Recruiter (new to trucking industry) looking for driver opinions on the recruiting process. Help!

I was a computer consultant, long before I was a truck driver. I understand that the recruiter only decides whether or not to submit a candidate for a position - not whether or not he gets hired. In fairness, the experienced drivers that you are after, don't have trouble getting hired; if there is anything that they have trouble with, it's finding the gig that they wanted. I wanted to be home every day - not have to take my time off away from home. The gig that I found gets me close to home for three hours in the middle of the night, and then I take my 10-hour break in a hotel, 300 miles from home. I get home on weekends. It's not the gig that I wanted, but rather the best compromise that I could find. Now, I like my boss, and it's a good run, but the contract is up in July, and there hasn't been much mail on the truck because they have been sending it by plane... so I'm not expecting it to last a whole lot longer, but I'm loathe to leave, and risk winding up having to go somewhere that I'm less happy with.

When I was a computer consultant, the value that my agent brought to the table wasn't the ability to find good gigs; anyone could do that, even me. It was his (or her) ability to negotiate pay, and translate it to me as a w-2 so that my taxes weren't a mess, that made the agent valuable. Frankly, I would have charged less than a third or a quarter of what I was paid, had I done my own negotiating, and in fact I probably would never even have been taken seriously by an employer, to get hired at all, at those rates. The agency also bore the risk, if the client failed to pay, or paid late, so they did the client financial due diligence. They used to claim that they were in it for the long haul, that they wanted to help us to reach our career goals - but that was bunk. Contract work was temporary, and the contract-to-hire gig was a poor deception, about 90-95% of the time. They have the job that they have, and it lasts for as long as it lasts, and when it's over, if they have something else that you're a fit for, they'll give it a shot, but you are no more likely to get it than if you had walked in off the street for that second gig, and never did the first one at all.

In trucking, recruiters do none of the things that agents did in computer consulting, which begs the question of what a recruiter brings to the table for drivers. Recruiters aren't any more career-focused than agents were; they have the jobs that they have, and they aren't looking for a job for a driver; they are looking for a driver to fill a job. The recruiter who comes up with a useful value to drivers, first, wins the market share... Assuming that they don't just find a way to spin the (very little) that they do for us, now... We aren't confused about what you do for the carrier. But if you want to be the place to go, when a carrier wants an experienced driver, then you can't provide value only to the carrier. There has to be a good, substantiative reason for those drivers to come to you, as well. "I'll do my best with the information I am given", isn't an improvement over our own efforts.

I don't have the solution. If I did, I'd be one very rich recruiter, and not just another old trucker. All I have been able to do, is identify the problem/s. But you find a real value that you can offer to drivers, and you'll be the next Robert Morris of trucking...

 

Leveraging your carrier generally turns out badly. They refuse, you leave - and they bad-mouth you on your DAC, limiting your future options.

It's better just to leave. No explanations, no recriminations - I'm just done, here. Thanks for the good run, wish I could've stayed longer, but I gotta go. Rolling stone, and all that moss...

Of course, before you go, you have to consider whether the next place is really likely to be an improvement. If you like the place you're at, except for the one issue, it may not be worth leaving over.

But leveraging them? Terrible idea. Sorry. Just my opinion, based upon my own experience.

 

Welp; I cursed myself. My gig ends on Friday. The post office cancelled the whole contract, and now we have at least five drivers out of work... :-/

 

Well crap. But hey, you know what? Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe there's an even better gig just waiting for a driver just like you.

As a good driver, you'll never have trouble putting food on the table. It's doing it while resisting the urge to stab someone in the eye with a rusty spoon that's the trick. Lol.

Good luck!

 

Why drivers hate recruiters story #8,745

See ad, ad fits my needs, sounds interesting. But no pay listed.
hmmmmmmm

Call for more info
So I call for more info.
"What does it pay?"
well come down here (an hour away) and do an interview.

"No, not without you answering some questions first, What does it pay?"
well, what do you want?
"what is the pay range of the job listed?"
well it's a direct to hire position and we are only qualifying candidates for them.

Well, pay is a pretty goddang major component of any new job and if you don't have that info, then you are just wasting my time.

Now, let me tell you, ANY ads from this recruiting/staffing company pretty much go immediately in the trash and are ignored. How does that help either the driver or the company?

 

A humble thought for you.

A driver to be hired for trucking is not "A Position" as it would be for a worker in IT or something higher. Truckers are a dime a dozen picked out of the mass of unsuitable orientations each week. The best of the bunch or the pick of the litter gets the truck. Everyone else gets shipped back home. The turn over rolls on to 100% or greater.

I once ran for a company that had 220 drivers when I signed on. 6 months later they were 235 drivers and I had moved up to be the top 30. All others have been replaced in that time period.

 

I both agree and disagree agree...

There are companies that have experienced drivers and don't hire new drivers every week.. some rarely hire a new driver because their drivers are truly that happy..

With a good company that does value their drivers and does not have a high turnover.. then leveraging does work.. because for a good company to keep a good driver by meeting that drivers needs is better for that company..

What if they let him leave and then have to go through 2 or 3 drivers to find one almost as good as the driver they lost..

I am a gonna say something that you will not like... so, just brace yourself...

But, the mentality that you.. and many drivers have.. is a big contributor.. when drivers, like you want to fall into the victim mentality they give the power to the carriers...

When I say I work with good qualified experienced drivers.. it isn't,t just that they have been driving for a few years, have a clean MVR and hasn,t jumped from company to company...

they are drivers who understand their value and worth to the company they drive for and they certainly can leverage... and the owner of that good small company definitely has a love hate for me as a recruiter.. they would rather I be on the phone filling up orientation classes then be out poaching his good drivers for another company... they hate me when I am recruiting one of their good drivers for another company.. they love me, when they need a driver and have go poach a driver from another company for them.. and yes, I said they need to hire 1 driver.. not fill up a orientation class.. yes, they have orientation for their new driver, but not an orientation class.. and these companies don't bad mouth their drivers or ding a dac, they actually maintain a good relationship with their drivers, even if the driver is going to another company.. because that driver, even after leaving to maybe drive local, maybe a different region, or whatever, is still a value and resource to them... because, good drivers are friends with other good drivers.. and so this driver may know a driver that what to run what that company runs..

You have the mindset that is exactly what the big Carriers want you to have.. that your a dime a dozen and just need to settle for mediocrity in pay and treatment.

 

It wasn't that different with programmers. They were always trying to get us to hire on 'permanent' on projects that were only going to last 3-6 months. They'd sing a song about retirement benefits, health insurance, 401k, and stock options, but they were never going to keep you on long enough to get signed up for any of it, much less get enough time to become vested in matching contributions or stock option discounts.

They had projects that needed doing, and when they were done, most of the programmers were going to be let go, anyway. Sure, they needed people with fairly specific and hard-to-find skills, but as high as the churn rate was, you could always find what you needed, if you waited long enough for it to become available on the job market.

Being a programmer wasn't "something higher". It could pay better, depending upon what your skill set was, but the cost of staying up-to-date and employable, as well as the cost of living, where the jobs were, was high enough that it was pretty comparable. It was nice when they coddled us with free fruit drinks and soda, couches and video games in the break rooms, and such - but they didn't do that because we were so special - they did it to keep us from leaving the building; to keep us working.

In fairness, I loved the work. I still do. I'd have done it for free - and, in fact, I still write code for the fun of it, during my home time. They only needed to give me a space to work, the coolest equipment I could squeeze out of them to work on, and perhaps an intravenous chocolate milk drip, and I would have happily kept working until I dropped dead...