More Job Boards Don’t Necessarily Mean More Qualified Automotive Candidates

Hireology states that a dealership’s job can be distributed across 10+ job boards to increase reach and visibility.

On the surface, that sounds impressive.

But I’ve been in the automotive industry for more than four decades, and I’ve operated AUTOjobs.com for 31 years. One thing I’ve learned is that more exposure is not automatically better exposure.

If you’re trying to hire an experienced automotive technician, what matters more?

Getting your job in front of the largest possible number of people?

Or getting it in front of people who actually work in the automotive industry?

Those aren’t the same thing.

General employment sites are designed to recruit for practically everything. Automotive Technician may be one category among thousands of occupations competing for attention.

AUTOjobs.com takes the opposite approach.

We don’t need 10 general employment job sites. We need one industry and the right audience.

Automotive.

That’s been our focus since 1995.

An ATS and an Automotive Talent Source Serve Two Different Purposes

This distinction is important.

Hireology describes itself as an automotive hiring platform that helps dealerships manage sourcing, interviewing, onboarding, reporting and the hiring workflow. Its automotive product also emphasizes mobile tools, standardized workflows, background checks and source-performance reporting.

Those are legitimate functions of an ATS.

But an ATS doesn’t manufacture experienced technicians.

It manages the candidates who enter the system.

That’s why the source of those candidates matters so much.

If your sourcing strategy creates a large number of marginal or unqualified applicants, you’ve simply created more work for your managers.

AUTOjobs.com was built around a different philosophy:

Start with automotive.

Employers post automotive jobs. Automotive professionals search automotive careers. Employers can also proactively search our automotive-only Resume Database rather than depending entirely on applicants to find them.

That’s a very different recruiting model from distributing the same opening across numerous broad employment sites.

Where Is the Automotive Resume Database?

One of the most noticeable omissions in Hireology’s Technician Hiring Playbook is a discussion about an exclusive database of automotive resumes.

The article recommends building a “virtual bench” from previous applicants, using referrals and technician networks, and developing relationships with technical schools. Those are worthwhile strategies.

But what about the dealership that needs an experienced Service Technician today?

Or a Master Technician?

Diesel Technician?

Shop Foreman?

Service Advisor?

Service Manager?

Parts Manager?

Body Technician?

General Manager?

The dealership shouldn’t be limited to waiting for new applications or recycling candidates who previously entered its ATS.

It should also be prospecting.

That’s one of the most important differences with AUTOjobs.com.

Our automotive-only Resume Database gives employers another direction to work from:

Don’t only wait for automotive professionals to find your dealership. Go find automotive professionals.

That changes recruiting from a purely reactive process into an active one.

“Review Applicants Daily” Only Works When You Have the Right Applicants

Hireology says dealerships consistently hiring technicians follow a straightforward rhythm: review applicants daily, contact them within hours, schedule interviews immediately, move quickly toward an offer, and stay engaged.

Again, I agree with one major qualification.

They have to be qualified applicants.

Speed matters when an experienced technician applies.

But how much dealership management time should be spent quickly reviewing applicants who don’t possess the experience, training or background required for the position?

If a Service Manager receives 50 applications and only two are legitimate automotive technicians, applicant volume hasn’t solved the dealership’s recruiting problem.

It may have made the problem worse.

Now someone has to review, screen and eliminate the other 48.

That’s why I don’t believe dealerships should measure recruiting success simply by how many applicants a source produces.

The better question is:

How many qualified automotive candidates did it produce?

There’s a significant difference between applicant volume and automotive talent.

You Can’t Automate Your Way Out of a Technician Shortage

Hireology correctly acknowledges that the technician shortage isn’t disappearing and that many of the best technicians are already employed.

That point deserves more attention.

An experienced technician who’s happy, or at least comfortable, at another dealership may not wake up Monday morning, upload a new resume to a general employment site and announce to the world that he’s looking for another job.

That’s not how this market always works.

A technician may start thinking about a move because of compensation, management, workload, shop conditions, schedule, benefits, training, advancement, a new Service Manager or dozens of other reasons.

