Avoid Bad Hires in Logistics & Transportation
A single bad hire can cost a transportation or logistics company upwards of 150% of the employee’s starting salary. For mid-level employees the price tag can exceed $150,000! The key is to limit or reduce those mistakes. Companies (75%) admit to hiring the wrong candidate for a job.
The transportation recruiting firm you use, hopefully us, can benefit by you sharing some of the basic elements when they are searching for candidates to fill your job. We can also recommend certain companies who provide these prehire assessments. The good ones are online so the time it takes is minimal.
Bad hiring decisions can damage transportation / logistics companies’ bottom lines, employee morale, and work place cultures. Many companies (93%) are turning to this method. Remember this is only a component of your hiring process. This is great news for transportation recruiters as these tests help to reduce turnover, raise company productivity, and simplify the screening process so that only the best fitting candidates make the cut.
Whether you in Air Freight, Ocean Freight, Truck Freight, Rail Freight, or in Logistics using this will help you lower your failure rate in hiring candidates in Sales or Operations.
Your Transportation or Logistics company has three basic choices to us consider on how to proceed with Prehire Assessments.
- Do your own Prehire assessment. We can help with this if you need some help. See further info below.
- Hire a company who will be able to give you the assessment for operations or sales.
- Do a mix of the two above and give your vendor key items of the job that are essential to you. Then the vendor can to decide whether these items are incorporated into the assessment or whether they work up a custom assessment just for you.
Do your own Prehire Assessment for Air Freight, Ocean Freight, Truck Freight, Rail Freight, 3PL’s, warehouse/distribution centers companies
Look at your existing assessments if you have any or start from scratch if you don’t. Prehire assessments are often job-specific tests designed to evaluate problem-solving, decision-making, and leadership potential.
Define what you feel great leadership looks like. It is a contextual skill unique to your transportation / logistics company.
You should look at previous business challenges that company leaders navigate successfully. What was it about the leaders’ performance that helped them achieve positive results? Like-wise what behaviors produced negative consequences?
Make a list of behaviors and skills that would make candidates successful on the job.
Develop a job profile and a Playbook
Develop this profile that clearly defines quality leadership as it applies to your company. Then collect observations of time that these behaviors occurred, both concrete and anecdotal, into a living document. Make sure to separate examples of great and not so great behaviors. This playbook can contain all the experimental wisdom and time-tested strategies that normally would take years of on-the-job experience and study to uncover. This playbook can eventually service as the barometer by which you evaluate candidates’ responses in an assessment. How close did they get to the playbook? What characteristics do they bring to the table that matches those in the playbook?
Testing the Prehire Assessment before using
You want your Prehire Assessment to tested so it gives you a glimpse of the behaviors from the playbook plus the soft skills necessary for the candidate to do the job.
Test it out on existing employees. You have a safe environment where you can receive direct feedback. If you see top employees struggling with it, then you know you have to adjust.
At Crabtree & Eller we recruit specifically in Transportation and Logistics and focus on a high level of service in the areas of Ocean Freight, Air Freight, Logistics, Trucking and Rail. If you have hiring needs we can help. Give me a call at 303-278-2001 or email me at mark@crabtreeandeller.com .