At Hireology, we’re laser-focused on our customers. We know that building customer empathy is critical to ensuring we deliver the best possible product and customer experience for our users’ unique needs. That’s why our product team visited Fox Motors, a longtime Chicago-based Hireology customer, this summer.
During our visit we aimed to learn more about Fox Motors’ business and how they are tackling today’s hiring challenges. We gained crucial context around what they’re up against in the market and how they use hireology to overcome these obstacles. And we left with an understanding where the product could be improved.
For example, we learned that the managers may not have all the time to fill in notes in the interview guides, but valued them as a reference point. This gave us plenty of ideas for how we can make our built-in interview guides more useful to teams. We also learned that Fox Motors has been working closely with tech schools to build talent pipelines — indicating that talent supply remains low and that customers across all verticals can benefit from our diversified applicant sourcing options.
Here’s a closer look at the challenges Fox Motors faces today and how Hireology is equipped to help:
Fox Motors Hiring Challenges
Many of Fox Motors’ talent acquisition challenges are similar to what we’ve seen from other customers across all types of verticials. Simply put, hiring is tough right now. Many businesses — Fox Motors included — are having a hard time finding great talent and keeping them interested throughout the hiring process.
- Location: Location is a huge obstacle for hiring at Fox Motors. It’s difficult to find talent directly in the city of Chicago, especially when competing with other dealers. And when great candidates come through who live in the suburbs, it’s hard to convince them to make the commute into the city every day — especially in the winter.
- Retiring technicians: More and more senior technicians are retiring and there is not enough new talent to fill in the roles. This is part of a larger market trend of shrinking talent supply. In general there are more open roles than there are active job seekers, and retiring baby boomers is only exacerbating this problem.
- Low trade school enrollment: Today, four-year college is the primary goal for young adults graduating high school. Trade schools have decreased in popularity significantly in recent decades, resulting in fewer workers with automotive technician skills looking for this type of work. Fox Motors said they actually started recruiting folks before they even graduate high school as a way to educate them on the career path and encourage them to pursue trade school.
- Poor applicant quality: Fox Motors noted that the majority of their applicants lack the skills and qualifications to perform the job effectively — particularly for highly-skilled roles like technicians. They find that they’re often forced to “take a chance” on these folks, which is an expensive risk.
- Candidate ghosting: Like most businesses today, Fox Motors struggles with candidates dropping out of the hiring process unannounced — also known as ghosting. They find they can get applicants to respond to follow up emails or phone calls but they don’t show up to interviews, which is a waste of time and resources.
How Hireology is equipped to help
After listening to Fox Motors’ challenges, our team was able to optimize their use of the below features. If you find yourself facing similar obstacles in your hiring process, read on to learn more about how Hireology is equipped to help.
- Job creation and multichannel distribution: With Hireology you’ll get support with your job description language and formatting to improve your application rate. You can also post your new roles across a variety of leading job boards and social media channels with a single click.
- Employee referral programs: Employee referral programs are the best way to increase applicants if you’re struggling to compete on general job boards. With Hireology’s built-in employee referral program tool, you can motivate your team to participate by sending internal campaigns directly from your Hireology account. You can track referral candidates alongside candidates from other sources and manage payout timing, reward amounts, and more.
- Candidate texting: One way to keep candidates engaged and interested during the hiring process is to embrace candidate texting. With Hireology you can send text messages and emails directly from your Hireology account and log all interactions with candidates each step of the way. Hiring managers using Hireology’s text messaging have decreased the time to hire by up to 8 days
- Applicant tracking: Hireology’s robust applicant tracking system allows you to keep track of candidates and move them through a streamlined hiring process from one central location. You can screen candidates, order background checks, keep track of interview scoring, communicate with teammates, and more directly from your account. You’ll never lose track of a candidate or forget to complete steps again.
- All-in-one hiring and HR: Hireology’s entire suite of features — from job creation and distribution to our integration with leading payroll and HR systems — empowers you to support the entire employee lifecycle from hire to retire. You will save countless hours jumping from system to system or manually entering employee information across platforms — allowing you to spend more time connecting with candidates and building your best team.
Interested in hearing more about how we have helped businesses across industries like automotive, healthcare, and hospitality attract better talent and fill open roles faster? Check out our library of customer stories today.
