Over the past three weeks we have tried to cover some common areas that plague recruiters and consistently give them trouble. This information has been learned and compiled by working with countless recruiting partners over the years.
Today we will end our four-part series with the final installment of what NOT to do in your driver recruiting practices.
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- Driver Recruiting: What NOT to Do (Part 1)
- Driver Recruiting: What NOT to Do (Part 2)
- Driver Recruiting: What NOT to Do (Part 3)
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Lack of Persistence and One-Dimensional Pursuit of New Leads
When pursuing a new lead, it’s important to be persistent. Estimates have shown that 30-45% of new leads are unreached or considered unresponsive after 90 days. For recruiters that only make a few attempts, these numbers spike even more.
Drivers in today’s trucking industry have a plethora of opportunities available to them. It’s imperative to reach out multiple times, and to do so quickly after initially acquiring a prospective driver’s information.
Heinz Marketing points out that their best practice for lead follow-up includes 13 touches across four channels over the course of 11 business days. Not only is it important to reach out to your leads early and often, but you must reach out to them over across multiple channels.
Research has shown that the more channels that are used in the recruiting process, the faster the prospect is engaged. Limiting yourself to a single primary contact point and failing to pursue your prospects is a recipe for failure.
For instance, Facebook is an excellent way for recruiters to reach prospective driver, but it should not be the sole point of contact being utilized. Custom landing pages, LinkedIn, and magazine publications can also be effective methods. Using multiple methods such as these all-in conjunction with one another gives you the best chance for success.
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Failing to Track the Source of New Leads and Hires
Having an accurate picture of what is working for you can guide your recruiting processes moving forward. Being able to see not only where your leads are coming from, but which lead sources convert at a higher rate can assist recruiters with their focus and time allocation.
Tracking each source that enters the system allows you to see any developing trends and track with source has performed the best for you over any given period. The ultimate advantage to tracking all your lead source and hires is that it allows recruiters to see which lead source has produced the highest conversion.
This tracking allows recruiters to prioritize prospects with a higher chance of converting and not wasting valuable effort and time on a low percentage prospect.
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Recruiters Assume That Practice Makes Perfect
We’ve all heard the old saying, “Practice makes perfect.” Although it is well known and sounds really good, it’s just not an accurate statement. To be perfectly blunt, doing something repeatedly doesn’t necessarily make you better at that activity. Unfortunately, truck driver recruiters sometimes fall into the trap of thinking this way.
No matter how long a recruiter has been doing the job, they must always be willing to learn and strive to be better. If a recruiter spends all their time concentrating on what they already know they will likely never get any better.
Being willing to learn new techniques and participating in activities designed for improvement that concentrates on their weak areas will better prepare them for the job ahead.
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Low Engagement With Drivers Scheduled for Orientation
The final mistake we’ll cover is failing to keep the prospective drivers engaged once they’ve been scheduled for orientation. Industry averages have shown that 15-20% of drivers scheduled for orientation don’t even show up. This is largely due to a failure of keeping them engaged.
The more engaged a driver is with a company, the less likely he/she will be to continue to seek out other job opportunities. Maintaining consistent contact with a driver is a simple fix to allow companies to ensure that a prospect stays actively engaged throughout the recruiting and orientation process.
Using multiple channels and touch points such as phone calls, text messaging, and emails in regular intervals can easily accomplish this. In addition, an email sequence can be automated to feed the driver information and tasks to better inform and help them prepare for orientation and the hiring process.
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Avoiding Common Errors in Driver Recruiting Will Lead to Success
Throughout our four-part series, we have covered many things that you should avoid with your recruiting processes. By continuing to adapt your recruiting processes and side stepping these common pitfalls you will give you and your fleet the best chance at landing top recruits moving forward.
