On this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road, Jeremy Reymer, founder of DriverReach, is joined by Sepeti Moala, vice president of client success at Transportation Marketing Group.
As is a common story throughout the industry, Moala fell into trucking by chance. Starting at a young age in sales, he was eventually hired to be a recruiter with C.R. England.
Within his first year, Moala became the No. 1 recruiter at the entire company, at which he spent a total of six years.
But, in the latter part of his time with the firm, Moala found that recruiting positions were increasingly being outsourced to Mexico. “As I went from a team of 50 recruiters to 10 within a span of six months,” he relates, “I started to wonder where my position would be in the next year or two.”
Facing an uncertain future, Moala left the trucking industry and returned to sales for the next two years.
Yet, like so many others before him, Moala heard the industry beckoning and found it irresistible: “I finally sat down and told my wife, ‘I know where I belong. I know I need to get back into the transportation industry.’”
And so he landed with Yellow, overseeing talent acquisition in the twilight years of the trucking giant. Going back and forth between recruiting and sales is not all that strange since, as Reymer notes, “recruiting is sales; you’re ultimately helping people make decisions.”
At Yellow, Moala gained a fresh perspective on the industry’s challenges to recruit and retain drivers, beset as the company was by discontent among its unionized workforce.
After the company dissolved, Moala had little trouble finding a new position, thanks to the generosity of the trucking industry on social media platforms. “It’s such a tight-knit community,” he reflects, “full of people who are more than willing to help others get to where they need to be.”
With Transportation Marketing Group, Moala connects such people to drivers in need of work. While many carriers find it difficult to secure phone calls with potential recruits, Moala stresses the importance of timely communication.
“When I hear things like, ‘I can’t get in touch with a driver,’ the first question that comes to mind is, ‘What was your speed to contact them?’ Was it a day later, or two days? The main reason why drivers don’t answer is because recruiters are not responding to them within that first 30 minutes.”
Moala foresees that driver recruitment will soon become a priority for most carriers, if it has not been already. Looking forward to 2024, he expects the industry to recover sometime in the coming months.
“Now is the time to sharpen your sword,” he declares, “because when the recession does end, are you going to be in a better position than you were before to hit the ground running?”
Click here to learn more about Transportation Marketing Group.
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