Dealerships are always on the hunt for top talent to add to their ranks. Jobseekers often visit dealership websites before submitting a resume or responding to a job post. One New Hampshire dealership is taking a new approach to how they design their careers pages, specifically to attract top-producing women. There has been a lot of news about human resources and recruiting integrating into dealership operations. We wanted to learn how one dealership translated a recruiting strategy into a customer relations effort.
A Customer-Facing Strategy that Puts Women in a Place to Win New Customers
Lovering Auto Group in New Hampshire is proving a new recruitment strategy works to attract qualified women to make career moves into their dealership. Lovering Auto Group understood the power of testimonials in traditional customer advertising efforts and segmented that strategy into their hiring practices. They produced a six-minute video featuring sentiments of women sharing experiences as employees of the dealership, and showcases these clips on their website careers page and online channels.
Why the Dealership Wants More Women
The New Hampshire based dealership felt it was essential to promote leadership opportunities within the dealership and highlight the successful career paths of those already working there. Lovering management also mentions the added benefit of having women in pivotal management roles, to offer seamless internal employee conversations with a shared perspective. Nearly one-third of the dealership’s 107 staff members are women, which is a strong contrast to diversity in years past. The national average of women employees in dealerships is less than 20%, according to 2018 NADA data, cited in a recent Automotive News segment. According to the Cox Automotive study for 2019, women represent 34% of dealership positions, indicating there more women are finding career paths in the automotive industry.
Receiving More Women Applicants as a Result
Nearly one month after posting their first video, Lovering Auto Group had filled all of the open positions. Many of the openings were in sales, customer service, as well as service technician roles. One Lovering manager said almost immediately after the video went live, she interviewed five candidates – four of whom were women.
What the Customers Think
Lovering Auto Group points out that their video testimonials originally intended for recruiting purposes have also had a positive impact with customers. In fact, one manager says the dealership received both new service and sales-related customer calls, during which the individuals told the dealership they only called because they were moved by the ‘women in automotive’ video. Lovering also says some of its customers prefer to work with women staff members because they feel “less overwhelmed” when dealing with women behind the desk. Women car buyers often tend to be more comfortable buying from other women too.
The testimonial video helped Lovering Auto Group put friendly women faces on the dealership experience. The effort not only helped to fill the open positions, but also created a flurry of customer activity in response. It’s a strategy that has worked well in New Hampshire and can be helpful in your market too. Consider looking at your current careers page and talent acquisition process. You might be able to showcase some of the top-performing women in your dealership, as a method for attracting more women to key roles. You’ll find customers, employees, and applicants will all respond favorably.
