Tag: improve

7 Tips to Improve Your Employer Brand

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Your company has an employer brand whether you actively work on it or not. Quality drivers are well aware of the best and worst employers. Here are 7 tips to improve your employer brand.

Benefits of a Strong Employer Brand and What it is

Employer branding is how potential drivers perceive your company. This is your reputation as an employer.

An employer branding campaign aims to improve your company’s attractiveness to the top drivers and increase retention rate.

Building your company’s employer brand will lead to lower recruitment costs. Drivers will know that your company is a great place to work and will actively seek out opportunities to work for you. Your company will not have to spend exuberant amounts on job postings.

The strongest employer brands attract the top quality of drivers. Truck drivers that are true professionals, and take pride in their craft, want to work for carriers that are the best of the best.

Lowering your recruitment costs and hiring the top talent is going to lead to improved company performance.

What's your brand written out on clipboard

How to Identify Your Employer Brand

Before you embark on building your employer brand, you need to assess where you are starting from.

Employer review sites, like Glassdoor, are the best place to begin identifying your employer brand. Glassdoor gives you quantitative ratings and how each rating stacks up against the competition.

Computer tab open to glassdoor

After reviewing your rankings on sites like Glassdoor, the next step is social listening. Social listening is done by searching your company on social media. You need to read your mentions and interactions. Reddit forums and trucking social groups are a great place for social listening.

If your employer turnover is high, that is a key indicator you have a weak employer brand.

7 Tips to Build Your Employer Brand

  1. Define What You Want the Culture to be

    If your company does not have a clearly defined culture then it is up to you to define it. Write out a clear vision and mission statement. 

    Once you have your vision and mission statement, establish 3 – 5 company values. These values are at the core of your company’s decision making process.

  2. Hire Culture Fits

    After defining what the company culture is, start hiring drivers that match your culture.

    You can do this by communicating the company values to potential drivers in the interview process. The drivers that you hire should strongly identify with at least two of the values.

    Potential hires that do not align with company values will not do well in your company and will hinder your employer brand.

  3. Treat Potential Drivers as Customers

    Quality truck drivers are the most valuable asset to your company. Companies that employ top notch professionals experience lower turnover rate and higher profits.

    During the hiring process, you need to treat the drivers as customers. It is up to you to ‘wow’ them. Sell the drivers on why working for your company will make their lives better.

    Treating potential drivers as customers will help you attract the top professionals.

  4. Use Storytelling

    You need to be frequently producing content that tells the story of your company. Tell stories about how much your current drivers love working for you.

    Potential drivers and passive candidates will interact with these stories and recognize your company as a great place to work. Positive stories build up employer brands.

    Hand writing Tell Your Story in expo marker

  5. Act on Feedback

    As you are going over your reviews on Glassdoor and conducting social listening, you will come across plenty of feedback. Assess whether this feedback is legitimate.

    If you come across positive feedback, double down on what you are doing well. Negative feedback that is brought up repeatedly needs to be fixed.

  6. Increase Driver Perks and Benefits

    The quickest way to get your drivers to brag about your company is by paying them more.

    However, solely paying your drivers more is not enough to build up your employer brand. You need to utilize all 7 tips.

  7. Be Authentic

    Drivers will see through you if you are not being authentic.

    To avoid this, come up with company values that your staff truly identifies with. Do not set values that you think potential drivers want to hear. That is inauthentic.

Whether you are aware of it or not, you have an employer brand. Drivers are taking note about which companies are best to work for. Follow these 7 tips to improve your employer brand, attract the best drivers, and increase company profitability.

7 Strategies to Improve Driver Recruiting

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Driver recruiting to fill your trucks

A carrier’s most valuable assets are their drivers. Companies that successfully recruit quality drivers in high quantities outperform the competition. Utilize these 7 strategies and your company will improve its driver recruiting.

1) Remove Tasks That Keep Recruiters From Recruiting

Driver recruitment is a demanding job. Assigning recruiters tasks outside of recruiting will keep them from devoting the necessary time needed to recruit.

