Don’t Just Recruit Owner Operators. Make New Ones.

September 5, 2012

Five Fundamentals Of A Successful
Lease Purchase Program.

In the first eight months of 2012, Alabama-based flatbedder WTI Transport signed over 100 new Lease Purchase agreements. That’s an exponential increase over the few dozen WTI had at the beginning of the year. Which should tell you two things.

1) With the difficulty of finding banks to finance truck purchases, Lease Purchase programs are quickly becoming the only way ambitious drivers can become Owner Operators.

2) The folks at WTI are doing something right. Particularly when you consider how many of their Lease Purchase drivers successfully take title to their trucks. “The main thing is, we don’t treat our program as a profit center,” says Lease Purchase Director Jason Quinn. “We created it because we really do want to see more drivers become Owner Operators.

“Our President Rendy Taylor has always said, ‘We can’t consider ourselves successful until a driver gets his title.’ That’s our philosophy. And drivers know that.” So what’s WTI’s secret? It’s no secret: They actually help their drivers succeed.

HERE ARE THE FIVE FUNDAMENTALS OF WTI’S PROGRAM.

1) Minimize The Down Payment.
Better still, says Quinn, don’t require any money down.

2) No Balloon Payments.
It’s pretty simple, Quinn continues: If a driver can’t afford a large down payment, he certainly can’t afford a huge balloon payment. After all, Quinn notes, that’s where so many Lease Purchase drivers at other companies lose their trucks.

3) Pay A Decent Wage. And Make Payments Affordable.
As of August of 2012, WTI was paying its Lease Purchase drivers 70% of gross. That’s as high as you’ll find in the industry. It’s why driver Andre Davis left another company for a Lease Purchase agreement with WTI: “With that other company, I had to run a minimum of 4000 to 4500 miles a week just to make any money for myself. Plenty of weeks, I owed them money.”

4) Offer A Fuel Routing Program.
A successful Fuel program combines maximum fuel surcharge with solid MPG practices, says Quinn.

5) Teach Drivers Good Business Practices.
“We think this is one of the real cornerstones of our program,” Quinn explains. “There’s a huge learning curve for anyone taking the leap from Company Driver to Owner Operator, so we created a Business Planning support system, to monitor our Lease Purchase drivers’ success in several key areas. Each Fleet Manager regularly reviews, with his drivers, a chart he keeps on those areas. Over time, the areas he’s marked red (problem) and yellow (potential problem) start turning green.

“So I guess, Quinn concludes, “you might say we aren’t really successful until our Lease Purchase graduates consider themselves successful Owner Operators.”

Good conclusion.


Build On Your Strengths to Improve Truck Driver Recruitment

August 30, 2012

The most successful recruiters know there’s more to attracting good drivers than just offering the best pay.

Here are a few things smart drivers consider before changing companies:

The Equipment
Drivers can tell a lot about a trucking company by the kind of equipment they put on the road. Under the CSA2010 regulations, equipment condition means more to drivers than ever.

Poorly maintained trucks and trailers can be a real red flag. And driving for a company that’s known for safety violations means operating equipment that’s literally been marked for more frequent inspections.

Driver Training
Training is also more important than ever. Drivers know that. Vehicle inspections may be a hassle, but what drivers don’t know about CSA2010 can take them off the road altogether. At the very least, good training gives drivers the information they need to pass those inspections.

The Contract
A lot of companies have a reputation for nickel-and-diming its drivers. When companies don’t have written policies for compensation, that’s a guaranteed red flag for experienced drivers.

Driver Turnover
There’s no better indicator of driver satisfaction with a company than its turnover rate. If your company has a high turnover rate, you need to know exactly why. At the very least, it means you need to change the way you treat your drivers, or you need to raise your driver recruiting standards.

Marketing Materials
Marketing materials often speak volumes about a company. If your materials are poorly designed and outdated, what does that say about your company?

When your marketing materials offer a compelling, attractive message beyond the basic Earnings Capacity promise, it shows that you’ve invested the time and effort needed to define what makes you different and special. Which tells drivers you’re probably also in the habit of investing the time and effort needed to make sure you really are different and special.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that the kind of company every driver wants to work for?


