We talk to many shops and when we ask what their biggest current challenge is right now the majority of them tell us it is hiring technicians. Unfortunately, what we most often find is that when you look at the shop’s web presence, including their website, Google Business Profile, Facebook and other social media, you wouldn’t know that they have positions available. They are missing a big opportunity to leverage those tools to help them attract new employees.
When we ask shop owners and decision makers why they aren’t highlighting the jobs they have available or their culture on the web, they usually tell us that they don’t see value in doing that or that they haven’t thought of doing it before. With that in mind, we wanted to find out directly from techs how often they research a service facility before applying for a job. Working with WrenchWay, we surveyed technicians in the WrenchWay mobile app to find out.
What did we find? The results are pretty clear:
More than 90% of the techs who took the survey said they would look at everything they can find online before applying for a job. If you’ve been one of those folks who have thought that your online presence doesn’t matter when it comes to attracting great employees, this survey result should get you to reconsider that stance.
The good news is that if you are a late adopter to leveraging your web presence to attract techs, it’s still not too late because chances are good that there are a lot of other shops and service centers in your market who are in the same boat. So, how do you get started?
How to Leverage Your Web Presence to Attract Technicians
1. Follow these tips for using your website to recruit technicians.
2. Next, you want to take a look at Facebook.
- What message are you sending to potential employees through your posts and photos?
- Does your shop look like a great place to work?
- Do you have photos of team events?
- Are you engaging with your community?
Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world. Chances are, a tech that could be considering applying to your opening is either going to look at your shop’s website or Facebook profile first. If they don’t like what they see, you’ve lost the opportunity to have a discussion with them before you even knew they were interested.
Even if you don’t have a current opening, now is the time to start using your Facebook profile for employer branding. Show appreciation for your employees. Capture pictures of your family outings and the team building activities you have. Take pictures of any community events you are involved in.
You want to get people thinking, “That shop looks like a great place to work. If I see they have an opening, I’m definitely going to apply there.” By doing that, your wait time to fill a job when you have an opening won’t be as long. And, even if an excellent candidate hasn’t been following you or heard about your shop, when they do they will see a history of these posts that will influence their decision.
3. Look at your Google Business Profile (GBP) with the eyes of a tech.
If you were a tech that heard about an opening at your shop:
- What messages would you get from the GBP?
- What photos are shared?
- What does the description of the shop say?
- How are the reviews?
- What do the reviews say about the customer experience?
If you get a sinking feeling about these things as you look at them, then you’ve got some work to do to clean them up. Start posting photos as mentioned in the Facebook section above. Start consistently asking happy customers for reviews. Don’t be afraid to ask your happy employees for reviews either – they can have an impact!
4. Consider other social media platforms beyond Facebook.
The two that would make the most sense would be YouTube and Instagram, although many people don’t really think of YouTube as a social media platform. If you are especially focused on attracting younger techs, these two platforms could work well for you. Specialty shops focused on wheels, performance, or mods can really pop on Instagram.
You can approach these two platforms very similarly to how you should approach Facebook. Capture videos or photos of team outings or events, cool projects, happy customers and generally what makes your shop a great place to work.
A word of warning though – don’t overcommit. If you only have the time to truly focus on one platform, you are better off doing an excellent job on Facebook than spreading yourself too thin and doing a poor job on three different platforms.
Start Looking at Your Web Presence as an Opportunity for Employer Branding
With 90% of techs saying that they will look at everything they can find online about a shop before they apply for a job, the message is clear – you need to look at your web presence as an opportunity for employer branding. If you are not utilizing all of your web properties in that way, you may be losing a lot of candidates before you even know they might be considering applying to your opening. Stop the bleeding and start today.
