How to be a Great Truck Driver Recruiter

Truck driver recruiters are some of the most important people within their organizations. If they are ineffective at their job, the company will have trucks sitting “on the fence” and not on the road earning revenue. Follow these steps and you will know how to be a great truck driver recruiter.

  1. Master Your Process 
  2. Understand Social Media Marketing for Trucking Companies 
  3. Learn the Art of Persuasion 
  4. Stay Organized and Be Prepared 
  5. Stay in Touch With Potential Drivers
  6. Remain Transparent Through the Hiring Process

Truck driver recruiter grabs red wooden figure to symbolize making a new hire.

Master Your Process

You will not be able to efficiently hire truck drivers if you do not have your process mastered.

How are you going to reach out to recent applicants if you do not know where their information is kept? How can you hire a new driver if you do not know how to send them the necessary paperwork and make sure it is all properly filled out?

If you are reading this and have been working at the same company for a long period of time, this tip may feel like a waste of time. However, each company has a different process. It can be easy to overlook this step when you start a new position.

Mastering the entire process is equivalent to mastering the fundamentals of any sport.

Just like you can’t expect to lace them up on Sundays without first mastering the basics, you can not be a great driver recruiter without first mastering your hiring process.

Understand Social Media Marketing for Trucking Companies

Nearly 100% of all truck drivers in the country are members of social media. Effective social media marketing allows for your company to reach all of these drivers, build your company brand, and connect with other people in the industry.

Because social media is so effective at generating driver applicants and promoting your company, it is likely an integral part of your carrier’s strategy.

A great truck driver recruiter understands the fundamentals of social media marketing. They do this because they want to understand where the drivers are coming from, how the driver came to apply, and what is reasonably expectable from a campaign.

Even if you are not responsible for running social media campaigns, you should learn how campaigns work.

Learn the Art of Persuasion

The red figure of a person influences a crowd of people. Expressing your own opinion, turning to your side. Mastery of persuasion, propaganda, influence on the masses. Warming up the mood of the crowd

Truck driver recruiting is a sales position. The key to being successful at sales is learning how to persuade people to act.

You rarely come across a driver applicant that has fully committed to working for your company after applying.

Drivers need to be persuaded to drive for your company.

The driver shortage has created a world where truck drivers are fielding multiple offers at once. Where the driver decides to work comes down to which company is the most persuasive.

If you want to learn how to become more persuasive as a driver recruiter check out this article:

5 TIPS FOR DRIVER RECRUITERS TO BE MORE PERSUASIVE

Stay Organized and be Prepared 

Truck driver recruiting is a constant juggling act. If you are disorganized and/or unprepared you will miss out on opportunities to hire drivers for your company.

If you are organized you will be able to manage applications coming in from multiple lead sources, keep track of all the meetings you set up, and submit the necessary paperwork for each driver.

You need to be over-prepared for each interview with individual drivers. At the start of an interview, you may think a driver applied because they are interested in a pay raise, and then find out that they had a poor experience with previous management.

If you enter the interview only prepared to discuss how drivers are paid at your company, then you won’t be fully prepared to talk about company culture. Sure you could discuss it off the top of your head, but you won’t have all the content necessary to show off your company culture.

Staying organized and being prepared will make sure that you interact with as many drivers as you can and can answer all of their questions.

Stay in Touch With Potential Drivers 

The hiring process can be lengthy, especially if a driver is applying to multiple companies. You must stay in touch with drivers that are in your hiring process.

Every day, Monday through Friday, you need to contact all of your potential drivers.

When you contact drivers you should be checking in to see if you can help them in any way. The key is to stay on the driver’s mind.

Remembering to contact drivers every day can be challenging. Using a quality ATS will help you stay organized and make it easy to contact each driver.

Wooden man shows with hand text Stay In Touch concept on wooden block

Remain Transparent Through the Hiring Process

You need to be transparent with the truck driver through the entire hiring process. Do not over-promise the good aspects of your company and hide the bad aspects.

Be upfront with the drivers about possible areas of miscommunication and elements of the job the driver may not enjoy.

It may feel counterintuitive to share negative information with the driver, however, it actually builds trust between you and the driver. The transparency establishes that you are an honest person.

