What Every Talent Leader Should Know About Hiring for Manufacturing Growth

As a talent acquisition leader in the manufacturing industry, you face unique challenges when recruiting for a new facility or an expansion. The stakes are high: you must attract a large volume of qualified candidates within tight timeframes while maintaining high standards for candidate quality, compliance, and the overall employer brand. To succeed, you need a robust strategy that anticipates challenges and aligns with both immediate hiring goals and long-term workforce planning.
Here are key considerations to keep top of mind when planning recruitment for a new manufacturing facility or expansion:
1. Understand the Local Labor Market
No matter if you are expanding operations in a current market, or moving into a new one, it is crucial to understand the labor dynamics by conducting a thorough labor market analysis to:
- Identify Talent Availability: Determine whether the local workforce has the skills needed for your open roles. An area may have ample production workers, but what do the skilled trades and engineering talent pools look like?
- Assess Competition: Evaluate the competitors in the area vying for the same talent pool and the strategies they’re using. Remember that your talent competitors are not always your business competitors.
- Forecast Hiring Challenges: Pinpoint potential barriers, such as skills shortages or labor regulations, that could impact your ability to recruit efficiently.
2. Conduct Compensation Studies and Benchmarking
To attract top talent, your compensation packages must be competitive. Compensation studies provide data to:
- Benchmark Pay Rates: Ensure your offers align with or exceed market expectations for comparable roles in the area.
- Support Hiring Negotiations: Use data to justify your pay scale to candidates and internal stakeholders.
- Incorporate Incentives: Determine if additional benefits, such as signing bonuses or relocation assistance, are needed to entice candidates.
3. Optimize Job Postings
First impressions matter. For a large-scale hiring initiative, your job postings and employer brand need to resonate with prospective employees:
- Write Targeted Postings: Clearly outline role responsibilities, required skills, and what is in it for the candidates.
- Highlight Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP): Showcase what makes your company unique, such as a commitment to safety, career development opportunities, or a strong workplace culture.
4. Assess Recruitment Team Capacity
Scaling recruitment efforts for a manufacturing expansion requires sufficient internal resources. Consider:
- Team Bandwidth: Evaluate whether your team has the capacity to manage a surge in hiring activity without compromising quality or timelines.
- Skillsets: Ensure your recruiters have the expertise to fill all needed roles, including high-volume hourly roles, skilled trades, and specialized salaried positions.
5. Build a Sourcing Plan
Hiring a large volume of candidates in a short time careful planning and consideration of the following areas:
- Understanding Your Candidate Funnel: It’s easy to focus solely on the number of hires needed and overlook the volume of candidates required to achieve those hires. To set realistic expectations and allocate resources effectively, develop candidate funnels that track key metrics, such as application-to-hire ratios and conversion rates at each hiring stage.
- Talent Shortages: In a competitive labor market, sourcing enough qualified candidates may require out-of-the-box thinking. Explore diverse sourcing channels such as social media, industry-specific job boards, job fairs, and partnerships with local community organizations to tap into new talent pools.
- Leverage the Right Tools: The recruitment tools and platforms needed for success can vary depending on the role and location. Assess your hiring needs to ensure your team has the right combination of active and passive sourcing tools.
6. Build Scalable Screening and Processing Workflows
Efficiently handling large volumes of candidates is critical to avoid bottlenecks and ensure a positive candidate experience. Think about the following:
- Plan for High Volumes: Hiring for expansions or new facilities often means reviewing, screening, and scheduling large numbers of candidates, as well as managing background checks, drug screens, and onboarding processes efficiently. Devise a plan on how to temporarily scale up your capabilities to account for these tasks.
- Standardize Screening: Develop consistent evaluation criteria to quickly identify top candidates while ensuring fairness and repeatability.
- Streamline Communication: Provide timely updates to candidates to reduce drop-offs and reinforce your employer brand. Consider all candidate touchpoints and how your target candidates prefer to communicate (text message, email, phone).
7. Engage Hiring Managers Early and Often
Hiring manager participation is crucial for successful recruitment. However, their availability and timeliness can be a limiting factor. To address this:
- Plan Interview Capacity: Coordinate schedules in advance to ensure hiring managers have adequate time for interviews.
- Provide Training: Equip managers—many of whom may be new to the company—with tools and training to conduct efficient, structured interviews that align with the company’s values and goals.
- Leverage Panels: Use interview panels to distribute the workload and maintain consistency across evaluations.
- Interview Days: For high volume roles, consider setting aside designated interview days or times. This helps with scheduling and ensures availability.
8. Prioritize the Candidate Experience
A rushed or disorganized recruitment process can alienate candidates and tarnish your employer brand, especially in a new market. Put yourself in the candidate’s shoes as you think through your plan to:
- Communicate Clearly: Set expectations about timelines and next steps at every stage of the hiring process.
- Provide Personalized Touchpoints: Make candidates feel valued through tailored messaging and one-on-one interactions where possible.
- Gather Feedback: Regularly solicit feedback from candidates to identify and address pain points in the process.
Recruiting for a new manufacturing facility or expansion requires meticulous planning, resource alignment, and a deep understanding of the market and organizational needs. By addressing potential capacity challenges, optimizing workflows, and prioritizing the candidate experience, you can ensure a successful hiring initiative that supports the company’s growth while solidifying its reputation as an employer of choice.
For manufacturing leaders, the opportunity to build a new workforce is also a chance to set the foundation for long-term success—and it all starts with the right recruitment strategy.