TOPIC: What is your most effective method for recruiting or hiring chauffeurs and other office staff?
Our best recruitment tool has been hiring customer-savvy individuals, with little to no experience, while paying wages commensurate with today’s economic environment. We have found that offering a fair hourly wage, guaranteed gratuity, and medical benefits has been the winning formula for us here in Silicon Valley.
Maurice Brewster, Founder & CEO
Mosaic Global Transportation in Redwood City, Calif.
One of the most important things to do when hiring both chauffeurs and office staff is cast a wide net. You have to post job listings on multiple career search websites, be proactive with reviewing resumes, contact prospects in a timely manner, and, most importantly, be descriptive and clear with the job requirements. Word of mouth and referrals also play a key role in bringing in good candidates. Once you have people coming in for interviews, it’s vital to stay diligent and not be discouraged. If you have a star applicant who decides not to come on board, you have to keep searching for the kind of top-level performers who will help take your company to the next level.
Alex Darbahani, CEO
KLS Worldwide Transportation in Beverly Hills, Calif.
There is no single effective way to keep chauffeurs—if you provide them with good work daily, you get great chauffeurs. With all the choices today in ground transportation, I find that chauffeurs move around a lot. You have to make them feel like they’re part of the team and treat everyone fairly, which can be hard as dispatchers often have their favorites. This is—and will always be—one of the most difficult things about running a transportation company.
Gary Day, President & CEO
American Limousines in Baltimore, Md.
The most effective recruitment method over the years has been through referrals from our existing chauffeurs, largely due to a financial incentive given to the chauffeur providing the referral.
David Eckstein, President
Valera Global in Long Island City, N.Y.
I can’t say there has been one specific “most effective” way to recruit chauffeurs, but a combination of different methods has brought us success. Things that have worked well for us include online recruiting through our contract with Career Builder and other sites; newspaper advertising, particularly in small local newspapers; open houses, both in office and near airports; referrals from existing chauffeurs and office staff; providing hiring bonuses; and, to a lesser extent, job fairs. Recruiting for office staff positions is less of a problem for us, but when the need arises, we usually find success online and through newspapers.
Jon Epstein, President
Royal Coachman Worldwide in Denville, N.J.
Since I operate a black car service in Denver that relies on UberBlack for more than 50 percent of our revenue, I look for drivers who are currently working for Uber with a rating of 4.9 or better over 500 rides. If they are currently approved for UberBlack, then they move to the top of the list.
Steve Felt, Owner
Colorado Black Car in Denver, Colo.
The Cots Group has had success with the chauffeur recruiting campaign from Limo University. We use testimonials from our current chauffeurs to promote what it’s like to work for our company. Then we use this in a video advertisement on Facebook, which leads to an application on our website. The whole process is very easy because we can target the specific area of Los Angeles where we know many of our chauffeurs live, and can turn it off and on again whenever needed.
Mo Garkani, Owner
The Cots Group in Irvine, Calif.
We use internal referrals and give incentives to our team to refer people to join our company. We also work with an outside recruiting company that helps source and screen chauffeur candidates. It saves us a lot of time as they really narrow down to find the best of the best before we do final interviews.
For internal office staff, we have had a long-standing relationship with a local temp agency, and we rely on temp-to-hire situations for several of our positions (dispatchers, reservationists, billing, etc.). We interview in the same manner as if we were going to hire, but they are placed with us for a period of time before we actually hire the person on the team. This gives us all a chance to see if they are the right fit for us.
Kim Garner, President
BEST Transportation Chauffeured Services in St. Louis, Mo.
Our best recruiting method is the employee referral program. With a turnover rate in the single digits, it is a true indicator that our program is working. One of the drivers behind the success of our program is the culture that is created from the top to the bottom of our organization. Being at an organization that believes and lives by its values encourages employees to have the willingness to inform others about coming to a great place to work.
Mark Karolides, VP of Human Resources
Tristar Worldwide in Beverly, Mass.
Chauffeur recruitment has become tremendously challenging, and sites like Craigslist have had dismal returns. We offer a $250 bonus to our chauffeurs who refer a candidate who is hired and makes it through our 90-day probationary period. This method has produced tangible results.
Mark Kini, Founder & CEO
Boston Chauffeur in Beverly, Mass.
Typically Craigslist works the best for us, but we recently ran an open house in our office that we advertised locally and on Facebook. From Monday to Saturday, we encouraged potential driving staff to stop in any time between 7am-7pm to apply for part-time and full-time positions. We had a lot of success with this campaign because of its flexibility.
Jeff Nyikos, President
Leros Point to Point in Valhala, N.Y.
Naturally, we advertise on several platforms; however, most commonly, our recruits come from the transportation industry and other bus companies since everyone is looking for an upgrade of one sort or another.
A company’s reputation within a city/region and how often a recruit sees your vehicles or employees working has a huge impact on recruitment. During each interview, we ask the applicant why they decided to contact us, and the most common answers are “I’ve seen your buses everywhere” or “because of your reputation in Chicago.” As chauffeurs see your branded vehicles more frequently, they get the impression that we have a lot of work (which we do) and become interested in moving to our company.
Everyone sees opportunity differently, some for the potential earnings, others for stability and opportunity to work for a larger company (prestige), and we are lucky to have all the above.
Jamie Smith, Chauffeur Manager
Windy City Limousine & Bus Worldwide in Chicago, Ill.
We believe that your employees and chauffeurs are your most valuable assets. We have created an environment where every employee and chauffeur feels like part of our family and are comfortable sharing feedback and suggestions to make us even better.
We guarantee minimum earnings for our chauffeurs so they never need to worry about the seasonality in our market. Team-building events and companywide outings have proven to be great ways of building camaraderie throughout our company. We believe that the best way to recruit great people is to provide a culture that attracts them.
Ibro Torlo, Vice President
Signature Transportation Group in Chicago, Ill.
We rely largely on Indeed.com and Craigslist. When needed, we rev up recruitment with local TV and digital marketing. Where available, we use an image in the ad and a very long and detailed ad copy for those who are curious. However, that being said, recruiting has been difficult. For instance, we haven’t had a single competitor call us for a critically important reference in many years. This amazes us, but it likely means that others are struggling to fill positions, too.
Charles Wisniewski, President & CEO
Teddy’s Transportation System in Norwalk, Ct.
We’ve loved hearing your answers to our benchmarking questions since debuting this interactive section—but we always welcome suggestions for future topics, too!
Have you wondered how others in the industry have tackled a concern you’re currently facing, handled a delicate issue, implemented a certain policy, or do you simply want to propose a topic for our consideration?
Send an email to rob@chauffeurdriven.com and you just might see your query answered in a future issue. We look forward to your input!
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