A new business designed to help motor dealer groups rationalise the cost and effectiveness of their recruitment process, through a model which only charges a 1% placement fee, has been launched by some well known faces from the motor industry.

Going by the name of Job Co-Op, the business which operates from a headquarters in Castle Donnington has been set up by Derek and Brenda Webb who founded Nicholas Recruitment and Ken Trinder, former head of business development for automotive technology firm Epyx. Automotive finance industry training guru, Shaun price is also involved in the business as a non-exec.

Job Co-Op say they will provide dealer groups with a way to recruit staff from a pre-qualified pool of prospective employees, utilising a centralised team of account managers to do all the admin and follow up which would normally have to be carried out by the recruiting managers within individual dealerships.

Talking about the key unique aspects of the business, Director Ken Trinder says, 'We've got a business offer with very low costs and a 1% fee, it is a different way of doing recruitment.'

Using a representative large dealer group business as a case study, Job Co-Op found that the direct costs of advertising and recruitment agency fees incurred to recruit 4 typical members of staff were around £6,500. Within smaller groups which make up the majority of UK dealers, those same costs are on average around £9,000 due to reduced buying power added to which there is little measurement and even less control of the management time taken to recruit.

By matching dealership recruitment objectives with required resources, the Job Co-Op business model, with its fixed monthly service charge and 1% placement fee, will cut the cost to recruit 4 members of staff to around £3,000.

At the centre of the Job Co-Op service is what the company refers to as a talent bank, a database of pre-qualified job seekers from within the automotive industry. Explaining the concept, Director of Opportunities, Derek Webb says, 'This is a product born out of our experience gained over the last 8 years working with dealership Groups, Job Co-op is a tool, to significantly cut costs, save hours of recruitment time and raise the quality of new starters in the dealerships'.