Why would any driver want your driver job?
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why any driver would want the driver job you are trying to sell. As a freelance driver recruiter I made it a practice to always ask clients why a driver should want the driving job that they are hiring me to recruit on, much less why any driver should want to work for their company. Amazingly most recruiters and fleet managers cannot adequately answer those questions, and even more alarming is that many of them have never even thought about it.
When you are in the recruiting business your open driver jobs are the product that you sell. If you hope to sell that product successfully you will want to think of your open driver jobs the way that a sales manager or advertising agent thinks about their product. For them the starting point of their sales campaign is a thorough understanding of the product and how it is better than the competition at meeting the needs of the potential buyer. If Ford can’t tell me why their car is better than a GM or Chrysler, I doubt that it is.
Likewise if you aren’t able to clearly articulate to a prospective driver why driving for your company is better than being a driver for his current company, he will likely remain at that company.
In order to identify your best selling points you will sometimes need to dig deep. You will want to look at characteristics about your job/company that differentiate you from the competition. This probably sounds a lot like marketing 101. However, in the past, when I’ve asked various clients of mine why a driver should want their job, nearly every client responded with “a driver is not just a number here” or “we treat drivers like family here”. Statements like these are meaningless to drivers, especially because they hear that over and over. Most recruiters are disappointed to learn that those kinds of statements do little to differentiate their job from any other.
In many cases those recruiters are overlooking features of their job/company that could have more impact, such as letting candidates know that drivers love their working their and typically stay with the company for xx years or more because they love it, or that you give substantial Christmas bonuses. One company I recruited for paid premium mileage pay for all miles after they failed to get the driver home as promised. The premium started upon failure and didn’t end until they actually got the driver home. That was a huge differentiator that helped him fill seats fast. One produce distributor offered grocery discounts to employees and used that benefit as a differentiator to entice drivers. It worked.
If you have seats to fill be sure that you clearly understand why any driver should want your open seat. If you don’t already know the answer, take the time to figure it out. If necessary, enlist the help of every person in the company to determine what selling point can best serve your company. If you and your team can’t come up with anything appealing then take a step backwards and make a few structural adjustments so that you can create a good selling point.
After all, recruiting drivers is a mission-critical function. Whether you are a private of commercial carrier, you absolutely have to be affective at bringing in qualified drivers. Don’t underestimate the importance of developing your selling point.
A good recruiter without a good selling point is like a good fisherman without a pole.