[0:02] Jodie Lethgo: proactively out there looking for jobs, and they're going to be comparing your company to other companies, but let's not be narrow-minded and think they're only comparing their your company to other non-emergency companies.
[0:16] Nirav Chheda: [music] with the co-founder of Career Driver, Jodi Lethco.
[0:35] Nirav Chheda: Uh Jody, would you like to quickly introduce yourself?
[0:38] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me today, Nirav.
[0:41] Jodie Lethgo: Happy to be here with you talking about one of the issues that I hear seems to plague a lot of our clients in the industry.
[0:47] Jodie Lethgo: We're going to be talking about driver recruiting today.
[0:50] Jodie Lethgo: Um, we'll probably touch on driver retention a bit today as well.
[0:55] Jodie Lethgo: If you're not familiar with Career Driver, Career Driver is a driver recruiting agency.
[1:01] Jodie Lethgo: We work in the non-emergency space as well as a few other sectors.
[1:05] Jodie Lethgo: We also work in taxi, so if anyone's got taxi, we can help out there.
[1:10] Jodie Lethgo: We work with um limo and with motor coach and delivery as well.
[1:16] Jodie Lethgo: But we are in the business of placing drivers.
[1:20] Jodie Lethgo: We do everything from the driver lead generation all the way through vetting and screening, interviewing, coordinating interviews and getting them in the driver's seat.
[1:30] Jodie Lethgo: So all the way Thanks, Jody.
[1:33] Nirav Chheda: And you know, I'm especially excited about this talk today because, you know, at Bambi, we have customers across the country who run non-emergency medical transportation businesses.
[1:43] Nirav Chheda: And the number one consistent thing we hear across NEMT companies across the country is it's hard to hire drivers.
[1:53] Nirav Chheda: It's hard to keep drivers. And this is exactly what you help any businesses do.
[1:59] Nirav Chheda: and I met you at the NEMTAC conference where you gave a really good talk about all of the best tips and practices that NMT companies can actually do on a regular basis to make sure that whenever they need
[2:15] Nirav Chheda: to hire they're best positioned to do so and you know they continue to do things to keep those drivers retained which is probably overlooked.
[2:25] Nirav Chheda: Um, so I mean without further ado, um, I'd love to I'd love for you to share, you know, the story first of of how you started Career Driver and even got into doing this.
[2:39] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah. So, thank you first off for giving me all that credit for all those great and wonderful ideas, but I can't take credit for everything that I share.
[2:47] Jodie Lethgo: U, my background is actually in the trucking industry.
[2:50] Jodie Lethgo: So, for anyone who's familiar with what's been happening in the trucking industry over the last two or three decades, they've had a severe shortage of truck drivers, um, understandably so.
[3:01] Jodie Lethgo: It's not the most appealing job to be working over the road away from your family, living out of a tiny truck.
[3:09] Jodie Lethgo: So, the industry itself has had to adapt.
[3:12] Jodie Lethgo: They've adapted and come up with some very creative ways and some very advanced ways of just working through and streamlining their driver recruiting and they take driver retention very seriously as well.
[3:25] Jodie Lethgo: So they do a lot and employ a lot of tactics to try to keep drivers happy and that's where we pulled a lot of our learnings from.
[3:34] Jodie Lethgo: My background is actually in marketing and then in trucking.
[3:39] Jodie Lethgo: So, [laughter] right out of college, I ended up working for Caesar's Entertainment in their marketing department.
[3:45] Jodie Lethgo: So, got a taste of marketing there and just through working in the casino industry, met a lot of really cool, great people and ended up going to work for one of those cool, wonderful people.
[3:57] Jodie Lethgo: So, I worked in the trucking industry for close to eight years with those folks that I had met there, this couple that owned um a trucking company, a logistics company, a limousine company, an equipment leasing company, and a
[4:14] Jodie Lethgo: class A CDL training facility. So, they were in a little bit of everything in the transportation world.
[4:21] Jodie Lethgo: And in total, you know, they had about 150 trucks out over the road.
[4:26] Jodie Lethgo: They had anywhere between 50 and 100 vehicles in the chauffeur fleet out at any given time.
[4:33] Jodie Lethgo: Um, and they had a little over a thousand trailers.
[4:36] Jodie Lethgo: We'd be tracking all over the country with between all the logistics things we had going on.
[4:41] Jodie Lethgo: So, a lot of exposure to every area of transportation.
[4:46] Jodie Lethgo: And in that time, I worked in all of the areas of the business.
[4:52] Jodie Lethgo: You know, I was exposed to everything from all of the tactics in recruiting and what made recruiting in the trucking industry so unique.
