MoLo Solutions is a transportation and logistics company, and its hiring goals are a moving target, too. But even with ever-changing industry and market conditions, MoLo’s talent team understands the importance of maintaining their brand recognition and building a consistent candidate pipeline. When their needs change, they’ll be prepared.
Caitlin Roth, Manager, Talent at MoLo sat down with Handshake to discuss how her team’s early talent attraction strategy is both responsive to the market and proactive for the future.
MoLo’s year-over-year impact with Handshake Talent Engagement Suite + Advocates:
- 119% increase in schools with an applicant
- 197% increase in page views
- 113% increase in referred applicants
Can you describe your early talent hiring program?
Our early talent hiring program is ever changing. Our goals can be as high as hiring over 300 people in one year, but they're always a moving target because our hiring goals are actually very dependent on the transportation market. We’re typically hiring for entry level sales and customer service, evergreen positions as well as summer internship programs.
The biggest challenge that our industry is facing has to do with the transportation market, because it’s very dependent on the economy. But even in times of uncertainty, my team understands the importance of maintaining our brand recognition among students, and building a consistent pipeline of candidates…so that when our needs do change, we are prepared.
“We physically cannot travel to every single campus to capture the talent that we need when those hiring goals are really high or when our hiring goals are more unpredictable. So that's why I think Handshake has been such a great tool for us, because it allows us to be so flexible in our strategy and can even act as another arm of our recruiting team at times.”
Let’s dig into how your broad school network enables scalable outreach and high-touch candidate engagement. Last year MoLo received applications from 318 of your partner schools, a 119% increase from the previous year. Can you speak to how your school partner strategy has helped you achieve the quantity, quality, and diversity that you were looking for?
With such a lean team, it is not feasible for us to travel to all of the schools that we receive applications from. We typically travel regionally to colleges and universities located near our offices, but School Explorer has been a great tool within Handshake that my team has used to determine which schools we visit in person and virtually. There are so many great search functionalities within School Explorer that we’ve used to research which schools have supply chain and sales programs, diversity and inclusion focused organizations, specific locations students are interested in. Then we’re able to target our campaigns and messages, for example, to those students saying that we know they're interested in those areas.
“We've believed that casting a wide net in terms of the schools that we're connected with on Handshake gives us the best opportunity to hire candidates from diverse backgrounds and experiences. And so that we are reaching as many people as possible with our lean team.”
How you think about the schools you’ll visit in-person vs. where you’ll do virtual events, and can you give us a sense of the types of events you host?
Since we typically only travel regionally, we really leverage Handshake to host a lot of virtual events at schools that are located all across the country. We've hosted informational branding sessions to talk about who MoLo is and what we do, since third party logistics isn’t as well-known as other industries. We've done intern and alumni meet and greets, and skill based events where we've taught students sales skills, networking skills, resume building skills so that they can walk away from the events with something beneficial to them and their professional development. We've also hosted a lot of underrepresented group focus panels through Handshake, like with our Women in Supply Chain ERG. So that's something I'm really proud of.
Tell us about your "Shadow Day" event, and how you’ve used Handshake to source students for this opportunity.
This is an experience where students get to come visit our Chicago office and see what a day in the life looks like working at MoLo. Not only do you get an understanding of the industry, you get to see the positions that you could potentially be working in, and experience our culture firsthand. We use Segments to source candidates who are located in Chicago or whose location preferences indicate Chicago, who also have an interest in the transportation industry. That made the invitations really segmented and ensured that we were inviting the right people to build those relationships with.
We invite a range of students from first years to seniors, so we start that early talent pipeline and the relationships with those students, but then can capture the juniors and seniors that are eligible for our internship and full time opportunities as well.
Two smart actions that have resulted in successful proactive sourcing for MoLo have been sending campaigns and hosting events. This is incredible: you’ve seen a 94% increase in job views and a whopping 477% increase in event RSVPs! Can you share how your high-touch outreach strategies have helped you build your brand, fill your pipeline, and see ROI?
My team and I have gotten really creative with our messaging in terms of subject lines, formatting, and content. We even got the idea to do this by attending several Handshake webinars to better understand how to attract Gen Z candidates, and then use that information to tailor the messaging in our Campaigns to be very personalized and specific to what these candidates are looking for.
But it's about so much more than just sending the right messages. It's about sending them to the right people. So using tools like Segment filters and Top Matches within Handshake helps us manage our outreach to students to promote MoLo leading up to the events and fairs that we're attending or hosting to make sure that we're meeting the right people. Which ultimately maximizes our ROI.
“I really think that the unlimited messages we receive through our premium partnership has been one of the main contributors to helping us grow our brand with qualified talent, despite being such a lean team. We are still a younger company that’s growing rapidly. So to be able to build that brand, it’s super important to have the opportunity to send as many messages as possible to as many students located across the country since we do have such a wide range of schools we're connected to. Handshake makes it so easy to maintain frequent communication with candidates.”
In 2024, MoLo received a Handshake Early Talent Award—congrats! Can you tell us how you’re building a culture that attracts students and recent grads?
I’m incredibly proud of my team's work over the past year and so grateful for the recognition we've received for the experience we create both for our candidates and our employees that we're bringing into the organization every single year. We've done so much research, you know, through Handshake webinars and through our own surveys to understand what our current employees want and need to be successful, and what Gen Z new hires and interns are looking for. And we are always implementing that feedback and the information and data.
I'm really proud to be a part of an organization like MoLo that is people first, and truly believes in hands on training, support, and mentorship so that we can set up all of our interns and new hires for the best successful careers that they could have ever imagined.