Hiring advice for dealers

CHICAGO — Dealerships across the country will lose an estimated 2 million job applicants this year, at a time when stores are finding it harder to fill positions, according to a study by Hireology and the National Automobile Dealers Association.

"Saving the Lost Applicant: Hiring Trends to Watch," presented at Hireology's Elevate 2019 event this month, measured the number of applicants whose resumes weren't reviewed for 21 days — the average time it takes someone to land a job — if ever.

Hireology analyzed data from the first half of this year from 4,000 dealerships it works with and estimated dealerships nationally lost 1 million applicants during those six months. For all of 2019, that figure grows to 2 million, Hireology estimates.

Millions of people "this year will attempt to work for us and we will not bother getting back to them," said Hireology CEO Adam Robinson.

Robinson said just reviewing applications more quickly would grow the talent pool for dealerships.

And with unemployment nationally below 4 percent, turnover high in several dealership positions and stores finding it tougher to find a quality hire, the study puts the importance of recruiting into focus, Robinson said.

"We are missing an opportunity to solve the problem simply by changing the process," he said. "The problem in attracting people in this business can be far less acute if we watch and manage how we're doing that."

The study found dealerships had 2.3 percent more jobs open in the first half of this year than a year earlier, with smaller dealership groups having a higher percentage of open positions than larger groups.

It also found the number of applicants at dealerships of all sizes is down from the same period in 2018, including a 10 percent drop for dealership groups with two to five stores. Robinson said it is also taking more applicants to fill open positions.

"What we're finding [with] the labor market this tight is that we have to get more looks to get to someone that we feel comfortable with bringing into the organization," he said.

The average number of open jobs per dealership is highest in the South Atlantic region, at 10.4 positions, while the fewest open jobs per store are in the West North Central region that runs from North Dakota and Minnesota to Kansas and Missouri, at 7.1, according to the study.

In New England, a dealership would need 133 applicants to make one quality hire — tops in the study — while a West North Central dealership would need 29 applicants to make a hire.

"This is not a problem that you can just grit your teeth and it'll go away," Robinson said. "This is something that you're going to see get harder over the next five years."

To help address that challenge, Robinson said dealerships need to think about what makes their store the best choice for candidates, to brand their dealership and deliver a great candidate experience.

The study also looked at how much dealerships spend to recruit applicants and hires. It found the most efficient, cheapest way to recruit was through referrals, with costs of $6 per applicant and $21 per hire. The most expensive cost per applicant, $75, came from sponsored job boards, which also had the highest cost per hire, $2,681.

Robinson said it's also important to factor in which types of recruiting take a lot of work to lead to a hire. The study estimates that four referrals are needed to make a hire, while as many as 126 applicants are needed to make one hire through free, organic job boards.
Robinson said dealerships may want to build a career website, if they don't have one. Career sites bring in 4 percent of applicants in auto retail but generate about 30 percent of hires, he said.

On average, dealerships take five days to open resumes from applicants, Robinson said. To make a hire, it takes dealerships an average of about 15 days, with luxury stores taking a few days longer, Robinson said.

"If you have a technician shortage and you're waiting nearly five days to reply to people who want to work for you, the first thing I would do is solve that problem," Robinson said. "Convert the leads you already have."