In the business world, it seems there is something that can be counted on, without fail, year after year. And that is the difficulty in finding and maintaining quality employees. Come to think of it, when was the last time you can clearly remember having a wealth of quality candidates for an open position?
Well, to answer that question, for some dealers it was a month ago; for others, at least 10 years. It’s hard to paint the nation’s employment picture with a broad stroke, as geography can giveth or taketh away. But for a vast majority of the country, finding talent has been an arduous process.
A number of dealers we’ve spoken to in the last few years have lamented that their ability to grow is held back by unfilled openings for sales reps—some dealers have been shorthanded for six months or longer. That speaks to two truths: one, dealers don’t want to lower their standards and hire for the sake of filling a position. Two, you don’t need me to tell you how much the wrong hiring choice can cost a dealer from a time/money investment standpoint. Hell, we even make the wrong calls with candidates who test and interview well.
Since so many members of our Elite Dealer registry cited hiring as their number-one challenge, we’ve decided to aggregate most of them in this article. Read on…
RJ Young, Nashville, Tennessee
“We have struggled to hire quick enough to keep pace with our current growth. The job market in Nashville, where we are headquartered, is booming and trying to keep pace with many large employers like Amazon is a constant struggle.”
Quality Business Solutions, Baltimore
“Hiring and developing our IT team and getting people to work in our office verses at their homes [is a challenge]. The American workplace has changed, and our administration, sales and IT departments all wanted the option to work from their homes. We like for our team members to come into the office, so they have that sense of fellowship with each other. This also helps them to work more like a team versus individually. We give the option to work from home one day a week as well to accommodate their personal needs.
Kelly Office Solutions, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
“Our reputation is strong in our market, so we have been fortunate to have workers seek out our open positions and current employees recommending others for open positions. We continue to grow and are still looking, so come see us!”
All Copy Products, Denver
“I look forward to a day that we don’t start an internal conversation with ‘I know that you are buried, but…” We are getting closer to being fully staffed in support roles but not back to the level of customer service that we would like to be both internally and with our clients.”
Coordinated Business Systems, Burnsville, Minnesota
“We added an in-house dedicated recruiter whose role is to source candidates and conduct a quick screen. We also developed an employment culture.”
Function4, Sugar Land, Texas
“We have partnered with a large human resources company to develop and manage an active and passive recruiting process. This partnership is improving our quality applicant flow.”
Offix, Gainesville, Virginia
“We revamped our recruitment strategy, updated job descriptions, expanded our reach with online job boards and even offered referral bonuses to our current employees to help find suitable candidates. Additionally, we worked on improving our onboarding process to ensure that new hires could quickly become productive team members. This concerted effort helped us overcome our staffing challenges and ensured the dealership continued to run smoothly.”
Mid Ohio Strategic Technologies, Columbus, Ohio
“The fact [is] that there are fewer and fewer options for qualified service technicians to bring on board to our team. We have developed a new strategy for onboarding new team members who have less experience out of the gate.”
Kraft Business Systems, Caledonia, Michigan
“It has been hard to find quality candidates. We have relied a lot more on our staff to help find the right people to fill the right seats.”
Image 2000, Valencia, California
“Hiring sales reps has become very difficult. On top of that, most want to work from home. I do realize that came about because of COVID, but it has become a reality that is going to be around for long time.”
Frontier Business Products, Denver
“[It’s] all about finding quality people. We’ve added to our internal recruiting team to increase our bandwidth.”
Millennium Business Systems, Livonia, Michigan
“Last year we hired a director of recruiting to assist management with sourcing top talent. This year, we’ve gotten creative with our positions, offering part-time and flex schedules to meeting applicants’ needs.”
