By Jon Purdy, National Director of Learning & Development, CDK Global
It’s both a blessing and a curse. The economy is booming, your business is growing, and you need good people to help you continue to grow. That’s a blessing. Right now, we’re in a “full employment” marketplace condition. This means that everyone who wants a job has one. That’s the curse. It’s always challenging to find the right people for your team, and right now it’s especially tough.
Adding to the pressure is the knowledge that the automotive industry has a multibillion-dollar bad hire and turnover problem. Yes, you read that right. According to Automotive News* and NADA, the cost of bad hires and consistently high turnover rates is now in the billions every year. Add in the complexity of a changing workforce, and it’s easy to understand the frustration that leads to many dealers feeling as if finding good people is the hardest part of their job.
That frustration comes from the knowledge that a bad hire wastes precious time. There’s also the expense of recruiting, onboarding, hiring, training, retraining, disciplining and then eventually terminating the employee. Bad hires typically have lower productivity, which leads to losses in variable and fixed operations profitability. Perhaps most costly is the damage done to your organization’s reputation. It only takes one person doing the wrong thing to undo years — maybe even decades — of hard work by the rest of your team.
In short, we need to get hiring decisions right the first time.
If you’re interested in learning more about building a team of top performers, I am hosting a session at Digital Dealer 27 Conference & Expo (Aug. 19-21, 2019 in Las Vegas, NV) titled, “Drafting a Winning Team,” which will discuss who to avoid, hire and/or develop based on five key qualities:
- Style of Play
- Knowledge
- Attitude
- Talent
- Experience
We will unpack each of these qualities, highlight when they indicate the right and wrong match for your team, discuss how they influence the dynamics of your organization, and help you build a profile for the people you need in order to grow your business. The final part of the session will include a high-level overview of how to build a professional interview system, including structure, planning, and EEOC compliance. You’ll also get tips on how to ask the right types of questions to find the right team players.
You’ll get many great ideas and tools from Digital Dealer 27 to help you push past your 2020 objectives. You’ll need a great team for that.
About the Author
Jon Purdy is a career automotive industry professional with a strong background in sales and F&I. His passion is growing other people to achieve their personal peak performance. Jon is an expert facilitator and coach with experience training groups of all sizes and audiences from sales consultants to dealer principals to OEM executives and is in demand all over the globe. Jon is the leader of our Curriculum Development Team and has written a mountain of content, courses and collateral specializing in guided self-discovery training techniques. His specialties include training all levels of dealership personnel, leadership training, one on one coaching, hands-on training, curriculum development, tool development, building client relationships, account management, OEM partnership and more.