Faced with an ageing workforce, constantly evolving market pressures and a global shortage of skilled talent, automotive engineering companies have ongoing recruitment challenges. In this climate, your employee retention strategy must take precedence.
As employee retention is intertwined with hiring practices, ensuring your recruitment process is efficient from the start means you’re much more likely to hire candidates who are not only a great fit for your company, but will enjoy a long tenure.
A specialist automotive recruiter can assist you with this dual task of recruitment and retention. What follows is a detailed illustration of the five key benefits this strategic partnership brings.
1. Avoid A Bad Hire from The Start
Hiring the right candidate is the best form of retention. It stands to reason that if they align well with your company culture, alongside having the requisite skills and experience, they’re more likely to be engaged in the role and feel fulfilled, and remain for the foreseeable future.
An automotive recruiter is an expert in making the correct candidate-client match. Through gaining a deep understanding of your company's unique requirements and utilising comprehensive pre-screening processes, they source relevant candidates whose skills, experience and long-term career goals line up with your role, not to mention that vital culture compatibility.
In addition, a reputable automotive recruiter possesses in-depth industry knowledge, including trends, challenges, compensation benchmarks and opportunities. This includes a thorough grasp of the major and minor players within the industry, which helps them recognise the nuances in each candidate’s resume. As an example, on the surface, one candidate’s resume may not look as impressive as another’s. But as the agency is aware their firm puts a higher value on soft skills, specifically skills that this candidate is strong in, then that candidate will be a better long term fit.
These meticulous screening processes minimise the likelihood of mismatches, which naturally leads to higher retention rates.
2. Faster Hiring
When hiring alone, it can take many months to recruit engineers. During this time, your existing teamwork under immense pressure in trying to pick up the slack. Productivity can be impacted, as well as morale and staff happiness which can risk further attrition.
Engaging an automotive recruiter allows you to benefit from their best practice and streamlined hiring processes. The time it takes them to find applicants is significantly less than a solo search, particularly when you factor in their vast potential employee pool comprised of both active and passive candidates. In these talent-tight times, speed is often the difference between securing your top pick and losing them to your competitor.
An automotive recruiter also specialises in understanding what top candidates want. This helps them tailor your recruitment campaign to attract them, from curating appealing job advertisements to marketing your role and company.
3. Effective Onboarding
Research by The Aberdeen Group shows that a structured onboarding program results in 65% of employees achieving higher productivity levels faster, 65% higher employee engagement and inclusiveness amongst team members, and 50% higher retention.
These statistics underpin the importance of effective onboarding. As a part of their service suite, an automotive recruitment agency can help you curate a seamless onboarding process to accelerate your new hires' integration into your organisation. This includes helping them understand what’s expected of them, as well as being an additional support touchpoint if issues arise.
4. Detailed Progression Plans
In a constantly evolving field like automotive engineering, professional development is an employee essential. While it brings a host of benefits for your business and its bottom line, it can also demonstrate to your staff that you value their career growth — something that’s both highly motivating and loyalty-inducing.
An expert automotive recruiter can collaboratively work with you to develop structured progression plans for your employees. These might involve both short and long-term goals with clear milestones and may encompass learning and upskilling programs, time off or subsidies for study, mentorship programs, access to feedback and coaching, as well as secondment opportunities or job rotations into other departments.
5. Ongoing Candidate Care
Having worked to recruit engineers and executive staff in the automotive sector for many years, the team at Fields and Rudd appreciate the importance of proactive relationship building. This involves cultivating long-term relationships with both clients and candidates well beyond placement, regularly assessing their satisfaction and helping to identify and address potential retention issues before they escalate.
Summary
With their specialised knowledge and resources for effective hiring, an automotive engineering recruitment agency can serve as a strategic partner to keep your employee engagement levels and retention rate high.
If you would like further support to address your attrition rate or sourcing new talent, connect with one of our specialists. From our ability to align candidate aspirations with your company's objectives, to our insights into industry trends and dedication to ongoing support, we’d love to help contribute to your company’s long-term success.