AC Transit New Bus Operator Social Media Posts

Target Audience: Potential job candidates, AC Transit bus riders, staff, and community members

Strategy Objective:The social media posts highlighted graduating new bus operators (NBO) and an announcement to welcome them to AC Transit. We have monthly NBO graduations. The graduations are held at the Training Education Center where we hosted family members to celebrate their certification. We have hired over 160 operators this year. The social media posts showed AC Transit adding more operators to our workforce and an opportunity to potential candidates that AC Transit can be a future employer.

Situation Challenge: AC Transit has a number of vacant bus operator positions. With employee attrition, AC Transit needed to improve its workforce and recruit bus operators. To hire candidates that meet AC Transit's standards, the process can take weeks, even months—from the screening calls, panel interviews, fingerprinting, getting the proper paperwork from the DMV, and finally background checks—before a new bus operator can enter a training class. Training is a nine-week process. Becoming a bus operator takes time and is not simple and quick. Plus the Bay Area is a competitive job market where most transit agencies are hiring bus operators.

Results Impact: Social media posts highlighting our new bus operators have been successful and consistently rank among our top-performing content. One of our new bus operator posts was one of our top-performing posts of the year, reaching 37,000 impressions and 2,480 engagements. On average, our NBO posts generate 20,000 impressions and 1,900 engagements. This year, three of these posts made it into our top ten highest engagement posts. The recognition of our new bus operators has been widely appreciated by our online audience and well received overall.

Why Submit: Highlighting our new bus operators celebrates their accomplishments and showcases the growth of our workforce. It acknowledges their hard work and successful completion of training, officially making them bus operators. The collaboration between the Marketing, Recruitment, and Training teams demonstrates our company-wide commitment to workforce development. We are able to show our growth in the workforce on social media, encouraging others to apply. Recognizing our new bus operators is vital, and the consistent positive engagement we receive underscores its impact. This is why we believe this effort deserves a 2025 AdWheel.