We spend a lot of time looking at recruiting data. Applications. Cost per lead. Cost per hire. Conversion rates.

And all of that data is useful. It tells you what happened, but it doesn't always tell you why it happened.

And there is another source of recruiting data that tends to get overlooked. Or, at the very least, it's not really used to its fullest potential.

What source? The actual phone calls themselves.

And by phone calls, I don't mean just the surface-level numbers. Number of calls. Calls answered. Time on call. Again, all of that can be very useful.

But for the purposes of what I'm talking about today, I mean what actually happens on the call. The conversations that recruiters are having with drivers.

Because your recruiting calls are telling you a lot more than just whether somebody answered the phone or whether a driver was qualified. They can tell you where your recruiting process is breaking down. And that could be very useful.

We recently analyzed more than 5,000 recruiting calls, and one of the things that immediately jumped out was why drivers were calling in the first place.

Single biggest reason? They were checking on the status of an application or following up on a callback that they never received.

That was 31.4% of the calls we analyzed. That's nearly a full third. Wow, the math checks out.

Now just take a minute and think about what that means.

If you're only looking at your recruiting dashboard, focusing on those surface-level numbers, you might see another inbound call and just move on.

But if you take the time to dig deeper and actually analyze the conversation, you might start to see something a little different. Something much more useful.

You see a driver saying, "Hey, somebody was supposed to call me back."

That is not a phone call problem. That's a follow-up problem.

And we saw variations of that everywhere throughout the data.

Drivers calling to ask about local routes when the job required OTR. Drivers trying to get around the phone menu and reach a recruiter. Drivers who are interested and qualified but who end up getting buried in all the noise coming into a recruiting line.

Those conversations start filling in the gaps that your traditional recruiting metrics can't.

Those traditional metrics tell you what happened, and that's good to know. But the conversations? They can tell you why something happened. And that's vital.

And when you're talking about one or two calls in a vacuum, yeah, that's anecdotal.

But when you can analyze hundreds or thousands of calls like we did? That seems like a lot.

Well, now you're moving beyond anecdotal, and you're getting to real, hard data that you can use to improve your approach and results.

When the same things keep cropping up in conversations, they can point you toward your weak spots.

Maybe advertising isn't setting the right expectations. Maybe there's a hole in your follow-up process. Maybe your phone tree is just too long or confusing and ends up costing you candidates.

Maybe recruiters are answering the same questions over and over again when that information should have been made clear right from the jump, before the driver ever even picked up the phone.

And that's where call analysis gets really interesting.

When it comes down to it, effective call analysis is not just about grading recruiters or deciding whether a call was good or bad. It's a whole other layer of recruiting intelligence.

Your drivers are already telling you where the friction in your process is. The only question is: are you actually listening?

Now, if you want to know more about what our call analysis revealed, we'll be digging into the topic on this month's Digging Deeper. That's why they call it that.

Our very own McKensie Worley and Aaron Maori will be joining Dave to talk about the data and answer any questions you may have.

And remember, these Digging Deeper discussions are live. We have the chat and Q&A open, and we want to hear from you during these things.

So sign up. Join us. Be part of the conversation.

The full download, The Anatomy of a Bad Recruiting Call, with all the data and some key takeaways, is going to be available a little bit later this month, so keep your eye out for that as well.

I think all of our downloads are really great, but this one in particular has the potential to be really eye-opening. So don't sleep on it. It's a really good one.

I'll be back next month with another recruiting topic. Till then, thanks for watching.