Using Reviews in the Hiring Process for an Auto Shop Manager

Wouldn’t you love to get hundreds of unbiased references for a candidate before you made a hiring decision? If you’re hiring a GM or service writer for an auto repair shop, that’s exactly what online reviews provide.

Before the interview, pull up their previous shop on Google and read a year or two of reviews with one question in mind: what happened at the front counter? Service writers and managers are the people customers deal with, so the review record is largely a record of them. Look for patterns. Are customers describing clear estimates and honest updates, or surprises on the invoice? When something went wrong, who made it right? Reviews often name names, and a candidate praised by name across a dozen reviews tells you more than any reference call.

Two cautions. Reviews reflect the whole shop, including an owner who may have tied your candidate’s hands, so treat a rough record as a question rather than a verdict. And the best use of what you find is in the interview itself: ask about a pattern you noticed and listen to how they talk about it. Do they own the problem? Does their answer demonstrate the self-awareness required of a shop leader?

We’ve started using AI to take this further. Everyone seems to know what to say in an interview, but staying consistent with a year of public customer feedback is much harder to fake. You can check a large sample of reviews in just a few minutes:

Step 1: Copy a year or two of reviews from the previous shop into a document. No special tools, just copy and paste.

Step 2: Add the resume, your interview notes, and any assessment results.

Step 3: Ask the AI to summarize how the front counter operated, and flag patterns and inconsistencies across the review record, interview notes, and assessment results, citing specific reviews behind each observation.

Step 4: Use what it flags as your second-interview questions.

AI isn’t making the decision, it’s organizing a lot of disparate information to help you interview and hire more effectively.

Hiring mistakes in these roles are expensive, the public record is free, and almost nobody checks it.

Frequently asked questions

Is it fair to judge a candidate by their previous shop’s reviews?
Not by themselves, because reviews reflect the whole shop and its owner, and your candidate may not have had the authority to fix what customers complained about. Use the review record to form questions, then let the candidate’s own answers and track record drive the decision.

What is a hiring assessment and how is it used?
A hiring assessment is a structured evaluation given to candidates, usually a skills test, a work-style questionnaire, or both. For manager and service writer roles, assessments typically measure communication, problem-solving, and how a candidate handles pressure at the counter. They work best as one input alongside the interview and the public record, since each catches things the others miss.

Will my hiring information be used to train the AI?
It depends on the tool and the plan. Business and paid tiers generally let you keep your chats out of model training, while some consumer plans use conversations for training unless you opt out. Before pasting hiring materials into any AI tool, check its data settings, and leave out personal details you don’t need for the evaluation, like contact information.