Introduction to Xchange

Managing Driver Verifications & Finding the Most Qualified Drivers

Verifications might not make the world go ’round, but they do make your recruitment process move forward. When you’re running a trucking business, making sure that you’re hiring safe, qualified, and experienced drivers is priority number one. While verifications can be a time-consuming headache, they’re a critical step that needs to be completed before you can even consider hiring a candidate. In order to make sure a candidate is thoroughly vetted, your business needs to verify that the employment history on their application is accurate and that their background check meets your hiring requirements. The problem is that new driver leads need to be nurtured and moved through the recruiting pipeline quickly, and with as little hassle as possible, or your business risks missing out on the candidates who are most qualified.

Learn more by reading What Carriers Need to Know About the Xchange Network

A Time & Labor Intensive Process

The best way to ensure that you don’t miss out, of course, is to have an efficient recruitment strategy and tools in place to empower you to make sure every step in your hiring process stays organized and goes as quickly and smoothly as possible. However, performing verifications poses some unique problems and is often one of the steps in your hiring process that can slow your recruiters down. Verifications are time- and labor-intensive, which requires your recruiters and processors to be extremely organized while executing tasks. The sheer volume of paperwork that verifications add to their workload can be overwhelming.

For each candidate, your recruiters need to track down every former employer the driver has listed and obtain releases for each of them from the driver. You need to find out each individual employer’s preferred method of contact (phone, email, or post); draft a request for verification of employment, drugs and alcohol, accidents, and any other information relevant to your hiring process; and send out the request with the appropriate releases documented. Even after the requests have been sent out, your recruiters still need to keep track of which verifications are returned for each candidate and potentially to resubmit verification requests several times if the former employers do not return them in a speedy manner.

Learn more by reading Sharpening the Saw: Efficient and Productive Recruiting

Old Tech More Secure than Email

In addition, obtaining verifications involves handling sensitive information and files, which means that all of this has to happen over secure channels, eliminating the ability of your business to use email and leaving your recruiters with out-of-date, slower, and harder-to-track technology, such as faxes. It also means that your recruiters have to be diligent in double-checking that they have the proper releases up-to-date and keeping proper documentation in order for your carrier to remain compliant. All of this creates a real time sink for your recruiting department. In order to maintain an effective verification pipeline, as with any other part of the recruiting process, organization is key.

Learn more by reading Why You Should Become a Tenstreet Network Provider

The Need for Centralized Data

Your recruiters need to have a well-developed and organized workflow in place, and a centralized place to store and easily access all of a driver’s files, as well as to keep track of tasks. Each step in the process should have a clear procedure and be easily tracked so that your recruiters know what went out when and to whom, and whether it has come back or not. All of the files and documents for each driver should be centralized and easy to access for your recruiters so they can update records and keep tabs on all of the required tasks, information, and documents, and so your business can remain compliant and prepared in case of an audit. Taking the same solutions that make for a successful overall recruitment strategy and applying them to your verification process will help to alleviate many problems.

Learn more by reading Bridging the Gap Between Paper and Digital DQF

The Requesting Waiting Game

Unfortunately, even with all of these measures in place to help your recruiting department stay efficient and on top of its workload, some of your biggest delays can come after the requests are sent out and your recruiters and processors are left waiting to hear back from the candidate’s former employers. Once the verification requests have been submitted to an employer, you’re at the company’s schedule as to whether or when you’ll receive a response. Requests can be ignored or overlooked the first time they’re sent; after all, faxes can fail or get lost, and phone calls and voicemails can be missed. Each company is looking to use its time and resources to its own best advantage, which means your verification request might not be high on their list of priorities. Whenever certain circumstances, such as verifications, are out of your hands, it’s even more important to maximize the speed and efficiency of the things you do have control over so you can use your time and resources wisely, and make up for the potential lost time that you can’t control.

Learn more by reading How to Accurately Measure Speed-to-Hire and Accelerate Your Process

Saving Time with Automation

That’s why, whenever possible, your business should find ways to automate and streamline the busywork in your verification process. By finding ways to do this for different parts of the verification process, you’ll free up the time of your recruiters to handle larger volumes of verifications, and to be able to resubmit verifications and pursue the employers who are dragging their feet about replying. Even in the cases when it may take more time for your recruiters to receive verification responses from previous employers, the time you save on your end will make the overall verification process go much faster. It’s also important to consider all the ways you can encourage the verification process to speed up from the perspective of the former employer.

Managing Incoming Requests

While sending verifications out and having to wait around for them to come back is one of the more obvious factors that can cause delays in your hiring process, dealing with the verifications that come into your business can be another big time sink. While not as obvious as direct delays in your recruitment strategy, dealing with incoming verifications is also time-consuming and takes valuable time away from your recruiters and processors that they could use otherwise for your business. Whenever a verification request comes in for a former employee, your processor/recruiter has to check and document that they receive the proper release, track down the former driver’s records, verify that the records on file are the most up-to-date versions available, and then draft and send a reply back to the prospective employer. They’ll probably also have to document everything and, most likely, to do that over and over for the same drivers as they apply to multiple employers. This can make answering incoming verifications equally as time- and labor-intensive as sending them out. Ironically, this is also one of the reasons it can take longer to receive those same verifications back from other employers.

When it comes to crunch time, you want your employees to focus on what benefits your business, and quickly dealing with employment verifications for your former drivers won’t be their most pressing concern. Again, the best way to speed up this process is organization and automation. Keeping your driver files easily accessible and centrally located makes it much faster for your processors/recruiters to locate the information requested and keep documentation on proper releases. Finding ways to keep up-to-date drafts for drivers that you’ve previously had verification requests for can also allow you to quickly and automatically send out responses once you have the right release. Another priority for your business should be finding ways to make outgoing verifications as easy to deal with as possible.