Alex

Indeed has become more popular in some cases than monster and careerbuilder, it’s worth a try 😁

@OTPAuto Have you tried putting an ad on indeed? Its free. Also try searching on indeed resume https://www.indeed.com/resumes

Auto Care Association Supports Supreme Court Decision Allowing States to Collect Online Sales Tax POSTED BY AUTO CARE NEWS ON JUNE 21, 2018 The Auto Care Association applauds today’s decision by the Supreme Court to permit states to collect sales tax on purchases of products made over the Internet. The 5-4 decision means that online sellers will now be on a level playing field with brick and mortar retailers regarding charging sales tax. The Auto Care Association had filed an amicus brief with other retail groups urging the Supreme Court to hear the case based on the price advantage that the current system provided on-line sellers. The decision overturns a previous Supreme Court decision that required companies to have a physical presence in the state where the purchaser resided in order to charge sales tax. “This is an important decision for many of Auto Care’s retail members and we are pleased that the Supreme Court saw the unfairness in the current system and determined to make everyone play by the same rules,” said Aaron Lowe, senior vice president, regulatory and government affairs, Auto Care Association. “We hope that implementation of the sales tax will be done uniformly across state lines to ensure a fair and efficient system of tax collection.

On June 20, the Automotive Service Association (ASA) hosted a webinar called “The Road to Great Technicians” with Chris Chesney, senior director of customer training for the CARQUEST Technical Institute. Written by Chasidy Rae Sisk * Attendees qualified for one credit from the Automotive Management Institute. After ASA Vice President Tony Molla introduced the webinar’s presenter, Chesney recounted his collaboration with the National Automotive Service Task Force (NASTF) to identify the Road to Great Technicians. They began in March 2016 when NASTF’s Spring General Meeting focused on the topic of building a road to great technicians. Chesney was asked to explain the current state of the aftermarket training industry. He defined the current state of aftermarket training as a lack of industry standards and a structured career path, unorganized training offerings, and disjointed efforts by industry organizations. However, he also identified many good building elements. Current problems in the industry include the inability to find new talent, graduates not performing to industry standards, an inability to afford techs and the amount of time is takes to replace a technician or advisor who leaves a company because companies do not build bench strength. Chesney stressed, “You have to invest in those new technicians, but many shops cannot find someone who can perform out of the gate, so we need to focus on growing our own and building our bench strength to overcome this problem. We have a need now for the next several years. Reports indicate that we need 80,000 technicians each year, but only 25,000 are being produced.” Chesney identified the aging workforce, oncoming tidal wave of technology and lack of a structured career path as reasons for the significant needs for technicians. Focusing on the influx of technology, he explored the unseemly amount of data that is transferred within modern vehicles. “It’s not the problem of education,” he said. “It’s our problem, and we’re going to look into that.” Chesney presented a picture of the Technician Life Cycle, which included the following seven steps: secondary shadowing, post-secondary intern, entry-level apprentice, technician, senior technician, master technician and specialist; however, he noted that this does not include possible “off ramps” on the Road to Great Technicians. Occurring after an industry professional becomes an entry-level technician, these “off ramps” include in-service continuing education and higher education, which can offer technicians a variety of paths to pursue in their careers, ranging from master technician to shop foreman to shop owner or even becoming an engineer for an OEM. In a January 2018 meeting, the education team at NASTF identified a subcommittee of industry experts tasked with creating a framework of education around the life cycle of a technician and other job roles within the industry. This framework is intended for curriculum providers to use in order to offer a career pathway that means something to the industry and is transferrable throughout the industry. The group began with the vision that they would prescribe degrees of competencies at every skill level, focused on the safety and reliability of the ground vehicle fleet. This Road to Great Technicians team consists of NASTF Chair Mark Saxonberg, Toyota’s Jill Saunders, WTI’s Rob Morrell, CTI’s Chris Chesney, NACAT’s Bill Haas, of Diag.net’s Scott Brown, WTI’s Mark Warren, NASTF’s Donny Seyfer, ASE’s Trish Serratore, S/P2’s Kyle Holt, DrewTech’s Bob Augustineand Cengage’s Erin Brennan. Exploring possible solutions to the industry’s problem, this group defined 13 solution elements, starting with new and enhanced communication with parents and influencers of peripheral students, early engagement with tactile students in middle and high school, support of STEM and development of a well-articulated career path with clear opportunities for advancement and growth that students and parents can see. The industry also needs to get involved with vocational education content to ensure these programs provide the right skills to students. Chesney explained, “They’re producing the wrong technicians because we aren’t involved. We have to be involved. We need to design a curriculum for schools and employers to ensure that, regardless of where technicians work, they are uniformly trained for the skill level. We have to provide people with the opportunity to grow throughout their careers.” The team also believes that the industry needs to provide internship experience, develop programs to help in-service technicians become mentors, and ensure that testing and certification programs are uniform and tiered to provide milestones for achievement. Employers also must find ways to provide wages and benefits that are competitive with other industries attracting the same individuals. “As technicians progress through their career, it is imperative to communicate career options to ensure they don’t leave the industry,” Chesney elaborated. “Vehicle technology has accelerated to unprecedented levels, necessitating faster and more thorough technician skill development to ensure public safety. To add further credibility and value to the process, NASTF is encouraging practical examinations similar to other safety-related skills as a means to verify requisite skill level attainment. Currently, this is not regulated and we cannot keep up with the advancing rates of technology, but we need a way to prove our skills and be prepared for what’s coming, not merely what is on the road right now.” The current state of industry education is outcome-based and not sufficient to serve today’s technology. The future of education must be competency-based with a focus on mastery of skill and validation of a technician’s mastery and development of skills that are recognized and transferable. A competency-based education offers a variable class structure and the ability to test out of the subject matter at different levels, enabling students to finish as they are able. The Road to Great Technicians team defined a new NASTF Technician Life Cycle that includes seven steps: apprentice technician, maintenance technician, service technician, repair technician, diagnostic technician, master technician, and specialist technician. According to Chesney, “Each step would require a variety of requirements as far as training and experience. They would also require mastery of competencies using curriculum provided by the industry, to include mentoring, demonstrated skills and self-paced curriculum. Finally, technicians seeking to advance would prove their skills through oral and hands-on exams.” Continuing the work they have started, the team plans to provide the industry with a white paper by the end of the year, but they encourage the industry to comment and opine. While the team will be limited in size in order to maximize effectiveness, they encourage industry professionals to join NASTF and the NASTF Education Team. The group’s vision for the future of automotive education culminates in the idea of the Automotive Institute of Science and Technology, which would include a pathway education in a project-based environment. In ninth and 10th grades, students would sample each pathway through projects designed to highlight the different aspects and career fields before choosing a specific pathway in 11th grade to focus on in their final two years of high school. Their choices would be automotive technology as a trade, business, or engineering. While obtaining their associates degree, students would enter the discipline of their choice, working in shops to gain practical experience while simultaneously acting as mentors to younger students. Chesney concluded the webinar with a question and answer session. Article Source: https://www.autobodynews.com/index.php/component/k2/item/15820-asa-hosts-road-to-great-technicians-webinar-with-carquest-s-chris-chesney.html

