CASE STUDY: Aerospace & Defense Multi-Site Hiring Success

Assignment

A client needed to hire at least 50 permanent employees across 9 different locations within an 18-month timeframe. These roles spanned multiple functions: operations, engineering, management, HR, finance, production, and skilled trades. The business required not just numbers, but high retention and consistent performance across all hires.

Challenges

Here are the major obstacles we needed to overcome:

• Diverse Role: The scope included:

  • Management roles: Plant, Operations, and Program Managers; Production Supervisors

  • Engineering roles: Automation, Process, Product, Quality Engineers

  • Functional roles: Controllers; Procurement Specialists; Financial Analysts

  • HR roles: HR Business Partners & Generalists; Talent Acquisition & Onboarding Specialists

  • Skilled trades: Tool and Die Makers; EDM and CNC Machinists

• Complex, Location-Specific Processes: Each of the nine sites had its own recruiting procedures, onboarding workflows, background screening, drug testing, offer approval cycles, and preferred sources for candidates. Some sites were more remote, others had more regulatory compliance; some sites had established talent pipelines, others had almost none.

• Coordination & Volume Stress: Managing this volume of hires across multiple geographies meant many moving parts: candidate sourcing, interview scheduling, offer negotiations, and onboarding paperwork. Without clear coordination, delays, miscommunications, or mismatches would be inevitable - and all would slow down hiring or hurt retention.

Solution

To meet the assignment, we implemented two interlocking strategies: specialized team segmentation and rigorous communication cadence. These leaned into our theme: specialization + structure = scalable success.

Specialized Team Approach

To ensure each role type and function received expert attention, we divided responsibilities among specialized sub-teams:

What this accomplished:

• Subject-matter experts were recruited for each cluster, allowing for a faster understanding of what each role demands.

• More accurate screening: technical tests, trade skill assessments, and behavioral interviews by people familiar with the field.

• Better sourcing: each team used specialized channels (e.g., engineering job boards, trade-school partnerships, local machinist networks) rather than generic job ads.

Structured Communication

We paired specialization with tight, consistent communication:

• Weekly site calls with each location. The frequency is sometimes scaled up (more frequent) depending on how many open roles and how far along the hiring process was.

• During each call, we reviewed:

  • Candidate pipeline status for each open role

  • Interview progress: who’s been interviewed, when, feedback, scheduling bottlenecks

  • Pending offers and negotiations, to avoid losing candidates due to slowness

  • Pre-employment steps: background checks, drug screenings, compliance paperwork

• Stakeholder alignment: site managers, HR leads, and recruiting leads were all looped in. This ensured decisions were made fast and with full information.

• Shared dashboards & status updates: we maintained live tracking of how each role was progressing, how many were in each stage (sourcing, interviewing, offer, onboarding), and where delays were happening.

Outcome

Over the course of 18 months, the approach delivered:

• 58 permanent hires were filled across the nine sites (exceeding the target of 50). The majority of hires were salaried/managerial/specialized technical roles rather than only hourly or entry-level.

• 95% retention in the first six months: only three of the 58 departed within six months of hire.

• High satisfaction from site leadership: they reported that hiring delays were much reduced, offers were accepted at a higher rate, and new employees were much better prepared from Day One.

Key Takeaways & Recommendations for Employers

If your organization faces a large-scale hiring target over multiple locations or a diversity of roles, the following insights may help replicate this level of success:

1. Segment your recruiting by specialty: When recruiters deeply understand a category (engineering vs. production vs. HR), they are more effective in sourcing and screening candidates. Use sub-teams or roles with domain knowledge.

2. Maintain rigorous communication rhythms: Regular check-ins (weekly, or more) with all stakeholders help ensure that nothing slips: delays are caught early, roles aren't forgotten, and candidate drop-offs are addressed promptly.

3. Use live tracking tools: Dashboards, pipelines, metrics matter. Measure time-to-fill, offer acceptance rates, and time in each stage (sourcing → interview → offer → onboarding). Transparency helps everyone stay aligned.

4. Focus on pre-employment stages proactively: Background checks, drug screening, and credential verification often are the choke points. Tackling these early in the process or planning buffer time helps avoid bottlenecks.

5. Retention isn’t accidental: If you hire carefully but neglect early employee experience (onboarding, clarity of role, alignment with culture), early attrition will erode your gains. Aim for retention metrics (e.g., “how many are still there at six months”) as part of your hiring goals.

Why This Case Works: Theme Behind the Success

The common thread is strategic specialization combined with disciplined communication. By dividing roles into logical clusters, each with focused recruiting paths, and by maintaining a strong cadence of updates, alignment, and responsiveness, the recruiting team could operate at scale without losing quality.

• Specialization allowed for speed, precision, and better candidate matching.

• Structured communication ensured visibility, accountability, and that delays or misalignments were surfaced and resolved quickly.

Conclusion

Hiring 50+ permanent staff across nine locations in 18 months is ambitious, especially when roles are varied and processes differ by site. But with a recruiting strategy built around expert specialization and tight communication, it is entirely achievable.

For business owners or HR leaders facing similar challenges:

• Break your hiring goals into manageable segments aligned by skill or function.

• Build in infrastructure for communication and tracking from the start.

• Measure not just hires, but retention.

If you apply these strategies, you're likely to exceed hiring targets, avoid costly turnover early on, and build a more stable, productive workforce.