Technology Aids Hiring

“How do I find good people?” “How do I use technology?” It seems I hear these two questions from dealers every day.

Rarely do I hear them ask these two questions embodied in one question: “How can technology help me find good people?”

Technology is everywhere, from the kitchen to the service bay. It seems technology is changing everything. More and more we are finding new ways to use it. Now it is being used to assist businesses and particularly dealers in finding quality employees.

In the past, how did you go about it? Here's one method to avoid: running a “help wanted” classified ad or responding to a “position wanted” ad in a newspaper.

A survey of 447 hiring professionals across various industries nationwide asked hiring managers what methods they used to locate potential job candidates.

Newspapers and internal referrals ranked highest, with 91.9% and 87.7% respectively. Only a quarter (24.4%) of the respondents indicated that they used recruitment research, while more than half (54.1%) indicated they used colleges and universities, job fairs (49.4%), and third-party recruiters (47.2%). Slightly higher ranked were networking (65.5%) and job boards (63.3%).

Numerous surveys show that only the unemployed, least loyal and most poorly motivated of all employees respond to classified ads.

Online “job boards” are just electronic classifieds. They are often more interested in advertising revenue than job fulfillments.

However, new Internet-based recruiting services are vastly different. Candidates are actually pre-screened and sought out for inclusion.

Historically, recruiting has been reactionary: Someone quits or gets fired and you look for a replacement. There is no inventory of qualified replacements; no inventory of people. Vehicles and parts are not the only inventories dealers should have in stock.

They should also stock an inventory of potential employees who have been “inspected” before they are put on the lot. Candidates who pass inspection should be a result of research, references, interviews, experience reviews and an assessment of commitment.

Recruitment research is able to find the hidden job seeker. Through research you can access almost anyone you choose, in any city and in any company.

Few dealerships maintain an adequate inventory of potential employees, and they certainly don't do a good job of screening them. However, in this age of out sourcing, they can turn to dealership-specific Internet recruiters such as Auto-Pros.net or Spark Careers for an annual subscription fee of $995.

Recruiters identify the people who are currently performing the job you need done.

They telephone them, ask the questions dealerships need answered, review their qualifications and make profiles of those who pass an online test.

No matter how you source employee candidates, you, as the dealer (and I cannot stress this emphatically enough) should personally participate in the interviewing for your key positions.

This is one task you cannot delegate. Your managers often have priorities much different than your own. Remarkably, some won't hire people whom they perceive as being more competent than they are. They think, mistakenly, that to look good they must surround themselves with mediocrity.

Your dealership must reflect your vision, not theirs. Some things even technology hasn't changed.

Don E. Ray is a CPA with the Dixon Hughes Dealer Services Group. He's at 901-684-5643 and [email protected].