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How To Hire Transportation Staff

How To Hire Transportation Staff
Post Series: How to Hire

The transportation sector is booming across its many services, creating unprecedented competition among employers to hire transportation staff. To maintain productivity and meet the demands of clients and customers, companies need to leverage an effective recruitment strategy to attract the drivers, logistics managers, and supporting personnel they need. Deploy the right recruitment solutions appropriate to your business, industry, and service, and hiring can be hassle-free. Use the wrong approach, and when you try to recruit transportation staff, the process can be costly, lengthy, and potentially fail.

Download Job Advert Template

In this transportation staff hiring guide, we lay out the steps to hiring transportation staff and logistics professionals, including:

  • Preparing To Recruit Transportation Staff: Your Employer Brand & Company Careers Page
  • Writing A Transportation Job Description & Job Advert
  • How To Hire All Transportation Staff
  • Advertising Your Transportation Department Positions: Referral Schemes, Social Media, & Job Boards
  • Reducing Hiring Costs: Recruitment Companies & ATS
  • Screening Job Seekers & Conducting Interviews
  • Presenting A Job Offer & Onboarding Transportation Hires

Preparing To Recruit Transportation Staff: Your Employer Brand & Company Careers Page

How To Recruit Transportation Staff

Before you begin to advertise externally for transportion staff, it will help to review all your existing candidate touchpoints to ensure you are promoting a positive employer brand. You will ultimately only find and hire the drivers and personnel you need if you show that your business is a highly desirable place to work.

It would help if you think about how you portray your work culture, values, and your business success, along with other elements such as supporting further training and career development. In our Guide On How To Hire, we explore deeper the topics of Why Should SMEs Build An Employer Brand and What Should Be On A Company Careers Page.

Writing A Transportation Job Description & Job Advert

How To Write A Bus Driver Or Transportation Job Description

Before you put pen to paper and write a job description and job advert for your transportation positions, you should speak to key decision makers in the hiring process, including the position’s line manager, to ensure accuracy.

Transportation Job Descriptions

Writing a job description for positions such as coach hire, shuttle service, and bus driver will help you speed up the recruitment process. The best practice is to have a job description on file for all positions. These can be quickly updated and used to create the job posting whenever recruitment needs arise.

For Search Engine Optimisation, it is a good idea to integrate keywords and key phrases that potential candidates might search for in a search engine or on a job site. The job profile should have a clear message to attract the most suitable candidates. It also helps to avoid using excessive punctuation and too much jargon.

Download Job Advert Template

When writing a job description for transportion staff, consider:

  1. Identifying and outlining typical business-wide requirements
  2. Collating today’s minimum driver technical skills, licenses, qualifications, and driving experience
  3. Reviewing what your competitors are saying in their job descriptions
  4. What the person profile of new hires should look like
  5. How you want your brand to be perceived

Our Job Description Templates can help you get started; we appreciate writing dedicated job descriptions can be a challenge. You can discover the most popular Transportation Job Descriptions here.

Further useful resources include How To Define What People Do In Their JobsPreparing Job Descriptions, and Key Roles And Responsibilities In Transportation.

Transportation Job Adverts

Your transport job descriptions will form the basis of your new job advert. There are other things to add to this to ensure you attract the right applicants with appropriate skills, so ensure your job ad includes:

  1. An accurate job title – bus driver, staff transport manager, train driver, logistics manager, warehouse operative, cabin crew, traffic controller, etc
  2. An opening statement – saying why a job seeker will want to work for your transportation or logistics business
  3. The job’s description
  4. A list of responsibilities – providing staff shuttle services, driving luxury coaches, maintaining all our vehicles, driving buses, providing customer services, fleet management, assisting passengers, account management, or overseeing quality control
  5. Qualifications, HGV licences, personality traits, and soft skills
  6. Job location – site-based, region, city, or remote
  7. Salary range and employee benefit and perks – check the average salary range here for roles such as staff transportation controller, logistics manager, bus or coach hire driver, etc
  8. Next steps – applicants should email xxx or apply via your careers page

We recommend that SMEs use a job advert template to get down the basics if the role and then fill in more detail on the unique aspects of your role and team.

How To Hire All Transportation Staff

HOW TO HIRE A WAREHOUSE PROFESSIONAL

To hire a Warehouse Professional, it is helpful to describe the extent of your warehousing facility and the shift patterns the individual should expect. Applicants may require specific qualifications, so it is crucial to state if the person should have a forklift truck licence.

You can entice candidates by describing the role’s core responsibilities, such as picking orders from bays, preparing orders for dispatch, monitoring stock levels, conducting audits, following health and safety guidelines, and performing quality checks.

Warehouse Job Description Example

Post A Warehouse Job

HOW TO HIRE A WAREHOUSE OPERATIVE

To hire a Warehouse Operative, describe your team and the type of products and materials stored in the facility. Personal traits and experience may form part of your candidate profile, including physical stamina for long periods of standing or walking, database and stock system familiarity, or a forklift driving licence.

Attractive parts of the job include liaising with truck drivers and couriers, readying orders for collection, putting parts and products into stock, using portable stock control devices, conducting audits, and following safety guidelines and regulations.

