The largest car dealer, Rolf, is expanding its workforce to boost activity in the used-car market, where qualified specialists remain scarce in many regions. Other dealers report the same shortage, highlighting a broader industry challenge in staffing for pre-owned vehicle operations.
Across the sector, companies are experiencing personnel strain, intensified by recent regional mobilization announcements that affected hiring plans. Meanwhile, customers looking to sell their used cars have become more engaged, nudging dealers to accelerate recruitment and processing capabilities to handle the uptick in trade-ins.
Rolf has begun a regional staff push, aiming to recruit roughly a thousand new employees to scale operations in Moscow and the surrounding area, according to industry sources cited in Kommersant. This expansion signals a strategic push to strengthen purchase points, inspection, and post-sale services in the metropolitan market as demand for used vehicles remains robust in major urban hubs.
Internal data shared by the dealer indicates that used cars accounted for more than half of total sales in the previous year. The company reports that last year’s service capacity was near peak utilization, with a load nearing 90 percent, and there are plans to establish additional car-purchase points in eleven regions during the current year to better serve buyers and sellers alike.
Avtodom notes that it is prioritizing retention for frontline service staff—the highly specialized roles that are hard to fill or replace. In parallel, another large dealer, Klyuchavto, publicly lists 134 open positions on its career page as it scales its used-vehicle operations and service network to meet demand.
Fresh Auto, a nationwide network of dealerships, also reports a shortage of skilled personnel essential to a healthy used-vehicle ecosystem. Positions such as used-car purchase managers, diagnosticians, service technicians, and auto mechanics are in particularly high demand. The company oversees more than 2,000 employees, with roughly 65 percent devoted to the used-car segment, reflecting a strategic tilt toward pre-owned vehicles as a growth driver.
Analysts and industry observers point out that the used-car service and trade sectors currently offer more growth opportunities than the new-car segment. This is largely due to brand consolidation and tighter new-car inventories, which push both buyers and dealers to focus on the used-market pipeline and reposition service capacity to support higher throughput and better inspection standards. As a result, the talent pool in pre-owned operations is increasingly viewed as a critical differentiator for dealers seeking to maintain quality, speed, and customer satisfaction.