David McBride, executive vice president of recruiting and human resources at Lazer Spot, joined DriverReach founder and CEO Jeremy Reymer on this week’s episode of Taking the Hire Road to discuss what it takes to successfully recruit and retain talented drivers.
Born into a trucking family, McBride knew from an early age which career path he wanted to take. He has since enjoyed a successful career helping companies build their recruiting and fleet growth strategies.
Over the years, he’s developed three golden rules for recruiting, the first being advertising. McBride told Reymer that it comes down to broadcasting the best possible message to the right audience.
The second rule is to build a good team. “When it comes to recruiting, you can have the best advertising, but if you don’t have a good sales team that are out here working the phones, working their leads and applications, then you’ve got nothing,” McBride said, adding that managers should be solid mentors to their workforce, celebrating successes but also providing encouragement when they struggle. “My golden rule is if they do it right, love them. If they do it wrong, love them more to help them get on the right track.”
His third rule is one that McBride said is crucial, but one that many companies tend to forget — remembering that speed is everything. “When it comes down to the processing piece and you say, ‘I’ll call you back in the next two to four days to get you on board,’ then they’re gone.”
McBride said that he looks for driver recruiters who are engaged and self-motivated, individuals who not only want to make the sale but make it legit. He stresses that his recruiters be themselves on calls instead of following a script, noting the importance of genuineness.
“If there’s a script, you’ve already lost,” McBride said. “I believe that every recruiter’s got their own personality. … I want it to be genuine, I want it to be real, I want them to be themselves and create their own sales persona.”
Having the right recruiter for the job is important because finding talent today seems to be harder than ever before. However, McBride doesn’t believe that there’s a driver shortage. Instead, he interprets the labor issue stemming from a lack of workforce diversity. That’s why he’s a strong advocate for bringing more women into the male-dominated trucking industry.
“I spent a lot of years as a field recruiter early in my career going out to schools where I met some absolutely amazing women that said they wanted to get in this industry, but the wait time to be paired with a female trainer is barring them from getting in,” McBride said. “I think that it’s going to require a lot of companies to put their best foot forward to hire more female trainers to get all these amazing women through the pipeline.”
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