Hiring Best Practices In The Automotive Industry

Kind of back, John, to what, what are you looking for in people now that you've had this experience and you know you've, you've had a ton of people work for you. You've seen success and failures. What are, what are the main things and what are your questions that you ask? Like how do you figure out if they're, if they're the person or do you just leave it to chance? And we had somebody the other day, tell me why just throw it at the side of the barn and see if it sticks. So I just hire everybody.

I'm looking for people that are. I don't want people to have to come to work. I want people that want to come to work. I want people that want, that are, you know, if I could hire. We don't want to all have like, you know, Chris Collins, you know, because that'd be, that, that, that might be a little bit of a difficult arena. If everybody was, you know, as talented as Chris Cobbs was or maybe Christian, you know, if we had everybody like that, it might be the corporate arena. So we want people that are learning, new people. We want people that have been there. But ultimately most importantly is I want to engage people. I want, I want them and we actually do. I'm sure you're probably aware of the Toyota Production System TPS. I was with Toyota for 20 plus years. Yeah, the manufacturer, but the different dealerships. I learned about continuous improvement development. And I actually, fortunately I got to work with a guy named Dr. Jeffrey Leiker for many years who is all about lean management development. And so our systems are to build. Everything we try to do is from the bottom up. We like to learn from the floor. And the whole leadership team is we don't have that mentality that they work for us. We have the mentality that we work for them. And my responsibility is to take away all excuses and to make sure that they have the right tool and that they're safe. And then they get the opportunity to tell us how we can get better. So when they learn and trust us.

Now, before you know it, now you really have something that starts to build and grow.

What sort of questions do you ask?

Type of questions are what have you done in the past? You know, what is your goals in the future? Because usually a lot of times they'll tell you what they've been successful at. And if you can find out what they've been successful at, then you can find out what they'll be successful at. And that tells me a lot there their goals, you Know, things that turn them on are their alignments, the core values. Those are always good things to know also. And the reason why they're doing what they're doing, you know, what motivates them. Do they have a family? You know, are they just trying to make their. Less, you know, their next payment? And again, that comes. The hiring process is more important than anything. There. There's no. There's. For whoever, you know, wants to get in leadership or management, the biggest responsibility is the hiring. Because once you hire somebody, the truth is, now you have that responsibility. You know, it's your responsibility that that person becomes successful. And if you take hiring with a grain of salt, then you're probably not the best of leaders.

Yeah, I think. I think that the measurement of leadership is misunderstood in the sense that where you measure leadership is in the behavior of others, not the leader.

And when you have managers that complain about their people. Right. That always blows my mind. They're your people. Yeah.

Jordan Peterson has a great chapter on that in his book. His second book, 12 Rules for Life, where the. I think the chapter is called don't raise. Don't raise children you don't like. But he says in there, like, you control what they eat, what they think, where they go. And it's same thing with the. With the manager. Right. When a service manager says, oh, well, you know my people. And you're like, you make their schedule. You control where they sit. I've got people to quit just by moving their desk. It's not, you know, it's not real hard to figure out who's on and who's off. Right.

But don't you think it all really boils down to that? Exactly that. When you're not talking about the whole entire dealership, not just necessarily a service department, but a service department, the backbone of any dealership, in my opinion. It always boils down in all these years that I've been doing this, when I look back, it always, always boils down to that leader. It always goes right back to that soul that's leading that group.

And you. You see it all the time in sports and in business. Like, look, I was thinking about this yesterday.

Bob.

Bob Eigner comes back to Disney.

It'Ll be fixed right away. Whatever that guy did in two years or whatever. Bob's got it going already, but he'll have it coming again and better than ever. And it's one guy out of, you know, how many employees, A hundred thousand or whatever. Disney's a huge company, Right. He'll have it Going and it's one liter. That's the only difference.

And I bet you if you ask him how he did it, he'd probably have to pause and think his way through that, too, because there is no specific silver pill or bullet. It just depends on the situation. And you have to learn how to, you know, get the best out of whatever it is that you have in front of you. Sometimes you have to be patient, and sometimes you. You got to be reactive.

I watched his masterclass, actually, and I thought it was terrible. It's just like, you know, it's just.

One of those.

You know, you gotta take care of your. Just none of it is real advice. It's just the. The Hallmark card of it because it's all way harder. People wouldn't want to watch the. The real video of what it's like, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Which leads me to something. You know, it's like I had. I've had people working with me, you know, obviously, over the years, and all the different arenas that I've been in is I want to be a manager. You know, now I'm a general manager at the time, and I've got people that want to be managers. So they go from sales to management. And then all of a sudden. Now, wait a minute. That's a little harder than it. Than it. Than it looked, because they used to think that the manager was the guy that was just sitting there telling everybody what to do, but they forgot about what the manager was doing in between all of the things that they were doing, between asking people to do what they were supposed to be doing. So it's always, you know, when you. And I think Trip, that it changes at each level. At least it did for me, that job. You had to be prepared. To be a sales manager, you had to be prepared, right? To be a general manager, you had to be prepared. You had to have those experiences if you went from basic salesperson to owner. And I'm not trying to, you know, pat any owners on the back. And I don't think all owners are really great leaders of people. I think some owners are just, in fact, just owners. But there's. But there's some great owners.

But I think you have to have that experience. That's just, in my opinion, you know, if you don't. If you haven't, you know, I don't know what they say. If you haven't done the work, how do you get other people to do the same thing? The thing that you need them to do? If you haven't walked in their shoes.

Thanks so much for watching this clip of Service Driving Revolution. We're uploading new stuff every day, so make sure you subscribe and click the bell icon so you don't miss out. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on the show, call 8333 Ask SDR and we'll answer your question on the show. That's 8333 Ask SDR. For special deals on our books and training, head over to offers.chriscollinsinc.com that's offers.chriscollinsInc.com I'm Chris Collins and I'll see you in the next video sa.