Attracting the best candidates to apply for your dealership should always be the ultimate goal of any recruitment exercise, but it’s often easier said than done. The pool of top candidates is limited and they’re often in high demand, making it a big challenge—but it is possible.
If you want to attract the best of the best to your dealership, here are some of our top tips that will help you do it.
Perfect the job advertisement
You should always dedicate the time and attention to the job advertisement that it deserves.
The job advertisement is your first and foremost opportunity to entice candidates to apply to the role; it needs to be clear, concise, and provide an accurate representation of what the role is.
Avoid using gimmicky titles and instead stick to industry-accepted terms that candidates will recognise. If you’re advertising for a Service Manager role, make that explicitly clear. It will make it easier for candidates scrolling job boards to find your ad and will improve your chances of being seen by top candidates.
Ensure your spelling, grammar, and sentence structure is on point and list any systems you use or brands you specialise in. It’s also advantageous to talk about the location of the role (particularly if you’re in a regional location), and not shy away from listing a salary range. Candidates will value having that information and it allows them to assess if the role will be a good fit for them.
Always keep candidates in the loop
When trying to set yourself apart from the competition, communication is king. While this is not necessarily about attracting top talent to apply, it’s more about ensuring you don’t lose them throughout the recruitment process.
Keeping candidates in the dark about the progress of their application is the easiest way to make a good candidate disengage and start focusing on opportunities elsewhere. Even if a candidate isn’t going to be successful, it’s still worthwhile keeping them updated throughout the process to help you build a positive brand reputation within the industry.
Something as simple as sending out personalised email templates can have an enormous impact on the way a candidate views your dealership.
It’s also important to try to keep the recruitment process as short as possible to avoid having the best candidate snapped up by a competitor while you’re still deliberating.
Consider the whole package
While salary is important, it’s not everything. If you’re a small dealership, you may not be able to offer the same hefty pay package a larger dealership can, but there are still plenty of other benefits you can build into your offer to make it more attractive.
Benefits like flexible working hours, additional annual leave, professional development opportunities or a company car could all be valuable additions that could help get your dealership across the line with a top candidate.
Offer opportunities for progression
Very few candidates will apply for a role thinking it’s the only role they’ll do for the rest of their working life. Most candidates adopt a longer-term view, assessing whether a dealership can offer them the right progression opportunities to support their career aspirations.
A good strategy is to publish some success stories of other employees within the business on the careers page of your website to demonstrate how your dealership can support career progression. It’s also worthwhile discussing progression opportunities with candidates during interviews.
Remember that reputation is everything
Building a good brand reputation is crucially important to attracting quality talent to your business.
Look for ways to enhance the perception of your brand; this could be doing things like getting involved with various community events or sponsorships, or it could be as simple as working on your company culture and the way you handle exiting employees.
Disgruntled employees can cause some serious damage to your brand reputation if issues go unresolved (something which can be a major turn-off for prospective applicants), so it’s always worthwhile conducting exit interviews with departing employees to get an unabashed view of what their experience was like working for the dealership and what they think the key problem areas are.
Teamrecruit is Australia’s most established recruitment agency specialising in truck, earthmoving and agricultural machinery dealerships in Australia, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Southeast Asia. Find out more about Teamrecruit and how we support employers and candidates in the dealership industry.