Warehouse Operative Job Description Example

Post A Warehouse Operative Job

HOW TO HIRE CABIN CREW

To hire Cabin Crew, you will need to promote good working conditions and the average salary and career development opportunities. Entry requirements are strict, so include these in your job ad. Applicants will need to be over sixteen years of age, be able to swim, have good eyesight and hearing, and pass both a medical exam and barring service check.

The appealing tasks for cabin crew include welcoming flyers onto the aircraft, demonstrating the correct use of safety equipment, making pre-flight cabin checks, relaying information over the announcement system, administering first aid, handling complaints, selling refreshments and duty-free, and staying overnight during layaways.

Cabin Crew Job Description Example

Post A Cabin Crew Job

HOW TO HIRE A DELIVERY DRIVER

To hire a Delivery Driver, your job ad should communicate crucial information such as shifts (days, nights, or weekends), pay, vehicle types and the extent of routes. You can advertise for owner-operators, employ individuals with relevant licences, or provide driver training.

Download Job Advert Template

Compelling elements of the job include following routes and schedules, delivering small or large goods, processing customer payments, completing paperwork and reports, delivering customer service, handling collections, and managing complaints.

Delivery Driver Job Description Example

Post A Delivery Driver Job

HOW TO HIRE A LOGISTICS MANAGER

To hire a Logistics Manager, you may need to advertise the role on multiple or niche job boards. State your requirements, which might include a supply chain, logistics, or business administration degree or previous leadership experience.

Logistics managers oversee the logistics hub and its employees, handling duties such as negotiating contracts, entering data using logistics software, creating schedules, authorising leave, conducting appraisals, ensuring health and safety, route planning, managing costs, and quality assurance. 

Logistics Manager Job Description Example

Post A Logistics Manager Job

HOW TO HIRE A WAREHOUSE MANAGER

To hire a Warehouse Manager, start by creating a short company overview and provide a link to your company website. Job board advertising should include your must-haves, such as a logistics degree or warehouse management software experience.

Appealing aspects of the role include mentoring junior warehouse operatives, planning staff rotas, performing risk assessments, conducting performance reviews, distributing daily tasks, ensuring safety, and liaising with drivers, factory personnel, and suppliers.

Warehouse Manager Job Description Example

Post A Warehouse Manager Job

Advertising Your Transportation Department Positions: Referral Schemes, Social Media, & Job Boards

Advertising To Attract Delivery And Bus Drivers

With your transport job ad in hand, you are ready to find your new bus driver, courier, or transportation professional. Your transportation recruitment strategy might include posting your advert:

Internally (Employee Referral Schemes)

A non-incentivised or incentivised staff referral scheme is extremely valuable when you want to hire committed employees. You will turn your current staff into motivated recruiters, sharing that you are hiring new employees across their social and professional networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter).

Employee referral schemes often bring in the most promising candidates, with your team’s connections including like-minded professionals and industry contacts. To engage this hiring strategy, businesses should share their job descriptions with their workers and reward successful referrals.

You can discover many tips on referral schemes by reading Introducing An Employee Referral Scheme.

On Social Media

Hiring coach drivers and transportation staff through social media is effective, with free and paid advertising strategies. To boost your odds of success, ensure your social media messaging is consistent with your employer brand and conveys a positive image. An active social media channel is helpful if you want to build a community of professionals just waiting for an opportunity to join your business. Recommended activity includes posting news, expert opinions, updates, and industry insights.

Our advice for implementing a successful social media hiring strategy include:

  • Marketing yourself first
  • Joining industry networks and groups
  • Engaging with respondents and nurturing discussions
  • Using advanced search tools and Recruiter Lite on LinkedIn
  • Using Twitter’s advanced search tool and direct messaging
  • Building activity on your company’s Facebook page and encouraging engagement from existing employees, turning them into business advocates

We discuss finding qualified employees through social media further in our articles Social Media Hiring Strategies For SMEs and Job Advertising On Social Media.

On Job Boards

Whether your new hire is your first hire or your hundredth, advertising on job boards is essential if you want to hire in an acceptable timeframe. You can post transportation jobs on one job board, or many using an Applicant Tracking System. Job board resellers help you advertise your transportation jobs across multiple general, niche, and geographical job boards using their integrated ATS service, minimising the hassle and time of developing quality leads and hiring individuals with extensive experience.

Download Job Advert Template

Leading General Job Boards:

Niche Transportation Industry Job Posting Sites:

Aggregator Job Sites:

Geographical Job Sites:

You can advertise your job on these job boards today.

Reducing Hiring Costs: Recruitment Companies & ATS

Reducing Business Expenses And Hiring Costs For HGV And Bus Drivers

Budgets, deadlines, and administration require careful consideration whenever you instigate the recruitment process. To get the best results, you may decide to work with a recruiting firm with a UK wide focus, a global recruitment partner, or a niche transportation recruitment firm.

We discuss agency fees and recruiters in these two articles; How To Avoid High Recruitment Agency Fees and The Pros And Cons Of Having A Recruiter On Retainer.

