Last weekend, automotive leaders and dealers from across the country gathered in Las Vegas, NV, for the 2024 National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show.
As the trusted hiring partner for 1 in 4 dealerships, Hireology was honored to attend this event. This year, we shared our booth with Indeed to give dealers an opportunity to learn more about the powerful integrations between our two hiring powerhouses. Not only that, but our CEO and Co-Founder Adam Robinson hosted a panel discussion about the state of hiring and gave two exclusive presentations on automotive hiring data that we had not previously released.
While the conference was focused on driving the future of this industry, we honed in on listening to what dealers, general managers, and service managers were saying. As we spent the weekend chatting with leaders in the automotive industry, we realized that the common hiring problems we kept hearing reinforced what we found in our annual automotive future of hiring report.
What happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay in Vegas — particularly when it comes to better hiring. The three pain points we heard the most at NADA were:
- Quality over quantity mindset
- Improving hiring speed
- Adopting proactive recruiting strategies
Read on to learn more about the solutions to these challenges.
1. Quality over quantity mindset
Other than the ongoing technician shortage, dealerships often face another challenge when it comes to hiring: an overabundance of unqualified candidates. These applications make it difficult for recruiters to sift through the pile and find the talent that they really need. Instead of spending precious time sorting for the needle in the haystack, dealers want to find an efficient way of identifying top talent and moving them quickly through the hiring process.
How Hireology helps: Our applicant tracking system (ATS) features several key integrations that allow you to post your open roles directly on leading job boards and manage these listings, all in one place. Aside from our ever-enhancing integration with Indeed, we also have integrations with job boards specifically focused on automotive candidates. These partnerships allow you to find the right people for your team while prioritizing the ROI of your hiring spend.
2. Improving hiring speed
Hiring isn’t a quick process by any stretch of the imagination. Valuable time goes into selecting where to advertise your open roles, evaluating applicants, arranging and conducting interviews, and converting candidates into hires. Dealers at NADA frequently noted that they needed a better way to include their hiring managers in the process in a way that didn’t detract from their daily to-do lists. Most service departments are understaffed as is, so the hiring managers for these areas routinely find themselves moving hiring tasks lower on their priority lists to put out immediate (but not literal) fires.
How Hireology helps: Automation capabilities within the Hireology platform allow you to give your hiring managers time back in their day so they can do what they do best — all while allowing you to communicate with candidates faster than before. You can arrange for instant messages to be sent immediately once you receive a candidate’s application, thanking them for their submission along with a calendar so they can schedule their own interview. With our interview scheduling tool, you can sync your hiring managers’ calendars in one place to eliminate timely back and forth communication trying to arrange an interview. You can even set up automations to ask applicants to take pre-screen surveys so your team can focus on the strongest candidates. These enhancements allow you to move faster through your hiring process, keep top talent engaged, and reduce overall no-shows to your interviews.
61% of automotive job seekers accept the first offer they receive
3. Adopting proactive recruiting strategies
We know that hiring has changed significantly over the last few years, but the automotive industry as a whole has not kept up with the changes. With technicians in such high demand and short supply, dealerships across the country are having problems hiring the talent they need, when they need it. Old-fashioned and reactive ways of recruiting, like opening roles for applications after the position is vacant or only contacting applicants for this specific role, are not successful in this modern hiring landscape.
How Hireology helps: While passive recruiting strategies, like posting an open role on a job feed, will always be commonplace, there are other proactive tactics that you can establish with the Hireology platform. You can use our ATS to proactively create your own database of previous applicants, alumni, and employee referrals that you can tap into when openings occur. By keeping the resumes of candidates that you know have the qualifications you need, you’re creating a customized talent pool just for your dealership. With our platform, you can nurture and maintain strong relationships with these candidates and make your next new hire that much faster.
To learn more about how your dealership can hire better talent faster, schedule a 1:1 today!