Time spent planning orientation, running digital marketing campaigns, qualifying applicants, etc. is time away from recruiting. In order to maximize efficiency, recruiters need to focus all of their energy in three areas:

  • Calling fresh, pre-qualified, leads
  • Referral programs
  • Rehire programs

Recruiters wearing too many hats will produce sub-par results. Remove distractions so recruiters will focus solely on recruiting

2) Hire a Trucking Digital Agency

Digital recruitment generates a constant stream of fresh leads for your recruiters to contact. However, it has to be done properly. Your recruiters do not know how to run effective digital campaigns.

Also, a digital ad agency unfamiliar with the trucking industry will not succeed. Hire a digital ad agency that specializes in truck company marketing and driver recruitment. Specialty agencies will speak your language, have your interests at heart, and will know how to navigate recruitment road bumps.

Digital campaigns are more effective than outdated methods. The first place drivers go to find a new job is the internet. Run a digital campaign and drivers will see your posting when they look for a new job.

Another benefit to digital campaigns is everything is tracked. Agencies will use tools like Google Analytics and Search Console to see how each marketing platform (social media, ppc, remarketing,etc.) is performing. Tracking data also allows them to use A/B testing. They experiment with different images/messaging and see what variations produce the best results. Data driven decisions will generate campaigns focused on the most effective platforms using the most effective messaging.

Skilled agencies will be able to promote your job postings specifically to people who you want to see it. You will not waste a single cent on ads being placed in front of uninterested people. Digital campaigns are hyper focused.

3) Assign Primary Recruiting Responsibilities 

Assign your recruiters to recruit specific kinds of drivers. One recruiter needs to focus on drivers, one on owner operators, one on CDL students, etc.

Recruiters will take pride/ownership in the type of driver they are assigned.  Also, assigning drivers will assure your company has different drivers with diverse skill sets.

Instead of having a team of drivers with the same qualifications, your company will have a collection of different endorsements, O/Os, and rookie drivers.

In addition to assigning recruiters specific drivers to recruit, make sure recruiters are assigned specific channels. Driver applicants that slip through the cracks because a recruiter forgot to reach out to them is frustrating and costs the company money.

4) Train Recruiters to be Salespeople

Truck driver recruiting is a sales job. Recruiters are selling the idea of working for your company to driver applicants. If your recruiters are not properly trained in sales then they will struggle to recruit.

Recruiters need to be trained to utilize conversation techniques that discover why a driver would want to change jobs. After figuring out the “why” the recruiter can use that to sell the driver that working for your company will fix that why.

5) Shorten the Recruiting Cycle

The longer it takes from “hello” to contingent offer, the least qualified drivers you hire. Enable your recruiters to offer drivers a contingent offer on the first call. It is unnecessary for and inefficient to have a recruiter get clearance from a manager before making contingent offers.

Another way to shorten the recruiting cycle is to use a landing page that drivers can apply on. Drivers should click on your ads and be able to apply for the position without having to search through any tabs.

6) Inspire Drivers to Refer Your Company 

Getting drivers to refer your company to other drivers is a great way to bring on new talent. However, it can be difficult to get drivers to actually refer your company to their peers.

Oftentimes recruiters will implement an impersonal referral program. Recruiters will send out an email blast, or in a large meeting, ask all of the drivers at once to refer the company to their friends.

Ask drivers personally and privately for help. Doing so will lead the driver feeling like you are asking them for help, not asking the whole company at once. People are committed to people, not the company.

One strategy that produces results is pulling your top drivers into your office, asking them for help, and then giving the driver their own business cards. The driver will hand out their cards to people they meet on the road.

Do not forget to compensate drivers that refer qualified drivers.

7) Actively Recruit Potential Rehires

When a driver leaves your company for another, that does not mean they should never work for you again.

At the time the driver resigns have a company vote if they should be welcomed back. 30 days after the driver resignation, start sending them recruitment content. It is common for a driver to start a new position only to realize their former employer was a better situation.

Make sure to send out messaging to former drivers on December 1st. December 1st is the end of the busy season and drivers are starting to think about where they are going to work the following year.

Finally, announce company changes to former employees. Former drivers may have left because your company was not paying them enough, but they enjoyed everything else about your company. Letting former drivers know about the pay increase may motivate them to return to your company.

Improving the quality and quantity of drivers recruited will improve your company’s bottom line. Despite the driver shortage, your company should not settle for a lack of quality drivers. Follow these 7 strategies and bring in more qualified drivers.

This article based on Kelly Anderson’s webinar 10 Things to Improve Quality and Quantity of Drivers Recruited