7 Tips For Recruiting Younger Truck Drivers Through LinkedIn

August 16, 2012

Implementing a LinkedIn strategy now can pay huge long-term dividends in your driver recruiting efforts—particularly if your driver force is aging quickly.

It’s been over 18 months since I originally published this post. Since then, the results you could get from a LinkedIn search for “Truck Driver” more than tripled—from under 20,000 to nearly 62,000.  Granted, that number is  a drop in the bucket compared to LinkedIn’s reported worldwide membership (175 million as of June 30)—but it’s clear that divers are catching on. Particularly younger drivers—who are, obviously, much more savvy Social Media users than their elders. All of which is why I figured it was time to update this post.

In an early-2011 article, recruiting industry veteran Tim Giehll offered four tips for establishing an effective LinkedIn strategy for your recruiting. In retrospect, I’m adding three more.

  1. Create a strong company and career page on LinkedIn. Make sure your company profile is up to date, informative and compelling. Make your job postings rich with keywords. This will help job seekers find you more easily.
  2. Converse with other HR professionals. You can start with LinkedIn’s Hiring and Human Resources Questions page to see what other HR people are talking about. And there are many links to questions and answers about personnel, staffing and recruiting.
  3. Search for candidates via keywords and employers. Smart LinkedIn candidates will have keyword-rich profiles and detailed employment histories—so that they will be found by recruiters like you.
  4. Consider one of LinkedIn’s paid services. These include: LinkedIn ads. The LinkedIn Referral Engine. LinkedIn Recruitment Insights. And LinkedIn Recruiter, a powerful search engine specifically designed to help recruiters locate and communicate with candidates.
  5. Join as many LinkedIn groups as you can. Then plan a strategy for posting relevant content to those groups. I underlined relevant, because the same message may not be appropriate to every group. Some groups (like Logistics Manager Jobs) are pretty close to online job boards—where lots of members post job openings. Others (like Driver Retention Network) are forums for sharing ideas and content, not sales pitches. Groups like that might not yield direct results in hiring, but can certainly contribute to your overall strength as a recruiter.
  6. Build your network of contacts. There are any number of theories about who should be in your LinkedIn connections. I tend to avoid connecting with direct competitors—whereas my good friend Scott Simon (who had 27,580 connections on the day I re-published this post) credits much of his considerable success in recent years to his policy of connecting with anyone and everyone.
  7. Send personal messages with your invitations. One of my pet peeves is the LinkedIn (or Facebook) invitation from a total stranger who didn’t even bother to explain why they chose to send an invitation. To me, it’s borderline Spam—and it tells me they bring nothing of benefit to a potential connection. So take the time to write something—and use invitees’ names in your message. You’ll get a much higher rate of acceptance.

All that said, don’t expect instant results. Like all Social Media, LinkedIn isn’t a panacea solution for recruiting. It’s just one part of the puzzle—but clearly, it’s becoming a bigger part every day.

CEO of Global Recruiting Software manufacturer Bond Talent, Tim Giehll has 25 years of financial, operational, and technology management experience in large companies such as Manpower.

Click on the following links to read Tim’s articles, “LinkedIn to Replace Monster & Careerbuilder” or “The Use of Social Networks in Recruiting Continues to Grow”


7 Tips for Recruiting And Retaining Great Truck Drivers

August 1, 2012

Maximize your odds of hiring better truck drivers by looking for the four key qualities that all great employees share: Work ethic. Humility. Integrity. Maturity. (WHIM)

Granted, the driver shortage is making it tougher to find any truckers—much less the great ones. But it goes without saying that the best hires are usually the ones you keep the longest. For one reason, because they have those key qualities.

