Driver recruiting and sales have a lot in common, but there’s more to hiring than just a sales pitch.
DriverReach founder and CEO Jeremy Reymer welcomes Lance Christensen, director of recruiting and independent contractor capacity at NFI, to this week’s episode of Taking The Hire Road to dive into recruiting methods that turn conversations into conversions.
Leading a recruiting team requires one to assess the situation. Christensen suggests taking into account what your team’s strengths and weaknesses are and determining what tools they’ll need to get the results they want.
But having the right tools in place and finding a way to distinguish your fleet from the competition is just half the battle when it comes to recruiting a driver. Echoing the same pitch to each driver, no matter how spectacular it may be, won’t grab the attention of each potential new hire.
Christensen, who regularly draws recruiter training ideas from the sales pitch playbook, reminds recruiters not to forget the importance of relationship building.
“It’s relationship driven. It’s about what you say, how you say it and who you say it to,” Christensen says.
This involves having more meaningful conversations with recruits and actively listening to their wants and needs to see where they’d fit best in your team. He also advises against holding recruiters blindly to metrics, reasoning that while email and phone goals are important aspects of the job, it’s not the action but the interaction that forges relationships.
“We’re given two ears and one mouth,” Christensen says. “If you’re not listening to what the driver has to say, how could you possibly describe to them what your company has?”
Keep in mind that the recruiting process technically never ends. Once a driver is with your fleet, it’s up to you to deliver on your promises. Christensen warns that no amount of recruiting techniques in the world will solve your driver problems if members of your workforce quit because they feel undervalued and disrespected.
More from Taking The Hire Road:
Driver hiring: Balancing wages and benefits
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