[5:00] Jodie Lethgo: I had been exposed to recruiting through the casino industry with Caesars, but it was just completely different.
[5:07] Jodie Lethgo: It was absolutely just completely flipped on its head in the trucking industry.
[5:12] Jodie Lethgo: So, we deployed those same tactics in recruiting on the limousine side as well, which is where my co-founder Simon Curtis comes from is from the marketing side in the limo industry and taxi industry.
[5:25] Jodie Lethgo: So, we put our heads together and we were like, "Hey, you're really great at digital marketing, generating driver leads, and I've got experience in doing recruiting and all of the tactics to get folks in the pipeline through recruiting."
[5:38] Jodie Lethgo: And we put our heads together and Career Driver was born.
[5:42] Jodie Lethgo: So, we've been in business now for about as long as Bambi's been in business.
[5:47] Jodie Lethgo: So, we're still in our infancy, but we are around 50 clients now.
[5:54] Jodie Lethgo: Um, we offer packages all the way from just generating leads to getting a bit more involved and helping with the interviews all the way to the full end toend recruiting process where we are running MVRs.
[6:08] Jodie Lethgo: We're sending people for drug screens.
[6:10] Jodie Lethgo: We're even running people through training programs to get them on boarded with some of the brokers in the NEMt space.
[6:17] Jodie Lethgo: So, we do a little bit of everything.
[6:19] Jodie Lethgo: We tailor our packages to what our clients really need.
[6:24] Jodie Lethgo: So yeah, that's the um I guess short story there of how Career Driver came to be.
[6:31] Nirav Chheda: Yeah, thanks for sharing that. It seems like with your background in Simons, you guys are the dream team for helping transport companies find drivers.
[6:40] Nirav Chheda: There's there's nobody who has the better set of like experiences and background to do this.
[6:46] Nirav Chheda: Um so you've been doing this for as long as Bambi's been around, as you mentioned.
[6:51] Nirav Chheda: you racked up like a pretty impressive not only number but type of clients and I know several of them and you know you work with some of the most prominent non-emergency medical transport companies in the country.
[7:04] Nirav Chheda: Um can you tell me a bit about this?
[7:07] Nirav Chheda: So, you know, you help all kinds of transport companies find drivers, whether it be trucking, taxi, NEM.
[7:15] Nirav Chheda: What do you sort of find as you know, the key differences, if any, with non-emergency medical transport versus the other transport industries you work Yeah.
[7:26] Jodie Lethgo: So, in the chauffeur space in particular, it's more so focused on customer service.
[7:33] Jodie Lethgo: In fact, I hear all the time from those clients, you always ask, you know, what background do you see people converting over from that work out well?
[7:40] Jodie Lethgo: And they're always like, hospitality, we love hotel workers.
[7:43] Jodie Lethgo: We love people who have worked for TIPS in the past because they have a different level of customer service.
[7:48] Jodie Lethgo: Now, in the non-emergency side, it's we're looking for very caring people, people who are passionate.
[7:56] Jodie Lethgo: They are caring and patient people.
[7:59] Jodie Lethgo: So that one it's we're screening more for soft skills rather than your job history when it comes to the non-emergency side.
[8:07] Jodie Lethgo: Now across the board, driving record is a big thing.
[8:11] Jodie Lethgo: You know, drug screens, that's a big thing.
[8:13] Jodie Lethgo: That's a real hot topic, especially as weed becomes legalized in marijuana in many states.
[8:19] Jodie Lethgo: So that's always something we're screening for as well as your criminal background.
[8:24] Jodie Lethgo: Uh but you know that really big differentiating factor for us is those folks in the chauffeur space and even in the motor coach space have to have a different level of customer service background than what we're seeing in
[8:36] Jodie Lethgo: the non-emergency space. Thanks for sharing.
[8:41] Nirav Chheda: And you know, one thing that I want to dive into about what career driver does for any empty companies and one of the sort of lessons that you instill and you made a big point about this at your
[8:54] Nirav Chheda: NEMTAC talk um is that hiring is an always on thing.
[9:00] Nirav Chheda: Even if you don't need drivers right now, you still have to be doing the hiring practices.
[9:06] Nirav Chheda: Um, and I would just love for you to share about why that's so important to have this always on mindset in terms of Yes.
[9:17] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah. Thank you for bringing that up.
[9:19] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah, that's a really great point and that really goes down to your your company branding and your culture and just putting on your your outward image to the world.
[9:31] Jodie Lethgo: You know, in today's day and age, everybody has access to the internet right at their fingertips.
