With the unemployment rate at a record-low, the hiring market is more competitive than ever before for employers across industries. And finding top talent is even more challenging for retail automotive, as fewer than 1 percent of job seekers are interested in careers at dealerships.
Due to the limited interest in careers in retail automotive, dealers often end up paying a steep “brand tax” by overspending on job boards. Many dealers spend a significant amount of their recruiting budget on costly job boards in the hopes of driving more applicants to their job openings, especially for difficult to fill roles, such as service technicians.
Unfortunately, while job boards can drive a high quantity of applicants, the quality of these applicants is often lacking. In fact, while sponsored and organic job boards drive up to 92 percent of total applicants, they only result in just under 50 percent of total hires. On the other hand, career sites drive 8 percent of applicants, but these applicants result in 50 percent of hires.
So how can your dealership avoid maxing out your recruitment marketing budget on job boards, which only deliver about 50 percent of applicants you need to fill profit-driving roles? You need to invest in your employment brand and career site just as you would your consumer-facing brand and website. If you don’t, not only will you waste money, but you’ll also waste time reviewing and interviewing applicants who aren’t a fit for your team. Below, we’ve pulled together some tips to improve your recruitment marketing strategy.
Build a Strong Employment Brand and Career Site
Even at a time of low unemployment, most employees are always on the lookout for new job opportunities. A recent LinkedIn report found that 90 percent of U.S. employees would be open to new job opportunities. But as most job seekers are already employed, prospective job applicants have the flexibility to be more particular when considering career changes.
In today’s highly competitive applicant-driven economy, your dealership needs to sell quality talent on the opportunity working for your team presents. This goes above and beyond simply salary, as top talent today is looking for far more than an exchange of time for money and you need a compelling answer to the “What’s in it for me?” question. This can be made possible through a strong employment brand and career site.
Nearly 70 percent of job seekers would reject an offer from a company with a bad employment brand. Your employment brand can help your dealership stand out from other employers and attract top candidates in today’s competitive job market. And building your best team will ultimately lead to increased efficiency, productivity and revenue.
To get job seekers excited to join your team, develop a strong employment brand that encourages job seekers to build long-term careers at your dealership. Your employment brand should include strong, SEO-friendly job descriptions, a compelling career site, defined career paths across departments, employee testimonials, a comprehensive list of benefits and continuous job openings. By building and maintaining a strong employment brand and career site, you can attract engaged applicants who are interested in growing their careers with your team.
Optimize Your Recruitment Advertising Spend
Once you have a strong employment brand and career site in place, you can drive more quality applicants through your career site and, as a result, will have to spend less on job boards. And it’s also important to determine which job board channels result in quality applicants and which are not worth your dealership’s investment.
Dealers know, in great detail, which lead sources convert to car sales on a daily basis. This same level of attention and data-based decision making should be applied to the most critical component of a dealership – hiring quality people.
One of Hireology’s Insights answers the question, “What is my best source of applicants?” and provides clear visibility into the total number of applicants, quality candidates and hires by source. The Insight further provides central visibility into sponsored job board performance, including total sponsored posts purchased, dollars spent, quality applicants sourced, and average cost per quality applicant.
Sources that deliver a high quantity of poor applicants will only waste your dealership’s time and recruitment budget. By leveraging Hireology Insights, your dealership can improve the return-on-investment for your recruitment budget by vendor or channel, ensure quality hires are being made to drive profitability, and ultimately save the team time so they can focus on revenue-driving activities.
Put Extra Effort into Recruiting for Hard-to-Fill Roles
To be more efficient and strategic with your job board spending, consider enlisting the help a more advanced recruitment marketing solution, especially when it comes to hard-to-fill roles such as service technicians. Hireology’s solution, Applicant Engine, automatically taps into a network of 500+ applicant channels – including national job boards, organic search engine feeds, local classifieds, social media and other niche sources – to help you attract quality candidates from proven channels.
In addition to saving time and money, an automated recruitment advertising solution can help your dealership attract more quality candidates for open roles across departments. When you invest a big portion of your budget in job boards and don’t have a process to only focus your budget on recruitment channels that drive quality candidates, your team might end up spending time and resources on poor applicants. But by partnering automated recruitment advertising tool, you can shift to only spending budget on channels that drive quality applicants.
Hireology customers who have embraced the power of Applicant Engine have seen double the quality candidates at one-third the cost compared to traditional job boards. >> See how Walser Automotive Group reduced its cost per quality applicant by 47 percent with the help of Applicant Engine.
For more information on how your dealership can attract top talent in today’s competitive hiring market, read our resource, “The Applicant Economy: What Today’s Top Talent Demands from Dealership Roles.”
