The National Franchised Dealer Association (NFDA) is proud to announce its employment initiative ‘Drive My Career’ has been shortlisted for Motor Trader’s Industry Awards for 2020. The Motor Trader Industry Awards are regarded as one of the most prestigious accolades in the automotive industry and the event is now running into its 30th successive year. The industry award’s main focus is to celebrate the many achievements within the modern motor retailing sector and Drive My Career has been shortlisted to win the ‘Recruitment Agency of the Year Award’.
Drive My Career was launched by the NFDA in February 2018 to address franchised retailers’ concerns that not many young people generally consider the automotive retail sector as an option for their professional careers. Drive My Career promoteS the industry through marketing campaigns that are targeted to an audience of 16-24 year-olds who may be finishing their education or looking to start a new career through an apprenticeship or an entry level role. The key factor here is that Drive My Career is not the typical ‘job site’ but instead a long-term campaign designed to complement its members’ recruitment strategies.
Why has Drive My Career been nominated?
What makes our Drive My Career initiative stand out from other recruitment agencies is that fact it is innovative, flexible and completely transparent. Innovative in a way that it uses marketing strategies to serve its HR-focused goal. Instead of focusing solely on filling vacancies, Drive My Career promotes a range of elements highlighting why automotive retail is a great place to work. Flexible, as thanks to its structure it is extremely receptive to feedback and able to implement new initiatives quickly. With assistance from NFDA members HR professionals, Drive My Career benefits from their successful ideas and direct feedback being better equipped to the recruitment industry. Thanks to this HR guidance, the initiative is constantly developing in the right direction by making more people aware of the automotive industry. Transparent: being an not-for-profit organisation, Drive My Career invests all members’ fees into its marketing activities.
Why should Drive My Career win?
Drive My Career is an industry first initiative that has been established for the good of the industry and its dealers. Drive My Career’s marketing campaigns target over 600,000 young people a month which in turn also benefits other agencies who are advertising automotive job opportunities because a greater number of people are being exposed to industry that they may not have previously considered.
Drive My Career has run a number of successful campaigns across its two years and has helped promote the industry in various ways. Competitions such as #DMCAprenticeTakeover managed to reach over 350,000 people across various social media platforms in 2019, around a 75% increase in impressions and engagement compared to its previous year. The #DMCAutoSectors campaign was created to introduce the industry to people who may not have considered it before or have limited knowledge of the opportunities available, reaching over 100,000 people across social media. The #DMCTechnicians campaign helped promote Technician jobs for dealer members, with nearly 400 young people clicking through to find out more.
Drive My Career has grown from strength to strength. At the beginning, there were just over 600 dealerships involved. Two years down the line, over 1,000 dealerships are present on the ‘dealer-finder’ search map on the website. In 2019, Drive My Career reached 5 million people aged between 16 and 24 across various different social media platforms; the traffic on the website has grown from a few hundred users a month to more than 10,000; grew an active online community of 4,000 people; and achieved a 50/50 gender balance of users on its website, during a time where Drive My Career marketing strategy was to influence diversification within an industry which is heavily male dominated.
The NFDA is extremely proud Drive My Career been shortlisted for this award, this is testament to the hard work of the team that has developed the initiative. We look forward to October to celebrate all of the success within the industry, during a year which has been particularly uneasy and uncertain. And finally, good Luck to all others nominated.