[9:37] Jodie Lethgo: You have access to so much.
[9:39] Jodie Lethgo: You know, when I first applied to my very first job with Caesars, there wasn't a whole whole lot online you could find about them.
[9:46] Jodie Lethgo: In fact, I had to go in and fill out an actual written application and go do an interview in person.
[9:52] Jodie Lethgo: Whereas today, it's, oh, let me send you a link.
[9:55] Jodie Lethgo: But then these people are going to go and they're going to go Google your company.
[9:58] Jodie Lethgo: They're going to go look at your Facebook.
[10:00] Jodie Lethgo: They're going to look at your glass door reviews.
[10:02] Jodie Lethgo: You know, they're gonna want to see what you're doing at your company.
[10:06] Jodie Lethgo: They want to see what your company culture looks like.
[10:09] Jodie Lethgo: And the thing that I always remind everybody across every sector that I work in, the people that we are recruiting, those candidates, they're probably proactively out there looking for jobs, and they're going to be comparing your company to
[10:23] Jodie Lethgo: other companies. But let's not be narrow-minded and think they're only comparing their your company to other non-emergency companies.
[10:31] Jodie Lethgo: You know, the truth is most of the people that we're placing, they've come from entry-level jobs.
[10:37] Jodie Lethgo: You know, they're being wooed by Amazon.
[10:41] Jodie Lethgo: You know, Walmart might be trying to hire them.
[10:43] Jodie Lethgo: McDonald's could be hiring them. And you better believe that Amazon's got a call center of people that are going to be talking to those people immediately and be coaxing them.
[10:54] Jodie Lethgo: And if you go look at an Amazon social media, you know, Walmart, they they're these big mega companies, but we have an advantage there where we can really play on.
[11:04] Jodie Lethgo: We're homegrown. We're family businesses. And in fact, you know, that's one of the big things that our clients love to talk about when I on board them.
[11:13] Jodie Lethgo: We do a deep dive of all of our clients and we ask them, "What's so great, unique, and wonderful about working for your company?
[11:21] Jodie Lethgo: how can we as marketeers, you know, make your company appealing?
[11:25] Jodie Lethgo: And they're always like, we're familyowned and operated, like everybody, you know, in the office is like family.
[11:32] Jodie Lethgo: And I'm like, that's amazing. I love that.
[11:34] Jodie Lethgo: But let's do more to portray that.
[11:36] Jodie Lethgo: Like, how can you as a company, you know, put that image out there online?
[11:42] Jodie Lethgo: So when people are looking at, you know, John Smith's NMT company versus going to work driving for Amazon or going to work for some other mega company here in Louisville, I always use the example of UPS.
[11:54] Jodie Lethgo: You know, you can go through packages at UPS.
[11:57] Jodie Lethgo: Like, why should I go work for these familyowned businesses?
[12:00] Jodie Lethgo: And those businesses are the ones telling me, "That's why you should come work for us." And it's just as simple as on your social media pages, share the things that you're doing.
[12:11] Jodie Lethgo: A lot of these companies do a lot in the community, you know, around the holidays especially, they're out there doing different things with charities and just putting themselves out there in the community.
[12:21] Jodie Lethgo: Showcase that stuff, you know, get your employees involved in that stuff so we can showcase those employees doing things in the community.
[12:31] Jodie Lethgo: Um, we've got some clients that do some really cool things.
[12:34] Jodie Lethgo: Uh, we have a client in New York.
[12:37] Jodie Lethgo: There's a JFK 5K where they actually run the runway at JFK and they went out there, the company went out there and they sponsored some of their chauffeurs to run in this and they were at the finish line
[12:50] Jodie Lethgo: taking photos and it made their social media.
[12:54] Jodie Lethgo: But it's just little things like that.
[12:56] Jodie Lethgo: But you don't have to go, you know, sponsor someone running a 5K on an airport runway.
[13:01] Jodie Lethgo: It could be just employee spotlight or hey, here's our our team that's backing all of our drivers, you know, our great and wonderful evening dispatch team and do driver spotlights.
[13:14] Jodie Lethgo: Talk about the drivers that are doing things and testimonials are one of the best things you can get from your current employees.
[13:22] Jodie Lethgo: Use that on social media like longtime driver and here's what he has to say.
[13:26] Jodie Lethgo: what just a sentence or two, a quote about what he likes about the company.
[13:31] Jodie Lethgo: You know, a driver saying that this is a family business versus the owner saying, "I run a family business goes a long way." But it's not just your social media channels.
[13:42] Jodie Lethgo: There's other ways you can portray that.
[13:45] Jodie Lethgo: A lot of companies that we talk to don't even have a hiring page on their website.
