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CDL Employment Verification: 3 Ways to Streamline Your Recruiting

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CDL employment verification

To have an edge on your competition and hire the best drivers, a fast and efficient application and screening process is important. However, many teams struggle with various pieces of the hiring puzzle. Sometimes finding the perfect candidate is the hardest part. Other hiring teams find interviewing candidates is their biggest challenge. For others, working through the numerous verifications required by the Federal Motor Carries Safety Association (FMCSA) is the toughest task. For those teams struggling with the CDL employment verification process, here’s 3 ways to streamline your recruiting.

1. Know Exactly What You Need to Do

FMCSA requires every candidate to go through a comprehensive screening process before they’re fully hired. This includes the need for a verification of employment (VOE). Additionally, each candidate needs their driving and safety history checked. In addition, there are also necessary checks for drug, substance abuse, and alcohol test records as well as refusals to test and other specific driving information. Check to be certain you know exactly what you need to do.

Once you’ve got the comprehensive list of required verifications needed, be sure to do it for EVERY hire.

As part of your CDL employment verification process, ensure that your team is clear on what needs to be done and by when. Also make sure that your team has access to the most current information, as periodic changes to the regulations take place.

2. Stop Using Manual Processes

If you’re still doing VOEs on paper forms and faxing documents to verify a driver’s work history, this entire process can be automated. Let technology help increase your efficiency. If you keep doing things the same way that you always have, you will get those same old results.

There are so many tools available to help you do this process electronically. You can get verifications in a matter of minutes or hours, not days and weeks. If you do this, you’ll have less chance of drivers walking away from you to your competition because they can move faster.

3. Need an ATS to Help You?

For those carriers still struggling with CDL employment verification, we’ve got an opportunity for you.

As a partner with Drive My Way, we are extending a discount to our customers in need of an ATS.

DriverReach will help you get engaged quality candidates, streamline the employment verification process, and ensure compliance with the new Clearinghouse requirements, all while providing KPI metrics to improve your overall hiring process. If you’re not already using an ATS, or looking for a new one, take advantage of this offer!

Improve Your Recruiting with DriverReach

DriverReach provides a modern recruiting management system for truck drivers. We are extending a discount on the DriverReach ATS when a company signs up for Drive My Way.

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3 Tips for Your Lead to Hire Process

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Everyone knows the trucking industry is a driver’s market. Drivers get to choose between competing carriers which offer different pay, benefits, and home time. They will also likely choose whichever carrier presents them a good offer the soonest. Drivers will want to be hired soon to get that next paycheck. The carrier which can convert leads to hires quickly has a definite advantage. This is where lead velocity comes in—it measures how quickly you can convert leads into new hires into your fleet. With so much competition for a small pool of drivers, you don’t want to lose leads to other carriers simply because they hired quicker than you. Here are 3 tips for your lead-to-hire process.

Tip 1: Focus on Top Candidates

As a trucking recruiter, you’re usually bombarded with an overwhelming number of leads. Just a fraction of these actually convert to drivers for your fleet. In fact, you know that most of them are going to be unqualified leads. It’s no wonder that some recruiters and carriers take too much time on their lead-to-hire process—they’re spending time on too many unqualified leads!

Try to narrow your focus and limited time on the top leads

You can use landing pages and other automated methods to ask qualifying questions and narrow your leads. Using lead ranking will help you prioritize the top leads first and focus your energies there. If you don’t use lead ranking, you risk losing the best candidates to other carriers while spending time and energy on unqualified leads who don’t convert to drivers.

Tip 2: Automate the Process

We mentioned automating the qualifying questions through landing pages. Similarly, you can automate other steps of the process, especially the paperwork. Instead of taking a few hours for new hires to fill out the paperwork, it should take 20-30 minutes. Use electronic paperwork for new-hire forms such as DOT applications, release forms, I-9, W2, etc. Make sure these forms are mobile-friendly, as many drivers will take advantage of opportunities to complete them on the go. You don’t want to face application abandonment because your paperwork wouldn’t load on their phone!

