Reduce Friction in Your Driver Recruiting

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Driver recruiting is a frustrating business. Drivers are still in very high-demand, which means that you aren’t the only ones who will pursuing them. Many drivers find themselves filling out form after form and having conversation after conversation. Being asked to give the same information time after time is quite frustrating in its own right.
That’s why you and your fleet need to do everything you can to streamline the recruiting process as much as possible while still being able to effectively filter through the available candidates. You have requirements or qualifications that you look for in a driver and it’s important that you pursue prospective drivers that fill your needs. So, the question becomes what can you do to make sure you’re not wasting time on a driver you can’t use, while at the same time making your process as quick and painless as possible for the drivers on the other end?
The answer of course is removing unnecessary obstacles or roadblocks in your current approach and becoming as efficient as possible. You need to do what you can to find the right drivers for your fleet and at the same time make the process as painless as possible to the prospective drivers. Efficient recruiting ensures better and faster results for all involved.
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Increase Your Recruiting Efficiency

There are a number of things you can do to increase your overall efficiency. You may not be in a position to embrace all these tactics, but by taking a step back and looking at how you approach recruiting you will be able to figure out which of these methods may work best for you.

1. The Quality of the Lead Matters

One of the most common things fleets find themselves chasing after is sheer volume. The idea being that the more leads you have the more chance you have at converting leads into drivers. While I can understand the argument, unfortunately this just doesn’t hold true. By overloading your recruiters with mountains of leads that may or may not be qualified you’ve set them up to fail. Instead of trying to get the most leads possible you should be focused on getting the most qualified leads for your fleet. In the debate of quantity vs. quality, it’s quality that yields the most long-lasting and positive results.

2. Work Towards Your End Goal

What is it you are trying to accomplish with your recruiting campaign? Are you trying to generate a specific response type? Or is there a specific driver type you are trying to target? Maybe it’s a combination of both. The point is if you want to achieve recruiting success you have to know exactly what it is you are trying to accomplish. You have to know where you want to end up.
Starting there you can work your way backwards and plot the best course to accomplish your goal. A successful recruiting campaign isn’t just about generating leads and finding drivers; it’s about finding the right drivers. For instance if you have a specific need for team drivers, would you consider a campaign successful if only 5% of all the leads it generated were team drivers? Sure you got leads, but they weren’t the right leads.
Always start with a clear idea of exactly what you want to accomplish. Whether it’s generating more leads with a certain channel that’s proven successful, highlighting a particular response type, or targeting a very specific type of driver, starting with your final goal in mind is the best way to start and helps avoid clogging your recruiting funnel.

3. Contact Leads Quickly

The bottom line is the longer a lead sits, the less likely they are to convert. In the battle for drivers every second counts, literally. Consider this, after just 5 minutes your chances to convert a lead drop exponentially.
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Source: Leadresponsemanagement.org

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Meaning that once you get that lead if you’re not in contact with them in 5 minutes or less you’re fighting an uphill battle. Of course a response window that small is an incredibly big ask, and most are unable to pull it off on their own. The unfortunate reality is that most recruiters don’t have the time to circle back and follow-up with these leads multiple times.
Because of this drivers can often fall through the cracks. If they miss one call or touchpoint they could be forgotten about as the recruiting team continues down their list of drivers. This is often a point of frustration with drivers and can leave them feeling like your fleet doesn’t value them. Being able to reach leads quickly not only increases your chances of success but it makes the driver seem valued and eases them into your recruiting process.
That’s why tools like Randall-Reilly’s LeadConnect are so valuable. LeadConnect is a data-driven technique designed to not only get you in contact with leads quickly, but set you up for success by allowing for pre-qualified warm transfers directly to your recruiting team. Which brings me to my next point.
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Recruiting Warm Transfers

Warm transfers are an often overlooked yet highly effective tool. A warm transfer is when the agent on the phone with a prospect speaks with recruiter they are transferring them to and helps make the introduction. This warm transfer technique is one of the options available with a service like LeadConnect.

In the case of LeadConnect once the prospect shows interest an automated call goes out, at which time you have two options: have them automatically transferred to your recruiting team (what would be called a cold transfer) or have them connected to one the LeadConnect live agents who could speak with the prospect and pre-qualify them based on your criteria before connecting them with your team. Opting to use this type of warm transfer approach means that by the time they actually make it to a recruiter you know they are a legitimate and quality lead.
This also helps save time and frustration on the driver’s part. By providing your qualification for the agent to work through by the time they make it to your recruiters everyone involved knows they meet your criteria and you can move onto the next step in your process instead of going over the same information they’ve likely already filled out on apps and discussed with the transferring agent all over again.
Of course this leads to the question of how do you go about implementing a system that takes advantage of warm transfers? Randall-Reilly has a number of ways to help get you in touch with the drivers you’re after. From automated texts, emails, and calls all the way down to live agent warm transfers. We have a variety of options available that allow you to customize your approach for what works best for you. I could spend an entire article just going over the different offerings and capabilities. And in fact that’s exactly what I’ll be doing in an upcoming article, so check back with our blog for that.
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Eliminate Friction and Your Recruiting Will Thrive

The main point I want to try to get across with all of this is that there are a lot of areas within your recruiting that could be unnecessarily holding you back. Take a look at how you approach the driver recruiting process and see if there is anything you can do to increase your efficiency.
The more you do to reduce the friction in your process the better off you will be. Whether that comes in the form of working with us here at Randall-Reilly to reduce lead to contact times or implement warm transfers,, or just deciding to go it alone (which sounds a lot easier than it is), the most important thing you can do is streamline your process to eliminate roadblocks and increase your overall recruiting efficiency.

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