I’ve been around a while.
When I started recruiting truck drivers for a large Midwest trucking company in the early 1990’s, it was done so with a land-line telephone (not a rotary dial, although I have used one), a pencil, and a pad of paper.
We had a waiting list of drivers who wanted to come to work for us…no kidding. The internet wasn't used for driver recruiting, and we didn’t use computers to file, store, and organize driver leads. We placed our classified ads in a newspaper on Sunday and then spent the week answering calls. On Mondays, we were like radio DJs who asked for the 100th caller answering phone call after phone call all day long and the calls continued all week long, although they progressively fell off until the process started all over again the next week.
Don’t believe me? Ask the oldest person in your Recruiting Department who you were going to ask what a “DJ” was anyway. They’ll tell you. Times were different. Drivers flipped page by page calling carrier after carrier working their way through digest-size trucking books that were 100+ pages or newspapers that had 12 columns of nothing but driver ads.
Times have changed, huh? The days of being able to talk to that driver one-on-one and have their uninterrupted attention with their full focus on your trucking company alone are not only improbable, but downright unlikely, and the competition for truck drivers is fierce.
So, why are trucking companies refusing to look at some truckers who apply for their trucking jobs?
WHEN DID “MULTI-CARRIER” APPS BECOME A BAD THING?
Somewhere along the line some slick-talking trucking-consultant-types started trying to convince trucking companies that multi-carrier applications were bad….and some people blindly listened and against every fiber of common sense in their trucking brain, believed it.
Can you imagine being the Recruiting Manager at a trucking company who needs to hire drivers and you overhear this conversation from a driver lead you received through a phone call from a newspaper ad?
Recruiter: You’re exactly what we’re looking for and we want to offer you the job right now.
Driver: That’s great, when do I start?
Recruiter: First things first. Did you apply to any other trucking companies when you applied to us?
Driver: Yes, I also did a phone app with three others.
Recruiter: Oh, then never mind. We’re not interested.
At the very least, you would bang your head on your desk. Depending on how bad you need drivers, you might bang the recruiters head on your desk.
Yet, in a time where trucking experts are saying that there is a truck driver shortage of 150,000+ truckers, there are trucking companies who refuse to look at an Internet driver lead if that driver applies to them and has the audacity to apply to another trucking company at the same time. That sound you hear is me banging my head on my desk.
Think about all the trucking companies who make the decision to attend truck shows. They spend thousands and thousands and thousands (get the picture?) of dollars to capture leads. Drivers walk by, grab something free off a table and a Recruiter stands there and scans their badges. All day long. For three days. Do they delete the lead if the driver gets their badge scanned at the booth right next to them? Using the “multi carrier apps are bad” theory, they should.
Drivers use the Internet to apply for truck driving jobs. Convenience and the opportunity to research and apply to more than one trucking company by filling out one application is one of the main reasons they do so. So, while I don’t have the medical training to back it up, I believe the clinical term for people who think “multi-carrier” apps are bad is “wacky."
EMBRACE COMPETITION
Part of what makes a productive driver recruiter is their desire and ability to embrace the competitive market and sell truckers on the benefits of their trucking company while others are doing the same. In short, they have a competitive spirit. If you refuse to even look at a driver who dares to think about applying to you and the trucking company across the street, you don’t have a recruiting department…you have an order processing department and you probably shouldn’t need to advertise at all. But why not embrace that competition and show your product to every truck driver that has an interest in working for you?
The bottom line to all of this is that there needs to be different trucking companies, different truck driving jobs, and different truck drivers to make the world work. Not every driving job fits every driver’s personal needs. Don’t get offended and write off a potential driver hire because they have options. It’s the drivers who don’t have options that you should be steering away from.
Give the multi-carrier application feature a try and I guarantee that you’ll see a better return on your advertising investment. And then who knows…maybe you’ll even have a waiting list.