This does not mean that you should focus on the negatives. Share the things about the job that the driver may not like, but then show that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Truck drivers will be more likely to believe you on how great the position is if you are honest about some of the downsides.

Truck driver recruiters are essential to every trucking company in the country. Also, the better you are at driver recruiting the more money you will make. Follow this guide and you will know how to be a great truck driver recruiter.

How to be a Successful Driver Recruiter

At Driveteks, we have been working hand and hand with recruiters nationwide for 5 years now. This has given us an insight into what separates the bad from the good, and the good from the great. Follow this guide to learn how to be a successful driver recruiter.

5 Tips to be a Successful Driver Recruiter 

Successful driver recruiter hires a new driver

1) Get on the Phone ASAP

The most important step in successful recruitment relies on technology that has existed since 1876, phoning. There is a direct correlation between the rate at which recruiters are able to contact driver applicants via phone and recruitment success.

A study on phoning found two major conclusions: The odds of contacting a lead are 100 times higher if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes. The odds of qualifying a lead are 21 times higher if called in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes.

Drivers are applying to multiple companies at a time. This means that as soon as that driver hits “submit” on your application, you are in a race with everyone else.

Recruiters that develop a routine of calling driver applicants as soon as they apply will experience more success than the recruiter that is slow to call.

2) Stay in Contact

Once a successful recruiter makes contact with a driver applicant, they maintain that contact with the driver.

Recruiters that struggle with getting drivers through orientation often have a contact issue. Drivers are less likely to back out on a job offer, even if presented with a better option, if they have a relationship with the recruiter.

Whether you are contacting the driver applicant to inform them of a position update or checking in to see how the hiring process is going, there is always a reason to be in touch with applicants.

3) Interview for Culture, not Qualifications

Interviewing truck drivers needs to be less about the driver’s qualifications and more about the driver as a person. Successful recruiters learn everything they need to know about the driver’s qualifications from their application/resume.

In the interview, the successful recruiter focuses on if the applicant is a strong team fit. Focusing on the driver as a person, and hiring strong culture fits, will lead to a stronger retention rate.

Ask questions like these to get to know the applicant as a person:

  • What type of culture do you thrive in? (Does the response reflect your organizational culture?)
  • What’s your ideal workplace?
  • Why do you want to work here?
  • Tell me about a time when you worked with/for an organization where you felt you were not a strong culture fit. Why was it a bad fit?

A team with strong culture fits

4) Build and Maintain Strong Relationships 

Recruiters that are successful are aware that their job is more than simply hiring truck drivers. Recruiters are key contributors to their company’s retention rate.

By building and maintaining a strong relationship with drivers you hire, you are encouraging the drivers you hire to continue working for your company. Drivers are more likely to stay with a company where they feel like they are a part of a community.

In addition to improving retention, maintaining relationships will help you hire more drivers. Drivers that left your company for “greener pastures” often realize the grass is not always greener. When this happens, the driver will often return to work for your company if they have a strong relationship with the recruiter.

Also, drivers that like you, the recruiter, will refer their friends to you. The truck driving community is tight-knit, drivers often tell their friends about how great it is to work for their company.

5) Influence your company to build its Employer Brand

Quality drivers are well aware of the best and worst employers. Your company’s employer brand is the way that drivers perceive what it is like to work for you.

Even skilled truck driver recruiters will struggle to recruit drivers for a company that has a weak employer brand. Drivers will not want to work for you if they hear from their friends that your company does not value their drivers.

As the recruiter, you may not be able to build an employer brand by yourself. However, you do have a strong say within the company. You need to be advocating for your company to boost their employer brand.

The quickest way to improve employer brand is by offering higher driver pay and by responding to feedback from current/former drivers.

Where Successful Recruiters Find Truck Drivers

None of the tips above are helpful if you do not know where to find drivers. Finding drivers to recruit is the core of what you do as a recruiter.

In the past, one of the best places to find potential drivers was in-person recruitment events. However, those are no longer a possibility.

The best places to find drivers to hire are through digital marketing channels, social media, and employee referral programs.

Successful driver recruiter searching for drivers

A career as a truck driver recruiter is not an easy career. However, becoming a successful recruiter is fulfilling and rewarding. Follow these tips and you can learn how to become a successful driver recruiter.