Google has a great tool that allows you to check the mobile "friendliness" of your website. Just enter your website url at Google dedicated page: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly You should get something like: If you don't, time to look into updating your website 😁

Have a happy 4th of July everyone!

https://www.moderntiredealer.com/news/730291/bridgestone-is-dropping-atd-as-a-distributor

We've created this section here for you to post your shop website. This is a great way to get some feedback and suggestions from your peers. Please post relevant automotive shop websites only. Any posts including non automotive shop websites will be moderated and removed. Thank you.

@JustTheBest You can post the videos directly within the post by just copying and pasting the youtube url into the editor 😁

That's a good point about some states that do not charge sales tax. There's also suggestions being made about having an online sales tax amount that is the same across state borders, so we'll see where that goes.

Very interesting ruling today and it'll be interesting to see how it affects smaller online sellers. Larger ones like Amazon already comply in some states and will easily implement it, but what about their marketplace sellers that don't charge tax? ebay is another one....

It's been a while since I made a blog entry so I've decided that I am going to start to add entries around using AutoShopOwner and things that may be of interest. For this entry, I'd like to showcase our Activity tab in the main menu and try to describe how you can use it and some of our other views to bring up the content that you want to see vs viewing everything. Today we have a few ways of seeings what's new from your last visit and content in general. UNREAD CONTENT You can click the Unread Content link towards the top right and that'll give you all your "unread" content since your last visit. It's also available under Activity Streams (next section). Some people love this feature on forums and it's handy for frequent visitors, but can be a very long list if you haven't been here in a while. At any given time you can "Mark site read" and it'll show everything as being read. You can even mark topics and full forums as read (stops topic titles from being bold because bold means unread) ACTIVITY STREAMS Click on the Activity section from the main menu and you'll see a link for All Activity, My Activity Streams, and Search. This is where you can really tailor your view of content that you want to see. Start with one of our default streams or give a shot at creating your own stream to show only what YOU want to see! FLUID FORUM VIEW If creating your own Activity Stream isn't for you and you like to just go to the main page of the forum and see what's going on, then Fluid View may be for you. You can toggle between Fluid and Traditional views easily by clicking on the layout button. You can also customize which forums will show topics by clicking on the "Showing topics from all forums" link. Hopefully this explains some of the ways we have available for our members to get to the content they want to see and stay updated. If all else fails, just use the search box at the top of the page!

