Hiring delivery drivers is not easy.
You can’t distinguish between an average delivery driver and a great performer unless you have been recruiting for long enough. Even then, you could still make mistakes.
So, to make your job easier, we explain how to hire a delivery driver that fits your business requirements and culture.
We also look at how Route4Me’s Route Planner can help you attract the best delivery drivers.
Table of Contents
How to Find Delivery Drivers
There are many ways you can find the right delivery drivers. We share the best practices below.
Create an Attractive Job Description
A good job description will help the potential candidates determine what they would expect to become successful in the role and what they would get from the job.
The more detailed and specific your job description is, the better your chances of finding a candidate who’s a good fit for the job.
Here’s some key information you can include in your job description:
- Work Schedule – Will the driver work on specific days or on all weekdays? Do they need to work the first, second, or third shift?
- Type of Employment – Is the job full-time or part-time, or contract work?
- Payout – What compensation can the driver expect? Are there any incentives? Learn the salary comparison of delivery drivers of the top 20 cities worldwide, including the U.S., to offer attractive pay that drivers can’t refuse.
- Delivery Service details – What do you need the driver to deliver? Do you need a food delivery driver or a driver for propane and energy?
- Employee benefits – Provide details about the benefits you’ll offer to the drivers. It could be flexible working hours, guaranteed time-off, health insurance, competitive pay, or growth opportunities.
Simply put, the more detailed your job ad is, the higher the chances that you’ll attract the right candidates.
You can also download a delivery driver job description template to get the boilerplate information you need, such as qualifications and responsibilities, which will make your job a bit easier.
However, you must remember to customize the template to sell your vacancy by touching on delivery drivers’ important points.
Post Your Requirements on Multiple Job Boards
Post your job on popular job boards, such as Craigslist and Indeed. These sites get plenty of traffic and are free.
However, ensure your company details on the job are up-to-date. Also, monitor comments and reply to them when appropriate.
To get better results, focus on job boards that cater specifically to delivery drivers and related fields and are thus the best places for hiring delivery drivers.
These include Gary’s Job Board, GigSmart, Layover, and Bacon. Most professional delivery drivers look for delivery driver jobs on these sites.
Use Social Media for Hiring Delivery Drivers
Use social media to recruit delivery drivers as social recruiting can attract 50% more applicants than other methods.
According to Statista, 58% of North American companies use social media as a source for quality hires.
Also, 79% of job seekers use social media to find jobs, according to Glassdoor.
A social media presence is also critical for building your brand, which plays a key role in attracting and hiring competent delivery drivers.
Here are a few ways you can use social media to attract the right delivery drivers:
- Set up social media profiles specifically for hiring delivery drivers.
- Regularly post curated and original content.
- Actively engage with your audience by liking their posts, answering questions, sharing posts, and solving problems for them.
- Run Facebook ads.
- Ask your current employees to share your posts.
- Use images and videos to highlight your company culture.
Encourage Your Employees to Refer Candidates
According to a survey conducted by Statista, 62% of respondents said that the best sources of candidates are through referrals from successful placements. So, you shouldn’t miss out on the power of employee referrals.
Ask your current employees to provide referrals if they find someone who’s a good fit for your vacant delivery driver position.
Offer a reward for any successful hires to encourage employee involvement.
Also, formulate an attractive employee referral program that may take some time to set up, which would be a very effective recruiting tool.
Use a Route Planner with Truck GPS Tracking
A route planner with GPS vehicle tracking will help you with route planning and scheduling and vehicle tracking.
It’s not recruitment software per se, but you can use it to attract the best drivers to apply for your position.
Job seekers want to join companies that understand the employees’ needs and care for them. A GPS tracking app will help you make that happen by ensuring your drivers are well taken care of.
For example, an app for GPS tracking ensures driver safety, helps drivers earn more incentives, protects their reputations, and maintains transparency.
Learn more about how GPS tracking will help attract the best drivers to your business.
Also, learn the top 10 benefits of GPS tracking.
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How to Screen Applicants for Hiring Delivery Drivers
If your job posts, social media recruiting activities, and employee referral programs have been effective, you’ll have many applicants for each new job.
So, how can you weed out the non-starters from the rest? We share some tips below.
Send Emails with Qualifying Questions
Respond to each applicant with an email containing interview questions that would help you filter out only serious candidates.
Some of the questions you can ask include:
- How long have you been a delivery driver?
- What do you think the delivery process involves?
- How do you make deliveries on time?
- Do you have any infractions on your driver’s license?
Arrange a Phone Interview
While the screening email will help you filter out the worst candidates, a phone interview will further help you identify the best candidates for the position.
Some of the questions you can ask are:
- What are your salary expectations?
- Why did you leave your previous company?
- Why do you want to do this job?
- What qualities do you think a good delivery driver has?
- Do you have a clean driving record?