[13:50] Jodie Lethgo: You know, we build websites. We come up with all the different pages we're going to have and we run into so many companies that don't even have a landing page where you can go to find out about the
[14:01] Jodie Lethgo: jobs that they're currently hiring for.
[14:04] Jodie Lethgo: There's not a link to an application.
[14:06] Jodie Lethgo: There's no testimonials. There's no photos about why you should work for us or benefits.
[14:12] Jodie Lethgo: But those are all things that you can easily do.
[14:16] Jodie Lethgo: just creating an employee employer landing page, showcasing some of your employees, giving some quotes, giving your company benefits all about driving for your company, and then link them to the application.
[14:30] Jodie Lethgo: And as you're doing those posts on social media, you can always utilize that landing page as a tool to drive traffic back to that landing page.
[14:39] Jodie Lethgo: So as people come across these posts, you know, they're seeing all these great and wonderful things, they can click and follow through and get to an application.
[14:49] Jodie Lethgo: So yeah, I think I went down a bit of a rabbit hole there, Nirav, but no, not at all.
[14:55] Nirav Chheda: I mean, I was just about to say like what all you're saying like this is not to be underestimated at all.
[15:02] Nirav Chheda: Like this is the critical thing that every single NMT company needs to be doing all the time.
[15:08] Nirav Chheda: And like you mentioned at the beginning, we were going to talk about not only driver hiring, but driver retention.
[15:13] Nirav Chheda: And this is a pretty important plays right into it.
[15:17] Nirav Chheda: Yeah. Do you want to just talk about retention a bit?
[15:22] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah, I'd love to talk about retention a little bit.
[15:24] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah. And so, you know, the thing is we work again across all of these sectors and I hear things from all of the companies we work with that they're doing to help retain their drivers and they can all
[15:37] Jodie Lethgo: be applied across the board. And I do apologize because my cat just jumped in my lap and he meowed.
[15:42] Jodie Lethgo: So, you might have to edit out my cat meowing.
[15:45] Nirav Chheda: [laughter] I might not do that.
[15:49] Jodie Lethgo: Hey, that's okay. That's okay. He's He's got a Christmas bow tie on, so if he makes an appearance, it'll be very festive.
[15:56] Jodie Lethgo: His name's Patrick Sees, and he thinks he just needs to always be involved in my Zoom calls.
[16:02] Jodie Lethgo: So, apologies for that. [laughter] Always a distraction, but utilizing your social media channels goes a long way for your retention.
[16:13] Jodie Lethgo: And you know, showcasing drivers that cost you nothing to do to showcase drivers and that makes them feel in feel pride in what they do and it shows that you care.
[16:26] Jodie Lethgo: But, you know, there's a lot of things that companies can be doing to aid in retention.
[16:30] Jodie Lethgo: There's not like a one-sizefits-all for everyone.
[16:33] Jodie Lethgo: And I do think it is very tailored to the culture of the company.
[16:37] Jodie Lethgo: And it's forming the culture ultimately that does drive retention.
[16:41] Jodie Lethgo: is just creating an environment where people are vested in staying.
[16:47] Jodie Lethgo: They believe in the company and they believe in what they're doing.
[16:51] Jodie Lethgo: And you know, we do try very hard to find [laughter] um people who are compassionate about what they're doing here.
[17:00] Jodie Lethgo: You know, it is a job where you get to help people.
[17:02] Jodie Lethgo: So we do try to find people that are caring and kind and fit the scope of this role, but that doesn't, you know, retain somebody if they're unhappy with the culture of the company.
[17:15] Jodie Lethgo: So working on your culture is really the biggest driver of retention and building a culture that comes from the top.
[17:23] Jodie Lethgo: So, you know, those owners that we're talking to that are talking about the familyoriented business, a lot of them, they truly do have a family oriented business, but it's just ensuring that all the way down everybody feels like
[17:37] Jodie Lethgo: they are part of that company's family.
[17:40] Jodie Lethgo: And some of the things that we hear that make these families feel these companies feel more familyike is um support forums.
[17:50] Jodie Lethgo: So, you know, just WhatsApp groups or text chains where everybody is involved in it and can I'm sorry.
[17:58] Jodie Lethgo: I'm gonna kick him off the counter.
[18:00] Jodie Lethgo: [laughter] like popping in and out.
[18:06] Jodie Lethgo: [laughter] And I do apologize up front for um you having to do a little extra editing.
[18:12] Jodie Lethgo: I actually gave him No, not at all.
[18:14] Nirav Chheda: I won't edit any of this out.
