Craig Lockerd: How to find, hire, and retain top talent
With over 17,000 successful hiring campaigns under his belt, Craig Lockerd shares powerful advice about what it takes to find, hire, and retain top talent for your dealership. Buckle up–this one’s a doozy.
What we discuss in this episode:
04:20 – Artificial Intelligence – it’s not going to destroy you. It’s gonna make you change. It’s going to make you evolve. It’s not going to cost us as a job. It’s going to make your job easier.
6:24 – Dominate and own one media space and make it work for you to get people in the door. Don’t try to be everywhere.
08:27 – New technology is going to open the door for us to move on to something else.
11:18 – Salesperson – should have the willingness, the intellect to understand the concepts and then the will to create their own brand.
17:16 – Women as brand ambassadors – there’s an authenticity to their branding efforts that is much more difficult for their male counterparts to establish.
17:41 – Men are into things, women are into people.
19:14 – What’s the number one barrier that dealers need to overcome so that they can find the right people and keep them?
19:38 – Hiring the right person, you have to be attracted to that person to some level. There has to be that attraction from both parts and then you have to establish a friendship. Understanding your culture and establishing rules for the culture and relationship to thrive.
21:51 – To hiring the right person, be aware of his or her goals, what outcomes they’re looking for, and hopefully align those as closely as you can with him or her.
23:33 – Corporate culture – As a business owner you must take personal responsibility of your part of any conflict in terms of your team first.
30:30 – Culture is the sum of the individuals inside that business. It’s the beliefs, it’s the character qualities.
31:07 – Sustaining is supporting one another, not only showing support but providing support.
31:52 – As a leader, sustaining your team in saying that you matter here, this is going to help me support you.
35:03 – Positional leader. You’re a leader by virtue of the position you have. Most tend to use their position as a way of influence to get people to do things. Positional leader is an invitation to start honing and developing the skills and character and behavior traits of the next level of leadership.
37:38 – Maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses. Be self-aware enough to know where to back out.
41:30 – How do we introduce patience into the mix of finding the right person. It’s better to hire the right people before you need them rather than, cause that’s where the mistakes are made.
44:18 – Dealerships don’t hire techs until one leaves.
46:05 – Develop somebody now before you actually need a new hire.
49:24 – There can’t be a bigger ROI than your employee.
51:34 – Hire those whose values align well with yours and who do and can do great work.
51:50 – How can we have a diverse workforce?
52:50 – Hiring people has to be equality of opportunity. You can’t make a decision on hiring somebody based on whether they have a college degree or who went to college longer.
01:01:03 – Train and develop people.
01:01:41 – Responsibility as a leader, as a manager is to find out what your hire’s real “why” is.
01:07:30 – Build a relationship with your people. You got to talk to your employees and you’ve got to have those conversations.
01:13:51 – Leadership – establishing your brand as an employer with a good culture.
01:27:51 – The science of successful recruiting is to start contacting the applicants that you want to interview to see if then they deserve or qualify to go further in your process. Standardize your interview process to run like a system.
Become a leader
Craig adds that creating a culture and a set of rules and responsibilities for that culture to properly function is the best thing you can for your organization to thrive. Developing relationships and understanding what drives your employees is a key ingredient to successfully integrating them into your culture and aligning them with your company’s values.
Hiring as investment
Graig says that you need to make sure you properly invest in hiring and developing new employees prior to when you actually need them. You need to look into hiring as an investment and think about how to structure your hiring and sales processes to create a mutually beneficial environment.
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