I’m sure it’s absolutely no shock to anyone that the automotive industry is going through a skills shortage. For years now, schools have really been pushing young people to go to university instead of promoting apprenticeships or other options. I know when I was leaving school in 2016, I was very much looked down upon for choosing to do an apprenticeship after completing my A-Level exams. There seems to be a huge stigma against the motor trade in general by both schools and parents; it’s something that I’ve been trying to change through my social media channels but at the end of the day I am only one person. Can you imagine the difference it would make if the entire industry clubbed together to tackle this?
I am by no means an expert in this; however, I am a part of the younger generation and am quite close in age to the next generation coming into the trade. From my experience and from talking to the young people at schools’ events they’re not even aware of the career opportunities in our industry. For example, I didn’t even know you could paint cars until I got into it (sounds stupid but I genuinely just thought parts came pre-painted and it was a bolt off bolt on job) and that was only 6 years ago in 2016. Another example being very recently I done a chat with a group of 6th form students about careers in automotive and they knew absolutely nothing about apprenticeships and thought their only options were university or going straight into a job. It really annoyed me hearing this as these girls had not even been made aware of all the options they had after school.
In the background, I’ve been looking into creating a plan to help tackle this issue and from researching the problem from other body shop owners it’s never going to be an overnight fix. In my head, I think it’s at least a decade to make a significant step in the right direction. Look at it this way; it’s going to take at the very least 2/3 years at least to completely re-brand the industry as the promising career option it is and break this stigma that the automotive trade is a last option if you don’t get into anything else. Then you have the 4-year apprenticeship to complete then once they’re qualified then its 1-2 years to find their feet and gain proper confidence in their skills.
So how do we do this and where do we start? I think mainly through social media and careers events. Organisations like School of Thought, AutoTech and AutoRaise to name a few, have been doing great things to battle this issue but without the support from us as technicians and body shop owners we can only get so far. If every body shop in the UK created 1 positive piece of content regarding careers in the industry to be shared across all social media platforms, be that video, photo or written content imagine the difference that would make. It would be a massive help to these organisations as creating good content that will inspire the next generation is difficult and massively time consuming, so that small video or couple of photos from each body shop would make a huge difference. Or even if 1 person from each body shop took an hour out of their day to attend a school’s event or talk – the difference would be monumental with very little effort.
Like I said – I’m not an expert but I am trying to make a difference because I love our industry, it has so much to give to people and they’re completely unaware of all the opportunities available right in front of them.
Automechanika Birmingham will be hosting a skills gap focused day on day 3 of the event (8th June), bringing the industry together to tackle the issue and inviting apprentices to meet potential employers.