There seems to be a common problem occurring in the CDL driver recruiting market. While many recruiting teams realize that increasing applicant numbers, recruiting, and retention is paramount in today’s CDL marketplace, there just doesn’t seem to be any improvement in the numbers. Even for recruiting teams that are investing in high-dollar solutions, the results just aren’t showing up at the end of specific campaigns. So what’s missing, and where can recruiting teams change tactics?
While it might surprise CDL driver recruiting teams to hear this, you can’t just throw money at a problem (aka driver recruiting and retention) and just hope for the best. This is why these investment solutions aren’t working the way you thought they would right off the bat. Even your most well-meaning solution won’t show results if there isn’t a strategic plan in place that is founded on numbers and data.
Building your recruiting and retention strategy
One of the best phrases to apply to a CDL driver recruiting and retention strategy is ‘you can’t measure what you can’t see’. Basically, if you want to see how many new drivers a new recruiting platform, or an optimized online application, or even an updated recruiter call script can bring in for your team, you have to have a benchmark in place. How many new drivers are these channels currently bringing in? What are your overall team goals for this new strategy? What about goals for individual recruiters?
Starting with questions like the ones above – and having the answers for them – is the first step in building a successful recruiting and retention strategy. The next step is setting up the processes and procedures to collect the right data that will help inform these answers. By segmenting out your strategy into manageable parts, your team can tackle each individual component with ease instead of stressing out over trying to address every problem area at once.
Top metrics to start tracking NOW!
If your team has absolutely no idea where to start with tracking your recruiting and retention metrics, here are some top metrics to put at the top of your queue:
Click-to-apply rate: This metric tracks how many people click on an ‘Apply Now’ button on your website vs. how many people actually fill out the corresponding application. This metric measures how engaging and effective your actual application is.
Speed-to-hire: This metric shows your team how long it’s taking to hire a driver from the very first engagement (when someone fills out an application) to the final conversation (aka the hire). Understanding speed-to-hire helps identify where gaps and lags are in your recruiting process.
Application-to-hire conversion: Your application-to-hire conversion rate is a number that shows your team how many applicants actually were hired. This number can be an overall percentage of your total applicants or a hard number of drivers. Knowing your application-to-hire rate can tell you how successful your recruiting process is at actually driving new applicants through to the process and hiring them on full-time.
Monthly retention rates: This metric tracks how many drivers churn (aka leave) month after month. Your team should track retention rates on an individual driver basis to see how long drivers on average stay with your organization, as well as on a global scale to understand overall retention rates.
Qualitative metrics: While hard quantitative metrics like the ones above are important, it’s also critical for CDL driver recruiters to gather qualitative metrics from their drivers. Sending out surveys, asking for feedback, and aggregating online reviews can help your internal team understand what your drivers are thinking and feeling. Having this data at your fingertips helps improve retention and ensures your team is making decisions based on what’s most important for your drivers as a whole.
Improving your team’s recruiting and retention rates is possible if you have the right plan in place at the beginning. It starts with prioritizing your team and individual goals, assigning metrics to these goals, then actively starting to track the goals.
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