Stop Hiring Like Your Hair's on Fire (Unless You Like More Fires)

Want to know the fastest way to create more emergencies in your shop?

Make an emergency hire.

I know. That sounds backwards.

You're short a tech, the bays are stacked, phones are ringing, your service advisor is drowning, and you've got a customer in the lobby giving you the look.

So you do what any reasonable shop owner would do.

You hire the fastest person available.

Not the right person. The fast person.

And for about 72 hours, it feels like relief.

Then reality kicks in.

HERE'S WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS WHEN YOU HIRE IN A PANIC

I call it The Emergency Hire Domino Effect, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

➡️Domino 1: A gap opens. Somebody quits. Calls out. Goes on vacation. Or you just grew faster than your team can handle. Doesn't matter how it happens — suddenly the shop can't breathe.

➡️Domino 2: The pucker pressure hits. You feel it in your chest. Cars are backing up. Customers are waiting. Revenue is walking out the door. "We're losing customers every hour" — sound familiar?

➡️Domino 3: You lower your standards. Not on purpose. You just… stop vetting as hard. You skip the reference check. You ignore that gut feeling during the interview. You tell yourself, "I just need a warm body in that bay."

➡️Domino 4: You overpay, overpromise, or both. You throw money at the problem because you're desperate. Or worse, you ignore the red flags — the attitude, the outside drama, the skill claims that don't quite add up — because you "need someone now."

➡️Domino 5: They slow everything down. Wrong parts ordered. Constant questions. Sloppy workflow. Your service advisor is now babysitting instead of selling. Your best tech is picking up slack instead of producing.

➡️Domino 6: Comebacks start piling up. Warranty work eats your lunch. Customers who trusted you are now frustrated. Your reputation — the thing that took you years to build — takes hits you can feel but can't always measure.

➡️Domino 7: Your good people pay the price. Your A-tech "steps up" again. And again. And again. Until one morning they don't step up — they step out.

Now you've lost the person who was holding your shop together.

And you're right back where you started.

Only worse.

Because now you're not just short one tech. You're short one tech, dealing with the fallout from a bad hire, and your best people are questioning whether this is still the right shop for them.

That's the emergency hire cycle. And it doesn't stop until you break it.

WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING?

Because the pain of being short-staffed is immediate and loud.

It screams at you every morning when you look at the board and count the bays that aren't producing.

And hiring someone — anyone — makes the screaming stop. For a minute.

But here's the real math most shop owners never do:

A bad hire doesn't just "not help." They cost you in slower billed hours, in comebacks and warranty labor, in your service advisor's time spent managing confusion instead of writing tickets, in your time spent babysitting instead of running your business, and in the customers who quietly stop coming back because the work wasn't right or the wait was too long.

You didn't hire help. You hired another fire.

The real problem isn't "lack of techs."

It's not that Indeed sucks (although it does).

It's not that "nobody wants to work" (they do — just not for shops that only show up when they're desperate).

The real problem is this: You only recruit when you're in crisis.

So your shop is always living one call-out away from collapse.

One tech gets sick and "it turns the whole place upside down." One person quits and suddenly you've "depleted your bench." One no-show and you're scrambling to figure out who can cover what.

That's not a hiring problem. That's a fragility problem.

And it has a fix.

THE NO-DESPERATION HIRING PROTOCOL

This isn't complicated. It's four moves.

But they require you to do something that feels unnatural: recruit when you don't need anyone.

1. Build a bench — even when you're "good right now."

Always be collecting conversations. Not applications. Conversations. Keep a warm list of 10-20 people — techs you've met, talked to, or who've shown interest. Most of the best techs aren't on job boards. They're working. But that doesn't mean they're not open to something better. Your job is to be visible when they're ready to move, not scrambling when you're ready to beg.

2. Set your minimum standards and don't break them — especially under pressure.

This is where desperation kills you. Write down your non-negotiables: shows up on time, attitude fits the culture, honesty about skill level, baseline competency. Tape it to the wall if you have to. Because when the pressure hits, your brain will try to talk you into "he seemed okay." That's the desperation talking. Not your judgment.

3. Use a calm hiring process even when things feel urgent.

Phone screen. Structured interview. References — and not just any references. Ask for the names of the two best techs they've worked with and call them. A working interview if it's practical. Yes, even when you're short-handed. Especially when you're short-handed. Because a bad hire when you're already struggling doesn't ease the pain. It multiplies it.

4. Stop building a fragile shop.

Cross-train where you can. Document your key processes. And stop being the bottleneck that holds everything together through sheer willpower. If one person calling out can break your entire operation, the problem isn't that person. It's the system. Build the shop so it bends without breaking.

"But Chris, I'm dying right now."

I hear you. And I'm not going to pretend that building a bench fixes today's fire.

If you're in a genuine emergency right now, do this: Reduce your intake temporarily. Protect your A-tech from interruptions — they're your most valuable asset and they're probably already stretched thin.

Over-communicate ETAs to your customers (they can handle honesty better than they can handle silence).

And then — today, not next month — start building the bench.

Because the next emergency is already on its way. The only question is whether you'll face it from a position of strength or a position of panic.

The shop owners who are winning at hiring aren't luckier than you.

They're not in a better market. They're not paying twice what you are.

They just stopped waiting for a crisis to start recruiting.

They built a bench before the breakdown.

And when that inevitable gap appeared — a tech leaves, someone gets hurt, business grows faster than expected — they didn't panic.

They made a phone call.

That's the difference between a shop that's always scrambling and a shop that's always ready.

You don't need luck. You need a bench.

LET'S TALK ABOUT IT

What's the most expensive "emergency hire" you've ever made? What did it really cost you — in time, in comebacks, in stress, in customers?
Be honest: are you currently hiring in desperation or building a bench?
If one person called out tomorrow morning, what breaks first in your shop?

Drop your answers below.👇

No judgment.

Just shop owners helping shop owners figure this out.

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