Group taps chatbots and QR codes to recruit, hire

Berman Auto Group has brought technology not only into its sales process, but its hiring and recruiting process as well.

The six-store group, based in Chicago, has chatbots that screen employees and schedule interviews. QR codes — bar codes that can be scanned to access information, such as websites — are attached to marketing messages and can inform a user of open positions, said Amanda Whiddon, the group's executive and corporate recruiter.

This year, Berman Auto Group launched a text-to-apply feature that links a job applicant to the retailer's chatbot, allows the candidate to submit a resume from their phone and coordinates an interview, Whiddon said. At least 90 percent of the group's job applicants apply via a mobile device, she said.

That focus on technology early in the hiring process will be beneficial as the group weighs job candidates' communication skills and trains employees to work with customers on digital sales platforms, said Ross Berman, the group's vice president.

Whiddon, 33, and Berman, 37, spoke with Staff Reporter Lindsay VanHulle about automating hiring steps and bridging the online-to-in-store transaction. Here are edited excerpts.

On using chatbots in hiring:

Whiddon: I've created a chatbot for every position in the company. When someone wants to apply for a position, they're communicating with this electronic virtual assistant. They're answering a few questions, and once they get past the few questions, it'll automatically schedule interviews for me. This way we get the best applicants prescheduled into my calendar. We can also have it automatically schedule in-person interviews. If it's a basic entry-level position, say for an automotive porter, we can have it ask a certain amount of questions. If they pass those questions, we can get them scheduled in for an in-person interview. The chatbot does all of that for us.

It definitely helped save me time when it comes to recruiting for six different dealerships, and only one recruiter working for the company. It's a very efficient process.

Whiddon: We have QR codes for a variety of things. We can make it specific to the career fair. We can have it go to our direct career page. We can have them specific to jobs. We have one where, if someone's interested in the company, it would say, "If you'd like to come work for Berman Auto Group, here's our main QR code," and it would show all the open positions we have. We're putting it on all of our marketing pieces.

So whether it be email blasts or physical mailers, we're adding it to everything we have. So if someone receives a coupon for an oil change, on there, it'll also say, if you're interested in working for us, they just have to scan that QR code.

On the approach to digital retailing:

Berman: We brought that online interface in-store at Subaru at the beginning of this year. I felt it was a better experience for the customer than the traditional, printed proposal, desk deal we would normally do. And to be clear, we still do it at five of our six dealerships. It still works for them, but at Subaru, our customers really enjoyed engaging in having all the information at their fingertips, being able to select terms, payments, rates, etc., lease, finance, cash, all that. We spent the early part of this year training our salespeople to engage the customer in that process, not just online, but in the showroom. They use iPads or monitors at their desks to review the whole deal.

Since we've done that, customer satisfaction in the store has gone up significantly. Our speed to transact on deals — specifically with our best salespeople, who have always sold in volume — has improved. I feel like I've saved my best salespeople [a lot of] time. That's been going so well that [in October], we decided to transition the selling part of the finance office — the presentations, those things — into the hands of our salespeople as well. So if a customer doesn't want to go into the finance office or wants to finish a deal anywhere in the showroom, they will be able to do that, and with the person they initially sent the lead to online.