Recruiting and Marketing Tips for CDL Drivers with Ron Yazzetti from Work4

In July 2022, AvatarFleet president Scott Rea discussed recruiting and marketing to truck drivers with Ron Yazzetti from Work4.

Together, Rea and Yazzetti offered key insights and solutions for how to fill your empty seats with high-quality drivers.

What’s Stopping You From Growing Your Fleet?

You’re on the wrong end of supply and demand. Drivers are choosing between potentially a dozen carriers. Most of these companies look and sound the same to a driver on Indeed or Facebook, so if you’re embracing the Purple Cow philosophy, you’re leaving it all up to chance. 

If you frequently tune in to Solving The Driver Problem, none of this will surprise you. You and everyone else are struggling to fill empty seats with drivers. So what can you do? How can you improve your recruiting pitch?

As Yazzetti points out, it starts with understanding what drivers want.

The Voice of The Driver

Work4 recently conducted a survey with over 10,000 drivers. The survey asked drivers about what attracts them to a company, what keeps them at a company, and how they choose where to work. The goal is to understand the voice of the driver in order to improve recruiting efforts.

Your Mode of Communication

How you reach out to candidates matters. Work4’s survey points out that candidates ranked communication preference as email, then call, then text.

However, as Rea comments, “We see within our ATS that text is in the high 80% for driver response.”

Yazzetti has the answer to these discrepancies. He explains that drivers, while they may prefer email, always have their phones on them. So while they may prefer other modes, texting is still the most effective.

Rea and Yazzetti’s advice is to vary your approach. Send emails, texts, and phone calls until you know what a specific driver prefers. And in the meantime, track your data. Determine what is most successful for your company and focus on that approach.

When to Talk to Drivers

Communication with candidates takes the form of either inbound or outbound. In other words, it involves drivers reaching out to you or you reaching out to drivers. And when you do it matters.

The goal with inbound is simple, although difficult to achieve: you need a 95% or greater live answer rate on inbound calls from prospects.

Yazzetti explains it this way, “If you don’t respond right away, they’re finding a job somewhere else.” They don’t need to wait for you to call them back when they have offers from five other companies.

Outbound recruiting can be a bit more complicated. You need to develop a strategy for when you’re reaching out to drivers.

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As the survey uncovered, drivers typically prefer communication in the morning rather than afternoon or evening. So, this is probably a good place to start. However, Yazzetti cautions against an all-in approach.

If you focus entirely on a single timeframe, you’ll miss out on drivers. That’s why it’s important to take a staggered approach. Spread out your outbound communication with drivers in order to have the best chance for success.

Additionally, just like with the mode of communication, track your data. You may find that the time doesn’t matter or that a certain time results in overwhelming success. Act accordingly.

Improving Ad Copy

Your messaging matters. Like we said earlier, when you post a driver recruiting ad, it’s probably one of 25 ads that a driver will see, that day. You need to stand out from your competition. Work4’s survey offered important insights on how to do so.

When creating an ad, it’s important to include compensation. More specifically, you should show the compensation annually. Most drivers prefer to see their compensation for the entire year rather than the weekly, monthly, or per mile pay.

Additionally, it’s important to lead with your Purple Cow. Our subscribers should know what this means. Your Purple Cow is what lets you stand out from the crowd. Do the Google test:

• Search for trucking jobs near you
• Read at least three of the ads that pop-up
• Now compare them to yours - how similar are they?

Determine your “secret sauce” and lead with it to attract more calls and clicks.

Solve Your Driver Problem Today

Your driver problem won’t go away on its own. So, you have two choices:

1. Keep limping along with your current results
2. Change

If you want to improve, begin implementing the ideas shared in this article. Track your data and A/B test everything. For some added help, look into a world-class Applicant Tracking System and expert help with online recruiting ads.

With the right tools and strategies, you can fill your empty seats with all-stars while your competition wonders where all their leads went.