Dealer associations help their members find skilled techs overseas
Over the next several years, between 2022-2031, job openings for automotive service technicians, truck and bus mechanics, and mechanical repairers are anticipated to reach 54,000. The number of job seekers is projected to be 44,800.
That is according to the federal government’s Canadian Occupational Projection System (COPS). It shows that job openings, stemming from expansion and replacement demand, outweighs the number of job seekers from school leavers, immigration, and mobility by 9,200 positions.
“There are fewer and fewer young people entering automotive mechanic trade schools,” said Ian P. Sam Yue Chi, President and CEO of the Corporation des concessionnaires automobiles du Québec (CCAQ), in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “I would also include all the bodywork trades in which our dealers are involved.”
What this means is that, as a generation of service technicians nears and enters retirement over the coming years, and a younger generation of potential workers shy away from the trades, dealers will increasingly find it difficult to replace their technicians.
The issue is not new; the CCAQ foresaw this imbalance years ago and built an internal international recruitment agency that is helping to mitigate the issue. They have a permit under the banner Mobilö for immigration talent management, and often collaborate with other provinces in Canada. The initiative dates back seven years.
The Motor Vehicle Retailers of Ontario also has a program in place. Sam Yue Chi said Todd Bourgon, CEO and Executive Director at the MVRO, was the first to raise his hand to experience how things worked when the CCAQ implemented its recruitment initiative. At the time, Bourgon was eyeing the potential of building a similar program for Ontario dealers.
“Todd accompanied us (and) he understood very quickly (how things work),” said Sam Yue Chi. “We as a corporation obviously target French-speaking employment areas first, which is why we went to North Africa more often than not.” (Other areas include Algeria, and to diversify a bit, Mexico.)
Bourgon said Ontario is dealing with an immediate and significant shortage of technicians. As of the first quarter of 2023 there were more than 3,000 vacancies in the automotive trades in the province, according to an MNP report commissioned last year by the MVRO. Prior to the pandemic there were about 1,500.
The MNP report was created to help the MVRO better understand what the next decade looks like from a technician perspective. It considered car sales, immigration, population growth, and the current trend in education — graduates coming (or not coming) out of the school system. It also underlined the use of the Temporary Foreign Workers program to fill vacant positions.
“There’s a massive lag and the lag has been there for a very long time… The only way that this lag gets corrected is if either foreign technician recruitment increases, like we’ve been doing, or combined with the school systems getting reinvigorated with young people seeing our trade as a viable career,” said Bourgon.
“You don’t just, tomorrow, say we’re going to hire 5,000 technicians. That had to start years ago for the education and training of an apprentice.”
— Brent Ravelle, President, Ravelle Group of Companies
He said they started the foreign technician recruitment program just before the pandemic. When the borders opened, the MVRO had already received a number of requests from members to help them find certified technicians overseas. They went to the Philippines because the education system, in terms of what is being learned in school, the trades, and certifications, appeared to line-up with Ontario’s standards. English is also one of the country’s official languages (the other being Filipino.)
Bringing over a foreign worker can take about a year, if not more, but the program appears to be successful and dealers seem generally pleased. One example of this comes from Brent Ravelle, President of the Ravelle Group of Companies in Ontario.
“My guys are some of the first to land in Ontario. I have four: two at each store. They are from the Philippines, they’re highly skilled trade individuals, (and) they’re very much technicians. They’ve all been in the profession up to 13 years,” said Ravelle.
“The training they receive in the Philippines is extensive, including OEM training very much like ours,” he added. “(And) as with most OEMs, EV training has only become a factor in the past year or so. My guys have been here for 18 months, so they started to focus on EV training with me.”
However, Ravelle also noted that the foreign workers program is a stop gap for dealers. “It’s a way for us to answer the call of consumers who need work done, while we figure out how to bring more people into this business.”
According to the MNP report, the number of automotive trade job openings is projected to be 6,000 in 2025, while the number of automotive trade job seekers is expected to reach 5,100. In 2030, the number of job openings will be 5,200 and will match those of job seekers.
“You don’t just, tomorrow, say we’re going to hire 5,000 technicians. That had to start years ago for the education and training of an apprentice,” said Ravelle, who is a big fan of working with local high schools to talk about trades.
On education, the CCAQ started a public campaign called Ma carrière en concessionnaire that was launched on June 7 during the Montreal Grand Prix. Sam Yue Chi said the campaign brings people to a website on which they can enter into direct contact with dealers members to engage in discussion.
“We start from the premise that (the dealer) will either currently have or will certainly have positions to fill tomorrow,” which in turn can help fill a bank of employers who can potentially work with the CCAQ continuously and proactively.
On the candidate side, rather than getting bogged down in preparing a CV and letter of intent, job seekers can go directly to the website macarriereenconcessionnaire.com. Here, dealers can learn about the applicant through their response to five questions.
“The website generates five questions that lead to qualifying the individual for certain types of jobs, and the individual has the choice of getting in touch with a number of dealers that he chooses — in a region that he chooses,” said Sam Yue Chi. “After that, we call it a match; it is really based on the same principle as Tinder.”
The objective of the campaign is to present the diversity of roles and positions that are available at dealerships to the general public, creating awareness around the possibility of enjoying a long and rich career in the industry.
“From our perspective … international recruitment can fill a need, but it cannot fill all needs,” said Sam Yue Chi. “We ardently hope to be able to sufficiently promote technical trades so that young people” have it as their top-of-mind.
