Recruiting truck drivers can be hit or miss. Many companies are disillusioned at their results, while others continue to thrive.
What’s the deal? Why does one company succeed where another fails?
Companies that efficiently source qualified drivers have a system, and once you find out what it is, you’ll see recruitment in a different light.
Let's run through your biggest obstacles and show you how to turn them into opportunities right away.
1. You’re not getting enough applications
Turn up the volume!
You need a high volume of applications if you want even a fraction of them to convert into hires.
If your recruiting strategy relies on word of mouth, passive applications, or job boards exclusively, you're not going to get the kind of applicant volume that will truly help you fill your trucks.
We don't want your trucks to sit empty, and neither do you.
So if and when you're ready to turn up the dial and start hiring better, we'll have a few ways to help you.
Here's what you can do with YouCruit to reach more drivers:
- Spread your job to 200+ career sites with one click
- Get your ads seen all over the net with programmatic job advertising
- Reach the right drivers and get their attention with targeted Facebook advertising
- Optimize your job ads for best performance on all platforms
- Equip yourself with an SEO optimized career site that has been proven to convert more drivers into applicants
Remember, this is the simple way to calculate your total ad spend:
(Cost per applicant x Applicants per hire) x Empty trucks = Total ad budget
Read more about how to calculate your ad spend here
If you can get your cost per applicant down (and you probably will if you advertise using YouCruit) and decrease the number of applicants for hire (and you probably will if you advertise using YouCruit), you can save thousands per month on recruitment.
2. Your jobs don't fit the drivers you're trying to attract
Disclaimer: Whether or not this is a "quick" fix depends on your company.
Creating a job that's attractive to drivers is a balancing act. You want to find the golden middle way and stay there.
If your job pays too little, you're unlikely to attract cream of the crop drivers.
If you want drivers with years of experience, you need to adjust the pay for that position accordingly.
If you want to get away with paying less for a particular route, don't demand a driver have years under his belt.
Pay's a big one, but not all companies are in the spot to spend more money. Don't bend your expectations, but create jobs around the driver you want to hire.
Adjusting salaries and hiring requirements isn't always easy depending on your insurances and the amount of red tape present in your company, but your hiring requirements are always worth optimizing.
How YouCruit can help
Since we've worked with, and continue to work with hundreds of carriers, we can provide you with the data that will keep your job competitive and attractive to drivers.
When your driver expectations are in order, you'll have a much easier time converting them into hires.
3. You’re not quick enough
In business, getting results is all about conversions, and getting good results is all about converting better.
In trucking, how well you convert drivers comes down to (for the most part) time.
By time, I mean how quickly you can get drivers on the phone and start a conversation.
Pictured here: You vs. some smooth talker at a Top 5 carrier. Better run fast.
Consider the habits of the average job-seeking driver. They open up their favorite job board, "one click apply" to fifty to a hundred jobs (sometimes without reading the description) and continue going about their day.
Then, out of nowhere, that driver is swamped with calls and wonders what he did to deserve them.
With drivers like this, it's a matter of you beating out all the other recruiter calls, and that often means reaching them before anyone else.
How YouCruit can help
By providing you with an applicant tracking system that simplifies and optimizes your hiring, you'll be able to clearly structure who you need to call and when.
Depending on your ad channels, the time it takes you to reach out to a driver will usually make or break a hire. Having said that, there are ways to afford yourself more power by utilizing other creative advertising platforms.
You don't need to be one of many recruiters calling - you can get the driver's full attention.
4. You’re advertising on high competition platforms
When most trucking companies aren't running a local newspaper ad, or relying on word of mouth, they usually post their job on one or two free job boards. Then, they call it a day.
The problem here is they become just another job in a pile of jobs.
Pictured: You when you use a job board.
There is nothing about a job board that gives you an edge over other carriers, and even if there was, you'd find yourself in direct competition with carriers that have trucks in the thousands and an ad budget in the millions.
These ad spaces are dominated by big players, and when they're not - they're still bursting at the seams with carriers vying for the attention of drivers.
You don't need to do that!
How YouCruit can help
With programmatic job advertising and highly targeted Facebook ads you can get your jobs in front of passive and active job seekers and get their full attention.
The beauty of it is, the driver won't be getting called down by hundred of recruiters the next day. Instead, they'll be expecting a call from you.
As a bonus, if you make a career site using YouCruit's career site builder, you'll be able to create a homepage that generates passive traffic and serves as a great platform to showcase your unique brand.
Conclusion: Get a custom plan that fits your needs
So, what have we learned?
- If you maximize your driver applications by creatively approaching how you advertise, you will get more qualified drivers.
- If you optimize your jobs to target the type of driver you want, you're more likely to reach qualified drivers.
- If you use software and systems that make your recruitment process speedier and clearer, you'll be more likely to hire qualified drivers before they get snatched up by other companies.
- If you broaden your horizons and find ways to elevate your brand above the competition, you will convert more jobseekers into drivers.
Now that you know what can be improved, you're ready to take the next step.
Whether you choose to apply this knowledge by yourself, or get some help along the way, we hope you got something of value from reading this.
However, if you're looking for a great and inexpensive way improve your overall efficiency and spend less on recruitment in general, register a YouCruit account on our website and we'll be in touch to tailor a plan that matches your needs as a company.
Happy hiring.