In the past quarter of a century that I have been recruiting for automotive dealerships, here are the 5 points that are brought up the most often by employees looking for a job change:
- Day to day work content
- Career visibility / opportunity
- Location
- Compensation
- Security
So how can you use this to your advantage?
Find out what is most important to your top candidates and appeal to those needs where reasonable.
Case Study: We were helping an auto dealer with a very large Ford store. He needed a Rock Star Service Director. We found 3 great candidates. Two were out of town and need to relocate and were willing to do so. The dealer was willing to cover relo expenses. One lived across town, about an hour commute each way and did not like the long drive and did not want to move closer to dealership.
We suggested to the Dealer that he offers the candidate with the 1 hour commute the following:
- Salary that was agreeable
- Flexible hours – knowing the Service Director needed to be there 6:30am to open up but allow the flexibility of leaving early in afternoon sometimes to see in kids baseball games, dance recitals, etc. All the things he has been missing his entire career. Keep in mind, “Rock Star “employees are very hard workers by nature and not likely to take advantage of this benefit.
- Company car and gas. Let the Service Director take a nice used car and drive for a week or two then change for another one. (In the grand scheme of things what is the cost to use a company car and gas compared to the revenue from a huge Ford service center?)
Results: Win-Win for the auto dealer and the Service Director. The ability to occasionally see his daughter’s dance and piano recitals and his sons’ sports events made him feel so respected and made him the most dedicated employee you could imagine!
Lesson learned: Ask candidates what are the factors that they are considering in making a job change and appeal to these factors when /where it is reasonable.
Donald Jasensky
CEO / Automotive Personnel, LLC
216-226-8190
www.automotivepersonnel.co
Twitter : @DonJasensky
“We Find The People Who Drive The Automotive Industry Since 1989 ”