Tag: recruitment

Seasonality of Truck Driver Recruitment

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There are four distinct seasons to the trucking season. The seasons in order are: slow season, produce season, peak season, and finally the holiday season. Knowing the seasonality of trucking provides key insights to understanding the seasonality of truck driver recruitment.

Season 1 Peak Recruitment Season

It is of the utmost importance that recruiters are allocating the majority of their efforts to bring in as many new hires as possible between January 1st – March 31st.

As of 2017 the average time to hire (in work days) for the transportation industry was 24.9 days. Knowing that the produce and peak seasons are around the corner, recruiters need to put their company in the best position possible to capitalize on these busy seasons.

If a recruiter slows down their efforts because it is the “slow season” for drivers then they are positioning their company to scramble through produce and peak season.

During the busy seasons every trucking company in the country will scramble to fill all of their trucks. The companies that utilized their time during the slow season will be the ones to successfully fill their trucks.

Season 2 Season of Shifting Gears

By the time April hits you should have the majority of your fleet filled. Due to things like the high turnover rate and challenges associated with finding qualified drivers, it is more than likely that you still have some trucks to fill. That is okay.

If you treated season one as the peak recruitment season then your company will be well equipped to tackle produce season.

Filling the fleet needs to remain your top priority. However, during this time it is important for you to begin allocating some time to driver retention. Competing trucking companies will start to realize that they are short drivers for the upcoming seasons and ferociously recruit.

As the pool of qualified shrinks your competition will look to poach your drivers.

Studies have shown that 70% of the global workforce are passive candidates. You need to begin retention efforts during season 2. If you don’t a large portion of your drivers will leave your for another one.

I recommend starting off this season focusing on recruitment, but then as each week passes by focus more on retention. Do this until you reach the point where your top priority is retaining your drivers.

Gear shifter of a semi-truck symbolizes season of shifting gears

Season 3 Retain, Retain, Retain Season

August through October is the most stressful time of year for drivers. At times it is going to feel like there is more units that need to be delivered than you have the capacity for.

That is okay, at this point you have worked your hardest to fill your fleet with qualified drivers and now your main focus needs to be retaining your talent.

Trucking companies that failed to properly recruit earlier in the year will now be desperate for drivers and will be allocating large amounts of resources to recruitment. You need to be prepared for the fact that your drivers are going to be tempted to join other companies.

If you do nothing to entice them to stay with you then the drivers will leave for another company. Here are some tips for driver retention:

  • Instead of paying per mile offer an hourly wage so drivers are paid for everything they do, like loading and unloading.
  • Offer significant performance bonuses during the peak months.
  • Make the drivers feel valued by having a company wide “Driver Celebration” day
  • Show you care about the drivers’ families by offering additional time off during the holiday season based on performance during the peak season.

It is important to note that despite your best retention efforts there will be drivers that leave the company. Make sure that you are still allocating about 20% of your time for recruiting new drivers during the retention season.

Season 4 Sourcing Season

Once Thanksgiving passes the industry slows down as people begin to take time off to celebrate the holidays with their loved ones.

Drivers are going to be more focused on their time off than finding a new job. You will be spending less time calling, meeting and interviewing candidates.

This downtime is an excellent opportunity for you to source prospects and build up your hiring pipeline. Find new groups to join on social media, iron out the details for a new referral program, and build out your contact list as much as possible.

The better job you do sourcing during Season 4, the more success you will have during the following year’s Peak Recruitment season. As mentioned above, a successful Season 1 is critical to a successful year.

Improving Driver Recruitment With a Faster Response Time

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Digital marketing tools like geofencing, social media, SEO, etc. have enabled trucking companies to generate more applicants than ever before. However, the most important step in executing a successful campaign relies on technology that has existed since 1876, phoning. The rate at which recruiters are able to contact driver applicants has a direct correlation with improving your driver recruitment.

Slow Response Times Kill Your Recruitment Efforts

Forbes conducted a study of 10,000 businesses across multiple professions to see how effective they were at contacting internet leads and measure the results of contacting the leads.

On average it took businesses 46 hours and 53 minutes to pick up the phone to call a lead. Sales reps only attempted to get a hold of the lead 1.3 times before moving on. The study found that 71% of the leads generated were being wasted due to the slow response time.

One study conducted by Dr. James Oldroyd found some eye opening results:

  • 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.

The moment a driver submits an application to drive for your company, a recruiter needs to be calling them. Every second that ticks by where a recruiter has not called the applicant the odds of hiring that driver diminish.

How A Quick Response Time Will Improve Campaigns

Think back to two days ago and I bet that you will struggle to remember everything that you did that day, let alone all the websites you visited. Drivers are the exact same way.

