RV Technical Institute Exceeds ’22 Recruitment Goals by 10%

With a couple of weeks left in 2022, the team at the RV Technical Institute (RVTI) has met goals to have a minimum of 1,000 students in training and at least one RVTI student on board at 750 dealerships.

“Yeah, we sure did,” Executive Director Curt Hemmeler told RVBusiness Thursday (Dec. 8). “Right now, it’s about 10% over, so 110 % – I’ll take it.”

RVTI was launched in 2018 after the RV Industry Association (RVIA) board of directors approved a plan – and multi-million-dollar investment – to improve owner satisfaction, in large part by addressing an industry-wide shortage of trained technicians. With an adequate number of technicians in the field, repair event cycle time (RECT) – the amount of time RV owners must wait after bringing a rig to a dealership for repairs – can be significantly reduced, resulting in a greatly improved RV ownership experience.

Today, RVTI works with manufacturers, suppliers and leading RV experts to deliver the most up-to-date RV technician training available.

Curt Hemmeler

The recruitment goals for this year were part of a larger plan to grow RVTI into a leader on technical training.

“We strategically planned for this year to be the year of recruitment,” he said. “The curriculum was done. We had the delivery options all completed and it was time to do the third part of our mission, which is to recruit – our mission is to train, certify and recruit.”

The recruitment push started with the boards of directors of RVTI, RVDA and Go RVing approving subscription pricing to make it affordable along with a subsidy from Go RVing.

Next came the hiring of Tracy Anglemeyer, director of recruitment, and Halle Edminster, account specialist, who were brought on board in January to spearhead recruitment efforts.

Finally, RVTI partnered with online education provider Bisk to begin paid media campaigns which allowed recruitment outside the industry through ad placements on the Internet as well as optimization of social media, Hemmeler said.

With a recruitment strategy now in place, RVTI is looking to future growth.

“We’re going to continue to hammer down, obviously,” he said. “We’re going to continue to grow our presence in high schools, attending more high school counselor events this year, increasing our presence in homeschooling, military as well as correctional facilities.  We want to grow that 1,000 into 1,200 and we want to grow that 750 to 900. So, 20% increases or more on each side,” Hemmeler said.

The RVIA has approved a budget that includes the addition of four new positions to accommodate this future growth and to help handle the more than 5,000 technicians currently in training.

RVTI will be conducting a strategy session on Feb. 8.

“The board’s going to come together, and we’re going to brainstorm and bring knowledge from manufacturers and suppliers and dealers to build out the next one- to three-year strategic plan for RTVI,” Hemmeler said.

Source: https://rvbusiness.com/rv-technical-institute-exceeds-22-recruitment-goals-by-10/