Best PracticesDealership MarketingDealership Operations & Processes

Is Your Dealership Career Website Ready For Today’s Job Candidate?

You’ve identified your Dealership’s Employment Brand, but now what?

In my previous article we defined, in the simplest of terms, what a Dealership Employment Brand is. But each “dealer” must take hard look at their business structure, operations, standards and practices in order to identify and define their own True Employment Brand. The value of your employment brand will speak volumes when seeking and attracting top talent for employment.

One successful key strategy when building your dealership’s employee brand is incorporating a Career Website. Let’s consider…

A career website should the first impression for as many job applicants as possible. When a potential customer walks through your showroom doors, they have done their due diligence by not only thoroughly researching the vehicle they intend to purchase but have also researched the reputation of your dealership.

Similarly, job seekers are conducting extensive research when deciding whether or not to apply for a job with that particular company. A poorly designed career site fails to promote your dealership as a great place to work.

The Dollars & Sense of a Strong Dealership Career Website

A dealership’s career site also has a financial impact. Your dealership is probably spending significant dollars on promoting your latest job openings. For example: online job board postings to spread the word about those open positions. If that investment results in the right hires, it’s easy to justify the expense. However, when viable job candidates are introduced to an unappealing employee brand and corresponding uninformative career website, they are less likely to pursue the application process. You also increase your risk in attracting the wrong candidates – meaning the investment in generating applicant flow is wasted.

With this in mind, is your career website ready for today’s job candidates?

We recently measured one of our partner’s hiring activity over six months to see how employment branding affected the quality of applicants in the overall hiring process. The partner utilized both job boards and a strong career site to attract 1,825 applicants for several rooftops. Our findings showed that direct career site visitors drove 18 percent of applicant submissions, but resulted in 79 percent of overall hires. Additionally, career site candidates were more likely to be top performers.

Employee turnover from this candidate group was also 70 percent below the industry average.

To determine if your career site is ready to attract top talent, we encourage you to open your site and ask yourself the following questions:

Does it Make a Good First Impression?

In life, you only get one first impression, and we all know how detrimental or beneficial that can be. Apply this philosophy to your career site. Does the site accurately portray your dealer’s employment brand while giving a compelling representation of your team and culture?

Here are some best practices:

  • Showcase your dealership’s culture, benefits and job openings front and center so they are encouraged to continue reading.
  • Use lifestyle photos that advertise a positive and exciting representation of your team, culture and history.
  • Make sure your content focuses on your best qualities by highlighting key employee benefits, perks and community involvement.

Does it Outline a Potential Employee’s Career Growth Path?

It’s important to understand that many applicants are not only looking for a job, but rather a long and fulfilling career. This is something that is not commonly talked about, but can be a huge competitive advantage that draws in higher-quality candidates.

Your career website needs to speak to each and every applicant, demonstrating a potential career path with the company. Whether they are a recent technical graduate or an experienced sales person, they should have an idea of what their future would look like with your dealership.

Is it Accessible on Mobile Devices?

Today’s candidates are tech-savvy and expect information to be available in the palm of their hands. Job candidates will not only want to research your business from their mobile device but will likely want to apply at the same time.

Making sure your career website is mobile-friendly may seem like the obvious but too often company and/or corporate websites are overlooked for providing a fluid mobile experience.  enables applicants to inquire, learn and apply to a dealership no matter what device is being used. With that in mind, it’s important to ensure applicants can simply upload their resume rather than having to spend excessive time copying and pasting it into various fields. Making the application process as simple as possible and easily viewable on mobile devices will help ensure millennials are actually applying for the positions, instead of seeing an overwhelming application process and opting to pass over it.

Today’s candidates expect information to be available in the palm of their hands. Making sure your career website is mobile-friendly may seem like the obvious but too often company and/or corporate websites are overlooked and fall short on providing a fluid mobile experience. Applicants should be able to learn, enquire and even apply for a position by simply upload their resume, no matter what device they’re using.

Remember, a strong career website can play a huge part in building your dealerships employment brand. Make sure it’s easy to follow and evokes feelings of excitement in candidates by portraying the dealership’s history, culture and anything else that makes your dealership special.

How are you currently promoting your Dealership’s Employment Brand to attract top talent for hire?

Do you have dealership career website? 

Join this discussion with your answer(s) right here in the DealerRefresh Dealer Forums

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Adam Robinson is the co-founder and CEO of Hireology – the leading integrated hiring and retention platform in retail automotive – working with ov...