If your recruiters are taking the average amount of time (46 hours and 53 minutes) to call driver applicants, then chances are the applicant has forgotten about your company.

The applicant may remember applying for the position. However, they will have forgotten the information that made them want to apply.

By calling immediately after application the driver will still have all of your information fresh on their mind.

Also, a quick response time generates a “Wow Effect” with applicants. Place yourself in the driver’s shoes for a moment. You have applied to five trucking companies that are all claiming to value their drivers and take care of them more than the competition.

Four of the five companies take two days to call you about your application. One company called you within five minutes of submitting the application. Which company would you feel like wants you the most?

Applicants that receive a call immediately after submitting their application exhibit an emotional response. That emotional response creates a feeling like, “this is a company that truly wants me to be a part of their team.”

Tips for Decreasing Your Response Time

Hand starts stop watch to measure response time

Now that it has been proven how critical a fast response time is, you are now probably wanting to place a response system within your company to improve your response time. Here are some tips to help you:

  • Track your team’s response time: If you are not already tracking your response time then you must begin. This will give you a baseline to work from and enable you to prove you have made improvements to your response time.
  • Set goals: The ultimate goal for your team should be to respond in under five minutes of an application being submitted. However, if your response time is two days then it is unrealistic to expect your team to begin responding within five minutes. Start by trying to get the average response time down to one day, then twelve hours. Slowly work your way down to five minutes and then let your team know that five minutes is the expectation going forward.
  • Automation: Using a tool like Callingly to automate the response process is a sure way to improve response time. Callingly integrates with your website and will call your team as soon as a new lead comes in, routing the lead based on territory and schedule.

A fast response time is an essential element to any recruitment campaign. Slow response times are causing your recruitment campaigns to not be as successful as possible. By improving your response time you are bound to see more success with all of your recruitment campaigns.

Geofencing For Truck Driver Recruitment

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Today’s technology enables recruiters to specifically target niche demographics of potential drivers. This heightened level of focus improves the effectiveness of recruitment campaigns. Geofencing for truck driver recruitment increases the focus of recruitment campaigns.

Restricting your ads to specific regions ensures that the people seeing your ads are involved in the industry, within your niche demographic, and in the vicinity that works for your company.

What is Geofencing

Geofencing is a location based advertisement strategy. It works by setting up a “geofence”, a virtual perimeter around the outside of a geographic area. Anyone who enters the perimeter receives the targeted ads.

Perimeters can be set up as a radius around a point or a predefined set of boundaries. Geofences can be placed around certain events, zip codes, specific buildings, etc.

By carefully placing geofences around areas where potential clients frequent your campaign ads are guaranteed to land in front of the eyes of the people who care. Hopefully the wheels are starting to turn and you can see how this strategy is highly effective when used properly.

Why Geofencing Works

If you do the due diligence to place geofences in the right place, then you will know exactly what kind of people are within the fence. With this knowledge you are able to build ads that cater specifically for the people in the geofence. Sending these curated ads out increases the level of engagement compared to other less focused paid media.

Considering 75 percent of job applications come via mobile phones, the more candidates that interact with the mobile ads you send them the more applicants you will get. Wayne Cederholm III, vice president of driver recruitment for C.R. England, is a big proponent of geofencing. Here’s what he said on the topic,

“There’s not a lot that differentiates these carriers, so the smallest thing can make a big difference.”

Another example of a company succeeding with geofencing is Parker Staffing Services. They saw a 40 percent increase in web traffic after they began using geofencing.

Arguably the most important thing that geofencing does is dramatically improve your ability to avoid wasting ad dollars on people outside the trucking industry. Attracting only those interested in trucking to your site decreases marketing expenditure and increases ROI.

Impactful geofencing strategies will attract droves of driver candidates to your site without having to increase marketing spend.

How to be Successful With Geofencing

Icon that depicts geofencing for truck driver recruitment.

The first thing that you must do for a successful geofence campaign is select where you want the campaign to take place. The location of the campaign must be based off of the type of candidate you are looking for.

Placing a geofence around truck stops is an excellent way to target drivers who work for another company and are considering switching companies. Another way to target drivers looking to switch companies is by placing geofences around other trucking companies’ property.

Target CDL schools if you want to attract brand new drivers.

Trucking conventions will be filled with new and experienced drivers so you should place a fence there.

Once you have chosen your location(s) the next step is to create content specifically curated for your niche. Experienced drivers are not going to respond to ads designed to recruit brand new drivers and visa versa. If you are targeting a womens trucking convention then your ads better depict women fulfilling the driver role.

It is easy to diminish your budget quickly if you are targeting ineffective areas. The best way to ensure success with geofencing is to know your audience and where you are targeting.