[18:16] Jodie Lethgo: Catherine is killing it here. But a lot of the companies that we work with, you know, they're just missing a few little things as far as making that outreach so that everybody does feel like part of their family.
[18:29] Jodie Lethgo: And some of the things I've seen that drivers tend to really like are those support groups.
[18:35] Jodie Lethgo: So, we've got some companies that have just a group chat or a group WhatsApp.
[18:40] Jodie Lethgo: Um, we've got a client that does coffee mornings.
[18:43] Jodie Lethgo: They just bring coffee in and because all the drivers are starting around the same time and you can just come in and chat with any of the the owners, directors, managers and they're just going to hand free coffee
[18:56] Jodie Lethgo: out to the drivers. So they do some various things such as I've heard uh one client that does a card night.
[19:03] Jodie Lethgo: So it just happened on accident.
[19:05] Jodie Lethgo: the owner stayed after on a Friday evening and was playing cards with some of the drivers and it became to be an expectation.
[19:13] Jodie Lethgo: So, it's just a weekend thing.
[19:15] Jodie Lethgo: After people park their cars, they'll stay off the clock and hang out together and play cards.
[19:21] Jodie Lethgo: But that's company culture. It's creating an environment that's unique to your company and that comes from top down and from other management within the company.
[19:32] Nirav Chheda: Yeah. I mean this is all fundamental and really important stuff which is make your company an attractive place to actually work and then make your company look like an attractive place to work by putting it out there you
[19:49] Nirav Chheda: know on the internet which it already is an attractive place because you actually made it like that but you also have to capture that so that new drivers see that.
[19:57] Nirav Chheda: So Jody, can you do this for me?
[20:00] Nirav Chheda: Paint me a picture of the ideal scenario that an NEMT company, you know, goes through.
[20:07] Nirav Chheda: Like the ideal process, let's say there's a company that has six vehicles and six drivers.
[20:13] Nirav Chheda: Business is expanding. They're getting a seventh vehicle.
[20:16] Nirav Chheda: They need to hire that seventh driver, right?
[20:19] Nirav Chheda: um you know they paint a good picture of what the company culture is like by putting on social media and the internet about you know nice things about the company and now they have to actually bring in job
[20:32] Nirav Chheda: candidates and fill that role. What what is the process like how would it ideally go?
[20:38] Jodie Lethgo: Yes. So first you got to start by getting leads.
[20:41] Jodie Lethgo: So you need to have leads in your funnel.
[20:43] Jodie Lethgo: So it's a funnel is what it is.
[20:45] Jodie Lethgo: is, you know, you've got all these leads at the top of the funnel and then you start vetting through those leads and that funnel you get down to the smaller smaller parts of the funnel.
[20:53] Jodie Lethgo: As you're vetting leads through the funnel and ultimately at the end, you know, popping out of the end of the funnel are going to be those folks that you end up hiring.
[21:02] Jodie Lethgo: But that's how we think of it is as a funnel.
[21:05] Jodie Lethgo: And to get those leads into the top of that funnel there, you've got to have some lead generation sources.
[21:11] Jodie Lethgo: So most people are very familiar with Indeed.
[21:14] Jodie Lethgo: They're very familiar with Zip Recruiter, with Monster.
[21:17] Jodie Lethgo: Those are all means of getting leads into the top of your funnel.
[21:21] Jodie Lethgo: Now, I will say those folks are very proactively looking for jobs.
[21:26] Jodie Lethgo: So, when you put your company out there on a job board, just bear in mind we do treat those a bit differently than some of the other sources we use because those candidates are applying to multiple jobs.
[21:37] Jodie Lethgo: I can't tell you how many times my recruiters have gotten on the phone and for anyone listening to this who calls is the first line of defense calling those people.
[21:45] Jodie Lethgo: Uh which job is this again?
[21:46] Jodie Lethgo: Or they're getting their facts mixed up from other jobs they've applied to.
[21:51] Jodie Lethgo: So it's very obvious these folks are mass applying to multiple jobs when you're working on job boards.
[21:58] Jodie Lethgo: That's why we come up with diverse channels where we generate our leads.
[22:02] Jodie Lethgo: Now our biggest source of leads is through social media.
[22:06] Jodie Lethgo: Social media allows us to be a lot more targeted with our leads.
[22:10] Jodie Lethgo: For any client that I've onboarded, I always ask them, "What's your ideal driver?" And then I'll start asking some questions about where's the what background did they come from?
[22:21] Jodie Lethgo: You know, what jobs would these people be working?
[22:24] Jodie Lethgo: What age range, you know, what area are they living in?
