Recruitment should always be viewed as an opportunity to breathe new life into your business. However, it’s not uncommon for busy dealerships to make a few mistakes with recruitment practices that turn it into more of a challenge than an opportunity.
If you run a dealership and want to know how to get the best results out of your recruitment activity, here are the most common mistakes you want to avoid.
Forgetting to look within the business first
When a worker hands in their resignation, your immediate reaction may be to advertise the vacancy and start the process of finding a replacement—but before you do, don’t forget to look within the business.
In many cases, there may be other hard-working employees that have been quietly waiting in the wings for an opportunity like this to arise, and it could provide the perfect chance to offer some much-valued career progression opportunities.
Opportunity for progression within a business is a great employee motivator that can help with staff retention, and if a staff member has the right basic skills and attitude, with a little extra training and coaching they may be able to step up into the role with ease.
It could even be a good opportunity for someone that wants to re-skill in another role. Imagine you’ve got a Service Advisor that loves the customer side of their work but has grown tired of being on the tools. The opportunity to move into a Sales Manager position could be just the thing they need to reinvigorate their love for working in a dealership, and their hands-on knowledge could prove to be a real asset in the role!
Discounting candidates too soon
Forming an impression of a candidate as soon as they walk through the door is unavoidable. We all do it, and it’s simply a part of the social skills that have been ingrained in us our entire lives. However, it’s important to try not to write off a candidate too soon.
Remember that interviews can be extremely stressful for some people. While some personality types will breeze through it with complete charm and confidence, others may find themselves freezing up and struggling to put their best foot forward, even if they do have all the skills and attributes you’re looking for.
As an employer, it’s important to be willing to overlook a couple of missteps that could be attributed to nerves and try to put the candidate at ease to allow them to show you what they could really bring to the business. You never know, you may just end up uncovering that diamond in the rough!
Interviewing without all the right people present
Another big mistake is conducting interviews without having all key decision-makers or stakeholders present.
While it can be difficult to find a time when your hiring manager, owner and/or general manager (depending on who needs to be there) are all available at the same time, it’s an important aspect of any hiring decision.
Each person involved in the hiring process will be looking for particular skills and attributes, and if hiring decisions are made without appropriate input from all key stakeholders, there’s opportunity for hire regret to sneak in down the track.
Similarly, if each stakeholder is conducting individual one-on-one interviews with each candidate, you’re not creating an even playing field. Instead, it’s important for each panellist to conduct their assessment on the same interview to avoid creating a skewed or inconsistent view of a candidate’s performance.
Taking too long to select a candidate
One other recruitment blunder that happens far too often is taking too long to select a candidate.
Yes, it’s true that recruitment is something you don’t want to get wrong, but if you take too long, you risk losing the top candidate to one of your competitors.
While it is important to conduct a thorough assessment of the top candidate to ensure you’re making the right hiring decisions, don’t forget that the best talent is rarely looking for a new job for long.
If you do happen to come across a great candidate early in the process that ticks all the boxes, interviews well, and would be a good cultural fit for the dealership, don’t sit on your hands for too long, or you may find yourself having to go back to square one. It’s an issue we discuss in more detail in this previous blog post which is well worth the read.
Trying to do it all yourself
Finally, the other mistake plenty of dealerships make is trying to manage all parts of their recruitment process themselves.
While you may initially think that managing your recruitment yourself is a great way to save a few bucks, in most cases it will actually work against your business.
Not only does it take valuable time and resources away from the dealership, but the final outcome is rarely the best one. Recruitment agencies follow tried-and-tested processes that streamline the entire recruitment process, while also allowing you to tap into a much wider candidate pool that would be impossible to find on your own.
They also know exactly what’s required to sort the so-called ‘good from the bad’, and find those candidates that would make a really good fit for your dealership. Furthermore, they’ll manage the entire process for you, allowing you to dedicate more focus to other business priorities.
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.