As a member of AutoShopOwner, you can manage the types of notifications that we provide you for when things happen here, either via email or when you login and view your notifications list (the bell icon). For instance, when you start a new topic in a forum or reply to an existing topic, you are automatically subscribed to receive a notification when new content is posted. That can happen by email or not, depends on how you want to receive it. To get to your notifications management section, first go to Account Settings Then go to Notification Settings There you will see some your current preference settings for overall delivery method, follow preference, browser notifications, etc. Scroll down and you'll see individual notification settings where you can pick and choose how you are notified. For email, an email is sent every time that action takes place based on your delivery method above. For Notification List, every time an action takes place, it will be listed in your notifications panel under the little bell icon. One more setting we have is for our weekly newsletter, which includes a list of topics and activity from the week. You can opt in and out from your account settings as well. If you haven't taken a look at your settings yet, we encourage you to check it out. 😃

Check out some of the instructor led training at CTI http://ctionline.com/index.php/cti-instructor-led-class-schedule.html Also WTI http://www.worldpac.com/training/classes/technical/

That's a great tip! https://moz.com/blog/boost-conversions-with-google-posts

Google has a great informational page that outlines best practices to increase your website/business ranking in search results. Can’t find your business? Improve your info. You may find that your business doesn’t appear for relevant searches in your area. To maximize how often your customers see your business in local search results, complete the following tasks in Google My Business. Providing and updating business information in Google My Business can help your business’s local ranking on Google and enhance your presence in Search and Maps. Enter complete data Local results favor the most relevant results for each search, and businesses with complete and accurate information are easier to match with the right searches. Make sure that you’ve entered all of your business information in Google My Business, so customers know more about what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you. Provide information like (but not limited to) your physical address, phone number, and category. Make sure to keep this information updated as your business changes. Learn how to edit your business information Verify your location(s) Verify your business locations to give them the best opportunity to appear for users across Google products, like Maps and Search. Learn more about verification Keep your hours accurate Entering and updating your opening hours, including special hours for holidays and special events, lets potential customers know when you’re available and gives them confidence that when they travel to your location, it will be open. Learn how to edit your hours Manage and respond to reviews Interact with customers by responding to reviews that they leave about your business. Responding to reviews shows that you value your customers and the feedback that they leave about your business. High-quality, positive reviews from your customers will improve your business’s visibility and increase the likelihood that a potential customer will visit your location. Encourage customers to leave feedback by creating a link they can click to write reviews. Learn more Add photos Adding photos to your listings shows people your goods and services, and can help you tell the story of your business. Accurate and appealing pictures may also show potential customers that your business offers what they’re searching for. Learn more How Google determines local ranking Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search. For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that's farther away from your location is more likely to have what you're looking for than a business that's closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results. Relevance Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for. Adding complete and detailed business information can help Google better understand your business and match your listing to relevant searches. Distance Just like it sounds–how far is each potential search result from the location term used in a search? If a user doesn't specify a location in their search, Google will calculate distance based on what’s known about their location. Prominence Prominence refers to how well-known a business is. Some places are more prominent in the offline world, and search results try to reflect this in local ranking. For example, famous museums, landmark hotels, or well-known store brands that are familiar to many people are also likely to be prominent in local search results. Prominence is also based on information that Google has about a business from across the web (like links, articles, and directories). Google review count and score are factored into local search ranking: more reviews and positive ratings will probably improve a business's local ranking. Your position in web results is also a factor, so SEO best practices also apply to local search optimization. There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google. We do our best to keep the details of the search algorithm confidential to make the ranking system as fair as possible for everyone. Source: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en

@autobodyguys Nice layout! Looks like you are using a wordpress theme commonly used to build sites which is good. I would consider moving your domain to https:// at some point and checking your slider images for clarity on larger screens. The car image for instance, its stretched beyond its dimensions causing it to be slightly grainy on larger desktop screens, which you can solve by using a larger image for desktop and smaller image for mobile or resizing correctly. Personally, I'm not a fan of using white text with shadowing on white background like in your logo because it gets lost a bit, but that may be just me. 😋 Maybe put a background on the "collision repair" text within the logo image like you have it on your building: Your slider image text should be moved higher because its at the bottom of the screen on desktops (checked in Chrome browser). You should put that higher towards the middle of the page view. This is on a quick look of course...😁 You can run a SEO test here: https://seositecheckup.com, you'll find a few things like image alt tags and page caching to improve speed as opportunities.

Most websites and website designers these days follow the guideline of 160 characters when writing website page meta descriptions. When they are longer, Google just truncates them to 160...well until December 2017 when Google decided to accept that number to be around 300 with some recommending to make it 320. If your web designer wrote your website page descriptions shorter, you aren't taking advantage of the description tag to better your SEO and possibly your click-through rate. It's time to look at your website pages to be sure. Feel free to join and post in my group and we'll take a peak for you. Good read: https://www.compose.agency/insights/meta-description-length-2018

There is an ongoing topic you may want to check out:

Welcome to AutoShopOwner! Bumping this topic for you...😉