If you recruit CDL drivers, you know it’s getting increasingly difficult to find, qualify, and hire truck drivers in today’s driver shortage environment.
No longer can driver recruiters rely solely on inbound leads generated from a variety of job posts that compete with, and blend in, amongst a sea of other ads from every other trucking company across the country.
The days of a driver recruiter being just a “processor” are over.
Today’s modern driver recruiter is really in sales. Each recruiter should approach each interaction with a driver no different than a salesperson approaches a prospective customer.
Candidate Experience
Each conversation a recruiter has with a prospective driver should be centered around making sure the candidate has a great experience.
Always speak to the driver with a smile and enthusiasm. Focus on establishing a rapport. Be friendly. Be cordial. Get them to talk about themselves and what they’re looking for. Ask plenty of open-ended questions. Have empathy.
Don’t make the driver feel like they’re just another one of the calls you get all day long. They are special - they’re the only one you’re talking to...make them feel that way.
Sales Pitch
A driver recruiter should also be armed with a fine-tuned sales pitch that highlights their company’s story, along with relevant statistics that help articulate why their company is a great fit for that driver (great culture; great compensation; low turnover; new equipment, etc.).
In today’s competitive and cut-throat market for qualified drivers, recruiters need to be able to sell the driver on why they should choose their company over a competing carrier.
CRM
The most successful salespeople use CRM all the time when they’re prospecting and managing their leads through their sales process. There’s really no difference here. Driver recruiters need to be using CRM, too - especially if they expect to thrive in today’s environment.
CRM is traditionally referred to as “Customer Relationship Management”. But in the world of recruiting, it’s “CANDIDATE RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT”.
Driver recruiters can use basic CRM tools to dramatically improve their rate of connection with their leads, and manage all their leads more efficiently and effectively.
Creating follow-up tasks, reminders and notes for each driver, and using email and text functionality are all CRM-related functions that driver recruiters need to incorporate into their process if they expect to excel.
Customer’s Always Right
Remember this adage? It applies to drivers, too. We still have a qualification process to adhere to, but the principle of keeping the driver as the primary focus and ensuring that his/her experience is extraordinary is of utmost importance, even if you don’t end up hiring the driver.
If a driver has a good, professional experience, even when not hired, they’re more likely to refrain from any negative criticism. In fact, in most instances, there may even be compliments as to how professional and efficient the process was.
Ongoing Training
Again with a parallel to sales, driver recruiters needs ongoing training to ensure the proper message is being conveyed in the most effective manner.
Just like with sales training, there are platforms available that host driver recruiting training. This is a must for any driver recruiter in order to continually enhance their ability to convert driver applicants and leads into hired CDL drivers.
It’s Here
Now, with DriverReach, you finally have a modern driver recruiting management system that provides all the tools necessary to empower driver recruiters to thrive today.
- An easy-to-complete, mobile-friendly DOT application gets more drivers into your funnel and reduces abandonments along the way.
- Automated previous employment verifications improves the speed-to-hire to just days instead of weeks.
- CRM-functionality provides the necessary communication tools to ensure better connectivity with more applicants.
If you’re trying to grow your business, stop relying on reactive processes and workflows.
Let DriverReach help you Hire. Better. Faster.
Learn more today, request your demo of DriverReach now!
