You can’t hire truck drivers if they don’t apply to your job. Simple as that. But recruiting teams often overlook this step in the process because they have so many other moving parts to worry about.
Nothing can be more frustrating to a recruiting department than building a recruitment process only to not get any applicants.
Here are the 5 steps to get truck drivers to apply to your company:
- Determine the Type of Truck Driver You Need
- Write out the Job Listing – Focus on What is Important
- Put Together your Advertising Budget
- Choose the Right Driver Lead Sources
- Post the Jobs and Monitor Campaign Performance
Determine the Type of Truck Driver You Need
Do you need drivers for a regional route? OTR? Dedicated? Maybe you have routes for teams.
What about endorsements? Are there any requirements? If so, can the driver obtain the endorsements after being hired, or do they need the endorsements upfront?
How about the hiring area? Where can your company hire drivers from?
Answering these questions will help you determine the type of driver you need. Knowing exactly what kind of driver you need will help you decide which lead sources you need to be advertising on.
Write out the Job Listing – Focus on What is Important
Writing out a compelling job listing that convinces drivers your company is where they want to work can feel like a daunting task.
How do you distill your entire company’s history, driver culture, and position information into a digestible format?
Simple, focus on what is important.
Ask any truck driver what they look for in a new position and they will tell you, “Pay and home time.” Knowing that drivers are looking for how much money they can make and how often they get to be at home, make this information the focus of your listing.
Do not beat around the bush, cut to the chase, and tell drivers what they want to know.
You can even put the pay or home time in the job title!
Put Together Your Advertising Budget
Getting truck drivers to apply to your positions is not free. You are going to need to pay up to fill your trucks.
If this is your first campaign it may be tough to gauge how large your budget needs to be. A good way to estimate your budget is first to determine how many leads you need to meet your hiring goal.
The industry average hiring rate is 3%. If you need to hire 3 drivers you are going to need 100 driver leads.
At Meramec Solutions, we would recommend a $3,000 campaign to reach 100 leads. This is assuming you do not require any endorsements or other specialties.
Finally, once you have determined your budget, make sure you have the money.
Choose the Right Driver Lead Sources
Even if you write the perfect job listing and pay an exuberant amount of money, choosing the wrong lead sources will lead to poor results.
Want to learn more about choosing the right lead sources?
Check out this article:
Post the Jobs and Monitor Campaign Performance
There is no exact science behind generating driver applicants. The strategies used one month maybe entirely useless the next.
Because you never know what exactly will work, you need to keep a constant eye on performance.
If the campaign is struggling to produce applicants, or the applicants coming in are subpar, you need to make changes immediately.
Having a person dedicated to the campaign performance makes this step in the process easy. Their job will be devoted to monitoring and making changes, ensuring the best results.
Hire an Agency
The number 1 way to get truck drivers to apply for your positions is to hire an agency that has mastered this entire process.
Hiring an agency will free up your recruiters to get back to what is important (recruiting), fill your ATS with fresh leads, and make sure each month runs as optimal as possible.
Have questions about what it is like working with an agency? Fill out the form below!