Fixed Cost Recruitment

Fixed-cost recruitment allows you to hire at a flat fee governed by the level of service and functionality you desire.

The success of fixed-cost recruitment depends on the company offering the service, the methodologies they deploy, and their expertise and knowledge of your industry or business sector. You will need to determine which actions you need assistance with to use flat-fee recruitment successfully.

Four steps to leveraging fixed fee recruitment to hire transport services workers:

  1. Place ads across leading job boards
  2. Search CV databases and social media channels
  3. Headhunt and shortlist potential staff
  4. Receive interviewed and qualified candidates

Useful resources:

Applicant Tracking Systems

Automatic Tracking Systems can significantly reduce the costs of hiring by creating efficiency. Candidate, vacancy, and advert management fall within the software’s parameters. Team access creates a unified place to work, helping you build a seamless hiring process and candidate experience.

Five steps to centralising recruitment with an ATS service:

  1. Find and contact staff online
  2. Review candidate scores
  3. Contact or distribute personalised messages to a large candidate pool
  4. Automate responses
  5. Direct candidates to application forms

To explore all the features and benefits of Automatic Tracking Systems, read Centralising Recruitment With ATS.

Screening Job Seekers & Conducting Interviews

Screening And Interviewing Bus Driver And Transportation Managers

Before your interview process commences, you need to shortlist drivers and office staff by reviewing their CVs or resumes. Indications that you have an individual worth interviewing include:

  • Quantifiable evidence of past achievements, driving performance, and skills
  • The individual has steady career progression
  • The candidate is committed and not job-hopping
  • The CV is free from spelling and grammatical errors
  • The candidate has the relevant business experience and skills to meet the job requirements

Decision-makers and hiring managers need to be prepared to deliver a consistent interview experience. It helps to ask the same interview questions to each driver or office worker, to aid candidate scoring. Ensure anyone who has candidate contact is on the same page and understands the brand’s vision, values and opportunities. Interviews should be challenging, supportive, positive, and engaging.

Download Job Advert Template

Video interviews are an increasingly popular recruitment solution, saving on resources and speeding up the driver recruitment process. Video sharing, shortlisting, and feedback from hiring and line managers ultimately generate more successful outcomes. If your office has not conducted a video interview before, read How To Conduct A Remote Interview.

Our article Defining Your Interview Process, discusses interview questions, avoiding unconscious bias, and interviewing tips.

Presenting A Job Offer & Onboarding Transportation Hires

Presenting A Job Offer And Hiring The Right Bus And Lorry Drivers

When you have finished interviewing drivers or transportation staff and believe you have the right person for your vacancy, you will need to present an offer and onboard the candidate:

Making An Offer

The process of presenting the offer to drivers or logistics professionals varies depending on what has occurred before. If you don’t already understand the individual’s current earnings, expectations are better managed over the phone. Phone offers should be confident but be prepared to make changes if the individual’s circumstances have changed. Reaffirm that the driver or candidate is happy with the offer, clarify their acceptance, and proceed to a formal written offer, in the same way you would for any hire.

A formal offer letter from your firm can be conditional (dependent on a background check, etc) or unconditional and should include:

  • Job title
  • Candidate name
  • Your conditions – i.e., this offer is made subject to…
  • Official start date, time, and location
  • Probationary period
  • Offer terms
  • Candidate actions and acceptance instructions – i.e., request a signed copy of the employment offer
  • Terms and conditions of employment (issued within two months of the start date)

You can read further on Presenting A Job Offer here.

Onboarding Bus Drivers And Logistics Workers

The onboarding process should support the drivers as they become part of your team.

Actions that benefit onboarding driving and office staff might include:

  • Creating an staff identification number
  • Presenting the driver with an employee handbook
  • An office tour, introducing the person to their manager, other drivers, and senior executives
  • Informing the driver or office worker of the communication methods and what network access software is used
  • Presenting clear responsibilities and duties
  • Defining new role expectations, service quality standards, and performance indicators
  • Gathering feedback from the new bus or vehicle driver

How To Recruit Transportation Staff FAQs

Here we answer your transportation staff hiring questions.

What are the job titles of transportation staff?

Job titles for staff in the transportation field include:

1. Bus Driver
2. Warehouse Operative
3. Cabin Crew
4. Van Driver
5. Tow Truck Driver
6. Courier
7. Bus Driver
8. Taxi Driver
9. Logistics Manager
10. Delivery Driver
11. Bike Courier

What are driver services?

Driver services depend on the vehicle (bus, lorry, or van) and might include:

1. Driving throughout the UK’s busy road network
2. Taking payment from passengers and ensuring quality customer service (bus driver)
3. Driving vehicles on site
4. Maintaining an excellent driver record
5. Maintaining bus depot and office contact via a communications network

Where can I advertise passenger transport and bus hire jobs?

To ensure you are hiring the best driver candidates, your ads should appear on:

1. Job boards
2. Social media
3. Your company careers page
4. Niche job sites

How To Hire Staff In Different Sectors

Find our recruitment guides for different sectors below:

All Transportation Job Descriptions

Post All Transportation Jobs

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