An Ontario Honda dealership is advertising online to attract people that have a strong social media presence and technology skills to work in various aspects even if they don’t have any automotive experience.
Trent Valley Honda, which is based in Peterborough, is posting videos to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram as opposed to traditional hiring sites to find individuals looking to take their social media talent and combine it into a career in either sales, finance and insurance or service. Interested applicants are asked to forward a video introduction of themselves along with their social media handles.
Monika Carmichael, who has been the Dealer Principal of Trent Valley Honda for 17 years and with the dealership as General Manager for 30 years, told Canadian auto dealer that she has taken this innovative approach because the automotive industry is shifting to digital.
“You have to bring in talent that you don’t already have, and if that’s the piece that we’re missing and that’s the bridge to the future that’s what we’ll focus on for anyone we’re hiring in any position,” said Carmichael. “It’s really that techy skill set and that attitude, we can teach the rest. It’s finding someone who lives in that space and wants to do that representing a real amazing brand with lots of new changes coming down the pipe.”
The initial video appeared earlier this week, specifically aimed at a job in sales as a product specialist.
“The demand for an online influencer product specialist is at an all-time high and the sky’s the limit,” said Carmichael in the video.
She is working with Mike Sarrazin, who worked in the automotive retail industry for 18 years and used videos as part of his job. He is now an automotive influencer on YouTube with the handle Skinny. For the past 18 months he has been working as a Digital Strategy Consultant/New Era Sales Trainer/Content Creator.
Sarrazin had been doing some work shooting videos for some dealerships and reached out to Carmichael. She had already been considering a digital strategy after attending a national Honda conference in 2021 attended by some 200 dealers. The corporate message to the dealers was the company was shifting from analog technology to digital and from internal combustion engines to electrification.
Sarrazin put together an online electric vehicle course that Carmichael and her employees are accessing through an app used for in-store communication. That led to the idea of creating videos aimed at attracting social media influencers.
He said the purpose of the videos is because customers are doing more online research than at stores, which might not have one of every model and every trim level on display. He said having people working in the store creating entertaining and/or educational videos will help attract customers.
“It’s just creating a little bit of a ripple to get attention to themselves and of course the store goes along with it,” said Sarrazin. “If we do that we become a source of that education and then they show up here and they want to deal with us rather than other stores.”
