I’m a 17 year old girl who started getting interested in cars and motorbikes, started taking pics of them and that goes from there to a hunger to try and eat up as many information as possible, I’d say I’m still mid about it but I’m there.
I’m curious when I start taking it seriously, where do I go to learn? do I work at a dealership and learn or go through a school or a college? what books and channels are useful for me to get a head start from?
Give up on being a mechanic and become a service advisor.
There’s no money in being an automotive mechanic, especially at a dealer. The money is in diesel and medium+ truck. Especially if you don’t mind living onsite at the bottom of a mine.
Women are drastically underrepresented in the field. Sexism is rampant in the shops. Guys grope each other for fun.
But women are also underrepresented in the office. Women customers trust a female advisor more than a male. Male customers want to deal with a female advisor more than a male…
And you can keep your hobby passion for turning wrenches without turning your passion into your career and hating it.
I’m not so sure about that part. We have two women service advisors and customers will sometimes question them, but then I tell the customer the same thing and everything is ok. I don’t know for sure if it’s because they are women or because they don’t know how to fix a vehicle. I don’t think most service advisors know how to fix a vehicle, though.
That’s just typical service advisor problems. No one believes you because you’re not covered in grease. And places like Midas and Jiffy Lube don’t give the profession any help.
Since I’ve started working at my dealer as a tech, (about 2 years) we’ve had one female technician and she was one of the best. Moved out of state though. Our advisors are split about 50/50, and I think we might actually have more male advisors. There is plenty of money at the right dealership. I’ll admit though, I definitely work on my own stuff much less now.