cost; ours should not be any different,” said Dehnke
“To build this is more than a one person job. It will take a team of people and a reasonable amount of financial resources,” he added.
As for now. an important way to keep and draw talent to the industry is to offer a strong employment package with health insurance, paid time off, training budget etc. In order to remain competitive with other professions, “Dealers need to sit down and ask what is my plan to find and retain staff, not just training, but figure out a competitive package similar to other jobs in their market,” Dehnke added.
I also went sort of the same path, but I serviced used car dealers lots for sevral years on my own.
Were talking old cars with 2 knob radios stuffed in the dash you had to tear 1/2 the dash apart just to get the factory radio out of. I did this for years.
Then finally a distributor gave me a chance doing car lots for them, I’d never done alarms, and I was not good with them and were just talking 3 wire units.
That job didn’t last long but a retail store hired me and it was a very busy shop, with a lot of installers.
I learned some from them, learned some on my own and figured things out as I went along.
There is no reason you can’t set this up like an apprenticeship program. I also do not belive MECP delivers all of what it should have, sure you can read the books and take a test but do you really understand the content. This became very clear to me when I kept seeing cars come into our shop with 2 12″ @4 ohms in a comon chamber box wired in stereo on an amp.
And the chain stores sales person who had mecp certification kept selling this to people then they would try to hook it up as a mono block amp but its 2 ohm stereo stable 4 ohm mono stable. They just did not understand the concept. JL AUDIO KIND OF FIXED this problem with the slash series amp, but the national chain did not sell JL Audio and still don’t.
A store is only as good as its weakest link.
And sometimes that’s on the showroom floor.
A salesman should know both ends of the business not just product knologe. Every installer should also know both ends as well.
Yes I had mecp certification from 25 years ago near when it started, I knew the people who started this
I’d been in that store sevral times before they sold it.
I’d even tried years before mecp started to get hired by them. Insted I worked for 2 of there competors for 17 years. Now at my age I don’t care to crawl under someone’s dash. If the outlook for mobile electronics wasn’t in the shape it is now, I’d probably open a store.
But its bleak where will it be in 5 years? 10 years?
Do you really want to pull out the factory system, and is the aftermarket stuff any better?
Why pull out a system made by Alpine to install a karco? Sadly I’ve seen it done. Well maybe not kraco but some of you older guys know what I’m talking about. The whole reason to do any aftermarket is to make it sound better or play a different format media.
And some cars you might as well forget it on.
The cost and or problems pily up way beyond the outcome.
I don’t have a lot of extra time, but I’d be willing to make some for this project. I have lots of questions, though and they aren’t easy ones.
Thank you Andy. I hope someone or group takes you up on the offer!
Tony has some great ideas there. One thing he mentions is “To build this is more than a one person job. It will take a team of people and a reasonable amount of financial resources……”
Who then is that group or collective who makes the investment to lean into this kind of effort?
Tony is on to something with this. It’s is a great idea and very much needed. When I started in this industry, I was a hobbyist and no one would hire me because I had no experience. I went to Installer Institute and got my MECP certification but that didn’t seem to hold the weight that I had hoped. Through persistence I was able to get a company to hire me and I fell on my face a few times because I had knowledge but no experience and they didn’t have a training program. It’s the common chicken vs egg scenario.
Some sort of hands on program or apprenticeship program would be great. Electricians have apprenticeship programs that work well. I’m working on something like this for the CEDIA channel as we have the same program.
Now is the time, there are a lot of people out of work with lots of growth opportunity for the CE industry for both home and car.