About this episode
Jodie Lethgo co-founded Career Driver, a driver recruiting agency based in Louisville that places drivers for NEMT, taxi, limo, motor coach and delivery operators, drawing on her roughly eight years in trucking recruiting. She tells host Nirav Chheda that NEMT hiring screens for soft skills rather than job history, and that owners should treat recruiting as always on because candidates are also weighing Amazon, Walmart and McDonald's. She walks through the lead funnel, from job boards and targeted social ads to MVRs, backgrounds and drug screens, and says a lead left sitting past 12 hours is usually already hired elsewhere.
Key takeaways
- Lethgo screens NEMT candidates for soft skills rather than job history, while her chauffeur and motor coach clients want hospitality and hotel backgrounds. Driving record, background and drug screens apply across every sector.
- Career Driver calls every lead inside 12 hours and staffs a weekend crew, because Lethgo says anyone who mass applied to Amazon, Walmart or McDonald's is already fielding recruiter calls.
- Lethgo says many transport companies have no hiring page on their website at all, so there is no application link, no employee testimonials and no benefits for social posts to point at.
- One multi location client bought Indeed leads that sat 48 to 72 hours because its driver managers were also dispatching. Career Driver took the top of the funnel and lined up interviews.
- The retention tactics she has seen work cost almost nothing: driver WhatsApp groups, coffee mornings while everyone clocks in, and a Friday card night that started by accident and became expected.
Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction
- 2:40 Jodie's background
- 5:40 Birth of CareerDriver
- 7:25 NEMT drivers vs other transport
- 9:10 "Always On" mindset in hiring drivers
- 15:22 Driver retention
- 32:50 Conclusion
