Luxury is in the details.
When it comes to buying a luxury vehicle, your customers are buying more than just transportation — they’re buying into your brand and the experience that comes along with it. A new or certified pre-owned luxury vehicle comes with more than just your symbol on the hood; the service and support that accompanies your logo, the warranty, and your dealership itself is what elevates this entire experience for a customer.
And when it comes to hiring at a luxury auto brand, there are very different expectations at play. The clientele is elevated, the trim levels are fully loaded, and the cars practically sell themselves (but humans are still very much needed).
Compared to a traditional retail automotive dealership, luxury automotive brands experience hiring differently even in this ongoing labor crisis. Read on to learn three ways that luxury brands can turn traditional hiring on its head.
How luxury brands recruit the best talent
The vehicles may all have four wheels, but much like the character of a person, the details are what sets a luxury brand apart — and it all starts with how these brands can hire differently.
Require experience (or invest in quality training)
It’s no secret: there’s an ongoing automotive technician shortage projected for the next nine years according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. With so few technicians entering the market, luxury dealers need to be ready to move quickly to identify and hire the best — or otherwise invest in quality training programs to mold talent to their needs.
Whether the new hire will be on the showroom floor as a sales associate or in the service bay as a mechanic, these pieces of machinery are too sensitive to be potentially mishandled. Not only that, but the quality of sales associate should cater to the clientele’s sensibilities as well. Other dealerships can hire fresh technicians with a brand new ASE certification, but depending on the make of your brand, your technicians might need more training either on the job or through a specialized program for your models. Luxury brands, then, need to do their due diligence by listing required job experience in their job descriptions or develop a training program that will allow them to invest in quality people who have the right enthusiasm to learn the skills.
Exceptional expectations
The caliber of workers at a luxury automotive brand is one that embodies exceptional expectations. The way that automotive workers conduct themselves is different at a luxury brand, so the workplace culture overall will be different than a traditional dealership.
Hiring managers can take time during the interview process to make sure that candidates are truly a good fit for their brands, as these are highly sought after positions. With the competitive salary packages and compensation plans for commission-based roles, many in the retail automotive industry would jump at the opportunity to work for a luxury brand. Not only that, but customers expect perfection from luxury dealers, so their workers are expected to deliver excellence in all of their endeavors.
Consider the culture fit
Like we mentioned above, new hires need to fit in with the work culture — and that goes beyond being professional with the customers. In luxury brands, integrity is the backbone of the business and unfortunately, a wrong hire can cost otherwise well-performing teams to lose morale. When hiring, dealers need to pay careful attention to how candidates conduct themselves to get an understanding of how they’d operate in the workplace.
Luxury brands need to find the right worker for their open roles. These types of dealerships need someone who can be professional on the service bay and the showroom floor, not someone who needs to be hidden for an oil change. In this sense, luxury brands are hiring for personality as well as skill set.
Takeaways
Hiring is hard for everyone, but luxury automotive brands have the luxury, so to speak, of waiting until they find the right fit for their open roles. When their hiring teams identify top talent, they know that they need to move quickly to capture these candidates as their employer brand will only win them so much favor with applicants. Learn how you can fine tune your online presence with our employer branding best practices guide for dealers here!
