Attracting the best candidates

In our article last month (“The changing landscape of employee development and retention,” June), we discussed how employee development and retention programs in your repair shop can benefit your company and employees. Creating a recruitment strategy is the last pillar to consider when building your shop to become the local market employer of choice!

You may be wondering why we would discuss retention in our previous article before tackling recruiting in this article. The reason is simple. The message you’re going to communicate with potential employees is that everything you do is aimed at keeping your employees happy, well trained, productive, engaged, and ultimately retained. Your overview message to candidates should be “This is why you should work here.” It is hard to recruit anyone to your business if you don’t first understand what is important to them.

The basics

The first step to consider in creating a recruitment strategy for your shop is to look at what would be important to you and your staff. Reviewing these ideas will help you begin to construct a great recruitment program. In addition, reviewing the following questions with members of your team may help build your recruitment strategy.

Company Mission – What values make your business unique to a potential employee
Career Opportunities – Your thoughts on what opportunities your business may be able to provide a recruit?
Company Benefits – What benefits do you offer that would be important to your employees?
Training Programs – What internal or external training would be available to a recruit?
Job Application – What tools and locations do you currently use to recruit staff? How can you expand on these?

Answering these questions is a great starting point to help determine where and what you need to develop your recruitment strategy.

One size does not fit all

There is no single type of recruiting strategy that fits everyone. Every collision center’s recruiting efforts can and will be different than those applied by other shops. What are some factors that might affect recruitment strategy from one shop to the next? Geography could have an impact, such as being in a metro area versus a rural area. Climate is also a consideration when searching for candidates. Furthermore, the urgency of your hiring need and the type of position required can have an impact on securing the best candidates. Identifying some of these factors in advance will help you customize your recruiting strategy.

Building a talent pool

Traditionally, shops choose new employees from applicants who walk through the door or answer an online ad. These are considered active candidates.

However, the reality is that some of the best candidates are probably already working for someone else and are not even looking for a new job. They are called passive candidates. These candidates require a different approach to hire, yet targeting passive candidates is becoming an essential strategy in today’s hiring environment. Passive sourcing is the process of searching for candidates who are already employed, reaching out to them, and trying to interest them in working for you.

Passive candidates will most likely only leave their current job if they believe the new job you offer will be more rewarding. They want development opportunities. Since passive candidates are generally happy in their current employment situation, you must provide motivation for them to move and that starts by building a rapport and relationship with them.

Building a talent pool can help you separate your business from other shops in your market when it comes to recruiting the best employees. The key is to build a passive candidate pool before you need to fill open or new positions.

Managing your talent pool

A talent pool is basically a database of potential job applicants. This is where you’ll keep track of everyone interested in your organization that fit your culture and have the potential to benefit your organization. Your goal is to have a pool of candidates who are already familiar with and potentially interested in joining your organization?

Who should be in your talent pool?

Internal candidates – Providing they meet position requirements
Previous applicants – Good culture fit but were not right for the previous position they applied for
Former employees – Sometimes called boomerangs, these are valued former employees that you would like to have return
Employee referrals – If you don’t already have one, consider creating a method of having existing employees refer candidates
Tech school students – This is one of our best industry resources for new talent; make sure you’re building a relationship with the school placement counselor
High school students – Capture candidates through career planning events
Post-secondary students – This resource is a hidden treasure trove of former college students who found college may not offer them a career path.
Other passive candidates – These sources may include military, or auto related service industries such as mechanical and detail services

Using your talent pool

There are many potential benefits of having a talent pool for your business. Your talent pool already contains qualified candidates, so it should be the first place you look when you need to fill a position.

Access to passive candidates – If they are in your talent pool, it means you have been interacting with them. They have access to information about your company and can stay up to date without any pressure.

Strategic planning – Whether doing your budget or trying to evaluate your workforce, ideally you should have qualified candidates in your talent pool to consider.

Your employer brand – Everything that you share with the candidates within your talent pool tells them what they need to know about your culture and what it would be like to work for your organization.

Staying in touch

Developing a way to keep in contact with passive applicants can be done in numerous ways. This might include sending them job alerts notifying them anytime you have an opening that fits their interests and experience. In the digital age, it is very effective to send a direct application link to a potential candidate from your talent pool. Being able to apply any time is important and very convenient for those who have existing jobs. Remember too that encouraging employee referrals is another way of staying in touch and very important to creating a robust talent pool for your shop.

Making the connection

After you have decided what makes your shop unique and where the potential candidates are located, you are ready to decide how to connect with them. The key to connection is using tools that work for you and your business. There are two different types of effective recruitment methods that are employed by HR departments, owners, and managers across the country to reach candidates.

One is a traditional recruitment method, while the other is called the modern recruitment method. One may argue which method of recruitment is the best, but both have their positives in helping organizations hire the best possible candidates.

Traditional recruitment methods include:

Local newspaper advertisements
Local employment postings (classifieds)
Reward for referrals
Industry events
Temporary agencies
Local word of mouth
Modern recruitment methods include:
Company website career opportunities
YouTube videos
Company social media platforms
Online job sites (indeed.com, ziprecruiter.com)
Related automotive online postings
"Why I work here" employee testimonials

You have many choices that you can use to develop your recruitment message and find the best candidate for your business.

Our goal in this article is to help identify and get you thinking about how you can create your own program to recruit new employees that will work for your business.

After reviewing recruitment and our previous articles concerning employee training and retention, we feel that you have the basic components to succeed in being the shop in your market that people want to work for!

Keep these characteristics in mind as you work through developing your programs: