At the Expo...a panel of 3 judges...one from each division...TT. straight and CV...
Goes to each recruiting booth, listens to their pitch, armed with the same questions for each...and then we rate them according to their answers and the BS meter...
This assigns a presumption of guilt to recruiters, which drivers often do. Indeed, popular acceptance and emotional strokes can be easily found at truck stop lunch counters and other places truckers gather if you complain about recruiters that lie.
The ironic thing is, the complainers will also find popular acceptance and emotional strokes when boasting about how they cheat on their log books and boost their income with clever tricks that break the law or cheat their carriers and customers. In their world, it's OK for them to lie to others but it is not OK for others to lie to them.
In many cases recruiters can tell the truth but drivers will not hear it or they will mis-hear it, and then blame the recruiter for the negative results that the drivers themselves produced.
Both classes of people are just that, people. If you subjected a group of recruiters and truck drivers to the same series of psychological and ethical tests, I don't think either group would score significantly higher than the other.
A responsible recruiter will tell the truth. A responsible driver who is shopping for a new carrier will seek the truth, not just what he or she wants to hear.
To make the BS meter contest fair, the judges' should be similarly assigned the presumption of guilt. Build into the contest the assumption that the judges' truth hearing skills are no better than the recruiters' truth telling skills.
After the judges make the rounds and score the recruiters, test the judges by giving them a one paragraph sales pitch of some sort, and score their ability to accurately say back what they think they heard after they have sat quietly for five minutes.
To the extent that there is such a thing as a BS meter, make sure it is functioning well and calibrated to the truth.
