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How to Reduce Driver Application Abandonment

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truck driver application

Trucking recruiters are tasked with finding top candidates, matching them to the right jobs, and converting them into drivers for the fleet. That’s why it can become so frustrating when you notice that the number of drivers who apply for your jobs starts to drop. 

There could be many reasons why this is happening, but if you’ve got a solid reputation, great pay, and nice benefits and home time, the real reason could be right under your nose; application abandonment.  

Your carrier could have the best reputation, pay, benefits, and perks in the industry, but it amounts to little if you have an application process that is so frustrating for a driver to get through that they don’t even bother finishing it.  

A recent survey found that 92% of jobseekers who hit “apply”, never actually get through the entire job application. Just think about the great drivers your carrier could be missing out on because of a bad application process. Here are three things that could be causing truck driver application abandonment and what you can do to fix them.

1. Cut Down on the Length

If you’re dealing with high application abandonment, try putting yourself in a driver’s shoes. Most drivers don’t want to spend their limited free time filling out lengthy and complex applications. In fact, this is usually the top reason job seekers quit in the middle of applications. 

If your applications require drivers to answer multiple long form answers, input the same information multiple times, or they’re being asked tedious questions related to small details of the job, most will decide it’s not worth it and move on. Worst case, you may be losing these candidates to rival carriers who have optimized and shortened their applications. 

Ideally, your carrier’s application should take no longer than 15 minutes to complete. Instead of requiring drivers to provide every bit of information up-front during the application, focus on the basics and stick to questions that require simple answers. You can ask more detailed questions later, during the follow-up or in-person phone call.

2. Make Applications Mobile-Friendly

Since drivers spend most of their time on the road, they mainly search for and apply to jobs using their smartphones. In this mobile-first world, recruiters and fleet managers need to make sure they’re able to communicate and interface with drivers this way. Otherwise, you risk a large number of drivers abandoning your application. 

Optimize your applications for a mobile-first experience by using mobile rendering, saved login information, and other useful features. A lot of web providers will give you the ability to look at what a page will look like on a mobile device before you publish, so you can see if there are any issues.  

3. Collect Feedback

driver recruiterWhile you, as a recruiter can create what you think is the most efficient, painless, and all-around great application experience, you won’t really know how it is until drivers start applying. Even when they do start, it can be hard to gauge what’s working and what’s not since gathering data around job application abandonment can prove to be difficult. 

The solution lies in collecting driver feedback. Reach out to drivers who have completed your application process and see how they felt about it. You could offer an incentive to do so or tack it on as the last question during your initial phone screens with drivers. 

This information is invaluable in helping you and your recruiting team understand what’s working and what’s not in relation to your application.  

truck driver job description template

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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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5 Things Wrong With Your Truck Driver Advertising (And How to Fix Them)

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truck driver advertising

Nine times out of ten, the recruitment process starts with advertising your jobs to truck driver candidates. With a tight labor market and high turnover across the trucking industry, carriers are starting to put an increased emphasis on this first part of the process. 

This issue is that many carriers either don’t advertise their jobs aside or have a dated advertisement process that isn’t bringing in the quality drivers they’d like. Here are 5 things wrong with your truck driver advertising and how to fix them.  

1. Not Including Driver Testimonials

You’ve boasted about your carrier’s benefits and perks on every possible advertising channel, but still aren’t getting many leads. Meanwhile, a competitor spends less on advertising but has stronger recruiting. What’s going on here? Most likely, they’re using driver testimonials are you’re not.  

A driver testimonial is a short video or quote from a driver where they talk about what they enjoy about working for your carrier. What makes these so important? Think about it from a driver’s perspective. Who are they more likely to believe: a fellow driver or a company? 

Peer recommendation is one of the strongest factors that can influence human behavior. That’s why your truck driver advertising should consistently include driver testimonials. These could be as simple as gathering quotes from your current drivers about why they like working for your carrier, or it can be as ambitious as compiling a short video of your drivers speaking freely on what they enjoy about the job.  

Here’s an example of a testimonial that shows some of the reviews that drivers left after using Drive My Way 

Aside from increasing the effectiveness of your job ads, driver testimonials can be used to build trust with drivers and leave you with a positive reputation. 

2. Using Only Print Media for Advertising

It’s not breaking news that print media is on the decline. While ads in newspapers and magazines may have been the primary advertising channel decades ago, readership has gone down significantly.  