Noted author and workplace productivity coach & trainer Garrett Miller (and author of Hiring On A WHIM) offers several great tips for identifying the best candidates. Here’s a summary of those tips:

  1. “Listen” to the resume. Look for overlapping activities and jobs—signaling strong work ethic and an ability to juggle. Note any employment gaps, and ask about them.
  2. Assess their WORK ethic. Ask candidates to describe their work experience in detail. Listen for signs of motivation, intensity, and excitement.
  3. Discern their HUMILITY. Ask candidates to describe the last process they had to learn. Good signs are willingness to ask for help and seek coaching. Ask what they learned from their most humbling moment.
  4. Determine their INTEGRITY. Ask candidates about their biggest disappointment or failure, and see if they took the appropriate level of responsibility for it.
  5. Evaluate their MATURITY. Ask candidates to talk about one of their greatest regrets. Listen for bitterness or complaining versus maturity.
  6. Throw in a Wrench. Knock them off balance to see how they react. New settings create stress and illuminate personality traits.
  7. Heed Your Gut. Every candidate must have at least one strong example for each WHIM quality, above. If you’re overly enamored with one or two qualities and ignore a gap, you’ll regret it. Listen to your gut.

It’s pretty simple, really: The best drivers love what they do. Miller’s tips are a helpful system for separating the drivers who merely say they love their work from the ones who really do.

At the same time, when you emphasize the importance of the qualities mentioned above in your recruiting efforts, you’re positioning your company as the kind of quality organization that quality drivers want to join.

Click on the following link to read Garrett’s article, 7 Tips for Hiring Great Employees, in its entirety.


Recruiters: Is your company keeping the promises you’re making?

June 6, 2012


If not, maybe it’s time you were honest with yourself.

What was I doing talking to the Boilermakers Union?
Several years ago, my agency was invited to offer the International Brotherhood Of Boilermakers a proposal for a statewide campaign promoting organized labor in Alabama.

Being Southern, and a business owner, I’d naturally been conditioned to harbor deep suspicions about unions. However, the opportunity was too good to dismiss it outright—so I agreed to an initial meeting with Boilermakers president DeWayne Parker.

What Parker told me in that meeting entirely changed my way of thinking. “We want to help the companies we supply labor to,” he told me. “We want to help them succeed and prosper by delivering value—both in terms of superior skills and a better workplace attitude.”

That certainly didn’t sound like any union I’d ever read about. That was a message we could sell to Alabama businesses. Still, I told him, a PR campaign was doomed to fail unless the entire Union was committed to making the changes needed live-up to those ideals. Without hesitation he replied, “Then that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

Two months later, Parker was soundly defeated in his bid for re-election. And as far as I know, the union never made any of the changes he envisioned.

What’s The Boilermakers Union got to do with driver recruiting?
That experience came to mind recently, after a trucking company invited my agency to analyze its recruiting problems, then offer a plan for addressing those problems. In researching the company, we discovered there was a massive disconnect between its stated mission and the reality drivers were experiencing once they joined the company.

In short, the company wasn’t keeping the promises found in its mission statement, or in its recruitment advertising. Consequently, overall driver turnover was significantly higher than the industry average; among younger drivers, it was literally double the industry average.

Which is why our recommendations focused on what we saw as their top three needs: 1) Making the changes necessary to get the company back in line with its founders’ mission, 2) Realigning its brand promises with reality, wherever organizational changes couldn’t be made, and 3) Elevating the role of Driver Retention to its proper place in supporting Recruiting’s goals. After all, we reasoned, what’s the point of increasing your flow of new recruits if you’re just pouring water into a fishnet?

They knew we were right. They said as much. So what did they decide to do? They implemented a program for increasing the flow of incoming recruits.

Now, I fully understand how important it is to maintain a steady flow of incoming drivers. But the sad truth is, the company simply wasn’t willing to address its real problems, or make the real changes they needed so badly. Changes that certainly involved short-term costs—not to mention pain and suffering—but which would have ultimately led to long-term improvements in the health (and cost-effectiveness) of their recruiting and retention programs.

The sadder truth is, that company is far from alone in this industry. So how about you: Is your recruiting campaign making promises your company can’t keep? If so, at the very least, you need to change one of two things: Your promise, or your company. For best long-term results, I’d recommend taking a good long look at changing both.