If you automate certain steps, it frees up that time to spend one-on-one with the drivers during orientation

Take advantage of the face-time with drivers to build relationships in-person, instead of asking them to complete forms that take an hour.

Tip 3: Lead Efficient Orientations

One of the reasons the lead to hire process may take too long for drivers is because of long or delayed orientations. Of course, it’s risky to just breeze through orientation. That time is crucial for onboarding as drivers need to be welcomed to the organization, learn about the culture, meet their dispatchers, and learn more about the company. One trick to getting around this is to offer more frequent orientations so that the soonest one beats out other carriers.

Make sure to offer orientation a few times a week to meet the schedule needs of your new hires

You can even be flexible with the orientation schedule and craft it to fit the schedules of your incoming drivers. Another time-saving method is to move some training items to an online learning system. By automating the less exciting parts of orientations, you free up time to have the important face-to-face interactions. It also makes the in-person orientation shorter, as drivers can complete some learning materials from the convenience of home.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

Get the Ebook

Driver Rehires: 3 Reasons to Focus Here

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Driver Rehires: 3 Reasons to Focus Here

Recruiting for retention is an important strategy for any trucking company. Some might argue it’s the most important strategy when hiring new truck drivers. But sometimes, even with a true driver-centric culture, good drivers leave. Rather than letting that be the end of the story, it can give you an avenue to focus on for hiring in the future. When looking for new drivers, consider your former drivers. Here’s 3 reasons to have driver rehires as part of your overall hiring process.

1. Driver Rehires are Already Familiar with the Company

Driver rehires are already familiar with your company, your culture and your policies. If they left on good terms, they might have just been testing the waters for a better salary. Or looking for a newer fleet of equipment to use. When that didn’t pan on for them, they start looking again for their next new trucking job. That can be a short trip back to your company. Their onboarding can be a lot more efficient, as they only need to learn what’s new, vs. starting from the beginning. If they apply again, and you know that they weren’t terminated or otherwise had any issue while employed, it could be an easy conversation to get them rehired.

2. Saves Money on Recruiting

It’s cheaper to rehire a driver than to find and hire someone brand new. If the driver worked for you already, you are almost certain to be on their radar if they start looking for a job again. They might be following your social media or the job boards that you use to post opportunities.

With the driver shortage not getting any better, having a pool of qualified and experienced employees to call on for rehire can be a valuable resource. Make sure the people you want to come back to work for you know they are welcome back.

You don’t have to spend any incremental dollars to get them to see what you’re already doing, because they’re following you already. Compare this to what it takes to find a brand-new lead. Then nurture that lead through your channels to get them to apply for your open trucker job. Instead, just go back to your list of former (good) drivers, and reach determine which ones might make good driver rehires. This can be a good cost saver, as well as a time-saver in getting your open seats filled.

3. Part on Good Terms

If a good trucker is leaving you, plant the seed that you’d look forward to hearing from them again in the future. Let them know you’ll be willing to keep in touch in the future. And that you’re happy to share future driver postings with them. If they indicate that they’re okay with that, mark them as eligible for rehire. Then keep them on your marketing list for newsletters, social media invites, etc. You can let your current marketing budget help them be aware of any news or job postings.

Why Did They Leave in the First Place?

As a side note, when working on your retention strategies, keep track of the reason that drivers are leaving you. Look for patterns or consistent reasons for leaving. Then work to adjust and seal-up any gaps in the future. Even better, keep a good pulse on what your drivers are thinking, and then be proactive with changes.

Keeping driver satisfaction high is a great way to ensure your drivers stay with you. Recruiting for retention is a great overall strategy to keep your fleets full and your drivers happy.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

Get the Ebook

Crucial Conversations with Driver Candidates: 3 Ways to Prepare

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Crucial Conversations with Driver Candidates: 3 Ways to Prepare

The hiring process is a stressful one. From both sides of the table (or telephone). Recruiters have to do a great deal of work to find and vet the best driver candidates. Filtering and sorting through piles of resumes, data files, and reading a constantly increasing number of emails. Driver candidates looking for new opportunities have all sorts of information being tossed at them from many directions too. They’re getting calls, emails and text messages from resume screeners, and finding information while doing their own research. The process can take a long time and require tough talks along the road to get on the same page. As a truck driver recruiter, here are 3 ways to prepare for those crucial conversations with driver candidates.

