As a 23-year-old body and collision technician with Rush Enterprises, Se’ara Hart is only at the beginning of her career—but with two third-place finishes in the two Tech Skills Rodeo competitions she has participated in, she is already working to master her trade.
Hart first began her technical career in high school, where her interest stemmed from her love of loud cars and painting. Her school offered a mechanics class and an auto body class, the latter of which contained the painting section, so that was the class she took.
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While her enrollment started out for fun, body and collision work became more appealing after Hart graduated high school early and needed to consider her next steps. Enrolling in a four-year college wasn’t attractive to Hart, but she kept thinking about how much she enjoyed those auto body classes and decided to find a technical school to pursue a career in maintenance.
“Originally, I was going to go to UTI [Universal Technical Institute] in Sacramento for a one-year program,” Hart said. However, after more research, she found that her local Nampa Campus of the College of Western Idaho had a two-year program. “It seemed a lot cheaper, and it had better options for afterward like internships to find a job after you graduate,” Hart explained, leading her to enter the program at 17 years old.
Hart's classes had students of varying ages, with Hart often the youngest. Her classmates could range in age from 20 to 50, and she was frequently the only girl in the class, mirroring her high school auto class experience.
“Being in classes in high school, you get used to ‘guy lingo,’” Hart added, “and you just have fun with it at that point.”
From school to work
From her classes at CWI, Hart’s next step was an internship program in the last semester of her second year, which rotates students through shops looking to hire technicians. She was hired at the second shop where she interned, working there for eight months in 2021 as a teardown technician and repairing plastic, bumpers, and handling minor body work.
Following her original interest in art, Hart wanted to become a paint prepper, but that shop wasn’t able to confirm whether she could get the role with suitable pay. So when she got a call from an estimator at Rush Enterprises to come work for them, she jumped at the chance.
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In her new role, Hart largely has little to no problems related to her gender. But that doesn’t mean work is always easy.
“I have had an issue with a guy, and I don’t want to assume he’s sexist,” she explained. “But he does like to pester me a lot in the shop. I just try to be the bigger person.”
This kind of ribbing adds another dimension to Hart feeling the need to prove her place in the shop, not just to her coworkers but to her customers.
“I always get nervous if I have to do something really quickly before [a truck] leaves and a customer sees me,” Hart said. “I always get a little nervous about that because I worry they’ll be like ‘Oh, a chick did it? Let me double-check this.’”
This kind of dynamic sometimes makes it difficult to ask for help, too, Hart said.
Despite this, Hart said she has found little resistance to her presence in the shops where she has worked. While she might need to lean on her coworkers in some instances, such as for some of the physical aspects of the job, she’s been able to establish support networks with them where they offer each other mutual help and advice. As a result, some of her largest challenges are the insecurities that any new technician may grapple with.
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“It’s just an in-the-mind thing where you have to fight irrational thoughts,” Hart noted. “I don't think most people care [about my gender]. I think a lot of people actually think it’s cool, especially the guys.”
To succeed, Hart recommends that other women consider their local auto and diesel programs if they want to enter the industry, as well as taking part in competitions like SkillsUSA and Rush’s Tech Skills Rodeo to hone their skills.
“Be open-minded; not everyone's sexist or crazy. You just have to be confident, learn from mistakes, and just own up to it,” Hart asserted.