[22:28] Jodie Lethgo: Because we can be a lot more targeted on social media with who we're going after.
[22:32] Jodie Lethgo: So we'll create a driver profile to help us target those folks and we are the ones being proactive in that instance.
[22:41] Jodie Lethgo: So for you know we're looking for for chauffeur is probably the easiest example I can give you guys is hospitality.
[22:49] Jodie Lethgo: So you know we're going to be targeting people who tend to work in the hospitality sector.
[22:54] Jodie Lethgo: you know, for depending on the company.
[22:57] Jodie Lethgo: We're going to be looking for people who might have some experience doing some home care, um, might have some experience doing some hospitality work as well because they're trained in how to talk to people or they're accustomed to
[23:10] Jodie Lethgo: working very closely with people to try to vet out people using the soft skills.
[23:15] Jodie Lethgo: But go just continuing off that discussion about lead generation sources.
[23:21] Jodie Lethgo: You know, we're proactively targeting people on the driver profiles we're creating and we're presenting them with a job opportunity.
[23:29] Jodie Lethgo: It's like, hey, you weren't necessarily looking for a job, but you meet our profile and our criteria, so we're targeting you.
[23:37] Jodie Lethgo: And if our ad is catchy enough to catch their eye, then we'll present them, then they'll put their information in and that's another lead in our pipeline.
[23:48] Jodie Lethgo: So, we have various means of getting leads into the top of the funnel, um, including job boards, social media.
[23:55] Jodie Lethgo: Now, I always recommend to companies, you know, word of mouth and referral.
[23:59] Jodie Lethgo: That's a way of getting leads into the top of your funnel.
[24:02] Jodie Lethgo: Absolutely. So, if you've got a fleet of drivers, tap into those people and that costs our company a company next to nothing.
[24:10] Jodie Lethgo: Now, I do recommend doing some type of referral bonus, but you know, to go prepay for some leads, it doesn't cost anything.
[24:19] Jodie Lethgo: And then just working your way through that funnel.
[24:21] Jodie Lethgo: So, you know, we got all these leads popping into the funnel here.
[24:24] Jodie Lethgo: Start working your way through them.
[24:26] Jodie Lethgo: You're going to call them and you're going to start vetting them.
[24:29] Jodie Lethgo: You know, most of our criteria, our hard criteria is going to be dictated by the insurance company.
[24:36] Jodie Lethgo: There's going to be an age minimum.
[24:38] Jodie Lethgo: There's going to be some limitations on your driving record.
[24:41] Jodie Lethgo: If you've got a DUI, you're probably not going to be eligible for any kind of driving job.
[24:45] Jodie Lethgo: Um, there's going to be limitations on your background.
[24:49] Jodie Lethgo: You know, we always have to screen candidates on the background.
[24:52] Jodie Lethgo: And of course, they have to be able to pass a drug screen.
[24:55] Jodie Lethgo: So the first time you're having these conversations, you're selling the job to them, but you're also screening them.
[25:02] Jodie Lethgo: So it is a long conversation at that first goround on the phone with them.
[25:07] Jodie Lethgo: And my recruiters typically have a call handle time for the first calls, 10 to 15 minutes, just to get the first time screening out the way.
[25:16] Jodie Lethgo: And then we can start to dig into those deeper details that are required on an application for a driving job.
[25:23] Jodie Lethgo: But we do that initial screening to get people down even further into the funnel.
[25:29] Jodie Lethgo: Then you get them to the point where you're actually running MVRs.
[25:32] Jodie Lethgo: You're getting more narrow in your funnel.
[25:34] Jodie Lethgo: You start running backgrounds. We're getting a bit more narrow.
[25:36] Jodie Lethgo: And then the drug screens are always a big fallout for us.
[25:39] Jodie Lethgo: And so what ends up coming out at the end of that funnel?
[25:42] Jodie Lethgo: That's where you end up getting your hires.
[25:45] Jodie Lethgo: Now, I know you're probably a very technical guy just based on what you do.
[25:50] Jodie Lethgo: So, you're probably thinking, okay, so how many leads to get how many, you know, folks pop out at the end of your funnel?
[25:56] Jodie Lethgo: Well, it really depends on your area.
[25:59] Jodie Lethgo: It really depends on your sources of leads.
[26:03] Jodie Lethgo: And I can't confidently say if I go into a market just looking at, you know, what we've done everywhere else, I can't say, okay, I know for sure Facebook and Indeed is going to be the way to go
[26:14] Jodie Lethgo: here. Because it doesn't work that way in any market.
[26:18] Jodie Lethgo: In fact, it fluctuates quite a bit, which is why Simon is, you know, the other half of this business.
