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Last month at Digital Dealer, we recognized we were in the presence of a service tech guru in Jennifer Briggs, GM of Volkswagen of Marion in Illinois.
Her lengthy auto resume includes two years as dean of the Auto Diesel Institute of Michigan, where she grew the number of industry certifications students could graduate with from eight to as many as 64.
We also learned new tactics from a dealership group running a thriving program and got insight from a shop foreman.
So here’s the best from our notes: Get into local schools, make room for apprentices in the shop, and teach young techs how to make real money in the trade.
Smart stores are getting inside local schools.
Having learned a little in a high school vocational program, Christopher Walentschik took a part-time job at a Subaru/Mazda store in Illinois while studying at DePaul University’s School of Music.
He ultimately stayed in the service lane, and now, eight years after joining Jake Sweeney Mazda North in Ohio, Walentschik is a shop foreman.
He’s also one of two 2026 national winners of Mazda’s MAZTECH competition.
“While working, I had a mentor at the time tell me I could be very successful in this industry if I commit to it and that turned into what it is today,” Walentschik said.
Christopher Walentschik
Jake Sweeney
Mazda North
So… What’s the secret to more stories like his, and fewer tech shortages?
According to Briggs, it starts with getting into schools, and dealers should be the ones to initiate it.
Here’s why: Most instructors are retired techs, many from independent shops, who left the bays before cars became rolling computers.
Many have never worked in a dealership, so they don’t know who to call there, or how to find modern resources for their students, Briggs told CDG News.
“It’s up to us to reach out to the schools,” Briggs said. “It’s up to us to volunteer to get those students into our shops.”
Jennifer Briggs
Volkswagen of Marion
Briggs suggests mapping every high school CTE program and community college within 30 miles using the ASE Education Foundation’s website or the state’s.
Also, skip the front office and go straight to the instructor, or you’ll be stuck in admin forever.
Then, work the details:
Check the accreditation level.
Time in an ASE-accredited program counts toward the work experience ASE requires for full certification, Briggs said. At non-accredited schools, it doesn’t.
Open your OEM training portal: Honda, Subaru, Ford, and General Motors allow schools into their technician training. When dealers sponsor schools, students can earn OE certifications before they graduate, Briggs said.
Oh, and donate dealer-centric stuff. Briggs suggests: retired loaners, demo units, OEM-funded equipment, even non-running cars you’d otherwise wholesale. Students get time on real vehicles and can learn your brand, too.
Worth noting: Keep your pool wide. Briggs’ students have included a 49-year-old career changer, a 55-year-old farmer, and a 40-year-old Army veteran.
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Dealers should be making room for apprentices.
“…We have to get into the schools, but the other thing we have to do, which ties into it, is we have to make room,” Briggs said.
Her fix at Volkswagen of Marion: A second shift for internal work, planned for the first quarter.
Two apprentices will work days with her two master techs. At night, two master techs she plans to hire will each have two apprentices.
Freeing daytime bays for customer-pay and warranty work could add $1.8 million in service revenue in 2027, by her conservative projection.
Other ways to fit them in:
Pay the mentors. Briggs’ shop foreman gets extra paid hours every week to field younger techs’ questions, separate from what’s on the RO, she said.
Buy the first toolbox. Briggs plans to use apprentice grant money for starter sets, which run about $3,200 to $3,500 with student and apprentice discounts.
Come with the paperwork. Liability is usually the shop’s hesitation. Briggs created a Work-Based Learning Toolkit, which includes a templated student safety agreement and an emergency medical and insurance release.
It gets a dealer “75% of the way there before your legal team even opens the file,” she shared. (Briggs recommends having your attorney review it first.)
Some groups have already built what Briggs describes. In fact, three of her former students landed in such a place.
LaFontaine Automotive Group created its 18-month (Briggs approved!) apprenticeship after gathering about 50 staffers, from shop foremen to general managers, to brainstorm.
“This is actually feedback they directly gave us, and we’re using it,” Steven Parks, the group’s fixed ops director, told CDG News.
Steven Parks
LaFontaine Automotive Group
What came out of it:
Apprentices earn a salary, plus a weekly kicker based on their mentor’s hours, and the mentor covers half of that kicker.
When the apprentice graduates with six to eight certifications, the mentor gets $15,000, and the apprentice gets a $2,500 toolbox.
A week-by-week outline shows apprentices what to learn next.
The takeaway: An apprentice program is a plan, a pay structure, and a mentor, not just a body in the bay.
Techs need to be learning how to run their business.
Briggs, who started her career in dealership accounting, judges a store by service absorption: whether service covers all of the dealership’s overhead.
“That’s how you know you’re a good operator,” Briggs said. “But the people who generate that revenue are often treated as the lowest of the totem pole.”
She treats every station in a dealership as its own business, and says it’s on dealers to teach each person how to run theirs.
For techs, that starts with certifications and pay.
Briggs recommends a bump for every certification, from $25 more a week up to $2 more an hour. (The $13 to $17 an hour she’s cited for apprentices is for non-certified apprentices, she said.)
At $25 a week per cert, a G1 plus Michigan’s seven state auto certifications adds $200 a week, or $10,400 a year, Briggs said.
Those certs are easy to get, but nobody’s teaching young techs how to work those pay plans, she said.
LaFontaine pays certified line techs time and a half on warranty work, which costs the group about $3 million a year, Parks said.
Briggs also wants techs to protect their assets.
Tool truck financing can carry a 19.99% interest rate, she said. Some tool reps’ student programs offer up to 60% off and up to 12 months same-as-cash.
As dean, Briggs brought in a physical therapy club to teach students to stretch.
She also kept a Cornhole board in the lobby, since the throwing motion is the opposite of leaning over an engine all day.
Beyond that, keep investing once they’re hired. Briggs asked her service manager and shop foreman separately for each tech’s certs and specialties.
They gave very different answers, she said, and now she’s building a plan for each tech.
And don’t forget: Pay and plans matter, but so does being nice.
Foreman Walentschik has worked at five dealer groups. What keeps him at Jake Sweeney Mazda North isn’t complicated.
“Simply, it’s the people,” Walentschik said via email. “…No one is quite as friendly, passionate, family oriented as the Sweeney family…”
Bottom line: The industry has an execution problem, Briggs said, borrowing a line from her late mentor, auto retail giant Jim Ziegler. Dealers already know what to do.
“Everybody likes to talk, but nobody wants to actually roll up their sleeves and go to work,” Briggs said. “And we have to do that.”
The stakes, in her words?
“And if we don’t fix this as an industry, we’re f****d.”
