Drive My Career was launched in February 2018 to reach out to young people who may not consider automotive retail as an option for their career. The project highlights the key features of the industry that people outside the sector are not familiar with. These include the variety of roles available, openness of the industry, in-house training most automotive retailers offer, and, in general, the exciting and long-term rewarding career options available.
A gender-balanced audience
One of the key goals of Drive My Career is to make people aware of today’s automotive industry openness and its increasingly diverse workforce as opposed to the traditional views that the automotive sector is a male dominated field.
To achieve this, we have run several highly targeted campaigns that have helped us obtain a more gender-balanced audience. Months of tests and experiments have helped us refine our strategies and find the most effective images and words to appeal to a specific audience. This has been a steady progress that we aim to improve in the upcoming year.
Social media: ‘the’ channel to talk to young people
Since Drive My Career started in February, social media platforms have had a hugely positive impact and developed considerably, relying now on an active community of over 1,000 people. More than 600,000 users are reached every month through our social media campaigns, posts, videos and more. This results in a wide range of about 1,400 users being redirected to the members’ career pages, through Drive My Career, every month.
Exploring young people’s perception of the industry
In July, we started conducting surveys to gain a better insight into our target audience’s perception of the automotive industry. Respondents are aged between 16 to 24 and answer questions such as Have you ever thought about working in auto retail? What sector of auto retail interests you most? What would you like to see on an auto retailer recruitment website?. The results of our surveys are shared on a bimonthly basis with Drive My Career’s members.
Partner companies involved
There are now 856 dealerships on the interactive dealer-finder Drive My Career’s map. Website’s users can now see all the companies that have signed up to Drive My Career on the Partner Companies page available at www.drivemycareer.co.uk under the ‘About’ section, giving the users a clear insight into the dealer groups involved.
Testimonials
Groupe Renault’s Director of Total Customer Experience, Mark Crockett, recently explained to Auto Retail Profit that they see Drive My Career as “complementing” their own recruitment platform and valued the attention Drive My Career places on advertising “all manner of different roles”.
“We have our own recruitment platform where we advertise the opportunities we have across our network and then that links out to key recruitment channels. We see Drive My Career as complementing that”, Mark Crockett added.
Drive My Career is a project which follows the directions set by our members. The next HR NFDA Working Group, where Drive My Career will be discussed, will be taking place on 6 February in London. If you would like to attend, please contact louise.woods@rmif.co.uk.
Read the full update on Drive My Career in the Winter issue of The Voice.