[26:24] Jodie Lethgo: Him and his digital marketing team of gurus are such a big part of our business.
[26:30] Jodie Lethgo: They're working diligently behind the scenes to reallocate ad budget, to analyze where our leads are coming from, and ensure that we're putting our ad spend in the right places.
[26:41] Jodie Lethgo: And it does change. It does fluctuate quite a bit.
[26:45] Jodie Lethgo: Um, we've had some clients that have been with us now for a little over a year.
[26:49] Jodie Lethgo: And you know, the channels when we opened up the contract that were working to get the right leads in the funnel are not the channels we're using today.
[26:59] Jodie Lethgo: And the ads we were using when we kicked off those accounts are not the ads we're using today.
[27:04] Jodie Lethgo: It is an endless cycle of just monitoring where your successful leads are coming from.
[27:11] Jodie Lethgo: But for those of you that are listening to this podcast, you don't need a team of digital marketing gurus.
[27:17] Jodie Lethgo: It's as simple as saying, "Where am I putting my ad budget?" and then monitoring where your hires are actually coming from and then moving your ad spend to that source.
[27:26] Jodie Lethgo: Now, I know Indeed's probably always the easiest place to start.
[27:30] Jodie Lethgo: So, I do recommend for anyone who's not doing any kind of hiring right now to always start with Indeed.
[27:37] Jodie Lethgo: It's the easiest place to go and you'll probably get some success immediately but that ends up trickling off and after that you will have to source some other areas for leads and you know I've even heard Craigslist working.
[27:53] Jodie Lethgo: I'm not a big advocate for it but I'll give it a try in some of our more difficult markets but it's just trial and error and just always continuously monitoring where those leads are coming from.
[28:06] Nirav Chheda: Yeah, thanks for sharing. So, Jody, let me ask you this.
[28:11] Nirav Chheda: There are plenty of NMT companies out there who, you know, they see what you're saying.
[28:18] Nirav Chheda: They think, hey, she's making a lot of sense.
[28:21] Nirav Chheda: I believe that, you know, these probably are the things that I need to do in order to improve my driver hiring and retention, but, you know, I'm not an expert in social media.
[28:32] Nirav Chheda: I've never done this stuff. I don't know how to do this stuff.
[28:35] Nirav Chheda: Like, is the juice really worth the squeeze for me trying to figure this out?
[28:39] Nirav Chheda: Like, maybe I just have experts like Jod and Career Driver do this for me.
[28:46] Nirav Chheda: Like, can you share a story about one of your NEMt clients who might sort of fit that sort of bill and how you've taken them from here to here?
[28:57] Jodie Lethgo: Well, I'll say we wouldn't be in business if it wasn't for those folks.
[29:01] Jodie Lethgo: So that's a great point that you bring up.
[29:04] Jodie Lethgo: But yeah, we do have one in particular that comes to my mind.
[29:10] Jodie Lethgo: They had a team of folks that were supposed to be driver managers.
[29:13] Jodie Lethgo: You know, you're they had multiple locations and these driver managers were having to take the time to call and vet drivers as well.
[29:21] Jodie Lethgo: And as I was saying to you at those folks at the top of the funnel to screen all of those folks, that's very time consuming.
[29:29] Jodie Lethgo: And what we see happen with not just this particular company, but a lot of companies is the people that are supposed to be making those calls, they're also dispatching drivers.
[29:39] Jodie Lethgo: They're also putting out fires. Not literal fires, you know what I mean?
[29:43] Jodie Lethgo: They're working on the daytoday of the business to keep the keep the wheels turning.
[29:49] Jodie Lethgo: And they often it falls on the back burner because it's not the urgent immediate thing that's right in front of them.
[29:56] Jodie Lethgo: You know, you've got drivers that need to go out.
[29:59] Jodie Lethgo: you've got clients that need to be picked up.
[30:01] Jodie Lethgo: This list of leads that's coming in is going to have to wait.
[30:05] Jodie Lethgo: And that's where we see the need for some additional support.
[30:11] Jodie Lethgo: And what we were seeing happening was this client was paying for services through Indeed.
[30:18] Jodie Lethgo: And nobody was able to get around to those leads.
[30:21] Jodie Lethgo: And when they did, you know, 48 hours later, 72 hours later, sometimes two weeks later, these people have already found a job.
[30:30] Jodie Lethgo: So, you're paying for a service to provide leads, but not at the fault of that employee, but just kind of the nature of the beast.
[30:38] Jodie Lethgo: And we've seen this so many times, the leads just go unattended to.