While print media isn’t entirely dead, digital is definitely king now. If your carrier is still using print media as your main channel for job advertising, your first priority should be adjusting your advertising budget and resources accordingly.

3. Heavy Information Dumping

You’ve seen these ads everywhere: Ones with 20-30 bullets listing out every facet and minute detail of a job. But the more information available for prospective hires, the better, right? Think again. In that very early stage of the job search, driver candidates are usually just looking for a few pieces of key information so they can decide if they want to learn more about the position.  

While it’s important to make sure you’re including the most important information in your advertising, don’t make the mistake of clogging the ad with everything you can think of. Keep the most important information like CDL / endorsement requirements, pay, and route at the top of the ad and include details on benefits and equipment below.  

Take a look at our Truck Driver Job Description Template for more details on how to optimize the copy of your job ads.  

4. Not Utilizing Social Media

To simply call social media popular anymore is a gross understatement. It’s become so entwined with people’s lives that we almost can’t imagine life without it. This is why it’s important for carriers who are looking to reach more drivers through their job ads to build up a presence on these social media sites.  

But what does posting memes and pictures of your company events have to do with reaching more driver candidates? Think of it this way. A carrier that has built up a following of 3,000 drivers through their social channels can post a job ad and have it reach 3,000 drivers without spending a dime. For a carrier with no social media presence to get that kind of reach would cost serious money.   

For more information on how to build up your carrier’s social media presence, you can visit our blog on the subject.  

5. Not Partnering with a Job Distributor

Where the ad is placed is just as important as how it’s written. With hundreds of job boards and social media channels out there, it can be a pain to know where your time and resources are best spent to reach the drivers you’re looking for.  

Partnering with a recruiting platform like Drive My Way is the perfect way to get your jobs in front of qualified driver candidates.  We create customized advertising campaigns that reach drivers in the right place and the right time. Just like we did with Button Transportation, a family-owned and operated trucking company in California, that hired 10 new drivers within the span of just two months.   

Comprehensive CDL Recruitment Solutions

Ready to start recruiting the right drivers? Our solutions experts are happy to answer any questions and show you how Drive My Way uniquely approaches CDL driver recruitment.

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What’s the True Cost of Hiring a Truck Driver?

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What's the True Cost of Hiring a Truck Driver?

There are many metrics that a carrier can use to measure its hiring success. Some metrics are more well defined and simple like time to hire, while others are more subjective and harder to wrangle, like driver happiness.  

But no matter what metrics you look at, the dollars spent to hire a candidate is traditionally thought of as the most important. That’s why carriers need to know what these costs are and how to measure them effectively. Let’s take a look at the true cost of hiring a truck driver. 

How to Calculate Your Cost Per Hire

Before you can reduce your CPH, you need to know how to calculate it. Luckily, calculating CPH is pretty simple math.   

You add up your total costs for recruiting new drivers, and then divide that by the number of drivers ultimately hired. This gives you the cost per hire for all your recruiting efforts. (Note that this factors in actual hires, not just leads.) You can use this formula to measure CPH over any time period you’d like, including month, quarter, or year. 

So, What’s the Real Cost of Hiring a Truck Driver?

When nailing down the cost of hiring a driver, the actual math is not the tough part. It’s finding all the factors that go into the cost of hiring. This means all the costs, not just the ones associated with finding driver candidates, like job advertising and using recruiting services.  

Your company’s cost per hire will be unique to the way you recruit and hire drivers. And it might take some time and refinement to ensure you’re calculating it correctly. Here’s a list of the most common costs associated with hiring a truck driver. 

Turnover Is Your Enemy

Now that you understand the calculation for cost per hire, there’s another piece of the hiring puzzle that needs to be factored in as well; your turnover rate. 

It’s widely known that the trucking industry faces very high turnover rates. According to some surveys, over 50% of newly hired drivers will leave their carriers within the first six months. In some cases, turnover can be closer to 90-100% over a year. 

Looking at those stats, it’s easy to see that turnover is a huge problem for many carriers. To avoid high turnover, don’t fall into the trap of hiring drivers to fill an empty rig as quickly as possible.  

If you’re hiring quickly and not taking the time to ensure you’re a good match for each other, it’s not likely it’s going to be a relationship that will last and will raise that hiring cost. If you keep repeating that cycle, it’s going to cost your company exponentially more and you’re still going to have empty seats to fill.  

