20 June 2016

You may have noticed a recent flurry of comment pieces in the specialist motoring and technology press on the subject of millennials and their perceived indifference towards cars and car ownership. If you believed the plethora of experts, this particular demographic was more into living in cities and getting around in the back of an Uber-hailed car than being shackled with the expense and hassle of actually owning one.

As it turned out, such doom-laden predictions were a little wide of the mark. However, it does beg the question: how do you recruit and retain the next generation of sales executives to serve the new wave of tech savvy and financially astute buyers? After stumbling across the results of a recruitment survey (I know, I know) it turns out you might have to work harder to secure the services of Generation Z if you want the best and the brightest.

Generation Z  are those aged between 16 and 20, and according to the survey a large majority (62 percent) believe the traditional interview process is as much about interrogating a prospective employer as it is you questioning them. If you don’t have your story straight you might lose that bright young thing to a competitor.

Also, they don’t plan on staying long – two years tops in most cases. The rewards for using you as a stepping stone to something better is that they will be focused and work hard so long as the training, motivation and opportunities are there. Given the age of all those bright, young things, the emerging trend for employing non-sales people into sales roles could work to your advantage.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that so-say inexperienced recruits often perform better than seasoned professional due to their lack of baggage. Training them in the ways of your specific business practices immediately side-steps the instances of “I didn’t do it like that in my previous job” or a general reluctance to accept new ideas. And with the growing trend for auto retail management to recruit HR professionals from outside the industry, cultivating a fresh approach at all levels could put you on a better path to challenging the threat from online and other future sales channels.

Iain Dooley

Editor, Agenda

Auto Retail Network

Tags: employment, Generation Y, recruitment, retail, training