Tulsa dealership recruits interns for service department
From the October issue of UCD
One day while eating lunch, Cody Brazeal struck up a conversation with a gentleman who taught a transmission class at a technical school next door.
“I had a little conversation with him completely at random, and we were just talking about the students, and he was telling me about how he had a couple of really good ones in his class. And, that just kind of got me thinking maybe these guys will come work for me,” Brazeal recalled.
Brazeal of Auto Credit Express in Tulsa walked next door and talked to the career specialist, establishing a pipeline for young technician talent to work as interns in his shop. Brazeal has since added a second school to recruit more hands to gain valuable experience.
According to Brazeal, bringing in the younger generation is a necessity for dealers running a service department in today’s limited technician market. Though there has been a recent climb in the number of new technicians entering the workforce, a 2024 TechForce study notes there will be 349,000 open spots to be filled in the next four years, and only 87,000 new auto technicians.
“We kind of got here out of necessity,” Brazeal said. “With the current technician pool, it’s hard to find what you’re looking for. The guys who have good experience and have been in the industry are usually happy somewhere. To get the technicians we want working for us, the best option is really to train them ourselves. Industry-wide, it’s replacing and bringing in the next generation.”
Brazeal points out that many of the technical schools, including the two he’s working with – Tulsa Tech and Oklahoma Technical College – offer internships with the program. He likes allowing the young students to work in the shop to get experience they can’t get in a classroom. An independent shop offers a wide array of experiences that many of the young students don’t know about.
“They know they want to work on cars, but a new car dealership, a used car dealership and an independent repair shop are hugely different things,” Brazeal said. “So, they get to come out here and really kind of get a hands-on try at what it’s like before they’re really committing the rest of their life to something.
“The most recent student I hired really thought he wanted to go to a big-name dealership. He told me that up front. I supported him going to do that after the program. He worked for us for about two months and changed his mind. He seems to really like where we’re at.”
The interns work 24 hours per week. His current two are working Monday, Thursday and Friday. They are partnered with a master tech, hanging parts. The master tech is answering questions and helping the students along the way.
“[The master tech] has time to really talk to these guys. They can put parts on and they can ask him what it is that he found,” Brazeal said.
It took a little convincing to get the master techs to buy in, but they quickly learned these students are serious and willing to work. The extra hands also helped get more cars through the shop. They can also pass off some of the brake jobs and other routine tasks to tackle the more complicated issues.
“The master techs have found they could diagnose some issues and put the student on it, and they can spend a couple of hours taking this part off and putting it back on,” Brazeal said. “They’re going to stop the guy a couple of times and ask him some questions and ask for some tools. But at the end of the day, our master tech is now working on two cars at the same time, and it’s helped get cars out and take the pressure off those guys.”
Speaking with their instructors, Brazeal learned that the hands-on skills are what many of the techs in training are missing. The students pick up knowledge from studying, but have limited resources to practice what they’ve learned.
“The schools will have one or two cars, and the instructors will have to bug them, go in, and make a problem. That’s not real. They can talk about issues, and then they come here and start relating to the things they’ve learned in class,” Brazeal said. “The hands-on part is really getting them the experience they are missing.”
For Brazeal, this is an opportunity to pay it forward with a new generation. He followed a similar path, with a shop bringing him in to work while attending a technical school.
“Without that shop giving me that opportunity, I don’t think I’d be where I am today,” Brazeal said. “If we can move that forward, I think that’s the only way we can really grow the industry. We can say for sure there’s a technician shortage, but the only way to fix that is to help bring more people in. We have to make people want to come in and do this job.”
Brazeal encourages other dealers to reach out to technical schools and bring on the young students to feed the pipeline.
The NIADA Foundation is joining the effort. Next June, the non-profit will award scholarships to students from six regions who are attending trade or technical schools in hopes of bringing more technicians to the industry. More details will be available in early 2026.
