What is the right number of driver recruiters? Is there such a thing? Fleets struggle everyday with this question. We all know that the truckers themselves are the lifeblood of the trucking and freight industry, but without recruiters…how do you get those drivers?
Driver recruiters are a vital part of the equation.
No fleet wants to waste valuable spend, or perhaps even worse leave money on the table. Which leads me back to the question, what is the right number of driver recruiters? How many do you have right now? Is it enough? Do you have too many? Unfortunately, there really is no one answer to the question. No magic bullet to solve the problem. So, where does that leave you?
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How to find the right number of driver recruiters for you.
Before we get too deep into this we have to start by looking internally. In the end, the recruiters you now have and how they are operating will help point you in the right direction.
Many have fallen into the trap of taking a look at their numbers and determining that their leads and hires are not as high as they’d like. So, what’s the reaction? Hire more recruiters. This is a mistake. More recruiters do not necessarily equal more hires. It really all comes down to efficiency.
If you have 10 recruiters but don’t have enough leads to keep them all busy…you lose money. On the other hand if you have 5 recruiters and way too many leads for them to work…you lose money. You need to take a look at what your current recruiters can handle and compare that to the amount of leads you are supplying. Too few leads means idle recruiters, while too many leads can negatively affect recruiters’ productivity.
I know a lot of you aren’t going to like this, but this really all comes down to…math. I know. Boo!
Your fleet and its needs (including the number of recruiters needed) are completely unique to you.
There is no other fleet or company in the world that is exactly like you. That’s why I’m not going to tell you to just do “blank” and presto the problem is fixed and you’ll have the perfect number of driver recruiters. Your situation is unique and more than likely the perfect number of recruiters for your fleet will be unique as well.
Now back to the math, I mean the fun stuff. Don’t worry it’s not too terrible. Let’s take a look.
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Crunching the numbers to find your optimal recruiter count.
One way is to simply take a look at what you’ve done in the past. Comb through your fleet’s historical hiring data and apply that to how you move forward.
Looking through what your fleet’s recruiters have been able to do and what kind of production they’ve had in the past will give you a better idea of how you can reach your goals for the future. For instance, if your records tell you that an average recruiter for your fleet is able to hire 4 drivers a week, we now know that on average one of your recruiters brings in 208 drivers a year.
The next step in the process is applying what we’ve learned. What are your goals for this year? If you estimate that you’ll need to hire 1500 drivers this year, we can take our averages from historical data and use it to find out how many recruiters we need to hit that mark.
You need to bring on 1500 new drivers. We know that an average recruiter for your fleet brings in 208 drivers per year. We simply divide the needed 1500 drivers by 208 and get…7.21153846. And since it’s pretty hard to hire on .21153846 of a recruiter, let’s just round that to 7. Based on historical data applied to current yearly projections, with this scenario you’d need 7 recruiters to hit your target goal. I want to add a caveat. This equation doesn’t account for turnover, which is something you definitely need to account for.
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Diving deeper into the marketing budget for recruiting.
If you know your marketing budget, you can work back from there. A simplistic approach to getting your marketing budget is cost-per-hire multiplied by needed drivers. However, we encourage our clients to refrain from this, though it is better than nothing. If you need help finding what your budget should be, you can refer to the Recruiting Budget Calculator. But back to the math.
Divide your marketing budget by your average cost-per-lead (may help to do this by each division in your fleet). This gives you your lead volume. Our research shows that somewhere in the vicinity of 400 – 500 leads per recruiter per month to be the optimum number for recruiter productivity. Less than this is not using the full potential of the recruiter. More than this actually lessens the conversion rate of a recruiter.
At 400 leads a month per recruiter, that would give 4800 leads per year per recruiter. Divide the total number leads your budget will generate by 4800. This gives you a pretty close estimate of the number of recruiters you need.
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How can Randall-Reilly help?
If you, like myself are not a mathemagician level 10, this can all seem very confusing and overwhelming. But trust me, the math is solid on this one. So, some people much smarter and interested in numbers than myself put together a tool for the rest of us: the Recruiting Budget Calculator. Using it you can answer simple questions and provide information about your fleet and the calculator will do the rest.
The more accurate and detailed the information you input, the more accurate the results of the calculations will be. Using this tool with your customized data can show you vital figures such as projected monthly run rates and total revenue. This tool helps take the guesswork and headache out of crunching the numbers and running the figures.
Whether you choose to take advantage of the new and improved recruiting budget calculator or not, the important thing is to take another look at your numbers. How’s your recruiting efficiency? Where would you like your numbers to be? It may seem a little daunting, but making sure you have the proper number of recruiters for your operation to reach your goals is essential to your success. Good luck!
