On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, James Winfrey, vice president of partnerships and alliances with Leoforce, joined Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach, to discuss the ongoing evolution of recruiting technology in the trucking space.
From the earliest days of digital advertising to the current use of AI-assisted recruiting functionality, those companies that leveraged cutting-edge technology have gotten ahead of the curve and paved the way for more efficient practices in the future.
Winfrey first started in what he refers to as “human capital” in 2003, at the inception of digital advertising. “I cut my teeth at monster.com,” he said. “At that point in time, we were educating people why using just print was a missed opportunity and getting them to use the limitless text of online advertising for a fraction of the cost.”
In the early 2000s, Winfrey says, the transportation industry was in dire need of a technological advancement. “The recruiting space, especially in trucking, was aching for some sort of upgrade from their traditional print ads,” he said. “When I was placed in a remote office in Dallas, I picked up the local greensheets and started looking. I saw a lot of ads for recruiting truck drivers, big print ads.”
Seeing an opportunity, Winfrey researched the local and national transportation industry to understand their needs and costs, making himself an expert on the subject. “When I started contacting trucking companies, I said, ‘Here’s an online ad for 30 days instead of three, and it’s a fraction of the cost. How many do you want?’” he said. “That sprung me into the transportation space, because it’s starving for innovation.”
Winfrey worked directly with Facebook on recruitment advertising campaigns and started to see more success than carriers had seen in a long time. The magnitude of the leap from print to social media is occurring again now, he says, with the proper utilization of AI.
“Now that AI is on the scene, I’m looking at it through a whole new lens,” he said. “What can automation do to drive quicker and better outcomes?”
At its core, Leoforce provides an AI and machine-learning assistant that can be deployed anywhere in the hiring process and integrated with a large number of existing software suites.
“Arya is the AI that all our systems run through, including chat and engagement and everything else,” Winfrey explained. “We have bots from an interview-scheduling AI to a job-matching AI.”
According to Winfrey, Leoforce can utilize Arya’s sourcing to pull in new candidates with specific searches. “The AI can process information about the job, so we thought, let’s have the AI engage the user,” he said.
Fortunately for carriers, Arya can be integrated with a variety of APIs or TMSs, making it versatile for a number of functions. “You need a call to action, in most cases an application,” Winfrey said. “The AI will match up a profile to the job metrics, engage the user and publish that application back to the recruiter’s database, wherever that might be.”
Because Arya’s services are all outcome-based, clients only pay for successful outcomes and not for a regular subscription or even a number of clicks or engagements.
“Applicant On-Demand is a predictive model where you can enter in the job role, the cost, the metrics, and you only pay for a successful outcome,” Winfrey said. “It’s our fastest-growing segment just because people were already looking for alternatives to traditional models.”
“Given that it’s outcome-based and you only pay for successful, complete applications, it really takes out the risk of trying something new,” he said. “If Arya delivers one application, you’re only charged for one application.”
Clients see the value of the outcome-based business model once they run their own numbers, Winfrey says. “What helps is asking questions, because it forces customers to get into the nitty-gritty of their data,” he said. “What is your average cost per hire? Is it impacted by location or role type or time of year? When you dig into all that, you can see what an application would cost in a given scenario from traditional sources and compare it to ours.”
With the traditional model of recruiting software or services, you incur a cost whether you get a successful hire or not. “We alleviate all of the risk of pay-per-click campaigns, because we only charge based on verifiable results,” Winfrey said.
As Winfrey says, the truck driver recruiting space has been starving for new innovations. “How can I nurture a candidate all the way through the recruiting process and have my recruiter spend time on what they do best – building a relationship with a potential candidate?” he asked. “That’s the most impactful part of your process.”
When AI can automate the technical details, recruiting and human resources professionals can focus on selling the organization to the best candidates and forming a personal relationship.
“Let’s let the AI automate the grunt work, freeing up the recruiters to interact on a more personal level with the candidate,” Winfrey said. “It’s the human element that never goes away. We get the benefits of advanced AI and of human excellence.”
Book recommendation: The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
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Sponsors: DriverReach, The National Transportation Institute, Career Now Brands, Carrier Intelligence, Infinit-I Workforce Solutions, WorkHound, Asurint, Arya By Leoforce, Seiza, Drive My Way, F|Staff, Trucksafe Consulting, Seated Social, Repowr