1. Be Honest with Driver Candidates

When working through the steps to bring a driver on-board, you’re going to talk through a lot with your candidates. If your company has a less than stellar reputation, you might get asked questions about what drivers might have heard about what it’s like working for you. These things might be true, or might not be true. But in the cases where they’re asking about something that’s actually the case, you need to be honest with your candidates.

Employers who are transparent in nature with pay, benefits, job role, home time, etc. often see better, more sustainable driver retention than those who exaggerate in a job description to get drivers in the door.

If you know you can’t compete on salary or benefits, be clear and up-front about it. And then also let the candidates know where you’re company can be a great fit with them. Starting out anywhere other than with honesty and transparency will most likely not lead to a long-term employee.

2. Know Your Facts

When being asked questions about pay and benefits, be prepared to provide accurate numbers. Being vague is never a good way to gain trust from your truckers. If questions come up about what their future career path might look like, be clear on what could potentially happen. But also provide the driver with what needs to be accomplished to gain promotions in the future. On the flip side, you may need to discuss negative findings after a background check or a drug screening. Be sure that your information is 100% correct when having these discussions with your truck driver candidates. Accusing someone of something that’s not true, or preventing them from being further considered, could have lasting consequences.

3. Be Empathetic

When going into a tough conversation, put yourself in the other person’s boots for a minute. If it’s a conversation to deliver bad news, or to discuss a potentially sensitive topic, think about what your driver candidates might be thinking or feeling. And most importantly, ask yourself how this conversation is going to affect them moving forward with your company. Empathy can really help choose words to keep tempers controlled, as well as keep the tone of the conversation civil and not accusatory.

A great resource for helping with these conversations, is a book called “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High”. Written by Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Joseph Grenny and Ron McMillan, this book is a highly acclaimed reference for both personal and professional use. It’s a must read for any HR or recruiting professionals.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

Get the Ebook

3 Reasons to Stop Texting Drivers From Your Cell Phone

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Texting can be a great way to communicate with family and friends. After all, Americans send over 26 billion text messages each day! But when it comes to official company business, using your personal cell phone for text messaging can lead to issues if you’re not careful. These issues could cost you time, money and ultimately qualified candidates over time. If you’re texting drivers from your cell phone, here are 3 reasons to stop.

The average American checks their phone about 50 times each day. 90% of text messages are read within 3 minutes. – techjury.net

1. Consistency

Using personal phones to send business texts can create branding issues for a company. Setting clear rules as to who can send texts, and the content they should contain should be a priority for any company using text messaging as an official communication practice. Much like having standard email templates in place for business communications, having text message templates for texting drivers is a good idea.

2. Timing

Using a messaging app from your personal phone could make you seem available 24/7. Though you might curb your overall business communications with candidates to your normal business hours, drivers might not be able to check their phones until you’ve gone home for the day. Once they’ve responded, you might not respond until the next morning. This type of time delay devalues the benefit of text messaging in general. Having an SMS system in place that’s truly a 24/7 solution, will allow for the best execution of this type of communication with your drivers.

3. Tracking Old Messages

If you and your team are all using your personal phones to connect with candidates, there’s plenty of room to lose track of what’s been sent. You could be sending duplicate messages, or worse, conflicting messages and confusing your potential drivers. Without a dedicated system to track all texts from one source, you could be inadvertently sending negative messages to candidates. This might make them decide to look for work somewhere else. And with no tracking system in place, there’s no way to get any usable metrics to find out how well texting drivers is actually working for your company.

As part of your overall communication strategy with your drivers, text messaging can play an important role. But in the recruitment process, texting from your personal cell phone is not always going to be the best idea. Hopefully the 3 things to consider when using text messaging from a hiring perspective will help your team recruit well.

