Unemployment in the U.S. is at a 50-year low right now, forcing logistics enterprises to get creative when it comes to finding workers to staff their operations. The latest example is Concord, North Carolina-based third-party logistics service provider (3PL) Cardinal Logistics, which has been recruiting drivers through Facebook Messenger, the social media giant's instant messaging platform.

According to Facebook, Cardinal was already using Messenger to communicate in real time with its drivers as they prefer messaging over phone calls. Now it's expanding its use of the platform to find new employees—a move that has paid off by nearly doubling the number of "quality leads" it receives and reducing the cost per lead by 55%, Facebook says.

The 3PL worked with the recruitment advertising specialist Conversion Interactive Agency to develop a Messenger-based lead-generation campaign that targeted both current truck drivers and a "lookalike audience" that mirrored Cardinal's own driver database. After a brief screening to filter out unsuitable candidates—like those who didn't have a commercial driver's license—Cardinal initiated instant-messaging conversations with qualified respondents, using the real-time texting platform to collect their applications and answer any questions.

Based on the results of Cardinal's initial Messenger-based recruitment campaign, which ran from November 2018 to May 2019, the partners say they're planning to stick with the program. "Cardinal and Conversion both agree that Messenger will play a big role in our recruiting efforts [into] 2020," Dave Edwards, Cardinal's senior vice president of driver development, said in a release. "The conversations that potential applicants are having with the Cardinal recruiters in Messenger are showing great value. They're not only turning into leads, but into hires."