Tire industry must ‘sell' business to women, next generation

MIRAMAR BEACH, Fla. — Among the hundreds of tire business professionals gathered at the 2022 Tire Industry Association's OTR Tire Conference, a smattering claimed to have women working in management positions at their companies.

That won't change much if the industry doesn't make an effort to attract a new, and diverse, generation of employees, according to the Women in Industry Panel, held Feb. 24, during the conference.

"We have a different set of eyes and a different passion for what we do," Moderator Deborah Bjorklund, executive vice president of 31 Inc., said.

"So we bring that to your customers and to the vendors and to the owners and to the managers. We actually create trust. And trust changes the business. … If you take the time to consider a female at all levels, you may change the future of your business and definitely the future of this industry."

The women executives on the panel — Grace Guedet, category procurement for tires and rims for Caterpillar Inc.; Donzaleigh McCord, customer service manager for BKT USA Inc.; Carly Shipley, OE key account manager for Continental Tire the Americas L.L.C.; and Brandy Sielaff, human resources director, Commercial Tire Inc. — admitted they initially didn't consider careers in the OTR tire industry until opportunities came along.

"Our industry is probably not bringing in the same amount of people it used to because there is another industry out there that our youth is going towards, which is IT," Bjorklund said.

"We have to bring people into this industry and bring the youth into this industry, not just female. So we have to go sell it."

The panelists said the tire industry provides high-paying jobs, a variety of challenges and opportunities to develop customer relations.

So with the variety of job positions and high pay, why aren't more job applicants answering help-wanted ads?

"We don't sell our industry very well," Sielaff said. "We're all salesmen, we can sell tires, we can sell wheels, we can do all that. But how often do you go out and actually sell our business? Like, 'Come work for me. We have all these different functions.' … How do we sell us and what we do?"

Qualified female employees are not necessarily going to feel compelled to apply for a generic job posting at a tire business, she said.

"If you're really trying to attract different people, you have to go and meet them," she said, encouraging owners to hand out their business cards at other types of businesses, such as Starbucks, where a person who demonstrates good customer service might be looking for another job or career.

Bjorklund said she hired five women from a bank because they knew how to solve problems and had business skills.

"That's how you're going to get the people you want to work for your industry. We're all salesmen, we've all done it. We can sell anything but why aren't we selling our business?" Sielaff asked.

Job applicants from outside the tire industry can be qualified to work at jobs other than servicing tires, such as in information technology, procurement, human resources and sales.

"Take a chance on someone who might not know tires. We can all learn. … There are ways you can compensate for what you don't know," Sielaff said.

McCord noted that, just as a picture is worth a thousand words, how a business advertises itself can send a lot of messages to potential female applicants.

"How many of you advertise and have women who look like they are out there doing what our industry is known for — a man's job?" she asked, noting that seeing images of women working at a tire business could pique a female job applicant's interest in the business.

"Give females a chance," Shipley added, noting she didn't have any experience in the tire industry when she was recruited out of college. "Look outside the industry, you might be surprised."

Once a company is able to attract a female employee into its organization, the company needs to work on creating an environment that fosters success for that person, Guedet said.

She encouraged businesses to make sure their new female employees get the training and knowledge necessary to do their jobs well.

McCord said it is important to have mentors. All the panelists said they had male mentors who guided them and offered advice and encouragement.

"Give your female employees the tools they need to succeed," Shipley said, including providing a strong network so they know who they can talk to when an issue arises.

All the panelists agreed that most customers are accepting of dealing with saleswomen.

"We ask great questions, we're good listeners and we get the job done," Shipley said, adding, if a saleswoman does get kickback from a customer, "Remind them that the year is 2022 and that we are fully capable of selling. We can sell anything."

Guedet described a Caterpillar program called "Women in Leadership" to help female leaders work on rising through the executive ranks and to facilitate women participation in the upper levels of management.

"It's really important to have a lot of different perspectives as you're working on any solution. And that doesn't necessarily need to be female, it might mean different cultures, it could be anything. So we're really trying to increase the diversity in our upper-level management," she said.

Caterpillar also started a second program, called "Men as Allies," that creates small classes of male leaders with a couple of female employees to discuss various topics related to biases.

"We all have unconscious biases in the way we think about things," she said.

One example she gave was how a typical employee retirement party involves a cake. When men in the class were asked who orders the cake, they assumed it was the female secretary or administrator.

"Well, maybe the admin doesn't want to do that," Guedet said. "Maybe she wants to make some business decisions.

"So it's just trying to raise awareness of how we unconsciously make decisions and do things, and really raise awareness of that within our management leaders. ... Since the beginning of that program, I think we've seen some more progress in this space than we did with the original program. They both go hand in hand," she said, noting that any business can tweak the idea to fit their operations.