Lastly, if you’re going to use text messaging in any capacity to connect with potential drivers, you need to let them know about it. This will reduce any confusion that might arise when a candidate gets a text message from an unknown number. Additionally, you should have your candidates opt-in to the text messaging system as part of the application process. This way they will know that the texts are coming, and who they’re coming from.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

Get the Ebook

Rethinking Your Driver Recruitment Budget

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driver recruitment

Budget planning is one of the most important jobs at any company. A limited amount of funds is available for each team, and they need to be spent wisely. When working through your plans for hiring drivers, your recruitment budget is a critical piece of that puzzle. But when you step back and look at the process and what you’re actually spending, maybe it’s a good time to also rethink your driver recruitment budget.

First Things First

do you have a good handle on your actual budget needs? It could be as simple as knowing your turnover rate, your anticipated need for additional drivers above turnover, and then multiply that by your current cost per hire. Simple, right? Could be that easy, but it’s probably a little bit more complex than that if you’re working through this for the first time. Especially when turnover rates keep climbing, and the driver shortage continues to grow. These things impact revenue because trucks are sitting idle, and once revenue decreases, assigned budgets can unexpectedly change at any time.

Cut Out What’s Not Working

The best thing to do when looking at your driver recruitment process is to figure out where to cut out waste. Let’s start with the type of drivers your looking to hire. Here you want to be highly strategic in your approach, to attract the perfect candidates. You don’t want to simply generate hundreds of leads only to find out that they don’t meet even half of your qualifications. If that’s what you’re doing, you probably also know the amount of time it’s taking for your team to work that massive pile of ice-cold leads. It might be a good idea to try and find a better place to spend that money. And a better way to use all of those wasted hours.

Using your historical data of what’s worked best, where have you found the best matches? The best retention? Those are the places you want to ensure your recruitment budget is maximized.

Part of any good budgeting strategy is tracking everything related to that budget. You should have at least a simple tracker of costs vs. return on each tactic, best case on a monthly basis (if not weekly). Once you’re sure the low performing tactics are no longer part of your plan, you can work to reallocate those funds to tactics that produce the best matches. Who knows, saving those hours and dollars might allow for improvements in employee benefits or salaries that will make you more competitive down the road.

Stop Making the Same Driver Recruitment Mistakes

At the end of the day, a recruitment budget shouldn’t be focused strictly on volume. Producing thousands of unqualified leads for your fleet, just bogs you down and creates capacity challenges throughout your day.

Instead, a driver recruitment budget should be focused on making meaningful connections with drivers that you are able to sustain in the long run.

It should be about focusing on spending in areas that will actually produce qualified matches for your fleet, instead of just trying to get warm bodies in your trucks.

ultimate guide to truck driver recruiting

Ultimate Guide to Truck Driver Recruiting

Current ways of recruiting truck drivers just don’t work anymore. That’s because recruiting isn’t a transaction. This ultimate guide helps carriers recruit for retention.

Get the Ebook

Why is Converting Truck Driver Leads So Hard?

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truck driver leads

Everyone on your hiring team is always busy. You seem to have a good stream of leads flowing in for your posted jobs. In general, these should be a very good thing for a hiring team. However, you’re just not seeing the conversation rates you’d like. Team members are frustrated because they have to start all over every time a new driver is needed. And your trucks are still sitting empty. In this challenging time where you’re doing everything you can to hire drivers as fast as possible, why is converting truck driver leads so hard?

What’s Your Current Lead Conversion Process?

Do you have an effective lead management process in place? Or even any structured lead management process in place? If yes, that’s great! If no to both, this is certainly the place to start when trying to determine how to better convert your truck driver leads. You can quickly find an online guide to help your team map out a simple lead management process, that you can then tailor to your company’s unique needs. Once you’ve got that figured out, work to follow the stated process. Every. Single. Time.

Once you know you have a great process in place, what are you doing to optimize your process? And what tools are you using to alleviate pain points or roadblocks in the process?