Every time you hire a new trucker, do it with the intention to retain that driver for a long time. The best way to do this is by really taking the time to get to know your candidates during the interview process so you can see if them coming onboard with your carrier is truly a fit for both sides. Doing this is the number one way to lower driver turnover, and in turn, lower the cost of hiring. 

Measure Consistently for Best Results

Once you’ve found all your costs, the most important thing to do is to measure consistently. This is the only way that you’re going to be able to compare things year-over-year or month-over-month to see if the changes you’re making are truly helping to reduce your true cost of hiring a truck driver.  

Don’t add in costs for one timeframe, then remove those costs the next time you calculate. If you do this, then you’re comparing apples and oranges and won’t have an accurate picture of your recruiting process.  

Once you are tracking consistently, you should see some trends that help inform changes to your overall hiring strategies. Overall, you want this number to be as low as possible to deliver you a quality driver who wants to stay with your company. 

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.

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Truck Driver Recruiting: 5 Ways to Recruit Drivers

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truck driver recruiting

Success as a truck driver recruiter is based on two things. Finding the best candidates for the job and doing it quickly. Recruiters have a limited budget and time with which to acquire top talent for their carriers. As a result, efficiency is essential in truck driver recruiting. The good news is that in this data-driven age, measuring recruiting efficiency is easier than ever. 

There are a number of different metrics that can help you evaluate the effectiveness of your recruiting process. Doing this will not only help you hire the best candidates, but also tell you where to best allocate your time and money. Here are five ways to measure success in truck driver recruiting.

1. Time to Hire

The number one reason that truck drivers end up declining a job is because they’ve already accepted a different offer that reached them first. This is why quickly moving your candidates through the recruiting pipeline is so important. 

Simply put, time to hire is how long it takes a company to hire a candidate, from their first contact with them all the way to the candidate accepting the offer of employment. 

Among other things, this metric is indicative of both the efficiency of your recruiting team and the candidate’s experience. That’s why HR and recruiting professionals put such an emphasis on it.   

Having a structured and organized hiring process is the best way to improve your time to hire. For more information on speeding up your time to hire, you can read our blog on the subject. 

2. Cost Per Hire

Time isn’t the only way to measure efficiency in recruiting. Cost per hire or CPH is an essential metric that measures how economically efficient your recruitment process is.  

Cost per hire adds up all the expenses that go towards hiring new employees and divides that over the total number of hires for a given period of time. The great thing about this metric is that you can slice it up a number of different ways so that you can see how much it costs to hire based on haul type, region, hiring terminal, and more. 

Understanding this metric will open the door for your recruiting team to try different ways to hire drivers for less money. Maybe you’re finding that you don’t need to spend as much to hire in your Jacksonville terminal as you do in your Montgomery terminal. Or, since your cost to hire local drivers is so low, you can move some of that money towards filling harder hauls, like flatbed or tanker jobs. Try changing your process and seeing where your CPH ends up. Eventually you’ll find what works for your carrier.  

3. Channel Effectiveness

Gone are the days of putting up some flyers and placing your job ad in the newspaper. Digital is king now, with most interested drivers coming from Google searches, Facebook postings, and online job boards. With all of these channels available, identifying where applicants are coming in from can be incredibly helpful. 

Understanding channel effectiveness can be done by measuring the number of successful conversions by channel. You can also break down channels by job type or geographical region. Don’t assume that the same channels or sources are equally effective across jobs or locations. Maybe your OTR job leads come in mostly through referrals, while company drivers come in through Facebook. 

You can calculate the cost efficiency of your sourcing channels fairly easily. First, find the amount of money spent on advertisements on each channel. Then, divide that by the number of visitors who successfully applied for the job to find the sourcing channel cost per hire. Once you’ve found that, you can start to see which channels are working for your carrier and allocate your recruiting budget accordingly.  

4. First Year Performance

The above metrics take into account truck driver recruiting efforts before the job starts. But those aren’t the only ones you should be looking at. Connecting recruiting efforts with the quality of your hires and their first-year job performance can help you see if your recruiting team is going after the right candidates.  

Speaking to the hiring manager or supervisor will start to paint a picture of the performance of your hires. This can take into account everything from productivity, safety concerns, and cultural fit with the carrier. 

Once you’ve gathered information from supervisors and HR, see if you can find any patterns with recent hires. Are new hires less productive than other drivers? Are they involved in accidents at a higher rate than other drivers? If you don’t see any red flags, consider it a success. If you do, it may be time to re-evaluate your criteria for hiring.  

