In today’s battle to find and keep good, qualified technicians, some dealerships have a distinct advantage: the ones that can say they sell and service the “The World’s Best” trucks, Kenworth.
But, it’s not just that these trucks have a reputation for excellence built over the last 102 years. It’s that Kenworth dealers also have available to them a successful corporate program that helps steer young technicians from high school or college programs to their service department doors.
The Kenworth Essentials program fosters connections between students, high schools and colleges and dealerships. It does so by working with all three constituencies. The Essentials program’s managers:
- Help high school students identify a college program to attend or a dealership for possible employment
- Work with educational programs so their curricula deliver the most up-to-date training required of entry-level technicians
- Assist dealerships make connections with educational programs and ensure they’re offering the sorts of opportunities their graduates seek when they get hired
Working With Students
The best way for students to receive the benefits of Kenworth Essentials is, like so many other things today, to get online.
“Kenworthessentials.com gives an introduction to our program, and gives them a place to reach out to,” said Bill Metzger, a program manager with Kenworth Essentials. “It gives them all of our program managers’ contact information, and what we prefer them to do is get in contact with one of us, because we all do have assigned territories that we work with or schools that we work with, and we can start the conversation with a student.
“If it’s a high school student, we can talk to them about where they’re at, where they want to go, what they want to do. We can connect them with a school that’s in our network.”
Or, if the student is already in an educational program, a Kenworth Essentials program manager can initiate contact with a dealer to help the student find a job after graduation.
“They’re at a school trying to be a technician,” said Adam Stone, a program manager for the West Coast and Southwest. “So we don’t have to convince them that they want to be a technician. We just want to convince them to be a Kenworth technician.”
Working with students also often means working with parents, especially at the high school level.
Darren Erickson is one of several program managers who are part of Kenworth Essentials. He said part of his job is explaining what a technician’s job isn’t as much as what it is.
“Reaching out to the parents of young kids and helping them understand what kind of career opportunities exist in the trucking industry is really what we’re trying to do,” said Erickson, who covers the U.S. West Coast and Canada for Kenworth essentials. “There’s a misconception that a technician is a dirty mechanic caked in grease, and in some cases that’s true. But, there is a lot more working with laptops and computers.”
Working With High Schools & Colleges
The folks working in Kenworth Essentials cast a wide net when it comes to educational institutions. To date they work with 200 schools across the U.S. and Canada. Program Manager Dennis Bullock said about 25% of the educational institutions are high schools with vocational programs. The rest are trade schools and colleges.
The goal of Kenworth Essentials is to help schools and colleges provide the sort of training an entry-level technician needs to get and be successful in a job at a dealership. Kenworth gives schools and students access to training the company has developed.
Metzger said, “It starts out at the very base of what a tech needs to know, and we kind of build on it from there. It goes through about 32 to 35 hours of online modules they can do.
“Schools have different approaches about how they have the students do the modules. Some of them use them in the curriculum, some of them use them as homework. The students have access to this while they’re going to the school, and they can access it on their own computer from home or at school, however they want to do it.”
Once students have completed those modules, Metzer said there are two instructor-led classes students complete to help them achieve their certification.
This, said Metzger, aids both the student and the dealership. If the dealership sees the student has earned their Kenworth Essentials certification, then they know that potential new hire has the basic knowledge needed to perform as an entry-level technician.
“This is all tailored around entry-level technicians,” he said. “So it’s the basic knowledge that has been out in the industry. We see the need for knowledge that the entry level techs need to know going in, starting their career with a Kenworth dealer.”
Then, after graduation and if hired by a dealership that technician would go through more training to become certified by Kenworth.
Working With Dealerships
The final part of the equation, and possibly the most important one, is the answer to the question, “Now what?”
Karen Apple helps dealership personnel and entry-level technicians find that answer.
She’s a curriculum development and retention specialist, and says her role is to ensure that graduates and dealerships see there is a career path, one that is clearly demonstrated on the Kenworth Essentials website. Apple said she wants new technicians “know how to go from level one technician to level two technician and so on.”
In addition to the career path map, Apple said Kenworth Essentials also has a Technician Toolkit, which explains what a technician needs to advance into different roles.
The Toolkit, said Apple,“ identifies those core competencies for each of the roles (on the career path). So really, it spells out this is a skillset that this dealership expects you to have within this role. So it allows you to have, not only a visual to let you see how you can grow in your career, and how this is in fact a career, but also what skills you need to help develop as you grow in your career.”
Kenworth Essentials also helps dealerships by urging them to be part of a school’s advisory board so dealers know what is being taught and so educators know the needs of the dealership. Also, the program also offers tips on how to put their best foot forward by inviting students to tour their facilities, and by explaining the training opportunities, compensation, and benefits new hires can expect.
But, one of the best things dealerships have going for them is their affiliation with Kenworth.
Dennis Bullock said when he goes to trade shows and hiring fairs, young people know and are attracted to the brand. He said people will come up to him and tell him how their fathers and grandfathers drove Kenworths. And, it’s something they say proudly.
