Ryan Kelly, of Terrapin Blue, has been on the road much of the year, creating videos and photos to help operators market themselves. Lately, his work has focused on creating collateral that can be used to recruit drivers.
“The majority of the media that we create now is branding,” said Kelly. “Your individual company has a unique personality, and you have to sell that personality, especially when it comes to driver recruitment because drivers can be selective.”
He praises client Pam Reipold, of F.M. Kuzmeskus and Travel Kuz in Massachusetts, for being creative in her approach to marketing to diverse groups of job candidates, from young moms to retirees.
She joined Kelly at the United Motorcoach Association Town Hall on Sept. 9 o share how they collaborated to create compelling recruiting videos and also to share her varied methods for reaching out to new groups of potential employees, using whatever works.
“Travel Kuz has been on the forefront of not being afraid to do whatever they want to do to try to attract talent,” said Kelly, an Associate UMA Member, adding, “They post a lot, and it’s all different and it works.”
They also have a robust training program to be able to get the right people behind the wheel. The secret is to be open to new ideas, says Reipold, a UMA Member who brings her employees into the creative process.
At one meeting, she asked employees to share what they liked about their jobs and working for the company. She was surprised at some of the answers.
“There are a lot of really different things out there that we never would have thought were important to our employees, so that just gave us a whole new avenue of what prospective drivers might be looking for,” Reipold said. “You’re missing a whole lot of potential if you’re not looking at what’s important to a prospective employee.”
Travel Kuz uses radio ads among other means for recruiting, and their ads feature their employees because they make the best case for why driving is a great career and why Travel Kuz is a great place to work.
“It’s not rocket science, but we’ve been really persistent with everything,” Reipold said, adding, “We just keep mixing it up and trying things all the time.”
