The idea Stephen Race was pitching to a room full of western-based carriers at the Alberta Motor Transport Association (AMTA) annual general meeting was that they could save themselves countless thousands of dollars if, when interviewing potential employees, they used “personality assessment tools.”

Typically, personality assessment tools are used at the corporate level, he admitted. But, he said, you can also use those “assessment tools to help predict personality, future behaviours, and attitudes toward safety.”

Race has a Ph.D in Occupational Therapy and works for a company called Talent Click, based out of Vancouver. Talent Click uses personality assessment tools that are modified for front-line workers. Much of their client base comes from the oil and gas sector, but recently they’ve been dealing with trucking companies, notably Canadian Freightways.

According to Talent Click, their clients have seen a 25 and 50 percent improvement in safety by using behavioural assessment tools.

After the interview of a potential employee, you’ll have a bead on their default personality settings: resistant, anxious, irritable, distractible or impulsive. “Those personality characteristics don’t change,” Race explained to Today’s Trucking. “But actions and behaviours can change through self-awareness, coaching and training.”

The whole process requires your supervisors to have an understanding of Joe Driver’s personality, requiring them to tailor their coaching style on a case-by-case basis, ideally driving a wedge between those knee-jerk, personality-based reactions and the actual action.

“Realistically, is any one person going to put in that time?” asks Caroline Blais, recruiting manager at Kriska Transport, based out of Prescott, ON.

She raises a good point: with a looming driver shortage, and a reportedly less-than-positive business environment, can a carrier afford the time and money to be that picky when hiring drivers?

Blais explains that while she is a believer in personality profiling, the challenge is on the implementation side. “The process is long and onerous. How much stuff do you put a driver through?”

While Kriska doesn’t use any formal personality assessment tool, Blais says that they do get a sense of those personality characteristics in the initial interview, and will refer back to their file when trainers have feedback or issues come up at a later date.

She explains that Kriska puts an emphasis on a driver’s ability to think critically. “They are out there on their own, and they need to figure out problems on their own.”

Recently, Kriska implemented a professional behavior program. “We really want to focus on how every decision we make has a consequence,” she explains, adding that they constantly discuss things like interpersonal interaction and how that affects attitudes. “A driver asks the dispatcher something, who is busy and says something not friendly, then that driver gets in the truck angry.” And that’s when crashes happen.

Putting more time into hiring and training could also improve your retention rates. From June 2011 to June 2012, SGT 2000, based out of St-Germain de Grantham, QC., had a retention rate of 6.5 percent of the roughly 112 drivers they hired and began putting through their training program. Then they made changes.

From June of 2012 to May 2013, their retention rate improved by a jaw-dropping 66.7 percent.

“What we did first was extend the road test,” Paul Salivar, SGT Driver Trainer told Today’s Trucking. Originally, SGT’s road tests lasted anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes.

“Now that’s changed into an 85km road test that goes into downtown Toronto,” Salivar explained. Potential drivers are put into all sorts of real-life, on the job situations — they even take them to an area that has a low bridge to see if the driver reads the sign. “You can see how they handle stress,” Salivar he says.

They changed their training program, too. Originally, the driver would spend one month with a trainer, then two to three months with another rookie, the two learning off each other. Now, they stay with a trainer for 6 to 8 weeks and then have another road test.

“Our highway trainers get a good sense of that over a long period of time. At that point, we’ll adjust the training,” he explains. “We’ve had the new drivers out of school who know everything, who doesn’t listen. We take them in step-by-step and try to understand why they are resistant.”

During the interview and hiring process, Salivar says they get a “feeling if there is potential, if you can get them over this one hump — we’re coming into the driver shortage, you don’t want to waste money.”