Recruiters: Is Your Agency Taking You For Granted?

May 18, 2012


If you asked me, all too often the answer is Yes.

In the years since my firm has been serving the trucking industry, I’ve talked with a lot of recruiters who were referred to me by friends and contacts. Referrals which, more often than not, included some variation on this suggestion: “You should call them because they’re not happy with their agency.”

I honestly can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had that sounded a lot, or entirely, like this:

Do you and the agency regularly review your numbers together?
—No.

When was the last time they made adjustments to your plan?
—Months ago.

Are they aware that your numbers are way down in the past few months?
—Yes.

And they haven’t suggested any adjustments?
—No

Tell me about your Social Media strategy.
—We don’t have one.

How does your turnover compare to the industry average?
—It’s actually a lot higher.

So what steps has your agency suggested to help you bring that down?
—We’ve never talked about retention.

I notice the website they did for you doesn’t really say anything about what makes your company unique.
—No, I guess it doesn’t.

Why not?
—They’ve never really explored what makes us unique.

Have they ever interviewed any of your drivers, to determine your strengths and weaknesses in recruiting and retention?
—No.

So how do they determine the strategy and content of your messaging?
—That pretty much comes from me.

(And finally, the pièce de résistance—which, admittedly, I’ve heard only once): Who’s your account rep at the agency?
—I don’t know.

Friends, if you have the same answer to any one of the questions above, your agency is not doing everything it can to support your recruiting goals. Granted, there are often legitimate reasons for that; for starters, you may be handling a lot of those responsibilities in house.

But if your agency relationship sounds a lot like the conversation above, and they have more than a bare-bones budget to work with, chances are you’re being taken for granted. In which case, there’s no two ways about it: you’re not getting your money’s worth. That’s wrong.

One of our long-time clients had virtually the same experience with their previous agency. (Click Here if you’d like to read about it). Needless to say, they saw a need for change, and they made it.

So if your agency relationship sounds a lot like the conversation above, here’s my question: Why haven’t you made a change?


Integrated Recruiting: If You Knew It, You’d Do It

May 11, 2012

In an excellent piece for BusinessWeek magazine, Steve McKee explains why it’s so important for all your recruiting efforts to work together.

While McKee’s original column addresses the broader issue of marketing, his points are directly applicable to driver recruiting. Here are the key points I pulled from his piece—adapted to your specific needs as a recruiter:

New marketing channels pop up every day, from apps to publicity stunts and beyond. Audiences (and attention spans) are becoming increasingly fragmented. That reduces the chance any message has of getting through.

How do you overcome fragmentation? Integration. That means communicating a consistent identity from message to message, and medium to medium. More importantly, it means consistently delivering on that identity.

Everything you do to attract, convert and retain drivers should be integrated—including your human resource practices, your training programs, even your compensation and employee evaluation metrics.

So why don’t more companies implement integration strategies? They don’t start with a strategic messaging foundation, and they don’t have the patience to see it through.

Companies that maintain healthy growth over time tend to have more durable messaging strategies and longer-lasting campaigns, while those that struggle tend to change direction more frequently.

That’s exactly what’s happening in the cola wars. Coke has remained focused and consistent for years, and is winning market share, while Pepsi recently fell to an embarrassing No. 3  in the market behind Coke and Diet Coke. That’s why Pepsi is now reexamining everything about its brand.

What’s the first step?
Take a close look at all of your company’s messages to prospective and existing drivers. Compare those messages with what your drivers experience once they sign-on with you. If it doesn’t all connect for you in some meaningful fashion, it won’t for your prospective and existing drivers, either.

If your messaging strategy is weak (or off the mark), you may need to do what Pepsi is doing, and reexamine everything.

It may be that your problem is more a matter of execution: You’re simply not doing what you’re promising.

Or it could be that you haven’t pulled the trigger because you haven’t seen a flawless plan for integrating all your recruiting and retention efforts.

Here’s the good news: There’s no such thing as a perfect integration plan. Over the long haul, the companies who have the real recruiting advantage simply do it better than their competitors.