5. Job Satisfaction

Measuring driver satisfaction is one of the secrets to measuring recruiting success and maximizing driver retention. Drivers and fleets are both looking for a strong match. If drivers aren’t happy with their carrier, it’s only a matter of time before they start looking elsewhere. Given the current state of the trucking industry, your fleet can’t afford to lose a driver after already spending resources on hiring and onboarding.  

Do whatever it takes to keep drivers longer, and that starts with measuring their job satisfaction. You can do this a few different ways. Consider an anonymous survey, suggestion box, or even conducting stay interviews with current drivers. This type of open-ended driver feedback is best so that you learn about drivers’ likes, dislikes, wishes, and frustrations in more detail. 

After drivers have given feedback, it’s the carrier’s responsibility to address their concerns, or risk losing them to rival carriers. 

A low job satisfaction rating by the driver indicates one of two things. Either, the driver was a poor fit for the position, or job expectations were not clearly communicated. Either way, this provides more information to truck driver recruiters, who can then use this information to improve the quality of hires and improve recruitment practices. 

Finding the perfect fit is the most important thing when it comes to truck driver recruiting. That’s why fleet managers and driver recruiters all across the country are choosing to partner with Drive My Way.

Our patented and proprietary technology matches more than 10,000 CDL drivers a month with the perfect carrier based on their professional qualifications and personal lifestyle preferences. 

Comprehensive CDL Recruitment Solutions

Ready to start recruiting the right drivers? Our solutions experts are happy to answer any questions and show you how Drive My Way uniquely approaches CDL driver recruitment.

Request a Demo

 

7 Ways to Reach Active and Passive Driver Applicants

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recruiter for driver applicantsWhen recruiting truck drivers, understanding the difference between active and passive driver applicants can be the difference between a consistent candidate pipeline and struggling to fill your fleet. Active driver applicants are ready to make a job change immediately. In contrast, passive driver applicants should be nurtured over time. An effective recruitment strategy should connect appropriately with active and passive driver applicants to allow you to nimbly shift recruitment strategies as company and drivers’ needs change.

Active vs. Passive Candidates

The difference between active and passive driver applicants comes down to the driver’s connection with the job search. Both types of candidates are necessary for a healthy recruitment pipeline, and it’s important to use the right type of strategy for each candidate.

type of driver applicants

Active Driver Applicants

Active candidates are currently looking for new jobs. They likely have applied to several places and want to make a job change soon. These candidates are often easier to recruit because they are ready to change jobs now. For active driver applicants, recruiters must act quickly because drivers want to move quickly to a new position and won’t stay on the market for long. 

Passive Driver Applicants

Passive driver applicants make up the vast majority of the job market, but may be overlooked in the recruitment process. These candidates include drivers that you have in your hiring database from any previous interaction, including re-hires. These drivers are not actively looking for a new position, so they may take a little more time and effort to recruit. Before reaching out to passive candidates, make sure to scrub your database and clean old driver information that is no longer relevant. 

Drive My Way CEO, Beth Potratz, shared her expertise:

“Recruiting is not a transaction, it’s a continuous effort that you should never stop. Active and passive job seekers are all consumers in the employment relationship whose needs will change throughout their career. Similar to consumers, they often have both articulated and unarticulated needs and you should explore both. If you build and nurture relationships with drivers, they are more likely to consider a job at your company when they are looking to make a change. It’s really all about relationships.”

Beth continued, “Start recruiting how you would like to be recruited and you will be surprised at the results. Listen for what is important to people and no matter what, always acknowledge their interest and get back to them with feedback and next steps. One thing is for sure, they will always remember how they were treated by you during the process.”

How to Reach Active Driver Applicants

1. Go Where the Drivers Are

The first step to reaching active driver applicants is to go where the drivers are. You know these drivers are already looking for a job change, so make sure they see what you have to offer! Now, a big part of being visible is a prominent online presence. While some drivers may still use old-school methods of finding a job, many drivers will likely start their job searching the internet. When they do, use digital marketing to make sure your brand is appealing and your job is visible to the drivers you want to attract. 

