What Happens When Marketing Invades the Recruiting Department
The unlikely alliance that fixed Coastline's talent problem
What if your revenue problem is actually a recruiting problem?
What if the people you're not hiring are directly costing you money?
What if the person you need to solve your talent shortage isn't in HR, they're sitting in marketing?
These aren't hypothetical questions at Coastline Academy. They're how a company grew from "a few people you know" to hiring hundreds of instructors across 500+ cities. And it all started when someone noticed the quality was slipping.
Not plummeting. Slipping. Just enough that it demanded attention.
(00:00) Meet the Marketer Who Decided Recruiting Was His Problem
Renaud Delaquis is head of product marketing at Coastline Academy, the nation's largest driving school with a mission to become the most recognized brand in driving education.
His job is straightforward: drive revenue. Increase demand. Scale profitably across 500+ cities.
Pretty standard marketer mandate.
What's not standard is how he discovered that his entire job was actually a recruiting problem.
Here's the reality: When you're experiencing rapid growth in a field where talent is scarce, demand generation without supply feels like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Renaud could create all the customer demand he wanted. But if instructors didn't exist to fulfill those lessons, the revenue evaporated.
So instead of staying in his lane, he walked into HR and asked the question that changed everything: How do we recruit better?
What came next wasn't turf war. It was collaboration. Because HR had been noticing something too—the more they hired to meet demand, the lower their quality metrics dropped. One unit. Barely measurable. But enough to matter.
That's when they realized they were looking at the same problem from different angles.
(01:37) When Hiring Speed Becomes a Quality Problem
Coastline maintains a 98% five-star rating. Industry-leading. Then it dropped to 97%.
One percentage point.
Most companies shrug and move on.
Renaud didn't. He traced every negative review back to its source. What he found wasn't a training problem or a hiring quality issue—it was an expectations problem.
The people being hired didn't understand what they were walking into. They showed up thinking it was just a job. They didn't grasp that they were entering a role where precision and calm literally save lives. They didn't realize their day-to-day choices would shape someone's confidence for years.
They just knew they were teaching someone to drive.
And when expectations don't match reality, people leave unhappy. And they tell the world about it.
(09:14) The Personality Type You Actually Need to Find
Here's the uncomfortable truth: Not everyone can be a good driving instructor.
You need someone who stays genuinely calm when a teenager is white-knuckling the steering wheel. Someone who finds real fulfillment in the moment a kid gets their independence back. Someone willing to sit through dozens of nerve-wracking lessons and make it look effortless.
Coastline studied their top performers. The ones who stayed. The ones who advocated for the company. The ones whose students became walking testimonials.
Pattern recognition:
They weren't fresh-out-of-school looking for their first gig
They were semi-retired educators, former teachers, people who'd already built meaningful careers
They wanted something part-time that still mattered
They took pride in safety and student transformation
This isn't a profile you find on a typical job board. This isn't someone LinkedIn-scrolling at midnight thinking, "Driving instruction sounds fun."
This is a person who needs to be told this job exists and why it matters to them.
That's where marketing comes in. Renaud realized they needed an entire branding initiative that speaks directly to this specific person. Not a generic "Now Hiring" post. A targeted message that says: Here's who thrives here. Here's why your skills matter. Here's the impact you'll have.
It takes investment. It takes time. But it's the only way to find hundreds of people who fit this exact profile.
(11:09) How to Justify Any Recruiting Budget in Three Steps
The usual tension: You can't have quality and volume and speed. Pick two.
Renaud picked a different path: attach revenue to it.
Here's how he thinks about it:
Step 1: Invest more in finding people who actually fit the role.
Step 2: Those people stay longer. They perform better. They advocate for the company organically.
Step 3: That translates directly to measurable revenue growth.
When you can show that correlation? Suddenly your recruiting investment isn't an expense. It's an ROI conversation.
Most companies budget for recruiting and hope for the best. Renaud built infrastructure where recruiting investment directly impacts revenue—not eventually, but immediately measurable. Then he gets more budget. Which lets him find more perfect-fit people. Which generates more revenue.
It's a cycle. And it speaks the only language every organization truly understands: money.
(17:50) The Radical Idea That Recruiters Should Know What Happens After Hire
"Recruiters should know how someone is performing a year after they're hired." Reynaud shared.
This shouldn't be controversial. But in most companies, it is.
Most recruiting teams measure success one way: Did we fill the position? Check. Move on.
Renaud flipped it completely. He needs recruiters to know the answer to one question one year after hire: Is this person still here? Are they thriving?
Why? Because Coastline invests thousands of dollars training every new instructor. If someone leaves on day one, that's not a win. That's an expensive, preventable loss.
The shift in thinking: A recruiter's job isn't filling seats. It's predicting and delivering retention of quality people. Which means they're answerable for whether someone stays—not just whether they started.
Completely different responsibility level.
Completely different questions you ask in the interview.
You stop asking, "Can they teach someone to drive?" You start asking, "Will they be teaching people to drive two years from now?"
(19:44) When Your Employees Become Your Sales Team Without Knowing It
The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.
It's someone genuinely excited about something, talking to people they know about it. Not pitching. Not performing. Just... enthusiasm.
Coastline realized their best instructors were already doing this. They'd tell people about the company. They'd recommend it to friends. They'd advocate because they actually loved the work.
So Renaud gave them infrastructure to amplify what was already natural.
Referral codes. Discount cards. Easy sharing mechanisms. Nothing that felt like a job. Everything that made sharing effortless.
The result: a miniature sales force that doesn't know it's a sales force. Instructors promote because they're happy. Parents and friends hear about it from someone they trust. Codes make it easy to convert.
"Another revenue channel," Renaud says. "Which means more budget for recruiting. Which cycles back to hiring better people."
The Question That Matters Most
Do you know what happens when different departments stop acting like separate businesses?
When marketing and HR collaborate on the same metric. When a marketer walks into recruiting and asks, "What if this is my problem too?" When a recruiter is measured on year-one retention instead of placements.
When the company decides that happy employees are the actual product—because every student who walks away saying "that instructor changed my life" is the real brand.
That's Coastline.
That's what happens when someone like Renaud refuses to stay in their lane.
Want to connect?
Website: https://www.instagram.com/coastlineacademy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coastlineacademy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coastlineacademy
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPruykTxAWpwh8i1GK-U1kA
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@coastline.academy
Renaud on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/renaud-delaquis/
Contact Traci: https://linktr.ee/HRTraci
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