10 ideas to immediately improve how you hire movers and drivers

Supermove was recently joined by Ben Cross (CEO of GLOMO), Brian Brooks (President of E.E. Ward Moving), and Oded Carmi (President of DN Van Lines) for yet another fantastic roundtable discussion on hiring and retaining movers and drivers.

The guys got into the nitty gritty on topics like understanding where your real challenge is when it comes to hiring, why presentation is key for attracting talent, the difference between active and passive recruiting, and more.

Keep reading for 10 quick takeaways from the roundtable that you can apply right away. We also really encourage you to watch the full webinar– Ben, Brian and Oded offer some amazing pearls of wisdom and actionable takeaways in this hour-long session, and it’s well worth the watch!

Top 10 takeaways: How to hire and retain movers and drivers

1. Hire internally first

The best, most reliable way to bring great people onto your team is to nurture and grow the folks you already have. The people who are already on your team get your culture, understand your processes, and wanna be there. You should be trying to reward them with upward mobility in the company. 

The added benefit of this is that if your people are happy, they’ll recommend other good people to come work for you. Referrals are one of the best ways to bring in talent, and if those referrals have been hearing about what a great employer you are, they’ll be excited, loyal, and driven from day one.

2. Understand where your hiring challenges are coming from

One of the big topics that came up was the importance of understanding where specifically your hiring struggles are occurring.

Are you not getting enough applications? Are people not showing up to the interview? Or are you extending an offer and no one is showing up on the first day?

Ben pointed out how important it is to think of hiring like a funnel– the same way you think of sales. It’s way easier to fix a specific problem than a generalized one. So once you’ve identified where the leaks are in your funnel, then you can put processes in place to increase conversion. 

3. Improve presentation for more successful hiring

Related to the point above, all three panelists pointed out that presentation can go a long way to increasing conversion in your hiring funnel. 

Moving tends to be seen as a very informal industry. But if you present yourself informally, potential candidates might not see it as a serious job.

“Moving and storage is not a sexy  or glorious industry. We’re not jet pilots, we’re not rocket scientists, we work in a labor-based industry, a blue collar industry but i think that putting the trappings of a larger organization and giving people pride in what they do, is key. So giving people proper titles, proper uniforms…and recognizing them on a regular basis can lend some credibility to it,” says Oded.

He took it a step further, saying that something as simple as a formal offer letter– inclusive of your logo, the job description, title, rate of pay, and benefits– can make a big difference. “Official” steps like offer letters, having candidates meet with HR, and ensuring that you’re communicating consistently with candidates instead of leaving dead space between meetings will all go a long way towards a successful hire.

4. ALWAYS be hiring

Hiring isn’t a seasonal or a one-and-done activity. You should always have some sort of hiring activity going on with the intention of adding A-players to your team. 

We know that it’s not necessarily realistic to be actively bringing new team members on board all the time, but here are some ideas of always-on hiring activities to explore:

1. Keep candidate information and nurture them over time. Even if you didn’t successfully hire someone the first time, you can use your CRM to put them in an email flow and send them information about what it’s like working for you. Include testimonial videos from current employees, TikToks from folks on the job, a rundown of benefits and culture etc.
2. Same goes for folks that are actively in your hiring funnel. Build out an email nurture cadence so they’re hearing from you regularly, and you remain top of mind for them.
3. Focus some of your advertising dollars on hiring vs driving business. THE biggest challenge in the industry today is labor, so you should be putting some budget towards solving this.

5. Be intentional about educating candidates about your company and culture

Company culture is one of the most important variables when it comes to retaining and growing your internal talent. Culture encompasses everything from how you compensate your staff, the working conditions, how you resolve conflict, and how you celebrate wins.

We asked our panel to talk about their best tactics for educating potential candidates about culture and company:

1. Create quick, organic videos on your phone. Get testimonials from employees, get shots of the warehouse and working conditions and really try to show, not tell, what it’s like to work for you.
2. Create a company benefit and culture letter and share this with all candidates. Help them understand what it means to work at your company and what’s in it for them beyond a paycheque.
3. Make this information really accessible on your website. Brian points out that this is also a great way to vet candidates– if you’ve made information about your company culture readily available but they show up to the interview and don’t know anything about that culture then that’s a read flag.

“They should be obsessed with your company culture and purpose and story. But you have to put all that out there for people to latch on to, and this will help you attract the people that are attracted to what you’re setting out to do,” says Ben.

6. Have an objective evaluation template for interviews 

Oded called out that how you interview candidates is also really important. He cautioned against an unstructured, open-ended chat and said that the better practice is to create a structured, consistent experience for all candidates.

Create a list of pre-defined questions that you’re going to ask all candidates. You can also create an evaluation matrix, where each question is scored on a scale of 1-10. This helps to take some of the subjectivity out of hiring and makes it a more equitable process.

7. Grow drivers, don’t hire drivers

One of the questions that came in from our audience was about hiring drivers– a task that everyone in the industry knows can be incredibly difficult.

Our panel urged attendees to remember that non-CDL vehicles can be your savior here, since anyone with a drivers license can drive a non-CDL vehicle.

Oded points out how this can work in your favor:

"The real way to get drivers is by  not getting drivers in the first place. It's by getting people that are movers that have a license, that have proven themselves. They know your culture, they know what you do. So six months in you can say 'hey you want to make more money? How about becoming a driver?"  

8. Know the difference between passive and active recruiting

Here’s a scenario– you’re posting jobs on Indeed, Zip Recruiter, and LinkedIn but you’re just not getting the volume or quality of candidates that you’re looking for.

Ben pointed out that all those recruiting sites are great, but they’re all passive recruiting.

“The trick is that good candidates already have jobs , they aren’t looking for jobs,” he says.

Instead of just posting a job and hoping for the best, you need to be ACTIVELY recruiting. Get a recruiter on board (someone who is specialized ien the industry) and get them to go after the people you want. Also consider adding other tools to the mix. Ben says that Facebook can be great if you’re in the right groups. He also swears by ZoomInfo when it comes to getting people’s contact information.

9. Understand and speak to peoples motivations

This takeaway is related to building culture, but deserves it's own place on the list. Hiring is hard in the moving business. Being able to understand, connect with and speak to the individual motivations of both your staff and candidates will give you a huge leg up when it comes to attracting and retaining great people. 

This came up in our panel discussion in the context of hiring different generations– Ben pointed out that understanding where people are in life and what they’re looking for from a job makes you so much more likely to connect well with candidates. For example, young people like to be spoken to in terms of their purpose and they like to be seen as an individual. 

“If we want them to be part of our workforce, we need to meet them where they are."

10. Map out internal career paths so employees know how to grow

Last but certainly not least, one of the best thing you can do to keep employees engaged (and keep them recommending their friends and family for jobs!) is by making it super clear what growth looks like at your company.

Knowing what’s next and how to get there is incredibly motivating for employees, but the moving industry has struggled to fully articulate what the career path is. This means there’s an opportunity for companies to step up, map this out and be transparent with employees about how they can grow. Our panelists even referenced one company that makes posters of their career path and puts it on the wall so all employees can see it.

"We have to look at how we're presenting ourselves. Are we presenting ourselves as an arthritic and rusty industry or are we presenting ourselves as a huge growth opportunity where you can make six figures before you're 30 years old? Where you can have a great career and do something interesting and get out of the office and get exercise. So I think I think we have to really look at the way that we we brand ourselves and frame ourselves," says Ben.

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Check out the whole conversation here.