2. Send the Right Message

Once a driver sees your job posting or recruitment advertising, you have one chance to make a good first impression. Clearly share your employee value proposition (EVP) with drivers in the job posting. They need to know how your company is different and why they should come work for you! Active candidates are looking for a job change so they may be more eager to hear what you have to offer. That said, they are also much more likely to have multiple companies vying for their attention. A clear and well-written EVP as part of your job description is essential for recruiting top drivers.

3. Be Ready to Move Quickly

Active driver applicants are ready to move quickly. That means recruiters must be too! Active applicants are often not on the job market for very long. Hiring top candidates can come down to a simple decision of timing. If your company and another make similarly competitive job offers to the same driver, and the other company is more responsive, you will likely lose that driver. The better the driver is, the more competition you will have from other companies that want to recruit that driver. In order to attract top talent, you have to be faster than the competition.

How to Reach Passive Driver Applicants

1. Go Slow To Go Fast

An effective strategy for recruiting passive applicants is entirely different than recruiting active applicants. For passive applicants, start by building your driver lead pipeline. It will take time to nurture a productive driver candidate pipeline, but the payoff is significant. You are playing a long game. There are many ways to add drivers to your passive candidate pipeline. One of the most powerful ways to connect is via a referral from other drivers. These referred drivers may not be looking for a new job immediately, but if you nurture the lead, your name will be top of mind down the road when they are ready for a change. At its core, building a passive driver pipeline is all about relationship building. 

2. Maintain Regular Touchpoints

It can be tempting to focus recruiting efforts on active driver candidates because they will be ready to move quickly. Don’t fall into the trap! Just because applicants are passive does not mean you shouldn’t have regular touchpoints with these drivers! Regular touchpoints through driver-centric content or other outreach efforts build your relationship with passive applicants. Regular touchpoints also allow you to more quickly respond if a driver starts to look for jobs actively. 

3. Track the Data

laptop to track hiring data

Passive driver applicants are nurtured with a series of small touchpoints over time. As a result, tracking interactions over the lifespan of each driver lead is essential. Document each communication or touchpoint with the driver meticulously. Ideally, this information should be stored in a centralized repository or ATS that is shared among all employees who might contact drivers. It’s a good idea to also include anonymous passive interactions, like website traffic, in your data. These are potential ways to add drivers to your recruitment funnel, and you can optimize your efforts by amplifying areas that are successfully generating interest. 

4. Be Prepared to Court Drivers

For a successful recruitment campaign, both active and passive driver candidates need to know what you bring to the table. However, to hire passive driver applicants, be prepared to show your best! Remember, passive driver candidates weren’t looking for a new job. It’s your job to convince them why YOU are a good fit for THEM!  This is the time to review your data on past conversations and what content this driver consumes to understand what matters to this particular driver. Then, use this data to recruit based on their interests and needs. To convert passive applicants to hires you must be able to clearly state the advantages of your company and open positions and why it will be a good switch for them.

Building a Comprehensive Strategy

A strong recruitment strategy should account for both active and passive candidates because recruiting demands can change quickly. Having active and passive candidates in the pipeline helps ensure that recruiters aren’t left without any candidates when driver demand is high. There may be times that require recruiters to focus more on either active or passive driver applicants, but don’t neglect either side completely.

Drivers are not static as active or passive candidates. An active applicant may become passive once they find a new job. A passive candidate may decide they are ready for a job change and start actively looking for new positions.

A recruitment strategy that effectively connects with active and passive driver applicants allows you to nimbly shift recruitment tactics as drivers’ needs change.

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Top 7 Reasons Drivers Decline CDL Jobs

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Are You Making the Most of Your Valuable Driver Leads?

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Recruiters work hard to bring in valuable driver leads. Are you making the most of them? From the first point of engagement to the job offer, your drivers offer valuable insight. Use this data to inform your recruitment process and optimization areas. The recruitment funnel should be realistic and efficient. Focus on hiring rather than strictly lead generation. Use these tips to optimize your recruitment strategy and ensure you’re making the most of your valuable driver leads.

1. Lead Attribution

There are two main models of lead attribution—single-touch models and multi-touch models. Single-touch models clarify pain points at particular stages in the recruitment process. Multi-touch models provide a holistic view of your recruitment process. Single and multi-touch models are also divided into smaller subsets. Each of the models has benefits and drawbacks. You may implement different models at different times as you continuously analyze your lead to hire process. Randall Reilly’s comprehensive video covers each lead attribution model in detail. Here are the highlights.

