Social media mastery can result in larger recruiting, retention efforts

DID YOU MISS THIS WEBINAR?

Fleets face unending challenges in relation to discovering and protecting good drivers even in a down market. CCJ lately hosted a webinar the place main fleets weighed in on what’s working for them and the way they established driver cultures which are foundational to their firm’s success. This CCJ webinar was sponsored by Bestpass.

Managing social media content material with genuine, constructive messaging may help increase recruiting and retention efforts, however it might require getting out of your consolation zone.

In a webinar hosted by Business Service Journal and Bestpass on Thursday titled “Recruiting & Retention Methods for the Lengthy Haul,” HR veterans from Chief Carriers and PS Logistics (CCJ High 250, No. 33) weighed in on quite a lot of subjects that affect driver recruiting and retention.

Seth Beck, vice chairman of gross sales and recruiting at CCJ’s guardian firm Randall Reilly, identified {that a} declining freight market has introduced driver demand right down to 2019 ranges whereas “the motive force pool however has gone means up.”

Mastering social media may help lure prime candidates from that broader pool the place firms have a possibility to advertise their folks and their values.

That’s positively been the case for PS Logistics. Kim Daigle, who serves as vice chairman of enterprise capability improvement on the Alabama-based provider, identified how social media has helped with recruiting.

“For us, it is actually taken off,” she stated. “Over the pandemic I feel it actually took off. That is after we introduced a lot of our social media administration in home and actually began to develop it,  and in order that was a sensible choice as a result of now it’s booming and bringing in leads of its personal, which is phenomenal.”

[Related: Fewer women driving trucks survey finds]

PS Logistics’ hottest submit but got here as a shock and serves as an necessary lesson. The driving force was celebrated for acquiring his title via a lease buy program. The driving force’s photograph, doubtless a selfie, wasn’t the highest quality, however that didn’t make any distinction in the tip.

Apart from social media presence, different preliminary impressions carriers make come via quaint telephone calls. Survey outcomes above from CCJ sister publication Truckers Information exhibits that job candidates are more likely to first attain for the telephone when severe a couple of job. “If that is the very first thing the motive force does once they’re is make a name, we have to make it possible for name is pretty much as good as it might probably presumably be,” stated Seth Beck, vice chairman of gross sales and recruiting at CCJ’s guardian firm Randall Reilly.Truckers Information“We put it on the market, and we celebrated him, and that factor’s gone via the roof,” Daigle stated. “It’s the most profitable submit we have ever had. We have put no cash behind it, nevertheless it’s simply gone loopy, and it is all constructive. Each single one of many feedback in it … I did not see a single destructive remark. It was all simply ‘congratulations’ and ‘nicely accomplished driver.’ I feel that numerous that’s coming about as a result of our focus is on their real-life tales. The authenticity comes via, and I feel that is actually essential to getting the drivers to really feel constructive about you on social.”

Andrew Winkler, basic supervisor of Chief Carriers, a transportation firm headquartered in Grand Island, Nebraska, stated along with studying how social media works, it has been useful to encourage others on the firm, together with drivers, to higher grasp a platform. However first he needed to flip to social media consultants for assist.

“We have used social to actually simply assist inform our story,” Winkler stated. “We had been that little provider in central Nebraska that no one actually knew about, and we lastly partnered with a advertising agency out of Omaha, they usually had a singular strategy in comparison with all people else. They actually put the technique behind it, they usually put it in a means that I understood it.”

Winkler was supplied with a social media playbook that helped the corporate and its staff achieve insights into get their voices heard.

“If something about Fb and a few of these platforms, if you do a submit, it is a very small a part of your viewers that really ever sees that submit until there’s some exercise in it that drives the algorithms to alter and push out to extra folks,” Winkler stated. “So the playbook was about educating our group, our drivers and our inside group about how one can assist us push these algorithms as much as get that story out to extra folks.”

Winkler additionally took on a podcast known as Pushed too Far, which has helped increase the corporate’s profile. It was one thing that was positively exterior of his consolation zone.

“I was most likely a bit of defiant with the concept of a podcast, to start with, as a result of I wasn’t comfy doing that,” Winkler stated.

In addition to being recorded on audio, Pushed too Far is video recorded and posted on-line for the world to see. Since rolling out in November as a weekly collection, the views proceed to come back in.

“I feel we’re getting near 40 episodes, and we’re a bit of over 26,000 downloads thus far,” Winkler stated. “It was a kind of issues that simply blows me away each time I get an replace. It is like, man, there actually are folks on the market listening to these things.”