Best Dealerships to Work for
Don Chalmers Ford
Rio Rancho , NM
Overall Rank for 2014: 33
Dealer: Gary Housley
Full-time employees: 150
2013 new-vehicle sales: 4,995, down 1%
Cool perk: Employees get paid time to participate in the community in an area they are passionate about.
Lee Butler, director of performance excellence, on recruiting: "In 2013, we began a Career Builders Program to recruit sales consultants who are college graduates or have scored well on their skills assessment but have no experience in the car business. These sales consultants receive an hourly wage in lieu of the traditional commission so that they can get their feet on the ground before being transferred to a commission-based income sometime in the first six to 12 months, depending on their productivity.
"This has also been applied to employees who are changing professions. We recently hired someone who was in the restaurant business for 20 years."
Butler on a change in response to staff requests: "We made a change to our on-site health and wellness clinic. Our contractor was limiting the services (such as blood draws, tests and certain procedures) that could be performed by our nurse practitioner, which had been allowed by the previous contractor. Employees were dissatisfied. We changed providers, and services provided are back to where we were in the past. Employees are ecstatic."