There are a ton of application sources out there to choose from when you’re looking to hire drivers. With all these choices, it’s nearly impossible to determine which ones work the best. What you’re asking for should be simple – which application sources give you the most cost-effective leads? Or to be even more clear, which sources give you leads that convert into the greatest number of hires, for the least amount of money?
Unfortunately, even through the use of your most functional spreadsheet, you still have a nagging suspicion that your budget and your time are being misspent. Every month you try to piece together a solution in which you can actually place confidence, and sometimes you feel you’re getting closer… but you’re never entirely sure. And you wouldn’t be alone if some months you just didn’t have the time to search for that elusive bulls-eye, instead taking several shots in the dark, crossing your fingers, and hoping for the best.
You may know by now that Tenstreet has developed a marketing service called
Origins to solve this problem. It’s an analytical tool that helps clients visually understand where their hires come from, enabling them to:
- focus on the ads that generate the greatest driver response, and
- put their dollars on the most cost-effective job boards that produce the leads that result in the most hires.
To help us get the word out about
Origins, Tenstreet visited with Josh Mecca, Director of Recruiting at American Central Transport (ACT), who once lived with these very same problems.
Mecca was quick to respond to a request for an interview. Gracious enough to offer time from his busy schedule, he wanted to help relieve others in his industry who were still struggling with this pain.
You can
watch the 6-minute video, or follow along through the interview transcribed below. Either way you go, know that Tenstreet has a solution that alleviates this hardship and uncertainty – saving you precious time and money every month, and helping you reach your recruiting goals without worry.
—[transcription start]—
Tenstreet: “How do you use Origins?”
Josh Mecca
: “I use
Origins mostly for directional planning, and looking for where my more effective sources are coming from. We get a lot of leads coming in every month, and
Origins is fantastic about showing where the leads are coming from, and shows how far down the funnel they get – all the way from coming in (new) to hiring. It helps with timeframes.
But it definitely gives me a good direction of which sources are effective and which sources are not as effective.”
Tenstreet: “Any surprising results?”
Mecca:
“One of the things we learned – we have a couple vendors we use from a lead-generation standpoint that we talk with all the time and we know we’re getting leads quite a bit –
but what really surprised me was how ineffective the leads were. Volume is a great thing; however, you have to have the quality to back it up. What we discovered through the use of Origins was that two of the vendors were definitely producing the leads, however, if you can’t use those leads…
“So, we were able to take those leads and work with those vendors respectively to drive a more effective strategy to make sure the leads were generating the hires that we needed. It really helped us put more data into which way do we go with vendors and what we’re looking to spend – quite frankly, I was really surprised at the number of ineffective leads we were getting.”
Tenstreet: “How does Origins help you make decisions?”
Mecca:
“We definitely use it to help drive where our strategy goes. If we find the sources are actively generating quality leads, we’ll move our budget around to really reinforce that budget location. Simply because we can tell with
Origins – over the last 30 days, 90 days, whatever timeframe you’re looking at –
we can see the growth of a certain advertiser from where our leads are coming from, and
then also you can see how effective that advertiser is being in generating hires.
“So, it definitely helps from a strategy standpoint of knowing where to go with our dollars, because we’re definitely trying to watch those each month.
“
And it makes the map clearer. It definitely helps paint a much clearer picture of where we want to go.”
Tenstreet: “Do you share the results?”
Mecca:
“Once a quarter I will share results with our senior officers – our ownership group.
I love the charts. The charts are fantastic in that they’re easy to generate, they’re easy to set your parameters to what you want to see.
“And plus, I’ve also uncovered things in those charts that I might not have thought about otherwise, like the ineffective leads. Where you see in the funnel report you might be getting several hundred leads a month – but if they’re not translating into hires, then honestly, what good is that? And if it’s not any good, then I can move those dollars somewhere they are producing 10 hires a month but for a fraction of the cost.
“We’re able to be very clear, very real-time with where we see our drivers coming from, and where we see our drivers going to. If we see them going from one job board to another,
Origins captures that – that’s one of the things I really love about Origins – is that
you get to see how many different sources a driver touches before they ultimately submit an application or not.”
Mecca elaborated offline that access to this data gives them an additional piece of the puzzle, helping them understand which advertising methods attract the most drivers.
Tenstreet: “How was it before?”
Mecca:
“We were trying to do some of this. We have a couple reports we run monthly. The data was good, and Origins really kind of backed up a lot of what we were seeing. But Origins gives you that and pictures, too.
“And the pictures we get from
Origins definitely was different than the pictures we were getting though Excel. When you take the data and you put it in your spreadsheet, you’re kind of limited in what you can think of.
The thing I like about
Origins is
it’s easy to manipulate, and you’re able to look at it from several different angles – all in the same time you’re spending developing your own charts and pivot tables.”
Tenstreet: “Any final thoughts?”
Mecca:
“You know, I really think that with
Origins – at the end of the day the thing that’s most effective about it, is how simple it is to use. You have to stay on top of it when you’re putting in your ad spend dollars and everything, but if you can do that – with as easy as it is to manipulate the data, look at the charts, and play with your sources a little bit – it definitely is worth the time and investment, because
it helps you be more accurate in your every day, day-to-day decision-making.
“And the other thing that really caught me off guard was how many different sources would lead to a driver deciding to apply with us, or to not apply with us – the number of different touch-points a driver goes through – and how easy Tenstreet’s
Origins puts that all together. It was really kind of surprising. It definitely makes it easy to find that. Which is not something I would have found in traditional recruiting reporting, just because that’s all straight-number, checkmarks here and there, etc.
“But with
Origins, going through our applications and being able to see more behind the scenes, really put together a nice picture.”
—[transcription end]—
We extend our gratitude to Josh and to all our friends at American Central Transport for the hospitality and tour of their warm and welcoming facility, and obviously for taking the time to talk with us about how Origins works for ACT.
For a tour of
Origins and to learn more, reach out to us at
[email protected] today!
