Employees can make or break your dealership. Following a step-by-step selection process can help prevent hiring disasters.  

By Denise L. Rondini, Executive Editor

They are either your most valuable asset or your biggest nightmare. They can win customers for you or destroy your reputation. They are your employees.

Nearly every dealer who has achieved success, credits his employees for their role in the dealership’s achievements. And it is true that having the proper people in the proper place is essential for dealership success.

But finding the right person is not always easy, and many dealers are not trained in proper hiring procedures.

According to John P. Boggs of Fine, Boggs & Perkins LLP, an employment law firm based in California, dealers need to follow a step-by-step process when hiring at all levels of a dealership. Speaking at a webinar hosted by KPA, a safety, environmental and human resources compliance consultant, Boggs says the procedure includes: an application, interview, conditional offer, drug and background screening, new hire packet and company policies and training.

Many hiring mistakes can be avoided in the very beginning of the process by using a proper application and interview process. A canned off-the-shelf employment application may not be the best tool for your dealership. Either develop your own application or check with your state dealer association, the American Truck Dealers or a firm that specializes in dealership operations, to see if they have sample applications you can use as a starting point for developing your own application.

Once you have a proper application, make sure each and every job applicant not only fills it out, but fills it out completely. Blanks on an application form should cause you to take a closer look. Areas that Boggs encourages dealers to delve into include blanks in crucial areas involving job termination, crime history, reason for leaving a previous job or contact information for a previous employer.

Another area that deserves close scrutiny, according to human resources professionals, is gaps in employment. While many people have “legitimate” reasons for these gaps — things like pregnancy, education, etc. — some job applicants will omit positions they held only briefly or those from which they have been fired.

Blanks on the application can be explored in the next phase of the hiring process, the interview. During this process, the interviewer needs to be careful not to ask any “illegal” questions. However, it is fine to ask an applicant if he had any employment during the gap between the two jobs that he listed on his resume.

This is also a time to probe the candidate if you notice he has had multiple jobs in a short period of time. If you are seeking an employee who will stay with you for years and years, someone with a history of switching jobs frequently may not be the ideal candidate. One caveat here, if you are looking to hire someone into your IT department and their stint of multiple jobs in a short period of time was during the dot- com boom, it may have just been a function of the times. Still, it warrants further discussion with the applicant.

Conducting a proper job interview is not an easy task, and most dealership managers are not properly trained in the art of interviewing. One rule of thumb, according to Boggs, is to listen more than you talk. He says an effective interviewer listens 80 percent of the time and only talks 20 percent.

Another key is asking open-ended questions, which are questions that cannot be answered with a simple yes or no.

Once you think you have found the ideal candidate, make him a conditional offer and then conduct drug screening and a background check. If that goes smoothly, agree to the terms of employment and give him your dealership’s new hire packet — which should include your company’s policies and procedures. Finally, make sure you have a training program in place to get the new hire the skills he needs as soon as possible.

While there is no guarantee you will hire the right person 100 percent of the time, strictly adhering to a set process for each and every open position can reduce your risk of making a hiring mistake.

o www.successfuldealer.com