One very important part of a lead management process is scoring the generated leads. Your process should include fast turnaround on scorning (if that’s not already being done for you), and then a quick hand-off to the person/team that contacts the drivers. An effective scoring process helps you focus on the most qualified truck driver leads first. And the those less qualified leads later. Getting leads already qualified from your marketing efforts is a best practice here. That saves so much time sifting through potentially useless lists that should never have been matched with your postings.

hiring truck driversWhat are your lead contacting best practices? How quickly are they being contacted? Once a lead comes in, you need to contact them quickly. If a driver just applied for your job, they’re expecting to be contacted immediately. This way you’re sure that you’re doing your part to get the relationship off to a good start. This also helps to avoid losing top candidates to your competition. Making sure that you have a great contacting and nurturing process for your truck driver leads is a key component in getting the best candidates hired. This is also a great place to augment your manual processes with technology to automate the lead contacting (and recontacting) process more efficient and productive.

Tired of Struggling to Convert Leads?

Then it’s time to take a totally different and personalized approach! One way to improve converting your truck driver leads is to start thinking about the process in a completely different way. Like we do here at Drive My Way. Truck drivers aren’t just leads. They’re people. We have a driver-centric platform that provides matches instead of leads. We focus on matching employers with drivers for each unique job based on the driver’s professional qualifications and personal lifestyle preferences. Unlike traditional job boards, we match at the individual job level. We don’t deliver unqualified lead lists. We focus on quality matches. Which makes the most sense for you, and the drivers.

truck driver job description template

FREE RESOURCE

Truck Driver Job Description Template

Your job description can either convert or lose applicants. Follow this template to make sure you’re on the right track.

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The Importance of a Truck Driver Career Path

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truck driver career path

Truckers looking into a new job almost always have a lot of questions about the carriers they’re considering. They want to know what things look like in a month, in a year, in 5 years or even in 20 years. Being able to provide that information to a prospective new employee up-front could give you the edge in getting that driver hired today! So with the driver shortage and the hiring process as it is today, what is the Importance of a truck driver career path for your drivers?

Training to Hire

With all of the talk about the driver shortage, there’s much renewed interest in driving a truck for a living. For those completely new to the industry, the first thing they need to do is get training to get their CDL license.

Whether you offer your own training program, or partner with a local truck driver training school, be sure to let all potential drivers know that you’ve got a job for you once you graduate.

Be clear about what you expect and what they can expect. That can take a lot of stress off a trainee knowing that if they work hard and get through the training program, their next steps are already mapped out.

Driving for Life

Incentivize longevity. This can be through anniversary certificates or awards. Or even financial incentives that pay out after certain milestones are met.  You can also provide opportunities for continuous education to keep skills sharp. And training to ensure that your drivers are always up-to-date with current technology and regulations.

Be overt about the amount of possible driving options you have for your drivers. Different phases of their lives could change their preferences about time at home vs. time away.

Equipment preferences can change. Or even how much money they need to make at various stages in their lived. Knowing that you’ve got them covered at all steps, is an advantage to help you retain drivers. And this helps drivers feel confident in their role as a driver for your company.

Non-Driving Roles

Sometimes drivers have a need to pull in off the road for good. For whatever reason. But when they’re a good employee and not yet ready for retirement, what kind of truck driver career path might be mapped out in those situations. Often times good drivers can become the best instructors. Or even move into a role in the dispatch office or operations management.

Letting a driver know that these options are available to them along the way might make those transitions from the road to the office smoother when the time comes.

Paint the picture early for your drivers that you have a truck driver career path formulated for them at every stage of their lives. And advertise this on your website and other recruitment materials. For those new to the industry, be clear about your training programs and what comes next. Once they’re ready to hit the road on their own, give great options that fit their lifestyle at each phase. If they grow weary on the road, or can no longer drive, communicate other options for them outside of the 18 wheels. Doing this can instill an additional sense of loyalty to you from your drivers and help you to retain the best drivers.
truckers.

ultimate guide to retaining truck drivers

Ultimate Guide to Retaining Truck Drivers

You work so hard to recruit the best truck drivers for your fleet. The trick is retaining them. This guide is packed with tips for retaining your fleet.

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