Washington Business Summer 2016 | Page 45

business backgrounder | education & workforce Auto-shop programs at local schools and vocational centers can be fertile ground for service recruiters, who look for young people with an aptitude for cars. Some of Shoreline’s partner dealers hire beginners right out of high school, then have the student enroll in the PATC program. Johnny Kamacho and Sam Flaxman, both in their first quarter of the program, consult the technical library on a laptop as they complete a 12-page checklist on the transmission in front of them. “I don’t learn things unless I do it myself,” Flaxman explains. Kamacho, who just started his job as a lot attendant at Lynnwood Honda, says that with the skills he’s picked up in the program so far, he’s been able to chip in at the shop when someone needs help. The Honda training program is full of self-directed learning exercises, instructor Bob Biesiedzinksi says. “We try to replicate real-world scenarios where a vehicle has a fault, and students have to go through a diagnostic process to figure it out.” The same was on display down the line in the Toyota section, where Jeff Cromwell had set up a panel with nine switches under the hood of a Venza. He starts the car, then lets a visitor flip a switch — any switch — in order to look and listen for changes. The otherwise healthy engine started to shake, its rumble slowed. Why? Cromwell had shut the fuel injector off — but that was for students to find out. “The littlest things can be overlooked,” Cromwell says, as a student reports his diagnosis of another car. After much trial and error, a blown fuse was identified as the culprit. “The number-one thing dealers look at is efficiency.” That focus on detail, on process and routine, drew Faris Hanhaz to switch to Toyota from the General Service Technician program. “They put you through every trick they can,” says Hanhaz, who works Fridays and Saturdays during the spring quarter at Lexus of Bellevue and will work full-time there during the summer. “But by the end of the day, when you get done, you feel like you know so much more.” www.shoreline.edu/auto “They put you through every trick they can, but by the end of the day, when you get done, you feel like you know so much more.” — Faris Hanhaz, a student in the Professional Automotive Training Center Shorewood High School auto shop teacher Wes Proudlove says his students have taken both paths — straight to industry, or straight to college. Operating a garage at Shorewood, Proudlove says, gives students experience with everything from customer relations to diagnostics. Where a program like Shoreline comes in, he says, is giving students the up-to-date factory-specific training they wouldn’t get at a general-service shop. Proudlove hopes more dealership service managers recognize the experience these younger technicians bring to the job. At the Shoreline PATC lab, students cluster around cars and hover over computers. One group, enrolled in the three-quarter General Service Technician program — designed for entrylevel students without an automotive background or declared manufacturer interest — ticks off a series of electrical tasks. In the Honda classroom, eight students are dismantling, then reassembling a controlled variable transmission — an activity that spans three or four six-hour days. Sean Hughen, a student at Shoreline Community College's Professional Automotive Training Center-Dealer Training Academy, uses diagnostic equipment to check the automatic transmission system on a late-model Honda Element. General Motors donated a 2014 Corvette Stingray to Shoreline Community College, where it sits in a showroom at the college's Professional Automotive Training Center. summer 2016 45