A LOOK AT SUCCESSFUL STRATEGIES FOR ATTRACTING TOP TALENT TO YOUR DEALERSHIP
It’s human nature to try and save a little up front, yet sometimes this can result in us being labeled “penny-wise and pound foolish.” And when it comes to hiring staff for your dealership, it’s a very important consideration.
Traditionally, the approach to finding new people often revolved around referrals from family members, friends or associates, often with little in the way of proper screening or skills testing. Today however, such an approach can have big risks, resulting not only in costs associated with bad hires but potential litigation as well. And yet when searching for people to hire it can sometimes be hard to comprehend just how significant those risks can be.
Gary Fenwick, Managing Partner at RightFit Plus, which provides online pre-screening and employment testing for businesses, says that major changes in both the employment market and the legislation surrounding it, mean that like many things, having a clearly defined process in place is important to avoid any major pitfalls.
Fenwick says that when it comes to auto retailing, there’s often a bit of a leap-frog approach required to make that happen. “Today, the tools are readily available in the marketplace and the high quality employees are there. What’s often missing is the willingness among management to embrace them and really move the business forward.”
Fenwick notes that given the knowledge and sophistication of today’s auto retail customer, plus the marketing and retention tools available to dealers, recruitment practices can seem to get left behind. And yet without the right people on board, successful utilization of those tools and delivering the optimal customer experience is often challenging at best.
The need for specialization
Compounding the problem is that putting in place a defined hiring process requires specialist expertise. Given the complexity of auto retailing and the demands placed on dealership staff, this means that either creating a dedicated HR department or partnering with a recruitment and training specialist (or a combination of both) is often the best solution.
Fenwick says that two core fundamentals to ensuring an effective hiring practice relate to firstly, having a clearly defined legal process in place to remove the risk of litigation and secondly, a process that delivers the type of candidate needed to fit within the organization. “Both of these things are very important,” he says “and both are solvable.”
And it was those key issues that partly led to the creation of RightFit Plus. “When we looked at the marketplace, we saw that some providers were good at offering pre-screening services or employment testing but not both. We therefore wanted to make sure the marketplace had a one-stop shop for working with HR.”
As an online service, RightFit Plus is accessible 24/7 and also uses benchmarking software, designed to provide consistency in the hiring process across multiple locations — a particularly important consideration for dealer groups.
“What we’ve done is identify character traits of a successful person in the flagship store and use this as a template around other locations where we are recruiting.”
Fenwick says the result provides a consistent hiring practice across all stores within the group, limiting liability and protecting the dealer group’s reputation.
Creating an internal HR department within a dealership or dealer group can be tough but with the growth in store consolidation in Canada, more and more are seeing the benefits. A good example is the Davis Automotive Group, based in Alberta. The group currently has nine stores and also a fully-fledged HR department. And it’s a strategy that’s been paying dividends.
The Davis Group has been the recipient of Aon Hewitt’s 50 Best Employers in Canada award not once, but twice. And as they say, it’s people that make the difference.
Process and support
Cindy Donaldson, Director of Human Resources for the Davis Automotive Group, says process is key. “As a team, we provide recruitment and on-board services, annual reviews for employees, handbooks, plus recognition and rewards programs.”
Donaldson notes that in auto retail, turnover rates still tend to be fairly high. “Statistics Canada noted in 2013 that voluntary labour turnover in 2013 averaged around 7 per cent. In retailing it’s around 20 per cent.” Donaldson says that traditionally, dealerships often have a hard time attracting and retaining good talent, quite simply because there is nobody in place to really manage the process. “It’s important to have those screening processes in place, to have proper advertising campaigns and work on retention strategies with managers in the dealership.” She notes that in the case of the Davis Group, such an approach has proved highly effective.
To help find the right people, the HR department builds a general template and applies information contained within the resume of each candidate. Donaldson says the result saves time and puts the most suitable candidates and the dealership together. “Going through resumes is important,” says Donaldson but she says that the follow up phone call and in-person interviews are often where it really counts. “You can often tell if somebody has ‘fluffed-up’ their resume or not simply by talking with them.”
Nevertheless, she can’t emphasize enough that diligence is key when recruiting and the more information a dealership is able to gather about potential hires the better placed it is likely to be in finding the right candidates.
Skills shortage?
In the automotive sector, it’s well known that some positions can prove very difficult to fill, particularly when it comes to Fixed Operations. Qualified service and collision technicians are in high demand, something that Auto-Jobs.ca is only too aware of. Auto-Jobs President Sophie Senneville, says dealers can ensure they attract the best and brightest by putting together competitive packages and emphasizing the attributes of working for that particular organization. “Can you offer a package for the candidate that aligns with the firm’s goals in the short and medium term? Can you provide compensation that will attract the right people?”
Senneville says this is hugely important for employers because the right candidates are often in high demand and as a result, can afford to be picky.
Another consideration often relates to background, not only the skills each candidate possesses but where they’ve worked and studied previously. For younger hires, education is often hugely important especially since good quality programs tend to provide a mixture of both classroom and on-the job-work experience, whether it’s sales, service or collision related. “There are a number of institutions that specialize in training for automotive retail,” says Senneville. “For us at Auto-Jobs, if a candidate has gone through a program such as those offered by the Automotive Business School of Canada, we know they will be worth considering.”
Even for short term training, dealerships can also look to their vendor networks as a good source for candidates. Senneville says that when it comes to roles like the F&I manager, firms such as IA-SAL as well as Action Solutions provide high quality training programs and have a great understanding of what’s needed at the dealership level.
NOW YOU’VE FOUND THEM, HOW DO YOU KEEP THEM?Finding the right candidates is one thing, keeping them is another. Given how costly bad hires can prove to be, dealerships need to Donaldson also says that asking for opinions and fostering a sense of inclusiveness for activities as wide ranging as benefit plan reviews and special marketing promotions creates a sense of value and appreciation among employees — encouraging team building and the need for collective responsibility. “Our staff are what have made the group the success it is today,” she says. “Without them we wouldn’t be here.” It arguably goes back to the old adage that if you treat your employees well and encourage them to make a difference, they most certainly will. They’re also more likely to stick around too. |