Steve McKee is the author of When Growth Stalls: How It Happens, Why You’re Stuck, and What to Do About It.

Click Here to read his original article in its entirety.


UPS Delivers Truck Driver Recruiting Success Through Social Media

April 15, 2012

A good Social Media strategy can deliver an excellent ROI for Truck Driver Recruiting and with 955 total hires through Social Media in 2010, UPS is living proof.

Todd Raphael, a writer with the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, recently published two online articles documenting UPS’s efforts, and the results. Here are the highlights:

Facebook Delivers Data.
UPS launched a Facebook page for careers in early October of 2009. By February 2011, the page had 14,365 fans. Analyzing fan data, UPS has determined that 78% of its Facebook audience is 18-44. And that 95% of its fans are from the U.S.

Social Media Delivers More Conversions.
Using both Google Analytics and its own talent acquisition system, UPS captured data on social media visitors who applied for UPS jobs. They determined that Facebook and Twitter delivered double the conversion ratio of created applications to hires, compared to all other online media.

By the Numbers:
UPS’s 2010 hires through social media break down like this:

  • Twitter: 45
  • Facebook: 226
  • Text-Messaging: 84
  • UPS’s Mobile-Friendly Careers Page: 600

Matt Lavery, UPS’s Atlanta-based corporate workforce planning manager, says that all these numbers are based on actual tracking. What’s more, he says the 955 figure is probably understated.

Cost Per Hire Drops Dramatically.
Based on an initial combined investment of $15,000 to launch its Twitter and Facebook pages UPS’s Social Media cost per hire in 2009 was in the $1,000 ballpark. Now, it’s more like $60 – $70.

With No Ad Spending.
UPS didn’t use paid media to spread the word and lure people to visit its jobs pages. It used social media.

A Work In Progress.
Even UPS is still feeling its way around Social Media. But the company is clearly convinced of the space’s effectiveness. So much so that they have made a profound shift in where they’re spending their recruiting ad dollars. Five years ago, UPS spent almost all its recruiting-ad dollars on traditional media, including print, TV and mailers. Now, it’s spending less than 1% on that sort of media—shifting its money (and time) to job boards, social media, and search engine optimization.

What makes all this information so relevant is, of course, the fact that UPS hires a lot of truck drivers. So if you haven’t already launched a Social Media strategy for your recruiting efforts, there’s no time like the present.


How To Competitively Recruit Truck Drivers Without Appearing Negative

April 1, 2012

When you’re competing for top talent, and you offer clear advantages over your competitors, you can exploit those advantages if you do it diplomatically.

Columnist Kris Dunn, Chief Human Resources Officer at Kinetix, has written an intriguing article for Fistful of Talent that offers five sneaky tips for negatively recruiting without appearing negative. Two of those tips didn’t seem particularly relevant to truck driver recruiting, so I didn’t include them in this post. Here are highlights from the original piece:

To Negative Recruit means you share interesting information about your competition with a candidate to increase your chance of closing. Here are [3 of the 5] Ways to Negative Recruit a candidate without looking like scum:

1. Assume the position of agent and always offer up what’s broken at your own company as you compare and contrast. Don’t just talk about the other company. Take what you know about your competition and compare and contrast with your own firm. Let the competition win a round or two. But make sure you win the final round, and make sure it’s a round that really matters to the candidate.

2. Use public information to help the candidate view the competitor with eyes wide open.

3. Ask questions about the next career step for the candidate if they join your competitor.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE THREE TIPS

Point 1 is by far the most important one to remember. In my own New Business efforts, I’m never shy about commenting on competitors—for a few reasons:

1) I like and respect the majority of agencies I normally compete against—and the fact that I’m willing to say genuinely nice things about them, in my opinion, demonstrates my commitment to a prospective client’s best interests.

2) There are still areas where I believe my firm offers advantages over even the best shops—whether it’s a better value for the money, or a stronger focus on bottom-line results.

3) I never say anything about competitors I couldn’t comfortably defend if it got back to them.

