Carmen Hinton was all the time uncertain about successful contests and prizes. So she was shocked when her title was introduced final month on the NADA Present because the winner of the fifth annual Ladies Driving Auto Retail Video Contest.
Hinton has been the service supervisor for the previous six years at Carter Myers Automotive’s Valley Subaru in Staunton, Va.
“I used to be watching it stay. I cried. I wasn’t anticipating it,” says Hinton, who began on the dealership 12 years in the past as a receptionist. “I felt overwhelmed.”
She had been approached concerning the contest, together with a number of different feminine staff, by Carter Myers CEO Liza Borches to make a three-minute video speaking about their expertise in automotive retail and why girls ought to contemplate it as a profession. The competition, designed to acknowledge girls within the subject and encourage extra to affix them, started in 2019.
Because the winner, Hinton obtained a $1,000 present card, complimentary registration to subsequent yr’s NADA Present in Dallas and a proposal to attend an NADA coaching program.
Hinton, who additionally has labored within the dealership’s accounting division and as a service adviser, says girls is likely to be intimidated by working in “a male-dominated subject.” However she says her male colleagues have been supportive, particularly when she turned service supervisor.
“The lads I work with wish to assist you to be taught,” she says. “They … let you know to not be afraid to tackle roles.”
Ultimately, she says, “I am a human being, and so they’re a human being.”
Hinton says she want to attend some lessons on the NADA Academy to be taught extra concerning the service enterprise.
“It will enable me to develop, to provide you with completely different concepts to get prospects within the door and make the service division develop in all points,” she says.
There was a time when she was intimidated by challenges, she recollects. However the help of her co-workers — from Borches on down — together with successful the competition introduced at NADA has instilled her with confidence.
“My mindset with the whole lot,” she says, “is simply to take it and run with it.”