[30:43] Jodie Lethgo: And ultimately, I even tell our clients who want to buy leads off of us, it's going to fail if you don't have someone who can pick up the phone and call that lead in under 12 hours.
[30:54] Jodie Lethgo: Like, that is our absolute longest a lead will sit is 12 hours.
[30:58] Jodie Lethgo: Our recruiters get to them under 12 hours.
[31:02] Jodie Lethgo: We've got a crew that works over the weekend to make sure that leads aren't sitting because we know that, you know, Amazon might be calling them already.
[31:10] Jodie Lethgo: McDonald's could be calling them. Anybody they've applied to is going to be calling them and trying to get them to apply for their job.
[31:18] Jodie Lethgo: So, back to this company that we were working for.
[31:21] Jodie Lethgo: They were not seeing any success.
[31:24] Jodie Lethgo: And so, their story was, well, we spend thousands of dollars on in lead and it doesn't work.
[31:28] Jodie Lethgo: And I'm like, well, hold up.
[31:30] Jodie Lethgo: It doesn't work. Let's take a peek.
[31:32] Jodie Lethgo: Well, there's thousands of leads in there.
[31:34] Jodie Lethgo: So, explain to me what doesn't work for you.
[31:38] Jodie Lethgo: So, you know, services like Indeed are great, but they don't go beyond the vetting of, you know, it's like we'll present you leads that are interested in your job, but we're not going to vet them for you.
[31:49] Jodie Lethgo: We're not going to line up interviews for you.
[31:51] Jodie Lethgo: We're not going to take it beyond that.
[31:53] Jodie Lethgo: So when we came into play, we just started lining up interviews for them and we completely removed the aspect of them having to work through the top of the funnel and they were only brought in at this part
[32:05] Jodie Lethgo: of the funnel. So you know, we were going through all the leads at the top of the funnel, vetting out any that on that first verbal interview didn't fit, and then, you know, saying, "Okay, we're going to line
[32:16] Jodie Lethgo: you up for an interview now." And they would pick it up.
[32:19] Jodie Lethgo: they were picking it up from that interview and moving them through the rest of the funnel.
[32:23] Jodie Lethgo: So, we took out the biggest barrier for them and they were able to expedite the process and it took a real burden off of those dispatchers that were expected to also be, you know, hiring in this instance.
[32:40] Nirav Chheda: That resonates a lot. I mean, I've talked with hundreds of NEMT companies across the country, and what you just said, like, I've heard this story too many times.
[32:52] Nirav Chheda: Jody, I'm sold. I think probably a lot of the audience is sold.
[32:56] Nirav Chheda: I'm going to leave your contact info and career drivers contact info in the description Yes, please.
[33:03] Nirav Chheda: Are there any final thoughts you want to leave our viewers with?
[33:08] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah, actually, um, thank you for giving me the platform for this.
[33:13] Jodie Lethgo: Yeah, you know, when I meet with clients, a lot of times they're just like, well, I don't want to really pay for the services.
[33:21] Jodie Lethgo: Like, I do need the drivers, but we'll continue to muddle our way through.
[33:25] Jodie Lethgo: And you know, that's fine. But the thing that I just always like to push back on is how much does it cost for that vehicle to sit there, you know, and not just the cost of whatever you're paying
[33:36] Jodie Lethgo: to lease it or to, you know, pay your monthly payment on it.
[33:41] Jodie Lethgo: It's got insurance on it as well.
[33:43] Jodie Lethgo: But let's also think about the lost revenue.
[33:46] Jodie Lethgo: You know, that vehicle could be moving.
[33:48] Jodie Lethgo: How much money are you losing?
[33:50] Jodie Lethgo: How many trips have you turned down?
[33:52] Jodie Lethgo: So, that's always what I like to point out to people is if you're going to let that vehicle sit because you're going to wait six weeks to hire someone when I can do it in six days, just do
[34:03] Jodie Lethgo: some quick calculations there and tell me how much you're going to end up losing.
[34:08] Nirav Chheda: So, just Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.
[34:12] Nirav Chheda: Exactly. Thanks for sharing. I mean, some of the leading NEMt companies in the country, you know, who I personally know have seen a big ROI from Career Driver and your guys' help.
[34:24] Nirav Chheda: So, I'm sure a lot of other NEMT companies are going to increasingly see that ROI.
[34:29] Nirav Chheda: Again, I'm leaving your contact info and Career Drivers contact info in the description.
[34:35] Nirav Chheda: Jody, thanks so much for your time.
[34:38] Nirav Chheda: Run, Bambi, run. [laughter] Awesome. Thanks, Jody.