Regarding Point 2, if one of your competitors recently lost a large account which could lead to layoffs, or has a reputation for mistreating drivers, your candidates should know what they could be getting themselves into. Just remember to be diplomatic about sharing that information.

Finally, Point 3 is an excellent way to help candidates envision themselves being happily employed with your company for a long time. And isn’t that what we’d like to achieve with all our hires?


MATS Lesson For Truck Driver Recruiting: “Contact Us”? Easier Said Than Done.

March 15, 2012

Technology must serve the goal of facilitating, not obstructing, incoming contact from driver candidates.

At MATS last year, I had the genuine pleasure of meeting dozens of recruiters—most of whom graciously accepted my card, and invited me to follow-up with them the following week. The trouble started when I attempted to actually do that.

First, let me emphasize that I know how time-stretched recruiters are most days. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take simple measures to demonstrate your commitment to personally interacting with every driver candidate who reaches-out to you. The good news is, there is now a cutting-edge solution available.

But first, here are the three main problems I experienced in conducting my follow-ups:

1. Insufficient Business Card Information.
Over half the business cards I received last week included no direct phone number. Several listed no email address. To be sure, a powerful brand-messaging platform (deployed through an effective, integrated marketing campaign) is your greatest long-term advantage in attracting good driver candidates. But as I’ve pointed-out elsewhere in this space, actions speak louder than words. And the more barriers you place between yourself and good candidates trying to reach you, the likelier they are to give up on you.

2. Recorded Messages. Phone Menu Hell.
The overwhelming majority of non-direct numbers I called were answered not by people, but impersonal recorded messages which invariably included the following: “Please listen carefully, because our menu options have changed.” Several of those menus sent me places I didn’t want to go. Bear in mind: Trucking companies are not falling over each other for my services. So if I found it aggravating to reach those individuals, how much more irritating are their phone systems making it for highly-desirable driver candidates (who know they’re in demand) to get them?

3. Baffling Websites.
As I’ve also pointed-out elsewhere in this space, way too many trucking company websites look like they were designed by Grampa Ned down at the retirement home in the mid-70’s. But even some of the homeliest sites I’ve seen offered one critical feature a number of technically and creatively first-rate sites lacked: Contact Us pages a single click away from the home page, with actual human contact names listed on them. On one breathtakingly-designed, hi-tech site in particular, I spent literally minutes clicking around—and never found a single individual contact name, email address or personal number.

People are a lot likelier to call people than they are to call nameless, faceless Recruiting Departments. That doesn’t mean incoming calls to your published direct number can’t roll-over to the next available recruiter when you’re unavailable. But at least your personal outgoing message (and yes, it should be in your own voice) could give callers the option to either go to that next person OR leave you a message to call them back.

Your Cutting-Edge Solution?
There is now an interviewing application that’s powered by Artificial Intelligence—which enables prospects to click or call for an immediate interview.

The App is programmed to adjust the order of questions asked according to the answers given—resulting in an interview experience that feels much more natural than rigidly-ordered online forms and recorded interviews.

It’s been used by companies ranging from Dish Networks to Pepsico—and many candidates who’ve taken the phone version actually reported how friendly the interviewer was. That’s right: They thought they were speaking with a live person.

Most importantly, the company that developed the technology has made a significant recent investment in serving the Driver Recruiting market. If you’d like to know more about this solution, contact me by phone or email. You’ll find my contact info on the Profile page.

That said, here’s one simple low-tech solution for you:

  • Make it painfully obvious how mobile-savvy candidates can text you. On your business card, list the mobile number as “Cell/Text”, instead of just “Cell”—as a subtle reminder that people don’t necessarily have to take the time to call (and maybe get stuck on hold) in order to reach you personally.

Here’s another one:

  • Dedicate a single cell phone in your department to incoming text messages. Publish its number, and, in your marketing messages, encourage busy respondents to save time by texting requests for call-backs. I ran that idea past a good friend in recruiting. He thought about it for a second, paused, and exclaimed, “Wow!”, Why didn’t I think of that?” Answer: Because I did. After all, that’s my job!

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