Drive My Career reveals insights to help dealers improve their recruitment process

Drive My Career has published the results of its latest survey aiming to help dealers secure a higher job application intake, including an analysis of potentially misleading job titles.

Drive My Career (DMC) polls its target audience regularly to investigate trends and perceptions of recruitment within the automotive industry. The most recent survey, which ran in October, received 130 responses from people aged 16-24 years old and explored a variety of topics after discussions with recruitment specialists from DMC members.

Job Titles 

One of the issues highlighted was the low intake of applications dealerships receive for certain entry-level roles. This led DMC to analyse the potential harmfulness of a number of entry-level job titles. Six entry-level job titles were hand-picked from DMC members’ career portals, and respondents were asked how much experience they assumed would be needed to successfully apply for the roles.

Product Genius received the lowest score, with a mere 13.1% of respondents understanding it to have entry-level requirements; it was  followed by both [manufacturer name] Expert and [manufacturer name] Pro with 15.8%; Star Expert with 19.5% and Customer Service Executive with 22.3%. Sales Executive received the highest percentage, although still relatively low, with 25.2% of respondents believing it to be entry-level.

The results show that although these titles are appealing and widely used, many young people could be misled into thinking more experience is required to apply unless the company clarifies and highlights the requirements for the role.

Job adverts information

Question 2 analysed what young people would most like to see in a vacancy’s job advert. The second highest result reported that young people were looking for the Experience & Qualifications Required (25.38%), reinforcing the first question’s insights. This highlights the importance of entry-level roles clearly stating the experience requirements to attract the most applicants. The highest returned response was Salary (29.69%), and the third highest was Detailed Description of the Role (19.53%).

In a separate question, 88.46% of respondents stated that they would be more inclined to apply for a job if the company clearly stated that they have a ‘clear and open Mental Health Awareness ethos within their organisation’.

Career page user-friendliness

Finally, on a scale of 1-10, the importance of a company’s career page to be user-friendly scored an average rating of 8.6. In addition to this, 44.19% of respondents stated they had ended a job application early because the website was not user-friendly.

Sue Robinson, NFDA Chief Executive commented: “These surveys present a unique opportunity for DMC to better understand young people’s perceptions about careers and to use the information to support members in their recruitment practices. 

“We encourage our members to take our users’ feedback on board to continue to improve their recruitment journeys and address the skills shortage facing our sector. Our findings show that small adjustments could have a positive impact on a candidate’s experience.

“Drive My Career has a strong and positive relationship with its members and we will continue to work with franchised dealers and industry partners to attract more young people into the automotive industry”.