Another month and another theme in the stuff we are receiving and hearing from the industry. This month it is staff/training and apprentices.

Staffing is a huge issue across many industries with the drying up of immigrants who have previously helped boost our workforces in a range of skilled areas including automotive technicians, allied to somewhat of a reluctance in recent times to train enough apprentices due to uncertainties in the economy.

You will all have seen the double page spread advert in the August issue from Bapcor looking to hire staff across a variety of roles for their 61 stores. This month we have a story from Transdiesel who received 280 applications for their apprentice intake and were so impressed with the calibre that they expanded the planned intake by 60 percent to take on eight new apprentices. We heard a similar story from a workshop that sold and fitted 4WD Accessories – they advertised and had two great applicants for one job so decided to employ both as their workload was substantially increasing.

After our deadline we have been invited to visit the revamped and upgraded Auto Super Shoppes training academy who claim 100 percent placement for their graduates in the automotive industry. We will cover this in the October issue.

Meanwhile the restructuring of MITO into the new Te Pūkenga (The New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology) for the end of the year continues and meanwhile they are launching several new credentials such as the New Zealand certificate in Automotive Machining (See the August issue for details).

There is also a story in this issue of the Got a Trade? Got it Made! SpeedMeet programme running across New Zealand in August and September to introduce secondary students to prospective employers from across eight industry training organisations.