The automotive industry is facing a rather bleak reality: there simply aren’t enough technicians on hand to meet dealer and consumer needs. Since 2020, the demand for techs has doubled according to the TechForce Foundation. Not only that, but the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects an average of 67,700 openings for automotive technicians over the next decade.
Competition to hire the technicians that enter the market will be steep. Ultimately, it will come down to who can identify and hire top technician talent the fastest — but not all applicant tracking systems were built equal.
Read on to learn about four built-in features that empowers dealerships to hire better technicians faster during this ongoing tech shortage.
Automation
In our recent State of Automotive Hiring Report, job seekers will accept the first offer they receive 61% of the time — meaning if you want to add the best of the best to your dealership’s team, you need to move quickly. Instead of encouraging your team to press the gas on every application that comes their way, you can empower them to make smarter hiring decisions with built-in automations to the Hireology platform. These automations are designed to save hiring managers time by eliminating unqualified talent from the process and allowing them to move forward with what your dealership is really looking for.
You can harness the power of automation with simple pre-screen surveys that job seekers can be prompted to take once they’ve submitted their application. By arranging “knock out” questions, you can indicate to the platform what incorrect answers will disqualify candidates from moving forward in your process. This simple step saves your team tons of time that could otherwise be spent on other relationship-building strategies. You can automate many other parts of the hiring process, including reference checks, reminders to submit missing information from their application, and more!
Mobile for you — and your candidates
Just shy of half (49%) of automotive job seekers say they typically check text messages before their emails, making SMS messages a compelling tactic to use in your hiring process. When you consider that 53% of job seekers also said that responding to a text is easier than responding to an email, you can really start to see the value of this communication channel when you’re trying to hire techs quickly. Essentially, using text messages to connect with candidates will ensure that your messages will be read sooner and the candidates will reply faster than traditional emails.
The best part? You don’t have to use your personal phone number to text with candidates! You can text candidates directly from the Hireology platform so the communications are stored in the same applicant tracking system that houses all of your other messages.
Hireology customers using our in-app texting capabilities cut an average of four days off their hiring process. You can use texts in a variety of different ways to communicate with candidates, including indicating that your dealership has received their application, to schedule an interview, or to simply keep candidates up-to-date on their current application status. The Hireology platform also supports TextApply, an application process where the job seeker scans a QR code then texts with a chatbot for under a minute to fill out and submit an application.
Indeed integrations
With 45% of job seekers beginning their search for their next role on general job boards, it would be silly to use an ATS that doesn’t integrate directly with the world’s #1 job board — aka Indeed.1 In 2023, Hireology made great strides to reestablish and strengthen our integration with Indeed, allowing us to create a Gold ATS Partnership with the leading job board. This level of partnership is given to just 4% of all Indeed ATS partners making this quite the recognition!
Now, your job descriptions are not only directly posted on Indeed faster thanks to an XML integration, but you can sponsor your open roles directly from the Hireology platform as well! Sponsoring your job post will put it at the top of the board on Indeed so more job seekers will see it compared to an organic search. Even better, you can manage the performance and budget of your sponsored jobs on Indeed all in the Hireology application.
Employee referral programs
Good people know good people — and Hireology can help you hire them faster. Our built-in employee referral software empowers dealers like you to tap into your employees’ existing networks of friends and former colleagues to access technicians who may not be actively looking for another role, but wouldn’t mind working with a friend.
But you can go beyond this traditional definition of an employee referral program with the help of Hireology. You can expand your program to contact employees who have left your dealership or former applicants to build a quality talent pipeline. This isn’t just a pipe dream, to clarify. We found that 83% of automotive job seekers would refer a friend to a previous employer if they had a good experience there — and Hireology can help you capitalize on this opportunity with our leading employee referral software.
Hear all this and more from us at NADA!
The expectations of today’s workers are changing fast — and Hireology is here to help dealers like you stay on the cutting edge of hiring technology. We’ll be giving you access to exclusive retail automotive research, our latest and greatest product features and more. If you’re going to NADA 2024, we want to see you! If you’d like to find time to chat with us, you can schedule a time here.
1 comScore, Total Visits, April 2023
