Automotive News is partnering with Bank of America to host a dealership roundtable on Tuesday, September 18 in Dallas. A segment of the roundtable will focus on women in the workforce and Adam Robinson, co-founder and CEO at Hireology, will share an overview of the latest women in automotive trends.
While women make up 65% of all new car purchases and influence 80% of all car purchase decision, only 20% of dealership employees are women. And when it comes to women who do work at dealerships, there’s a 96% turnover rate in female sales positions and fewer than 1% of technicians are females.
Given the record-low unemployment rate and rising personnel costs, your dealership needs to make sure you’re doing everything possible to attract top talent – both men and women. If you don’t have a strategy in place to attract female job seekers, you’re overlooking almost half of the workforce. So how can your dealership attract more quality candidates – including women?
Build an Inclusive Employment Brand
Just as you market to your customers, it’s critical for your dealership to effectively market to job seekers. And your employment brand can make or break the success of your recruitment marketing. Your dealership’s employment brand might be unknowingly targeted toward men rather than women. It’s important to regularly review your career site and job descriptions to assess the tone and word choice, ensuring the descriptions appeal to a diverse set of job seekers. Without realizing it, the language in your job descriptions might be catered toward aggressive, lone wolf salespeople, using masculine adjectives to explain the job requirements. Or they might even use masculine pronouns such as, “The right candidate will be able to demonstrate his customer service experience.” And your career site might only show pictures or highlight success stories from male employees.
If your dealership is doing one or more of these, it’s time to switch out the masculine descriptions and employee testimonials and ensure your employment brand is inclusive to all job seekers. Rather than using masculine pronouns, consider not using pronouns at all. And instead of using terms like sales ninja, highlight job requirements such as the ability to move quickly and achieve results. Also make sure to include pictures of female employees, along with testimonials or success stories, on your career site.
Overall, an inclusive employment brand will help you attract more qualified applicants, which will lead to better hires, better managers and leaders, and a stronger dealership culture overall.
Adam Robinson will share the latest trends about women in the dealership workforce, and other key insights, at the Automotive News roundtable in Dallas next week. For more information on how you can effectively attract and hire women at your dealership, download our Hiring Women in Automotive Checklist below.
