The Problem
Throughout the past year, Freeland Auto Group has seen an increase in demand for skilled labor due to low inventory counts, large-scale fleet servicing (up to 50 vehicles in a month at one location), and an increased need for service due to consumers holding onto cars for longer. However, like most employers in today’s challenging hiring market, they struggled to get the right talent in the door.
Once they did attract applicants, Freeland Auto Group struggled with a slow moving hiring process and disjointed, difficult-to-use systems that led to disengaged talent and missed opportunities to bring on great folks for their open roles. Post-hire, many of their processes, such as conducting payroll and submitting repair orders, required manual pen and paper — wasting time and resources and leading to costly mistakes.
The solution? Hireology + Netchex + Dealertrack DMS. The team at Freeland Auto Group says Hireology’s all-in-one hiring and HR platform has helped them drive more than 100 applicants per month and make 50 hires in 2022 alone. And because the platform directly integrates with Netchex and Dealertrack DMS, they’re able to run payroll and manage their dealership operations all from one central location.
Read on for a closer look.
A Faster, More Convenient HR process
Since partnering with Hireology, Freeland Auto Group has seen a drastic improvement in applicants, hiring speed, and payroll efficiency. The dealership credits several built-in Hireology features for these results:
Candidate sourcing and screening
Tracie Locke, Human Resources Manager at Freeland Auto Group, said she particularly values the ability to post new roles across multiple job boards with the click of a button within Hireology. She said this saves her the time she previously would spend jumping from channel to channel to post new roles. This also makes it really easy to update job postings and push updates out to all channels at once.
The team also rely heavily on Hireology’s automated pre-screen surveys feature, which they use as a litmus test to help find the right fit for each role. Many of the roles the dealership is focused on is highly skilled labor, so using pre-screen surveys allows them to weed out those who do not fit the criteria in terms of skills and training early on.
Easy candidate communication
The team overwhelmingly feels that the ability to text candidates directly from the Hireology app saves them significant time in the hiring process and allows them to keep great talent engaged. Tracie noted that the team’s candidate selection process has gone from taking upwards of two weeks to roughly two days.
David Beasley, Service Manager at Freeland Auto Group said he felt that SMS works so well because the next generation of employees isn’t as responsive in email. These folks (largely from Generation Z) are digitally native and are much more attuned to communicating via text. He noted anecdotally that he was struggling to get a response from a top candidate via email but once he reached out via text he heard back in 30 seconds.
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“A big win we’ve had through Hireology is that we can actually text candidates. It has really sped up our hiring process.”
— David Beasley, Service Manager at Freeland Auto Group
Centralized hiring
Tracie noted that the centralization of all hiring tools within Hireology has drastically improved the team’s hiring speed and efficiency. The team values that the Hireology platform gives all managers across teams visibility into all candidates and where they are in the hiring process. This, she said, allows for the entire process to move faster as folks aren’t jumping from system to system nor are they reaching out to one another to get critical candidate information.
The ability to order background checks from the Hireology app has also contributed to their decreased time-to-hire. Tracie said that in one instance the background check came back so fast within Hireology that it was a “two day turnaround” to get that particular candidate in the building.
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“You could interview someone yesterday and basically almost have them starting tomorrow.”
— Tracie Locke, HR Manager, Freeland Auto Group
Customer support
The team at Freeland Auto Group also deeply values Hireology’s support team. They love that they have a representative they can call at Hireology who knows their business needs and can offer advice based on their strong history together.
Streamlined onboarding and payroll
And finally, Tracie noted that Hireology’s digital onboarding software, which includes a direct integration with Netchex significantly streamlines a previously painful onboarding and payroll process. Uploading new contacts to their payroll system was manual and time-consuming. Additionally, she was running five separate payrolls which all required manual balancing.
Now, with the fast Hireology/Netchex upload process, she’s able to automate much of this process and save herself the time (and frustration) required to complete these manual tasks weekly. Tracie noted that she values the automated emails the system sends employees when they forget to include critical personal information.
An easy-to-use Dealer Management System
Another aspect of Hireology’s all-in-one platform that Freeland Auto Group benefits from is the integration between Hireology + Netchex and Dealertrack DMS. The direct integration between these three platforms makes employee data transfer and payroll even simpler. David noted that his favorite part about Dealertrack is how user-friendly the platform is.
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“No matter your experience level, I can put new people on the floor to shadow other technicians and they pick it up very quickly”
— David Beasley, Service Manager at Freeland Auto Group
David also said that the data within the system updates to the minute, eliminating the need for employees to memorize information or jump from different systems to access what they need. And he noted that one major win with Dealertrack DMS is the ability to digitize the process of documenting inspection sheets or repair orders. Instead, he can create these within Dealertrack DMS and the system will finish and print them.
Overall, the team felt that the partnership between Hireology + Netchex and Dealertrack DMS has been a game changer for their dealership. They’re able to move fast on great candidates and keep all employee information centralized in one easy-to-use system — reducing time spent completing manual tasks and the potential for costly errors.
100 applicants per month
50 hires in 2022 alone
2 days average application time-to-review
To learn more about how Hireology + Netchex and Dealertrack DMS can help your dealership streamline your hiring and HR efforts, schedule a free consultation today.
