- pbourke2
Workshop manager - Melbourne
From humble beginnings, Commuter Cycles has grown to be widely regarded as Australia’s home of Adventure Cycling and exploring by bike. Due to our continued growth we’re looking to ‘Assemble Voltron’ and require the skills of an experienced and chill mechanic to run the Commuter workshop.
Key Responsibilities:
Coordinating all workshop workflow.
Managing all workshop bookings including including a large volume of high priority in-house custom builds and ensuring adequate staffing levels (and communicating capacity/timeframes)
Ensuring that all customer communication is timely and transparent
Ensuring workshop stock, consumables and tools are optimised.
Rolling stock takes, ordering of ‘non-inventory’ stock, and regular reviews of the workshop tools/infrastructure.
Assisting retail customers when the FOH staff are at capacity.
Workshop processes
Defining and consistently improving and updating all workshop processes
Recording. communicating and training for new and/or revised processes
Policing, monitoring and evaluation of processes.
Working with the Front of House Manager to ensure that the two areas are working together harmoniously.
Working with the management team to assist defining strategic goals and formulating tactics to meet them.
Workshop staff training
Identifying skills and knowledge gaps at a team and individual level
Coordinating internal and external training to bridge the gaps
Key Selection Criteria (don’t stress if you don’t have ticks in every box!)
You’ll be an expert bike mechanic with significant industry experience.
You are ready to “not be on the tools” for at least half your work time, and relish the opportunity to step up into management.
You’re an excellent communicator, who gets energy from interacting with colleagues and customers alike.
A keen rider, who loves getting around by bike during the week, and heading on varied bike adventures on the weekend.
Love problem solving, and enjoy taking ownership of problems that are created beyond your control, but you have the means to sort them out.
Highly driven. You’re a motivated self-starter who has their ‘finger on the pulse’ of technical developments in the cycling industry, and is always looking for the next opportunity to improve and extend workshop capacity.
A systems person. You like thinking methodically, and get a kick out of creating, improving and policing processes to reduce recurring problems and improve the quality and consistency of the workshop output.
A natural leader, who can bring people along with them and energise others around a shared goal.
A good decision maker. When disagreements arise, you are comfortable with having to make a tough call and then implement and enforce it.
Strategic. Even though much of your headspace is devoted to small, tactical, decisions, you always have one eye on the long-term.
Flexible. You enjoy creating stability, but when required you can deviate from the norm to get things done.
Whilst fixing and building bikes is your real passion, you also love helping people discover the joy of everyday and adventure cycling so you get a kick out of the time you spend helping retail customers when the Front of House staff need a hand.
A typical day might include:
Get in a few minutes early to make yourself a coffee.
Share the details of a ride you did over the weekend with your colleagues, and send the route to a customer we built a bike for last week that was interested about it when you mentioned it in passing.
Scan the jobs to ensure that they are doable for the day, and assign jobs to mechanics.
Do a stocktake of spokes and place an order. DT have been out of one common length for ages, so you get the Stock Guru to get that length from another supplier.
You put a message on Slack to let everyone know that 262mm Black Comps will be replaced by Pillar for now.
Build a new bike for the floor.
The Front of House staff are all busy, so you spend an hour discussing and test riding gravel bikes with a customer who can’t decide between a Surly Straggler and Kona Rove DL.
When you’ve finished with that customer, you check in with the mechanic who had to discuss alternatives with a customer who’s big job had gone sideways.
Send the booking reminders to pre-booked services for the next day, double check that the Shimano order for a workshop consumable got placed by the Stock Guru.
Scan through the jobs for tomorrow to make sure there isn’t anything that needs to be done to smooth the way.
Have a knock-off beer and ride home.
What we offer:
A long term, strategic role in Melbourne’s home of Adventure, Touring and Commuter cycling.
Full-Time, Monday to Friday hours.
An opportunity to lead a team of 3-5 dedicated mechanics.
An energetic, flexible, fun and challenging work environment.
A competitive package to be negotiated based on your skills and experience.
To apply, please submit:
a Cover Letter which addresses the Key Selection Criteria (not all of them!!) and has a description of your current bikes and cycling goals, and
your Resume
to huw@commutercycles.com.au by COB Monday 7th March.