Being A Recruiter

by Cheryl
(Port Richey, Fl U.S.A.)

I drove trucks in the 80's and 90's for 17 years. And in those days, you only had to deal with one dispatcher or DM's as they are called today. And when you wanted to look for another job, you had to actually hunt down a recruiter or called the company yourself to find what was open.
Now..you go on places like Facebook, Ziprecruiter, Indeed and Glassdoor for example and you see ad after ad with pretty much the same type of openings, just worded differently.
After I got out of the truck in 2000, I worked internally in trucking companies doing billing, customer service, dispatching, scheduling..you name it and I learned how to do it. Then I retired and a friend called me and asked if I thought about recruiting. "Sure" I said, and have been doing it for almost 9 years.
Now, this is a whole new ball game. You have to create your own ads, you have to make sure you have at least 90% of the answers when a driver calls you AND for the most part, you have to be honest with these guys or you're going to have one pissed off driver and gain a bad name for yourself.
BUT, when you talk to a driver and you ask all the questions you need to in order to qualify him/her, you expect the same from them..honest and accurate answers. Eh! wrong answer driver...we get the info from the driver after asking many many questions only to find out they, didn't tell you about that accident or oops...they have a felony.
Recruiting takes a lot more than you realize. And when we give you information for a job, the information comes from the company then we have to give you what they tell us. Oh, and sometimes they leave little things that really matter out of the job description and when the companies processor says "Oh, the recruiter didn't tell you or No, that not what the recruiter said" The driver puts it all on the recruiter. We take a lot of riff from drivers and take the blame of the companies a lot. And believe it or not, but you will hear more untruth from a companies recruiter than you will from an independent recruiter. I know this because I will call that company and pretend to be a driver and ask a lot more questions, then wait a day or two later and call them back and sometimes ask those same questions to make sure I am getting the right answers or ask a whole new line of questions.
I don't know about other recruiters, but I work for the driver. If I get my commission GREAT, if I don't because i sent a driver to a company that I don't recruit for, then so be it...I found that driver a job and I'm happy with that.
So, if you want a good recruiter, tell the truth about everything.
I know it's hard for you guys to find the right job and I also know it's hard to look through ads and magazines while on the road and if you could just make that one call and talk to a trusted recruiter to help you with your search, that would take a lot off of you.
So, how do you find that recruiter that isn't going to lie to you and make up their own job descriptions? Let me put it like this...it's a chance you have to take, just like getting in that truck and pulling out with that load..you are taking a chance that all goes well and you get home safe.
It's tough out there (been there, done it) but it's tough on this side of the world too.
Ask around for good recruiters. I'm sure your friends have worked with a good one. And you can look me up as well if you want. If I can't find you a place, I know people that can.
Oh, one other thing..if you aren't interested in a job, be honest about that also. When you ignore a recruiter, it makes it worse than when you started.
We aren't all bad people and me being a former driver, I surely am not going to send you to a bad company and if it does happen, that company will hear it from me because they falsified something in that job description. You got questions? Ask away, leave your contact information f you want and I will call, text or write you back.