Top 5 Driver Recruiting Trends You Should Follow in 2020

2020 is right around the corner. The driver recruiting game is getting more sophisticated and you need tools to keep up. To start January with a bang and help you prioritize, we’ve outlined five trends that you should focus on in 2020. We’ve highlighted these five trends because they will help you generate more leads without spending more advertising dollars. 

1. Video
   Humans are visual creatures. Science has proven it through a concept called Neuromarketing. The old brain is the decision maker in the brain so sales 101 (recruiting is sales) says that’s who you need to talk to. Since the old brain can’t read, we have to communicate to it with images. Never say it if you can show it. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then video is worth 10 times that. There’s no more effective way to tell your story in 30 seconds than video.
   
   
2. Landing Pages
   Landing pages convert more visitors to candidates than your homepage, career page, or online application. Inserting landing pages in your candidate journey generates more leads because they remove distractions by providing a clear call to action. A proper landing page fits on a phone screen without scrolling and contains a 30- to 90-second video and simple form fill area. The goal of the form fill is to collect enough information to start the process with one or two qualifying questions such as: do you have a valid class A CDL? Then it’s game on for the recruiter.
   
   
3. Automated Referral Source Tracking
   Spend less time figuring out what sources work and let technology do it for you. Drivers often don’t remember where they found you anyways - the internet is a big place with lots of job boards and postings. Automated tracking will record where these leads came from so you know where to spend your money with confidence.
   
   
4. Social Advertising
   Our clients have proven social media has the lowest cost per lead. For those fans of the book Moneyball, you need to follow the same playbook of spending your advertising dollars on the undervalued sites. Don’t spend your money where it costs you $10 a click or $250 per lead. Look for the site where it costs you $250 per hire. In order to get there, you need to jump on the algorithm bandwagon to ensure you’re only serving advertisements to CDL holders in your hiring radius. We commonly see wasted dollars spent on non-CDL holders or out-of-market drivers by not using the available data. 
   
   
5. Text
   Email is dead. And you know many drivers who never used it anyways. While texting is a trend that you should have been using since the early 2000s, not enough transportation companies make use of this cheap, effective technology in 2019. Texting allows you to avoid the cluttered email inbox where emails get overlooked, deleted, or sent to spam. Texting is a significantly faster, more direct form of communication. Professional drivers cannot talk most of the time from 9am - 5pm because they’re driving - do you really want the driver who will take your call while they’re on the job? Texting allows drivers to respond to you on their schedule which is ever-changing and outside of their control. Our clients will commonly text candidates 15-25 times throughout the recruiting process before onboarding a driver. Texting from your Applicant Tracking System should be the primary form of your communication with candidates. 

You will recruit more drivers in 2020 than 2019 if you follow these five tactics. Your Driver Applicant Tracking System needs to facilitate all of these tactics so you can efficiently touch more candidates each day, track where they came from, and ultimately generate more leads.  Cheers to a 2020 full of qualified leads!