Single-Touch Lead Attribution

First Touch Model: As the name implies, this type of lead attribution is analyzed based on the point where a consumer makes first contact with your company. Drivers still have a long journey through your sales or recruitment pipeline. This model is most helpful in determining how drivers are being introduced to your company, particularly within a single campaign. 

Last Touch Model: This model similarly analyzes a single point of contact for a driver, but this time at the end of the recruiting funnel. The last touch model rests on the idea that it is most helpful to understand the point where the sales/recruiting effort is successfully closed. As a result, credit is given to the final point of contact in the recruiting pipeline. This model is a good fit for companies who are bringing in leads and want to analyze the success of a single closing campaign or compare results between campaigns. 

Multi-Touch Lead Attribution

Linear Attribution Model: The linear attribution model is the simplest way to track leads at multiple stages or across multiple campaigns in your recruitment pipeline. Each stage is weighted equally in importance. While multi-touch models are inherently more complex than single-touch models, linear attribution is a good place to start a broad analysis of your recruitment funnel. 

Time Decay Model: This model also examines leads at each point of contact or across campaigns, but it weights the stages of your funnel differently. The first points of contact are weighted less heavily, and more significance is given to points of contact that are closest to the point of conversion. This model can be particularly helpful with long recruitment funnels with time between each of the touch-points.

Position-Based Model: Like the Time Decay model, the Position-Based model unevenly weights lead attribution. Credit is more heavily attributed to the first and last points in your funnel that a driver encountered. This model implies that the first and last points of contact are the most important to successful recruiting. This model may be a good fit for companies that rely on long-tail lead nurturing because it weights your most important interactions more heavily. 

2. Allocating Paid Marketing

Once the research is done and you have a better understanding of your lead-to-hire process, paid marketing can amplify your impact. Assess your lead attribution model and determine which channels are driving your success. 

As you decide which marketing campaigns and platforms to elevate, keep the number of quality hires, and not the number of leads, as your north star. 

Ultimately, regardless of how many valuable driver leads you acquire, success is a hire. It’s important to understand your cost per lead (CPL), but the cost per hire should be the final decision-maker. In the end, a channel that has a low CPL but high cost per hire is less valuable than a channel with a lower cost per hire. Allocate your paid marketing to the channels with the lowest cost per hire.

3. Know Your Target Driver

The leads you are generating are more than potential hires. They are also reflections of your recruiting message. Make a point to understand the basic profile of your applicants. Then, examine which drivers are moving furthest through your recruitment funnel. Do they fit the persona of a driver who is a good fit for your company? If so, that’s confirmation that your messaging is resonating with the right people. If not, it may be a good opportunity to refine your content. 

Lead tracking is another valuable tool to understand the people behind your leads. Determine where your strongest applicants are coming from. That data, combined with carefully targeted messaging, can help you align your recruitment strategy to be attractive to the drivers you really want. A clear understanding of the people who make up your valuable driver leads will help you create an employee value proposition and write successful job descriptions. 

Free Template: Truck Driver Job Description

Follow this template to make sure your job descriptions are converting.

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4. Create a Realistic and Efficient Recruitment Funnel

To make the most of your valuable driver leads, set appropriate hiring targets. If possible, use historic data from the past 1-2 years on the hiring trends for your company.

Like many industries, trucking has seasonal peaks and troughs. These may correspond to your type of freight. Also consider that drivers who change jobs at different points of the year may be attracted by slightly different messages. Aligning your marketing strategy with natural seasonal flux will help you maximize your budget and your recruiting efforts. 

5. Improve the Quality of Your Leads

Inbound marketing is the gold standard because it brings valuable driver leads to you. Optimize your inbound digital marketing efforts with a few quick updates to your intake process. Review your site for appropriate and mobile-friendly calls to action as you share company information with drivers. Then, consider how drivers are sharing their information with you. Collecting qualifying information early on is key. Even though it may deter some drivers, it will ensure that the drivers you do get are qualified for your position.  

For example, when recruiting HazMat drivers with 2+ years of experience, ask for that information on an intake form. Then, sort your leads by that information and only pursue candidates who meet your criteria.

Similarly, cultivate your brand image and company reputation so they can be used as assets. In-person or virtual Word of Mouth and Referrals are some of the most effective marketing channels. When drivers learn about your company and turn to Glassdoor, Facebook, or Google for insight from other drivers, what will they see? Develop an online presence that will make drivers excited to learn more about your company and available positions.

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 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.

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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

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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