That’s why automotive recruiting has to be a long game.

The dealership needs to remain visible.

Not for seven days.

Not until someone gets busy.

Not simply until the ATS accumulates a certain number of applications.

Recruiting needs to be taking place whether the dealership has an immediate opening or not.

Hireology itself makes essentially this point when it says successful dealerships don’t wait for an empty bay before they begin building technician relationships.

We’re in complete agreement there.

Where we differ is where dealerships should spend more of their sourcing resources.

Automotive Dealerships Should Be Recruiting Every Department, All the Time

And this isn’t exclusively a technician issue.

A successful dealership depends on talented people throughout the organization:

• Service Technicians.
• Service Advisors.
• Shop Foremen.
• Service Managers.
• Parts Professionals.
• Parts Managers.
• Sales Professionals.
• F&I Managers.
• Sales Managers.
• Used Car Managers.
• Office Managers.
• Body Shop Professionals.
• General Managers.

The best person for your dealership may already be working for your competitor.

You don’t start recruiting that person the morning somebody gives two weeks’ notice.

You recruit continuously.

That’s why long-term automotive-specific job visibility and access to an automotive resume database should be part of a dealership’s overall hiring strategy.

Stop Making Dealership Managers Sort Through Noise

Hireology’s platform emphasizes moving applicants efficiently through the hiring process. Its broader automotive materials highlight mobile candidate review, alerts, workflows, screening, scheduling, background checks and reporting.

Those tools can make applicant management more efficient.

But there is another way to save time:

Reduce the amount of irrelevant traffic entering the process in the first place.

Think about the difference.

One approach says:

Bring candidates into the system and develop better technology for sorting, screening, communicating and processing them.

Our approach begins one step earlier:

Put the automotive opportunity in an automotive environment and concentrate on reaching automotive people.

A dealership doesn’t need hundreds of applicants to make a great hire.

It needs one qualified person who fits the position.

The Real “Bottom Line”

Hireology concludes its playbook by saying successful dealerships proactively build pipelines, move faster than competitors and establish consistent hiring processes. It argues that the dealership hiring the best technicians fastest wins.

Speed certainly matters.

But I’d change the bottom line.

You can’t hire the right automotive professional faster if you aren’t reaching that person in the first place.

That’s why the conversation shouldn’t only be about applicant-management technology.

It should also be about where automotive talent comes from.

An ATS can organize candidates.

It can automate communications.

It can schedule interviews.

It can measure time-to-hire.

It can handle onboarding.

But before any of those things happen, somebody has to generate the candidate.

That’s the part of the process dealerships can’t afford to overlook.

Hireology + AUTOjobs.com: A Better Automotive Strategy

This doesn’t have to be an either/or conversation.

Hireology says it works with more than 7,000 dealerships. It has built substantial technology around managing the dealership hiring process.

AUTOjobs.com has spent 31 years concentrating on the automotive employment market.

Those two capabilities should complement one another.

Instead of relying primarily on distributing dealership jobs across 10+ employment sites, Hireology dealerships should consider AUTOjobs.com as a primary automotive-specific talent source for its hiring needs.

Let Hireology do what an ATS does well.

Manage the hiring workflow.

Let AUTOjobs.com do what we’ve specialized in since 1995.

Connect automotive employers with automotive professionals.

For Hireology’s dealership network, that could mean another dedicated source for technician recruiting, an automotive-only Resume Database dealerships can proactively search, greater visibility for positions throughout the dealership, and less dependence on simply generating additional applicant volume from general employment websites.

For dealerships, it means reexamining where recruiting dollars and management time are being spent.

Ask your HR Manager, General Manager, Service Director or Dealer Principal:

Are our recruiting resources producing more applicants or are they producing more qualified automotive applicants?

• That’s the measurement that matters.
• Dealerships don’t need more noise.
• They need automotive professionals.

AUTOjobs.com has been focused on exactly that for 31 years.

Automotive Only. Automotive Employers. Automotive Professionals.

AUTOjobs.com, Inc. The Automotive Employment Website Since 1995.