Recruitment agencies can be found in most larger cities of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator. All recruitment agencies have to be discovered first by passing the street in front of it and after that they will be marked with on the map. Once an agency is discovered one can also access them via the game menu screen.
The agency charges a one-time fee of 1,500 EUR/USD for each driver hired. Once you hire a driver, you have to choose which garage they will be based at and which truck they will be driving. If you don't have an available truck, you can place the driver in an empty garage slot until you do.
When the driver has a truck they will start to work immediately. The driver will always attempt to schedule hauls from their home city out and then back again to minimize downtime, but occasionally no suitable cargo will be found for the return trip.
According to game files, there is a 10% chance of "no return job" for each driver, but this number is said to "decrease with skill". (see "economy_data.sii" file)
Unlike the trucks, the trailers cannot be assigned to drivers. Instead, you can place them in garage slots and drivers will use them as needed.
Under each driver's name you will find a rating that describes how efficient the driver is. As you train your driver in new skills and increase their training in existing skills, their rating will increase. As their rating increases, so too does their earned income.
Driver Job@net
Wage[]
Below the rating you will find the starting wage that the driver is asking. Whenever your new driver completes a job, this fee will be deducted from the job income along with any fuel and toll expenses. As the driver gains rating and skills, the wage will go up accordingly.
Skills[]
The final information displayed about each available driver is their skills. These will go up in time, but it is still a good idea to get a driver with a variety of skills. Long distance is the most wanted skill for making money, then ADR. Even eco driving can make a difference.
The default setting for skill improvements of a hired driver is "Balanced". You can find it on driver's detail in Driver Manager section of your Company Manager. It's recommended to change it to more specific skill, like Long distance or ADR.
It's good to put at least one point onto each skill, because it makes more jobs available and when drivers don't find an appropriate job, they're going back empty (which costs money).
¹ The 17 Cities listed as Fast Travel Destinations can be traveled to without discovering them by regular driving, which gives early-game owners a larger variety of drivers to choose from. There may be other Recruitment centers nearby that are also easily reachable (e.g. Oakland and San Jose in California, Eugene in Oregon, Tacoma in Washington), while some of the newer or reworked cities (Los Angeles) are more spread out, and the Recruitment Center may be up to 40 miles from the Fast Travel destination.
Trivia[]
As of version 1.48, SCS Software has only given the possibility for a maximum of 355 drivers in both ETS2 and ATS. After this, there won't be any more drivers in the recruitment agency although there are way more garage slots available.
In the initial release of Euro Truck Simulator 2, the maximum drivers giving in-game was as low as 155 recruiters, which would have filled up 31 out of 69 garages, or 155 out of 345 garage slots.
In American Truck Simulator, prior to the release of the Texas map expansion, the maximum number of drivers was 300 out of 345 drivers in the game before version 1.46 because of the number of garages in such large cities.
After the Texas map expansion releases, the garage slot count is currently 375, which marks the first time ATS has ever featured more garage slots than the available driver count in the game.
