“I THINK EVERYBODY IS REALIZING THAT OUR REAL PROBLEM AS AN INDUSTRY IS TWOFOLD: ONE IS
WE’RE DOING A TERRIBLE JOB MATCHING PEOPLE TO OUR COMPANIES. THE SECOND THING IS A CULTURAL PROBLEM. IT’S A PERCEPTION PROBLEM. AND IF WE WORK TOGETHER TO SOLVE THE PERCEPTION PROBLEM, IT WILL MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE.”
—JIM RAY, HIRING OUR HEROES
and only shows them jobs that they are qualified for and with carriers that will provide training.” The technology impressed the
Track, Manufacturing Track, and the Trucking Track. The Financial Track and Insurance Track will be added soon. Early this year, Hiring Our Heroes
and Jim Ray found each other to form the Trucking Track, as Ray tells it. He is the co-founder of a technology com- pany named Fastport that matches job- seeking truckers to trucking companies. “My CEO talked to Tom Donahue, the president of the Chamber of the Commerce. He’s the former president of the American Trucking Associations, so he was really familiar with trucking. He connected us to the executive of the Hiring Our Heroes program. So that’s how the story began.” The real story, of course, began
with serious problem solving. Hiring Our Heroes puts veterans in jobs across industries, but Fastport had already realized that traditional job searches are more complicated in the trucking industry. “The program has all these veterans that need jobs, and they have job posting technology for normal jobs. They were frustrated because traditional technology [Craigslist, Indeed, etc.] does not work for trucking,” Ray explains, “because it’s so geographical.” The Trucking Track was created in
May to use Fastport’s JobMaps technol- ogy and help veterans find trucking positions close to their homes. After military professionals arrive home from overseas, they look for jobs
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near their home base. One misconcep- tion is that truck driving will just take them away from their families again. The truth is that there are jobs available with lanes that run right through or very near almost everyone’s home town. Finding those jobs can be a needle-hay- stack operation. And there’s the rub. A search for “truck driver” in Little
Rock, Ark. on Craigslist yields 372 pos- sibilities. Each posting requires the job seeker to open the post, mentally process the job details, and decide if the position is a possible fit. The same search on popular jobsite Indeed yields 653 possibilities. All the job postings on these sites are formatted differently so there is a lot of information to sift through. Fastport uses a job seeker’s location on the map and matches jobs to those drivers. This minimizes out- of-route miles and maximizes drivers’ earnings. In addition to matching locations
to drivers’ home bases, the technology filters for experience. “Veterans are intimidated by the jobs, because of the language. We use a bunch of terms they don’t understand which scares them off. And then if they go on job posting boards . . . they don’t know which ones they can take because most of them require experience,” Ray continues. “So our technology only shows them jobs that are in their home towns, which is just desperately important to them,
Hiring Our Heroes group, but what puts veterans in jobs after they have seen the right postings is the efforts from industry partnerships. The Trucking Track has acquired 11 partnerships that represent different segments of the industry. There are nine carriers, a hazardous waste disposal service and a CDL school who are commit- ting to help veterans find the right civilian job in the industry. The part- nerships include YRC Worldwide, Holland, J.B. Hunt, Transport America, TMC Transportation, Maverick Transportation, Con-way Truckload, Knight Transportation, Ryder System, Inc., Troops Into Transportation and Clean Harbors. Each partner brings a commitment
to process the new hires and help them through all the steps of transitioning out of the military and into a truck. The procedure may mean assisting individu- als with trucking school, sending them to the carrier’s own school or helping them check all the boxes required to become a trucker. Another requirement of the partners
is a video for the Trucking Track website. Because the veterans may be new to the industry, the Trucking Track aims to pro- vide a basic education—what truckers do, why it matters, how military experience has already prepared veterans with skills valued by the industry. The partners also provide mentors
to interested individuals with a military background. A mentorship program has been one of the most successful elements of the Hiring Our Heroes ini- tiative since it began. Any veteran can come to the Hiring Our Heroes web pages and request someone to mentor him or her through the process. “It’s a selfless thing really,” Ray explains, “A mentor will hope that the mentees will come work for his or her trucking com- pany, but if there just isn’t a fit, it’s the
ARKANSAS TRUCKING REPORT | Issue 4 2014
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