Moving Words – Recruiting
Timothy Brady
“True leadership isn’t about having an idea. It’s about having an idea and recruiting other people to execute on this vision.” – Leila Janah
The key to finding that team of van operators, movers and packers to provide the top service required by your shippers is simple, honest communication. The biggest complaint many prospective employees in the moving industry have about the recruiting process is they aren’t told the truth about the company to which they are applying.
The three key needs which must be filled by a company are:
- Reasonable compensation for all hours required to perform the duties whether it’s driving a truck, loading or unloading, or waiting to be dispatched
- Consistency in pay from week to week
- Scheduled time home.
Fulfilling these needs will put you on the road to higher employee retention. But the most important task you can perform in finding the right person is to listen carefully for information:
- What are his needs and wants?
- What is her family going to expect and need?
- What are his expectations in terms of money, time at home, type of equipment and amenities?
- What are her career goals; in the next year, three years, five and beyond?
- What are his personal financial requirements: house payments, car payments, other debt and personal financial goals?
- Are there any other income sources to cover these personal expenses other than this position?
- Most important, will what you’re able to pay this person cover what he/she has in financial obligations?
The point here is, listening for information from this potential employee driver will aid you in determining if his expectations or financial requirements are above what you can provide him. Or if there might just be a match.
The next step is to tell applicants all about your operation: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Give them every opportunity to ask for the details. Don’t hide anything. This doesn’t mean you paint a bleak picture, just an honest one. Another complaint from employee drivers is they’re given incomplete information during the recruitment interview. In some cases, the recruiter/interviewer is telling the applicant what the recruiter thinks they want to hear – or perhaps the prospective employee only hears what he wanted to hear.
Avoid these misunderstandings by providing the potential employee with a Question & Answer sheet. He or she must fill in the blanks with the information your recruiter provides. The recruiter should have a similar Q&A sheet to note all the answers the prospective mover provides. At the completion of the interview, the recruiter and applicant should exchange these sheets and go over the information to be sure nothing is misunderstood. For this to work, both sides must be forthcoming and honest.
The more information exchanged, the better the employee and your company can decide if each is a match for the other. It’s estimated it costs between $8,000 and $12,000 to hire and train an employee for a moving company. It can cost a person tens of thousands of dollars in lost income to switch companies. So being diligent in the selection process for both sides make sense. The more knowledgeable the carrier is about each potential employee’s wants and needs, and the recruit is about the company’s methods and policies, the stronger the relationship will be. And all this makes for a strong, long-term business association.
“Never hire someone who knows less than you do about what he’s hired to do.”— Malcolm Forbes
