Opinion: Finding Qualified Diesel Technicians

By Jane Clark

Vice President, Member Services

NationaLease

This Opinion piece appears in the Dec. 19 & 26 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Qualified diesel technicians are getting harder to find, a situation the transportation trade press has lamented for the past decade with headlines such as “Who Will Fix Your Trucks?”

Ironically, as the diesel technician labor pool shrinks, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts an 11% growth in demand for their services, with graduation rates of certified diesel mechanics falling considerably short of that.

But the most disturbing statistic of all may be the prediction that an estimated 40% to 50% of current mechanics will reach retirement age between 2010 and 2030.

What’s a fleet owner or manager to do?

Short of quickly influencing a huge shift in demographics by encouraging more high school students to consider trade school instead of college, we are faced with the hard fact that we are all fighting for the same dwindling pool of candidates.

The good news is that there are proven recruiting methods that can make a big difference in that endeavor’s success rate. Better yet, these techniques have been in use for years by the job-recruitment industry and can be translated specifically to the trucking industry with little effort.

Job recruiters think of their job essentially as hunting, and some even proudly call themselves “headhunters.” To succeed, they have to be the best at finding the best. Here are some of their most valuable tips for finding the right people for the right job:

• Go where the candidates are.

Recruiters in general haven’t used newspaper advertising as a primary search tool for nearly a decade. Experience has found that such ads are expensive — a 19-line ad in the Chicago Tribune, for example, can cost $1,450 — and have a low success rate.

Furthermore, studies show that very few job seekers in the 18-to-34 age range read a newspaper. Whether senior management wants to accept it or not, these young people are going online to get their news and information.

The No. 1 place all recruiters recommend that job seekers go to look for work is online. More specifically, the best way is through a job-aggregator website. Such sites, such as Indeed.com, collect job listings from thousands of other websites, including job boards, newspapers, associations and company career pages. If employers want these job seekers to find them, they need an online presence.

Trucking firms can take advantage of Indeed.com and others by letting the person responsible for the company’s website create settings that will allow these sites to pull job postings from the trucking company’s website. By posting jobs on most job boards, a trucking company’s posting will be pulled by the aggregator and appear on that website as well.

Other popular job posting sites include: CareerBuilder.com, SkilledWorkers.com, FindAMechanic.com and Craigslist.org.

Job postings should be refreshed often because the most recent postings land at the top of lists. The job title in a posting should reflect the actual skill set required. For example, “diesel mechanic” is a better job title than “maintenance tech” because it is more descriptive of the actual position. Employers should keep in mind that job postings should be appealing to the job seekers, grabbing their attention by highlighting key selling points of the position.

Another often overlooked source of possible job candidates is state unemployment offices, which provide job postings for free in most cases. A good example can be found at the site of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, www.ides.illinois.gov.

Finally, many resources devoted to former military personnel allow employers to post job openings and candidates to post résumés. These include the Army Career Alumni Program Transition Centers, as well as several recruitment websites such as MilitaryHire.com, HireVeterans.com, MilitaryStars.com and RecruitMilitary.com.

• The best candidates come from referrals.

Every recruiter will agree that referrals produce the very best candidates. According to HR World, a leading resource and community for human resources professionals, a substantial 30% of job openings are filled through referrals.

One of the best ways to encourage referrals within an organization is through the implementation of a strong, written, referral bonus program. When writing a referral bonus program, a company should address several questions such as: Who is eligible? What is the company looking for? When does the referral program start and end? Where does a person make a referral? Why is the company looking for a referral?

And maybe most important to the person doing the referring — will I get paid if a person is simply interviewed, or must the candidate get hired?

Including answers to these questions in the written referral bonus program will encourage quality referrals and minimize confusion.

• Let others do the work. Another choice is turning to third-party recruiters to find qualified diesel mechanics. Recruiters offer some clear advantages: They have large pools of pre-screened applicants who often are immediately available. They offer flexibility, with options of temporary, temp-to-hire or permanent placements.

Some recruiting firms even offer guarantees on their placements. TransTechs and Maizis and Miller Consultants are two examples of firms that specialize in heavy-duty equipment mechanics, diesel truck mechanics and service managers.

With high unemployment such a hot issue, it’s ironic that so many diesel technician jobs are begging to be filled. The reality is that once young, serious and trained technicians enter the field, they almost can be assured of solid employment opportunities. But until they do decide to enter the field, it’s up to motor carriers to compete for the best and brightest, using the latest recruitment tools available. With a new outlook and some dedicated manpower, trucking firms can achieve a return on their investment in a relatively cost-effective manner.

NationaLease, Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., is a full-service truck-leasing organization serving North America. Now with NationaLease, the author previously worked for 15 years as a recruiter.