Cox Automotive Mobility Fleet Services (CAMFS) is the leader in scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, servicing diesel engine vehicle fleets with their mobile maintenance team and at service centers across the country. Fleet Services also provides emergency mobile service to put fleets back on the road as quickly as possible. We have all experienced supply chain and workforce challenges over the past couple of years, due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control. Now that a semblance of normalcy has returned, CAMFS has tasked McCulloch+Company with keeping things moving by helping recruit new diesel technicians to their team. 

With a lot of diesel technicians close to retirement, a significant portion of their work force will soon “age out” of work, necessitating effective recruitment campaigns that delivered experienced candidates. CAMFS also has a growing need to find future talent to enroll in their FleeTec Academy, a paid diesel technician training course, and become the backbone of the growing diesel technician team.

Finding experienced diesel technicians was the easier of the two tasks, but by no means easy. We spent a great deal of time interviewing our contacts in the automotive and transportation space, questioning them on how they find technicians for their dealerships and service centers. This involved asking about prospects’ media habits, hiring processes, referral programs, etc. Once we had a grasp of the potential hires’ profile, we developed a strong program to reach that segment. Using a combination of B2B tactics and consumer-facing programmatic & social media options, along with CAMFS’ testimonial-style display and video assets featuring recent technician hires, McCulloch+Company developed a program that targeted currently employed diesel technicians and promoted the various benefits of joining the team at Cox Automotive. The emphasis was on PTO, 401k, schedule flexibility, training, and other fringe benefits of working at a large, respected corporation like Cox Automotive. 

The more difficult task was finding potential recruits for their FleeTec Academy. How do you target a job opportunity for someone who doesn’t know what they want to do for a living? We had the benefit of accessing information from current FleeTec students regarding their media habits, but it was the targeting that was the challenge. Recruitment advertising can be difficult as most platforms limit how you can target to avoid any potential discriminatory tactics. This meant targeting by age and income was off the table. Instead, we focused on the job itself. They say doing a job you enjoy means you won’t work a day in your life, so that’s where we started. Targeting individuals with interests adjacent to diesel technician work such as DIY engine repair, car modders, and so on was a start. Additionally, we emphasized the speed at which their career might begin, focusing on weeks at FleeTec Academy vs. months or years at a technical school. Lastly, we “gamed the system” and focused on channels that naturally skewed to younger audiences: Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, etc. These channels showcased testimonial videos featuring recent program graduates and their great experience at FleeTec Academy.

The client was thrilled with the results. Ted Coltrain, Senior Vice President at Cox Automotive Mobility Fleet Services, said, “leads more than doubled in the course of a year” since onboarding McCulloch+Company to help with recruitment. David Evans, Manager of Brand, Content & Recruitment Marketing, had this to say:

“McCulloch+Company is always willing to learn what the brand is, what our goals are, then align the paid media strategy to those goals in really smart & intelligent ways. I don’t have to be an expert on media because [they are] the expert. McCulloch+Company helped us to be the first business within Cox to be on TikTok. I spoke with FleeTec students who saw our ads on TikTok. When I get that anecdotal success in addition to the data, it affirms how valuable our partnership with McCulloch+Company is.”