Evaluate whether the applicants’ answers correlate with those they gave to the questions in the screening email. Listen carefully to every answer and note anything that doesn’t align with your requirements.
Avoid applicants who have a negative attitude or have left many employers over a short period of time.
Invite the Applicants for a Road Test
Schedule a time for the applicant to come in for a road test. The resume and interviews will help you gather most of the information about the applicants, but putting them behind the wheel will give you an idea of their driving behavior on the road.
You can also offer them a one-time fee and watch them make a few deliveries one day. This would give you an idea of the speed and hustle the candidate will bring to the position.
Conduct In-Person Interviews to Hire a Delivery Driver
After the successful test completion, you can initiate in-person interviews, which should be the final interview for hiring delivery drivers.
Such an in-person interview is important to ensure the applicant is truly the right person, and it’s a great way to convince the applicant that they’ll enjoy being part of your team.
Some of the key traits you should look for in an interview for recruiting delivery drivers are:
- Excellent communication skills
- Ability to work promptly and consistently
- Attention to detail
- Maintain a customer-friendly attitude
So, ask questions that’ll help you better understand whether the candidate has these traits.
Also, ask open-ended questions, which means the candidates can’t simply answer with a YES or NO.
The candidate must preferably talk more in the interview, which will help you learn more about them.
For example, you could ask, “How have you managed a customer dispute successfully”?
Hire, Onboard, and Train Your New Delivery Drivers
Once you have the perfect match for your requirements, call the applicant and offer them the job.
You can follow up with an offer letter that explains everything you’re offering.
But that’s not all to it.
Onboarding and training new recruits are key in the recruitment process and mustn’t be ignored.
Even the most experienced candidates may not deliver the desired results if you don’t train them correctly to your processes and expectations.
So, break down the delivery driver training into four parts:
- Customer-oriented service training
- Software training
- Safety training
- Process training
Below are three articles that’ll help you strengthen your training process:
- Just in Time Training Is the Future of Learning. Have You Embraced It?
- 3 Training Tools that Bolster Driver Safety
- How Fleet Route Planning Software Helps You Train Drivers
How Route4Me Can Make Your Newly Hired Drivers Efficient
You can use Route4Me’s trucking GPS app for both single-driver operations and multi-driver teams. Below is a quick overview of how the multi-stop route planner can help.
Create Well-Optimized Routes
With Route4Me, you can plan well-optimized routes with driving directions for delivery drivers using the software’s Dynamic Route Optimization™ technology.
The delivery route planner can factor in weather conditions, traffic, avoidance zones, and more.
It can also consider priority stops and delivery time windows while planning routes. So, you can customize your routes as per your requirements.
All this means that your drivers will get the best possible route directions to work, which will increase their efficiency and productivity and help them make on-time deliveries.
Monitor Drivers in Real-Time
Route4Me’s map route planner comes with GPS tracking to help you monitor your drivers and vehicles in real-time.
The commercial GPS tracker monitors where your driver is, which stop they have completed recently, and where they are headed next.
Keeping track of your drivers and vehicles will help you ensure driver safety, provide data-driven feedback, and improve performance.
Update Customers About Their Delivery Statuses
Route4Me’s route planner app offers a customer alerting, and notifications feature that helps you notify your customers whenever their package is out for delivery or about to get delivered.
This ensures your customers are available to collect the packages and reduces the chances of failed deliveries.
All this means that your drivers won’t have to wait or return to deliver something to the same address due to the customer’s unavailability the last time. This will improve their productivity and help them make deliveries as planned.
Learn five ways to improve first-time door opens in last-mile delivery.
Route4Me also offers a customer portal that helps your customers track their own deliveries.
Route4Me’s delivery route planner app has many other useful features and functionalities to make your drivers more productive and efficient. Learn the six benefits of delivery management software.
To learn more about how Route4Me’s multiple stop route planner makes field service and delivery businesses more efficient, check out Route4Me customer case studies.
Final Words about Hiring Delivery Drivers
Customers want faster deliveries with same-day and even same-hour deliveries on an uptrend.
You, too, can offer an efficient delivery service by combining the right delivery drivers with the right delivery tools.
This article covered how to find professional delivery drivers, screen the applicants properly and conduct interviews in the right way.
We also covered how Route4Me’s delivery management software can make your new hires more efficient.
Route4Me’s route planner for deliveries same day offers an easy-to-use interface and helps your drivers get to their stops on time.
It also offers Android and iOS apps so that your drivers get in-app voice-guided directions and all other information they might need within the app, so they don’t have to toggle through multiple platforms.
This lets your drivers focus on navigating the routes, make more stops in less time, and provide an impeccable customer experience. Learn in detail how Route4Me can help you deliver a great experience.
So, what are your best practices for hiring delivery drivers and making them more efficient? Please feel free to leave your comments below.
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