Given the tight labor market, job seekers have their choice of countless open roles at the tips of their fingers. This means if your dealership has a frustrating hiring process, top talent won’t hesitate to find their next opportunity elsewhere. 

During the hiring process, job seekers are excited about the possibility of working for your dealership. But if this excitement wears off due to hold ups during certain hiring steps, you’ll risk losing quality job seekers to competing offers. Below several common job seekers’ frustrations are highlighted, along with ways your team can tap into recruitment technology to support an engaging candidate experience.

1. Job Applications Are Lengthy and Complex

The 2019 Dealership Staffing Study from Cox Automotive found that younger generations show a growing interest in dealership careers — with 33% of Generation Z non-dealership employees and 36% of young millennials interested in working at a dealership. But younger generations are also much more selective when applying for open roles and are not willing to spend a lot of time on long, complex job applications.

A recent study found that more than 60% of Generation Z job seekers are only willing to spend 15 minutes or less on a job application. If your dealership job applications are pages long or lead to a seemingly endless scroll to complete, this will likely turn away top job talent. 

Keep your job applications simple by only requiring job seekers to include their name, email address, telephone number and resume, with an option to add a cover letter explaining their interest. And by partnering with an applicant tracking system, you can easily centralize all this applicant information to keep the hiring process organized.

2. It Takes a Long Time to Hear Back After Applying 

We found that hiring managers take an average of 10 days to review and respond to job applicants. But in today’s competitive hiring market, many top applicants are completely off the job market within 10 days. This means your team needs to speed up the time it takes to review and respond to job applicants. 

A top reason your team might take a long time to review initial applicants is because you manually review each and every applicant — even those who are not a fit for your dealership. But with the right technology in place, you can streamline this first step in the hiring process. 

Prescreen surveys are one way your team can avoid manually reviewing each job applicant and instead automatically send those who are qualified to the next step in the hiring process. Using prescreen surveys, as soon as applications are submitted, emails are sent to candidates with a link to the survey. 

Applicants who receive a passing score on prescreen surveys can quickly move forward with next hiring steps, while those who are not a fit will be automatically removed from the hiring process and sent a rejection email. Leveraging prescreen surveys saves your dealership time that would have otherwise been spent reviewing applicants who aren’t a fit and saves applicants from the frustration of waiting to hear back after applying.

3. Communication with Hiring Managers Leads to Phone Tag 

Since most of today’s job seekers are already employed, they’re likely to miss phone calls or overlook emails from hiring managers. To make communication easier on job seekers interested in your dealership, you can turn to text messaging.

About 90% of job seekers would find it helpful to receive text messages during the application and hiring process. You can use candidate text messaging to schedule interviews, share directions to your dealership, follow up with feedback post-interview and remind candidates of actions they need to take — such as completing prescreen surveys. 

Text messaging can help you keep job seekers engaged and excited about joining your team throughout the hiring process. We found that candidate text messaging can help you hire up to eight days sooner, boosting productivity and profitability at your dealership.  

4. Reference Checks Slow Down Final Hiring Steps

Similar to your candidates and hiring managers playing phone tag during the hiring process, another step that often gets held up is reference checks. A candidate might have passed your prescreen survey and interview process with flying colors, only for you to have trouble reaching his or her references, extending the hiring process and delaying the final job offer.

With the right technology in place, you can automate the entire reference check process. Candidates simply fill in their references’ contact information and reference check surveys are automatically sent out. References can fill out the surveys on their own time and automated reference checks take less than two days to complete, with an average response rate of 85%.

In today’s applicant-driven economy, your dealership needs an efficient hiring process in place to staff up with qualified talent. By tapping into technology that can streamline your hiring process, you can avoid common job seeker frustrations and hire qualified employers sooner.

Click here to view more solutions from Adam Robinson and Hireology.