In the 1990s driver recruiting software packages entered the market. The first commercially produced package was created by Innovative Computing Corporation in 1995. By today standards it was clunky and feature-poor, but it answered the major needs of management. The marketing material for this product stated three main goals; to store driver application data in a way that would facilitate long-term recruiting of an applicant, track advertising effectiveness, and track recruiter performance. In 1997 several advertising agencies created packages under the guise of tracking the effectiveness of advertising. They donated these systems to customers as a gift for using their ad agencies. A few carriers had their IT departments create small systems to quantify the effectiveness of the huge amounts of money being spent on advertising.
In those days, drivers were enticed to make a phone call to the recruiting department. Everything was paper. Faxing an app to a driver rather than mailing it was seen as a major technological breakthrough. Industry statistics of the day showed that it took 100 calls to get 3 qualified drivers, a 3% hit rate. The weekend ads made Monday and Tuesday very busy in recruiting departments. Recruiters were screening calls and mailing application packets non-stop. Sticky notes covered the border of the computer screen. By Thursday recruiters were using the phones to call all their fantasy football buddies. Sticky notes were slowly making their way into the trash can. Recruiters were retreating into their computers to play solitaire. They were waiting for next week's ads to run.
The process of recruiting was invisible to management. They measured the effectiveness of their recruiting departments by the size of the orientation class. One of the stated goals of the early systems was to make the recruiting process visible. This emphasis can be seen in the report names; “Calls and Hires By Media and Publication”, “Hires by Recruiter”, “Elapsed Time First Call to Hire”, and “Drivers In Process By Recruiter”.
A recruiting manager once asked for a report to show him how fast recruiters were getting drivers hired. The report title was 'Elapsed Time First Contact To Hire'. This manager wanted to know which recruiter was getting drivers hired in the least amount of time after the first contact. He felt that the recruiters that were getting the drivers hired quickest would be the best recruiters. The results of this report were unexpected. The best recruiter in the company had numbers like 92 days, 127 days, 232 days, first contact to hire. In other words, the best recruiter was getting the name of a qualified driver and not letting go, repeatedly sending notices and company benefits packets, sending notes, calling, etc. This recruiter did not let go of a qualified name until he enticed the candidate to come to work. Those who were doing the best job of recruiting were those who were repeatedly selling a driver on their company's qualities.
The advent of internet recruiting and website applications soon followed the first wave of recruiting software. Drivers were no longer directed to call a toll free number. Rather, they were directed to enter basic contact information into a web-based form. A recruiter would then reach out to the applicant to glean more detailed information. Dozens of websites popped up, funneling initial application data to whoever would pay for their services. These websites flourished through the 90's and into the 2000's. The first wave of recruiting software was slowly replaced by web app consolidators. These web app consolidators would take the application data from multiple websites and scrape the data into a database for resale to trucking companies. These web consolidators slowly evolved into web-based listings of driver data and made them available to recruiters to begin the recruiting process. Web-based listings slowly added to their functionality and eventually replaced all recruiting systems owned by individual trucking companies. The flow of applications increased to the hundreds or even thousands per day. At this point, the recruiting process changed from one of sales, to one of wading through masses of data to find a qualified candidate. The hit rate of 3 drivers for every 100 calls decreased to 1 driver for every 400 web applications, from 3% to one-quarter of 1%. Recruiters stopped recruiting. They started depending on a constant flow of massive amounts of data to achieve their quotas. Driver information became old in an hour.
Looking back we can ask these questions; Did massive amounts of advertising solve the driver shortage problem? No. Did the initial software packages or the new web-based listings solve a company's problem driver shortage? No. Did massive amounts of application data solve the driver shortage? No. Did all these increase the cost and change the complexion of driver recruiting? Yes.
A third wave of recruiting software is emerging. The continuing upsurge and prolific use of mobile devices coupled with the influx of younger drivers is starting a trend that will bypass the websites and the application consolidators. In the near future drivers will be filling out a standard DOT driver application once on their smartphone app, store it on their phone, and send it in an XML format to whoever they want, whenever they want.
The most successful companies have systems that triage incoming smartphone apps and bypass the high cost of web-based application consolidators. This will allow them to return to the model of recruiting as a sales function. The new wave of driver discovery and hiring software will separate recruiting from form processing. More cost-efficient recruiting processes will emerge. An enhanced version of the old contact management recruiting systems that once owned the marketplace will make a return as a back-office method of prioritizing and working incoming mobile device data.
Will this next wave of driver recruiting allow the return to a sales model over a data mining model? Hopefully. Will this next wave of recruiting software solve the driver shortage? No. If not, what will?
A colleague of mine trains driver recruiters. One of the first questions he asks recruiters during training is to write down five reasons a driver should come to work for their company. If the recruiter cannot quickly come up with five reasons, they are either retrained or terminated. This may not be all the recruiter's fault. There may not be any distinctive reason a driver should want to work for their company. There may be multiple reasons a driver should stay away. Companies that give recruiters unique, positive and exciting reasons a driver would want to work for the company is one of the primary keys to effective recruiting.
This introduces the final and overall point. The one thing that has not changed as these software systems have evolved is the driver shortage. On the whole, driving an 18- wheel truck over long distances, for multiple days or weeks at a time, is one of the most dangerous, difficult, poorly paid, and thankless jobs in the American workforce. The cure for the driver shortage lies in progress in governmental policy, changes in company policy, positive development in industry policy, better working conditions, improved respect for the profession, and increased pay. No amount of advertising and no system ever created will overcome deficiencies in those.