Tesla (TSLA) goes on crazy hiring spree, adds 1,000 sales and delivery people in 2 months

Tesla (TSLA) is preparing to ramp up deliveries by adding about 1,000 sales and delivery people in North America in a crazy hiring spree over the last 2 months.

The automaker also changed its strategy and focused on hiring part-time employees.

It was just a little over a year ago that Tesla CEO Elon Musk was talking about shutting down almost all of Tesla’s stores and moving to an online-only sales model.

A few months later, he reversed the strategy and Tesla has been slowly growing its retail presence since then.

Earlier this year, the automaker actually ramped up its sales and delivery presence in several markets as production is increasing and it needs more capacity to support the distribution of higher volumes of vehicles.

Now sources familiar with the matter told Electrek that Tesla went on a hiring spree and hired about 1,000 new people in sales and delivery positions across North America in just two months.

These new hires are coming just in time as Tesla is preparing to try to deliver a record number of vehicles in the fourth quarter to attempt to reach its goal of delivering 500,000 vehicles in 2020.

Furthermore, sources familiar with the matter told Electrek that Tesla employed a new strategy and focused on hiring part-time sales and delivery workers.

This is a cost-saving initiative since part-time employees have fewer benefits and Tesla is also not supplying them with laptops and cellphones.

Tesla is also putting in place a path for those workers to become full-time sales and delivery employees at the company — resulting in an interesting trial period for part-time employees and giving Tesla the opportunity to move the highest performing workers to full-time roles within the organization.

Electrek’s Take

It’s crazy to think that it was just over a year ago that Elon said that Tesla would close most of its stores.

Now, in fact, Tesla actually added almost 100 new stores and service centers in the last year and hired several thousand more sales and delivery workers — now including 1,000 in the last 2 months alone in North America.

I think he underestimated the importance of a salesforce in the auto industry at the time and even though most people buy Tesla vehicles online, most buyers still like to ask questions and get test drives.

You need staff to manage that.

This new part-time strategy is smart. They get a bigger and cheaper salesforce during delivery rushes and then can promote those who perform best. It could pay off into the next year.