How a Smooth Candidate Journey Can Help You Hire Drivers Faster

You’re spending loads of money to find, attract, select, and hire drivers. That makes it all the more painful when they disappear on you and go with a competitor. It wastes your time and money while costing you runs.

If you want to improve your leads per hire, it’s time to take a look at your hiring process for truck drivers.

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What is the Candidate Journey?

The candidate journey is the experience a potential hire has during the recruitment process. It starts from the moment they see an ad and learn you’re hiring. However, not all candidate journeys are equal.

An effective candidate journey is simple, quick, and shows off why your company is the right company to drive for.

Most candidate journeys are clunky, confusing, and frustrating for the driver who’s applying. Think about the experience your potential hires have and consider the following:

• Is the next step always straightforward?
• Do they know who to contact if they have questions?
• How many documents do they need to fill out?
• Are they able to talk to recruiters directly?

If you’re overlooking these questions, that’s a big mistake. You’re on the wrong side of supply and demand, and that’s not changing anytime soon. Candidates can easily walk away from a cumbersome hiring process and work for your competitor.

If you want to land qualified drivers in less time and for less money, you need to improve your candidate journey.

How to Improve Your Candidate Journey

Don’t accept the mediocre results you’re seeing today. You can make small changes to your hiring process for truck drivers that will make big improvements.

We put these improvements into two categories:

1. Table Stakes
2. The Secret Sauce

Table Stakes

This category includes the minimum that you need to even have a seat at the table. Without these crucial pieces, you’re just too far behind the competition.

1. Applicant Tracking System

An applicant tracking system (or ATS) is an online system that automatically stores, tracks, and runs reports on applicants. It makes it easy to avoid bottlenecks and collect data on any hold-ups.

There are dozens of solid ATSs on the market, but our clients love A-Suite Recruit. Our system makes the following table stakes much simpler to implement.

2. Online Application

If you’re still collecting paper applications or PDFs, you’re basically working with pagers and landline phones.

The drivers you want are already driving for someone. That means they’re out on the road making someone else money, and they don’t have time to download an application or go fill out a paper application. They need to be able to apply online.

As we mentioned above, A-Suite Recruit gives you easy ways to create professional online applications.

3. Mobile-Friendly Applications

Let’s think about how drivers are applying for your job. We’ve already established they’re doing it from the road. So what are they using? Their phone of course.

If your application doesn’t function properly on a phone, you’re missing out on the vast majority of drivers. Typically, over 90% of A-Suite applications come through a mobile phone annually.

And of course, A-Suite online applications are guaranteed to be mobile-friendly.

The Secret Sauce 

The three items we listed above are essential. You simply can’t be effective in hiring drivers. However, if you really want to stand out from the competition, we recommend you find your “secret sauce.”

The following improvements will put you a cut above your competition and help you reign in more all-star drivers.

1. Auto-Filled Forms

When drivers apply, they’re filling out tons of documents. It can be frustrating to put in their information again and again.

Your candidates will appreciate it if your forms automatically fill in the information they’ve already given you. A-suite and most ATSs make it easy to implement this feature.

2. Automatic Responses

Chances are when a driver fills out your application, you’re not the only place that driver is looking. You need to be on the ball. The best bet is to have a recruiter call or text the driver within a few minutes, but if a driver applies at midnight on a Saturday, that obviously isn’t an option.

That’s why we always recommend automating the first contact. When drivers apply, they should immediately get a text and email. These messages should thank them for applying, lay out the next steps, and include the contact information for their recruiter.

3. Utilize Realistic Job Previews

The only thing worse than losing a driver to the competition is hiring someone who is going to quit (or be terminated) in just a few days.

When turnover happens within the first few days or weeks of hiring a driver, it’s usually an issue of fit. Either you didn’t give the driver what he or she was looking for or the driver wasn’t who you were looking for.

You want drivers to filter themselves out, and you do this with a realistic job preview or RJP for short.

An RJP is a short video that shows a driver exactly what it’s like to work for you. Don’t sugarcoat things. Just tell it like it is. Highlight the benefits, the reasons why someone would want to work for you, and exactly what the job entails.

The drivers you want will see your RJP and apply as fast as they can. The drivers you don’t want will run for the hills.

If you want help creating an RJP, contact us here.

Revolutionize Your Candidate Journey

You’ve got freight collecting dust, empty seats, and you’re hemorrhaging drivers. There’s no time to waste.

By investing in your candidate journey, you can reduce your cost per hire while hiring more drivers in less time. You’ll be growing your business while your competition wonders where all the good drivers went.

Looking for the best place to start? We recommend learning about our ATS, A-Suite Recruit.