While his team tracks nearly 2,000 driver leads per month, Luke Wimberly admits his recruiters are selective, which is why McElroy Truck Lines uses Tenstreet’s automated marketing tools to target the right drivers to fit the flatbed company’s needs.
Wimberly, director of human resources and recruiting for McElroy, a 600-truck carrier in Cuba, Alabama, says Tenstreet’s Job Store helps his team narrow down the field to find the drivers best suited for the approximately 20 truck driving positions the company fills each month.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, that number was much higher, but as nonessential businesses were forced to close because of shelter-in-place orders, demand for freight plunged in early May.
Tenstreet, a software-as-a-service company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, uses automation to expedite the hiring process for motor carriers. The company’s trucking-specific platform connects carriers and drivers and allows recruiters to stay in constant communication with drivers throughout its transparent onboarding process.
Over the past decade, 2,000-plus motor carriers and private fleets have used Tenstreet’s web-based tools to help market, recruit, hire and manage drivers. And 3.8 million drivers have used its platform to find their next trucking jobs using their smartphones.
Wimberly said that once he sets a monthly recruiting budget, he sends a list of job openings to Tenstreet’s Job Store, which posts them on Tenstreet’s free Driver Pulse App.
“Tenstreet makes sure that the jobs are posted and that they’re updated, fresh and new, which saves us a lot of time,” Wimberly told FreightWaves. “We’re not charged anything until someone clicks on our ad and actually fills out an application. So you actually get something that’s tangible to work with versus somebody that just clicks on the ad and you’re charged for it.”
Wimberly’s recruiting team can then follow up with applicants using Tenstreet’s marketing services, like Drip and Job Board Scrubber.
Drip helps trucking companies target the right driver audience a carrier is interested in through automated email and text campaigns.
Tenstreet’s Job Board Scrubber helps carriers nurture job board leads so potential applicants don’t fall through the cracks. Once a driver applies for a position, an email is immediately sent to the applicant followed by a series of well-timed emails to let the driver know the company is still interested in hiring the truck driver.
“Once a driver fills out a lead with us using Tenstreet, we are able to then customize personal messages to the drivers that may say, ‘Hi, we haven’t heard from you in a while or we noticed you started your application but didn’t finish filling it out,’” Wimberly said. “We are then able to send out a message from one of our recruiters to that driver’s smartphone every so often to keep in touch.”
A 2019 survey by Glassdoor found that of job seekers using Glassdoor’s site, nearly 60% use their smartphones. However, the survey discovered that number is even higher — around 63% — for job seekers in the transportation industry.
“We don’t take a lot of an applicant’s time by using Tenstreet’s recruiting tools,” Wimberly said. “Everybody has a smartphone; that’s where technology is today and why we decided to go full-on with Tenstreet. “Once we have an electronic file on a driver, many people are able to add information from the person in HR, the recruiter, the driver, the safety manager who talks to them when they come in the door; they all deal in Tenstreet.”
McElroy recruiters are also able to text drivers through Tenstreet, which is a big bonus because texting is such a huge thing in communicating with drivers, Wimberly said.
Once the decision has been made to hire a new driver, a Greyhound bus ticket can be sent out using Tenstreet’s integration platform — another reason Wimberly said McElroy made the decision to use the SaaS company for its recruiting needs.
“If one of my recruiters has to leave Tenstreet and go to another site, I consider that a loss of productivity,” he said. “All they do now is make about three or four clicks and it’s all generated for them through Tenstreet. The driver gets the information sent right to his or her smartphone with the confirmation number, date and time of departure for orientation.”
Since switching over to Tenstreet’s paperless platform nearly two years ago, Wimberly said he has been able to eliminate 11 file cabinets of old driver files and two part-time positions, whose jobs entailed putting together driver files.
Besides being a space saver, it’s also been a more efficient way to ensure all of the necessary documents have been filled out prior to a driver’s arrival for orientation.
“We are able to save about six hours off of our Monday orientation by going to electronic filing because we can send that person the paperwork they need to fill out and they can go online at their convenience and fill it out or electronically sign it and it drops right into their file,” Wimberly said.
A new feature within Tenstreet’s Job Store is its Concierge Service, which is free for active Tenstreet clients.
This feature writes the client’s active jobs to ensure they render well with Tenstreet’s 100% mobile-first technology and build out their hiring areas that target candidates who align with the freight lanes they need drivers to run, according to Leah Kelly, director of marketing and communications for Tenstreet.
“Concierge also ensures a company’s landing pages are set up properly and manages their recruitment dollars across the merchants in the Job Store that best supports the goals of their hiring department,” Kelly said.
Click here to find out more information about Tenstreet’s marketing tools.
