Social media mastery can result in larger recruiting, retention efforts

DID YOU MISS THIS WEBINAR?

Fleets face unending challenges in the case of discovering and maintaining good drivers even in a down market. CCJ not too long ago 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 will help increase recruiting and retention efforts, however it could require getting out of your consolation zone.

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

Seth Beck, vp of gross sales and recruiting at CCJ’s mum or dad firm Randall Reilly, identified {that a} declining freight market has introduced driver demand right down to 2019 ranges whereas “the motive force pool alternatively has gone manner up.”

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

That’s positively been the case for PS Logistics. Kim Daigle, who serves as vp of enterprise capability growth on the Alabama-based service, 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 once 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 publish but got here as a shock and serves as an necessary lesson. The driving force was celebrated for acquiring his title by a lease buy program. The driving force’s picture, seemingly a selfie, wasn’t the highest quality, however that didn’t make any distinction in the top.

Moreover social media presence, different preliminary impressions carriers make come by quaint cellphone calls. Survey outcomes above from CCJ sister publication Truckers Information exhibits that job candidates are prone to first attain for the cellphone when severe a few job. “If that is the very first thing the motive force does once they’re is make a name, we have got to make it possible for name is nearly as good as it could presumably be,” stated Seth Beck, vp of gross sales and recruiting at CCJ’s mum or dad firm Randall Reilly.Truckers Information“We put it on the market, and we celebrated him, and that factor’s gone by the roof,” Daigle stated. “It’s the most profitable publish we have ever had. We have put no cash behind it, however it’s simply gone loopy, and it is all constructive. Each single one of many feedback in it … I did not see a single damaging remark. It was all simply ‘congratulations’ and ‘effectively executed driver.’ I feel that a variety of that’s coming about as a result of our focus is on their real-life tales. The authenticity comes by, and I feel that is actually essential to getting the drivers to really feel constructive about you on social.”

Andrew Winkler, common 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 specialists for assist.

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

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

“If you recognize something about Fb and a few of these platforms, if you do a publish, it is a very small a part of your viewers that truly ever sees that publish except there’s some exercise in it that drives the algorithms to vary and push out to extra folks,” Winkler stated. “So the playbook was about educating our workforce, our drivers and our inner workforce 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 referred to as Pushed too Far, which has helped increase the corporate’s profile. It was one thing that was positively outdoors of his consolation zone.

“I was in all probability a bit 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 sequence, the views proceed to return in.

“I feel we’re getting near 40 episodes, and we’re a bit over 26,000 downloads to date,” 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 items.”