Preventing Turnover: How Do You Hire For Your Store?

During our visit to NADA 2015, we interviewed thought leaders from the retail automotive industry. Among those thought leaders is Adam Robinson, the Founder and CEO of Hireology. Robinson told us that there is a problem to fix with the turnover rate at dealerships being so high.

On dealership turnover Robinson said, “Name another fixed cost component of a dealership that’s bigger than their staff and name me another core critical part of the process that gets less attention than this. Most dealers can really drive ROI by implementing a process that’s scalable and repeatable. It helps them pick the right people and fish in a new pond for the people that are going to make them successful in the coming years.”

Robinson said dealers can implement a process to find the right employees using data. Robinson focused on the need for this data analysis when he said, “There is a competency makeup that makes somebody successful in sales, as a technician or in back office operations – they don’t need car experience, they just need to be wired the right way. And so the right process can lead to the right kind of questions and discovery to figure out if the person should have a chance at the store or not.”

One of the ways in which dealers can help their retention process is through training, however, what’s training with the wrong hire? Robinson touched on this subject when he said, “Training, the success of a training program, dealers are investing a lot in training and development the success of that training program has everything to do with the people that you’re hiring in the first place. So, you need to have a good product to train. If you start with the wrong person all the training in the world’s just not going to make a difference.”

Finally, as far as takeaways that dealers can use right now, just having a plan will almost double your effectiveness. Explaining the importance of organization, Robinson noted, “Just having any kind of process, any kind of process, for dealerships increases the success rate by about 40 percent. The other thing it’s going to do is cut the administrative overhead by about 80 percent. So what do you want your managers doing? Flipping through resumes or managing people who sell cars or deliver service?”