McRoberts: Using tech to boost coach and bus operator recruitment

The significant recruitment challenges in the industry have undoubtedly held back growth for many operators for a few years now.

The issue has been met by several recruitment agencies which have helped fill the gaps and limited the amount of work operators have had to turn down.

One of the newest of these is McRoberts, which is using innovative techniques in a bid to make recruitment hiring more effective.

The business claims its digital marketing techniques and automated filtering process ensure high exposure and thus volume, while also boosting the quality of candidates.

Founder and CEO Joe McRoberts claims his business can reduce hiring costs by up to 95%, eliminate 70% of candidate filtering time and increase driver retention by 20%.

The agency has already worked with RATP, Tootbus, Airparks and Newport Transport, while the founder previously worked with Arriva.

Joe had around 12 years’ experience in digital marketing before realising his skills could be well applied to combating the industry’s staffing issues. Recruiting 500 drivers for Arriva was something of a lightbulb moment.

“I realised that, by applying the same principles of growing businesses with digital marketing strategies, it would work really well for volume recruitment,” says Joe, whose business specialises in transport and logistics.

Quality over quantity

Despite McRoberts being a volume recruiter, Joe stresses quality rather than quantity is the business’s main selling point.

Its filtering process efficiently checks each applicant to ensure only the top candidates reach the client’s inbox, or “Applicant Tracking System”.

This entails a wide range of checks, including the most basic, such as whether they have a valid PCV licence with fewer than seven points and whether they have the right to work in the UK.

The business is increasingly using advanced technology and artificial intelligence as part of this process, for example, for automatically verifying claims made by applicants.

It is also currently developing features to help predict the likelihood that a candidate will be hired and retained.

McRoberts’ solution can also check each applicant’s expected commuting time based on their home address, given that excess travel time may increase drop-outs during the recruitment process or lower the retention rate.

The filtering extends to softer skills which can be tailored to each client’s requirement. For example, assessments can be used to ensure only those with a sufficient level of spoken English make it through.

McRoberts claims its approach increases the speed of the hiring process seven-fold. Joe says: “By sending operators quality candidates who are already vetted, they stop wasting time and they hire people faster, and the recruitment team are less miserable because they’re not spending their lives filtering through loads and loads of poor-quality candidates.”

We track which of our digital channels are performing best for hiring people for that client – Joe McRoberts

Before that stage, though, the team endeavours to get to know the client and the job for which they are recruiting.

“When we start with a client, the first thing we do is meet the drivers to fully understand their world. We interview them,” says Joe, “Because, from our perspective, it’s not just a job description as in ‘you work these hours, these are the benefits, these are your responsibilities’.

“We look at what they actually like about their life. Is it the shift pattern, is it that you’re working with passengers who are on holiday rather than on a service bus, is it the culture in the depot?

“We then build messaging to accurately represent that job and then we test this messaging in our ads across a range of digital channels and we see what is actually working.”

Reducing costs

This is where Joe’s background in marketing comes into play as the business advertises across Facebook, Instagram, Google, job boards and elsewhere.

He explains: “Because we track which of our digital channels are performing best for hiring people for that client, we can put our money into the channels where the cost per hire is the lowest.

“On top of that, because your team don’t need to spend so much time, that gives you more time to spend with the good-quality candidates.”

Joe notes that recruitment agencies traditionally charge fees of 10-20% per hire, and points out the example of its deal with RATP, which works out at less than 1%.

When it comes to RATP, McRoberts’ focus has developed, reflecting a trend across the industry towards quality of hires rather than just quantity, says Joe.

“The first priority is to fill the roles. Then quality is going to become the main thing for the industry.

“When we started with RATP, it was in a really difficult situation,” he says. “It needed to get drivers and it was spending a fortune on agency workers.

“Skip forward 18 months and we now help the operator hire 42 drivers per month and the volume is less critical, so it’s much more focused on the quality of people coming through.”

Joe is keen to stress the advantages which he sees of hiring permanent staff. “Almost all of our clients use us, in part, to stop using agency drivers,” says Joe.

“They are expensive, they are not great for culture, they often don’t come in with the right mindset, and they’re not loyal to the company or the brand values.

“We help clients hire people who are going to stick around, so they can stop using expensive agency drivers. For example, since working with Tootbus, this is the first time they haven’t had any agency drivers.”

Everybody is looking at diversity, getting more women and retention – Joe McRoberts

The sightseeing operator comments that it is enjoying the results from its recruitment campaigns with McRoberts.

Mariela Juarez Duarte, who is Human Resources Manager, Sightseeing UK, Tootbus, says: “McRoberts is going above and beyond to understand our recruitment needs and to align candidates perfectly with our expectations.

“From weekly stats and meetings with Joe, the professionalism, promptness, and attention to detail have been evident throughout the digital recruitment campaign they are doing for us. We do feel valued as a client.

“Moreover, even though we started with McRoberts three months later than with other recruitment sources, we have hired more drivers sent to us by McRoberts than any other recruitment boards combined.”

Increasing diversity

Further to assisting with the volume and quality of recruitment, McRoberts is helping to improve diversity in workforces, says Joe, whose business also deals with management roles.

He highlights that it has enabled RATP to triple the number of women candidates applying for jobs and is in a position to increase this further.

At a time when, typically, only 10-12% of bus drivers are women and the lack of diversity is even more pronounced in engineering, many operators see rectifying this as a way to combat recruitment issues.

“Everybody is looking at diversity, getting more women and retention,” he says.

“I do think the whole industry is going to up its game on the environment that people are working in, etc. I know Go-Ahead has done some great work on making the environment more welcoming for women in some of its depots to improve retention. I think the next 10 years are going to be completely transformative.”