Your candidate was approved to start driving! Congratulations! The next big step is to bring the driver on Orientation.
The orientation is a pre-employment process where the candidate performs various tasks at the carrier’s office before he gets hired and starts driving. Carriers can have one or more days of orientation.
At the orientation the candidate does the following:
- Drug test (performed near the prospects home before orientation or at the carrier office)
- All required driver paperwork – driver’s licence, medical certificate and other necessary agreements prior to being hired.
- Safety overview: e-log training, inspections, road tests, etc.
- Instruction on company policies & procedures
- Tractor/Trailer assignment
- Meet & greet with assigned Fleet Manager/Operations department
Recruiters are responsible to schedule the approved driver for orientation and find travel accommodation for the driver’s arrival.
1) Contact the driver to inform him that his application is approved and move forward with the orientation date. Ask the driver when is a good time to go on orientation? If needed you can say that we tend to arrange the earliest orientation available (If it’s a longer period he might lose interest to join us).
Next, you set the equipment he needs to be assigned with:
- Dry Van or Reefer,
- Automatic or Manual transmission,
- What is his preferred truck, and
- His preferred employment W2 or 1099 depending on carriers (for company drivers only).
To get him scheduled for orientation we need the following information set:
- Orientation date
- Type of Driver- Company/Company 90 days/Lease/Owner
- Type of Trailer – Dry Van/ Reefer
- Preferred Equipment – Truck-year-transmission
- Preferred Employment – W2 / 1099
2) After you make the schedule for orientation, you check the available transportation to get the driver on orientation. You check where he is located (ask where he will be traveling from – his home or somewhere else) on the map and look for available options:
- Flight, train or bus – up to $250 the lower the better, purchased by us, or
- Rent a car/drives own car – up to $200 for expenses, driver pays than gets reimbursed on his first paycheck.
Flight
Start searching for the best available flights using Google Flights. Set departure and arrival place and date (1 day prior orientation start). Look for non-stop flights that are the most affordable, if there are none – search for the nearest departure airports that have affordable ticket for that date.
If there are no flights available within our price range, search for train or bus ticket (avoid bus travel if its a long distance, only for areas close to Chicago, ex. less than 500miles)
Train
Check for available train tickets on www.amtrak.com. Set the date for traveling, departure and arrival (Chicago train station). The most common problem with trains is that there are not so many available stations for departure since the train network is limited in the US to several train lines. If you don’t have this problem than seek to find the most affordable train ticket and traveling time – traveling by train is slow and we need to plan for the driver to arrive before orientation, at best to arrive the day prior orientation.
Bus
Check for available bus tickets on greyhound.com. Set the date for traveling, departure and arrival (Chicago bus station). There should be available bus tickets but the biggest problem with buses is the traveling itself, buses are almost always late and traveling takes a long time, so it’s only affordable if the candidate is located somewhere closer to Chicago ex. less than 500miles.
3) During the period from being scheduled for orientation to traveling and starting orientation, it’s very important to stay in touch with the candidate and keep the interest high, since drivers can apply to other carriers as well and if there is no daily communication he might change his mind and “disappear” – not go on orientation. This period is great to ask him questions for his “driver profile” and have a better understanding of his expectations.