Company says recruiting ‘outsourcing’ needed to recoup costs of non-hires

The Trucker News Services

4/29/2010

MTS Driver Recruiters, a provider of recruitment process outsourcing to the transportation industry, says it is seeing “an upsurge in business due to the struggling economy.” MTS reported in a news release that the increase in demand for outsourced driver-recruiting comes from the heightened need for large fleets to find ways to cut costs and streamline operations.

While "non-hire" recruiting costs may seem like an unlikely place to look for cost saving opportunities, the release stated, “many managers believe that, by eliminating the costs associated with the people they don't hire, they have found a hidden treasure, capable of returning considerable dollars to their bottom lines.”

MTS Driver Recruiters said that fleets that have normally had difficulty recruiting enough drivers to effectively sustain fleet operations are now seeing an increasing number of driver applicants. While that increase in traffic has been an enormous benefit to those fleets from the standpoint of selection, it has also required more resources to manage.

“No one could have guessed 18 months ago, that a shift towards a surplus of drivers in the market could result in anything other than a reduction in driver recruiting expenditures,” said Ken Walker, MTS driver recruiters. “However, savvy fleet managers are noting that the influx of inquiries is putting an increasing strain on the resources needed to manage the flow of interested candidates, most of whom are not qualified and are never hired.”

Human resource experts refer to this unusable segment of candidate flow as “non-hire traffic” and report that though it is the most significant portion of the total recruiting expenditure, it is rarely recognized or quantified, according to MTS. “Typically, only costs directly associated with filling a position, such as advertising, are captured when quantifying recruiting costs. Industry experts report that on average, non-hire screening costs account for 95-97 percent of the entire recruiting expenditure,” the release stated. “With this in mind, many innovative fleets are now targeting the elimination of non-hire screening through outsourcing as an opportunity to add dollars back to their businesses.”

One of the most significant benefits of outsourcing some portion of the driver-recruiting function is that in most outsourced driver-recruiting relationships the recruiting vendor absorbs the cost of the non-hire screening element and delivers only hirable candidates who have been screened in accordance with the fleet's normal standards.

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