The recruiting chain is the five points of contact the driver has from when he first hears about a job opening to the point where he actually pulls his first load. Specifically, those points are: the initial job ad, the initial call to the recruiter, the job interview, orientation, and then pulling your first load. It’s important to audit each link in that chain to make sure that it’s clear, concise and consistent.

Probably one of the best examples is compensation. Suppose a driver looks at an ad that says Company A’s top drivers earn $65,000 per year. He calls the recruiter and they say that Company A’s drivers earn between $60,000 and $65,000. The driver gets to the terminal and he finds out that seniority drivers do earn between $60,000 and $65,000, but new drivers only make $55,000 per year. That $10,000 difference is enough to make that driver want to leave the company. So consistency is critical.

In the example I discussed above, where there’s a $10,000 discrepancy between the ad and the actual, instead of posting the “best case scenario” for a driver’s potential salary, you define your average annual earnings per driver, as well as your average annual earnings per new driver.

You should also take a look at average annual earnings per terminal, because often times there are significant earnings differences between terminals. Once you’ve defined all that, outline your results and pass them on to every point in the recruiting chain to make sure you have a clear, accurate and consistent message.

In addition to an accurate and concise message in your recruiting chain, you want to make sure that every point of contact within the recruiting chain is positive. This is most usually abused during orientation where ex-drivers lead the session. Ex-drivers often like to share their insights about the company. Let me give you an example: I audited one company where the ex-driver said, “I hope you’re not assigned to X terminal because that terminal manager doesn’t care about drivers and he always denies driver’s delay claims. So you want to make sure that every point of contact with the driver is positive.