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Modernize Your Method for Filling Roles in the BDC, Sales Floor, Service Department, and More

More than likely, your dealership is struggling to fill key roles in multiple positions. While staffing fluctuation isn’t necessarily unique to dealers, the sheer volume of roles to be filled and competition for talent is currently presenting some of the most unique staffing challenges in recent history.  

The Great Resignation, a term coined for today’s mass exodus of employees, has shown that employees across many industries continue to leave their jobs at an abnormally high rate. Automotive isn’t topping the list of industries most impacted, yet the staffing shortage at dealerships still exists. That said, there is an opportunity to capture job seekers looking for a new career path, like those leaving the restaurant industry. But it’s going to take more than listings on career sites and signs outside of the dealership to reach new job seekers. Below, we’ll walk you through ways to start expanding your reach and attracting more talent using simple digital tactics that resonate with these audiences. 

1. Compare Your Benefits and Incentives Against the Competition’s 

With a job market that’s both vast and competitive as ever, it’s time to get clear on what you can do to start attracting job seekers. Just like your business should have a Unique Selling Position (USP), your employment opportunities and benefits should, too. Why is this a crucial place to begin? Your employment offerings will serve as the basis for any listing and piece of content you create to promote open roles.  

While you may immediately think money is the only incentive that matters, think again. For example, in warmer climates like Florida, service bays may be entirely open and cause discomfort on hot, humid days. If your dealership has an air-conditioned bay, that may be enough to help someone consider you over the competition. Or, alternatively, you may offer to pay for new hires to become certified technicians, helping to further incentivize and open up the candidate pool. Research what the local competition is offering to understand what you’re up against. You may uncover opportunities to either boast unique benefits or tweak to match or beat the competition. 

2. Tell Your Story Instead of Selling Your Employment

As you know, word of mouth can make or break decision-making when it comes to shoppers considering your dealership. The same goes for job seekers! In your organic social strategy, it’s more than likely you’re sharing photos or videos of happy customers, willing to tag themselves and thank you for the wonderful experience. Once those customers have been tagged in or engage with your post, it begins to circulate within their network’s feeds, driving up post impressions. That means you’re getting valuable, free word of mouth. Have you tried this same approach with your employees? 

As part of your ongoing organic social strategy, ask employees if they’re willing to give a quick testimonial that can be shared on your channels. A short video explaining why these individuals like working for your business is authentic, which is the type of content proven to resonate most on social media. See if your employee is willing to be tagged in the post, share with their network, or otherwise engage with the post to help increase overall impressions. While this is just one way you can tell the story of what it’s like to work for your dealership via social media, it can help job seekers visualize themselves as your employee. Be sure to add a link in the social post that sends interested parties to your career page that further describes available roles and your unique benefits.

3. Increase Your Social Media Footprint & Drive More Candidates to Your Business

While organically posting to social media has its perks—with no cost to you and an authentic feel to the viewer—that message will only travel so far. Today, paid social advertising is commonly used by dealerships to drive targeted traffic back to their site for auto shoppers to view inventory or book service appointments. That’s because there is substantial data available to target and retarget best-suited intenders for each area of your business. Did you know there are also ways to target the type of job seekers you’re looking for just as you would target shopping or service prospects? 

Possibly one of the most overlooked and fastest ways to cast a wide net is to run paid advertisements for your open positions. As mentioned earlier, it’s best to include as much information in the ad as possible that will help the job seeker consider applying to your business. With a wide variety of first-party, third-party, and behavioral data available, it’s easy to deliver your message to the right audiences where you know they’ll be seen the most—Facebook and Instagram.  

Remember that employee testimonial content mentioned earlier? After posting your testimonial organically, analyze which videos or posts are performing best and use that data to inform how you’ll shape content for paid advertisements. You can even repurpose the top-performing testimonial videos or posts into paid ads, or A/B test against more branded, professional creative. If you’re not tweaking your content based on performance, you may be wasting your ad dollars, as inexpensive as it may be. 

If there’s one thing we know, the automotive industry is resilient. The current labor shortage won’t look like this forever, but in the meantime, it’s important for dealers to start thinking outside the box in terms of action planning. Appropriate staffing is crucial to scaling your business. Take the time to holistically examine your approach to recruiting and uncover improvements that can be made in order to improve results.  And above all, make sure you’re providing a great work experience for your employees that makes it easy for them to lend a hand when it comes to these recruiting efforts—their voices will be invaluable. 


If you’re not sure where to start, lean on the right partner whose top concern is seeing your dealership succeed. Affinitiv is helping dealers run unique recruitment campaigns right now. Reach out today for an expert consultation. 

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