By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.
Accept
routeonerouteonerouteone
  • News
    • Show all
    • Awards & Events
    • Deliveries
    • Environment
    • Exhibitor News
    • Euro Bus Expo 2024
    • Features
    • Legal
    • Minibus and minicoach
    • Operators
    • Opinion
    • People
    • Suppliers
    • Vehicles
  • Vehicles
    • Find a Vehicle
    • ZEV Comparison Tool
    • Sell a Vehicle
    • Vehicle Seller Dashboard
  • Insights
  • Careers
  • Events
    • British Tourism & Travel Show
    • Euro Bus Expo
    • Innovation Challenge
    • Livery Competition
    • routeone Awards
  • Advertise
  • Contact
    • Share your news
    • Subscribe
    • Update Subscription Details
  • Latest Issue
  • SIGN UP
Search
© 2024 routeone News. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: McRoberts: Using tech to boost coach and bus operator recruitment
Share
Font ResizerAa
routeonerouteone
Font ResizerAa
Search
  • News
    • Show all
    • Awards & Events
    • Deliveries
    • Environment
    • Exhibitor News
    • Euro Bus Expo 2024
    • Features
    • Legal
    • Minibus and minicoach
    • Operators
    • Opinion
    • People
    • Suppliers
    • Vehicles
  • Vehicles
    • Find a Vehicle
    • ZEV Comparison Tool
    • Sell a Vehicle
    • Vehicle Seller Dashboard
  • Insights
  • Careers
  • Events
    • British Tourism & Travel Show
    • Euro Bus Expo
    • Innovation Challenge
    • Livery Competition
    • routeone Awards
  • Advertise
  • Contact
    • Share your news
    • Subscribe
    • Update Subscription Details
  • Latest Issue
  • SIGN UP
Follow US
© 2024 routeone News | Powered by Diversified Business Communications UK Ltd
- Advertisement -
-
routeone > Suppliers > McRoberts: Using tech to boost coach and bus operator recruitment
Suppliers

McRoberts: Using tech to boost coach and bus operator recruitment

Automated filtering techniques and targeted marketing are significantly easing the challenges of hiring workers, relative newcomer to the industry McRoberts tells routeone

Paul Halford
Paul Halford
Published: August 19, 2024
Share
The latest technology is being employed by McRoberts in a bid to cut down on the time and cost involved in hiring new staff
The latest technology is being employed by McRoberts in a bid to cut down on the time and cost involved in hiring new staff
SHARE

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

Contents
Quality over quantityReducing costsIncreasing diversity

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 McRoberts is using a long background in marketing to help coach and bus operators recruit staff
Joe McRoberts is using a long background in marketing to help coach and bus operators recruit staff

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.

Tootbus is among several operators with which McRoberts has worked
Tootbus is among several operators with which McRoberts has worked

“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.”

TAGGED:driver recruitment
Share This Article
Facebook LinkedIn Threads Email Copy Link
Previous Article young bus driver CPT: Pressing the new government on workforce issues
Next Article Drivers are among employees who could be affected by TUPE regulations Coach and bus legal Q&A: TUPE and trade marks
- Advertisement -

Latest News

Temsa HD12 and HD13 delivered to Cresta Coaches under Asset Alliance rental deal
Temsa pair join Cresta Coaches on Asset Alliance rental agreement
Deliveries
Go-Ahead London – Managing Director
Careers Jobs
andy burnham tfgm £15.6 billion (1) The funding announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves today (4 June) has been allocated to several combined mayoral authorities to use on rail, tram, road and bus infrastructure. Transport for Greater Manchester revealed today that part of the £2.5 billion it will receive will go towards making the Bee Network fully battery-electric by 2030. An as-yet undecided portion of that will support a planned investment in 1,000 new zero-emission buses over that period, the mayoral authority said. That is part of plans to build the UK's "first fully integrated, zero-emission public transport system", with trams and trains also set to benefit. Liverpool City Region's already announced BRT system is among the projects to which its £1.6 billion will be allocated. Under those plans - due for realisation by 2028 - a high-speed network will be served by articulated buses which are modelled on the 'Glider' in Belfast. It is due to link Liverpool city centre with John Lennon Airport, and Liverpool FC and Everton FC's respective stadia along three routes. Although the model of bus has not been confirmed, a Van Hool Exqui.City on loan from Belfast was last year used as a demonstrator. That 18m vehicle can accommodate around 30% more passengers than a typical bus and has three sets of double doors. The funding will also go towards buses elsewhere in the city as the region heads towards franchising services by 2027. Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram with a 'Glider' which was on loan from Belfast last year - an example of the sort of bus which could serve the new BRT Bus services in the East Midlands region will be boosted by the funding, thanks to the £2 billion handed to it today by the government. Some of that allocation will be used for a rapid transit network on the Trent Arc between Nottingham and Derby. Between the two cities, the Freeport, Infinity Park Investment Zone and Ratcliffe-on-Soar will also benefit from the improved bus services. South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority's newly announced commitment towards bus franchising has been boosted by £350 million in funding as part of that region's allocation. The funding for West Yorkshire will help build new bus stations in Bradford and Wakefield. Likewise, the Tees Valley Mayoral Authority will put its sum towards a new £15 million bus station in Middlesbrough. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander says: "Today marks a watershed moment on our journey to improving transport across the North and Midlands – opening up access to jobs, growing the economy and driving up quality of life as we deliver our Plan for Change. "For too long, people in the North and Midlands have been locked out of the investment they deserve. With £15.6bn of government investment, we’re giving local leaders the means to drive cities, towns and communities forward, investing in Britain’s renewal so you and your family are better off."
TfGM’s all-electric bus plan boosted by new ÂŁ15.6 billion package
News
Local Transport Minister opens First Bus electric depot in Hengrove
Local Transport Minister opens First Bus electric depot in Hengrove
Bus
- Advertisement -
-

routeone magazine is the indispensable resource for professional UK coach, bus and minibus operators. The home of vehicle sales and the latest bus and coach job vacancies, routeone connects professional PCV operators with complete and unrivalled news coverage.

  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • GDPR Policy
  • Sustainability
  • Advertise
  • Latest Issue
  • Share Your News
routeonerouteone
Follow US
© 2024 routeone News | Powered by Diversified Business Communications UK Ltd