Dealers have detailed insight into which lead sources are converting to vehicle sales and track these metrics on a daily basis. This same level of attention and data-based decision making should be applied to a dealership’s most critical source of competitive advantage — hiring quality employees. With record-low unemployment rates and dealerships facing declining profit margins, it’s more important than ever to hire the best teams to help drive higher customer satisfaction scores and revenue back to your dealership.

Applicant sourcing data can help show what’s working and what’s not when it comes to sourcing and hiring for your open roles. How can your dealership start leveraging sourcing data to turn your team into a source of competitive advantage? I’ve outlined several benefits below.

Understand Applicant Sourcing ROI
Sourcing data can help your dealership answer the question, “What is my best source of applicants?” It also provides clear visibility into the total number of applicants, quality candidates and hires by source. Your dealership might buy one-off job board postings as needed when you have open roles, but this often results in limited visibility into ROI, which means you could be spending money on sources — such as national or niche job boards — that aren’t performing.

Sourcing data enables your dealership to see how your applicant sources are performing, including total sponsored posts purchased, dollars spent, quality applicants sourced, average cost per quality applicant and how these numbers break down across roles.

Eliminate Sources That Don’t Drive Quality Applicants
Sources that deliver a high quantity of poor applicants will only waste your time and your recruitment budget. With insight into how your applicant sources perform, your dealership can eliminate sources that aren’t converting and improve the ROI of your sourcing budget.

Examining how many quality candidates — and eventual hires — you receive from each of your sourcing channels can help you optimize your sourcing budget and ensure you’re only investing in sources that deliver top talent. If certain job boards or channels do not result in quality candidates, this is a clear sign you should reallocate your budget to other, more successful sources.

Optimize Sourcing Spend
Most dealerships have limited — if any — visibility into the effectiveness of job board spend, which can result in spending your recruitment budget without seeing results. With insight into how each applicant sourcing channel is performing, you can continuously optimize your sourcing budget, saving money that can be invested in other areas of your dealers. I’ve found that customers who have tapped into automated sourcing tools that include sourcing insights have seen a 30-percent reduction in job board costs.

Reduce Time to Hire
Once you have visibility into which sources are driving the most quality candidates, you can continue investing only in these top-performing sources, driving more candidates to your open roles sooner. Beyond improving your applicant sourcing, you can increase your hiring velocity by reviewing candidates quickly and automating certain steps in the hiring process such as reference and background checks.

Studies show that it takes an average of 10 days to review a new applicant. By speeding up applicant review, you can hire and onboard new employees much quicker, making more money and increasing your dealership’s profitability.

Take a similar approach to job applicant leads as you do for consumer leads. This will enable your dealership to save time and money on recruitment while building your best team. 

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