A critical role on your production floor has been unfilled for weeks. The team is stretched thin, overtime costs are starting to soar, and deadlines are slipping through your fingers like a conveyor belt with no stop button.
Man, you think. What happened to the days when staffing was quick and effective?
As an industrial staffing agency, we’re wondering the same thing.
Because we’ve noticed that over the years, the “direct start” model—where temporary workers arrived onsite within hours of a request—has faded. The trust between industrial companies and their staffing partners has eroded.
Many companies now require their own resume screenings and interviews before candidates can start. even for entry-level and general labor roles, despite hiring a staffing agency to streamline the process for them.
While understandable, this added layer has slowed down hiring, creating longer time-to-fill rates, operational strain, and shared frustration between hiring managers and their staffing partners.
Where Did The Trust Go in Staffing?
When we ask clients and community hiring managers why they want to be heavily involved in the hiring process, the answer is often rooted in past disappointments with other staffing agencies.
Experiences like these have left manufacturers feeling like they need to double-check the work:
- Unqualified candidates
- Poor retention
- Lack of transparency about the hiring process
- Inconsistent results
And we get it—nobody wants to gamble on a bad hire. But the reality is, these extra steps can slow you down when your business needs speed and consistency the most.
So let’s address these concerns head-on and see if we can help regain your trust in staffing agencies. But first, it’s important to provide some context on the cost of these hiring roadblocks.
The Cost of Unfilled Roles
The true cost of unfilled roles goes far beyond the inconvenience of being short-staffed. Every day a position remains vacant, your business loses both money and momentum.
Deloitte predicts that unfilled manufacturing jobs could cost the U.S. economy $1 trillion annually by 2030, highlighting the urgent need for smarter staffing strategies.
It becomes a domino effect where even one unfilled role can significantly impact your organization—both financially and operationally:
- Overtime Expenses: Existing employees must pick up the slack. Extra shifts mean higher wages and slimmer profit margins.
- Burnout and Retention: Overburdened and fatigued staff are more likely to experience burnout, which exacerbates attendance issues and retention challenges.
- Missed Deadlines and Revenue Loss: Production delays risk customer relationships and long-term profitability.
- Turnover: With higher turnover and no-shows, employers can feel let down if they invest resources in onboarding someone who doesn’t stick around.
- Lost Growth Opportunities: Scaling initiatives and new contracts are put on hold when you lack the manpower to deliver.
Why Are Manufacturing Jobs Going Unfilled?
Just how long jobs go unfilled depends on the specific role, location, even company size.
For example, general labor and warehouse roles often have quicker fill times because the demand is high. Manufacturers often hire agencies to focus heavily on filling high numbers of these jobs amid a growing skills gap.
However, skilled roles, like forklift operators or machine operators, tend to take longer to fill due to the smaller talent pool and higher skill requirements.
How To Rebuild Trust With Your Staffing Partner
The right staffing partner should take the weight off your shoulders—not add extra steps to your hiring process. But if you’ve had disappointing results before, where do you go from there?
Trust is a two-way street. Reset the trust meter and take action with these steps.
- Try Working Interviews: Test their assembly or machine operating skills in real time with a short working shift before making a full commitment. This reduces mismatches and saves days of interviews.
- Track record matters. Ask about your staffing agency’s fill rates, retention rates, and client satisfaction scores. A good partner will have data to back up their success.
- Demand transparency. A great staffing partner should provide real-time updates on your hiring pipeline and working talent, not leave you guessing. Frequent communication is key.
- Understand the vetting process. You shouldn’t have to double-check every candidate. Ensure your agency conducts skills assessments, interviews, and reliability checks so you don’t have to.
- Discuss candidate preparation. A staffing agency’s job doesn’t end when a candidate is placed. They should ensure temp hires know where to report, shift details, and expectations—reducing no-shows and improving retention.
A Win-Win Approach: Why Trusting Your Staffing Partner Pays Off
The manufacturing industry runs on precision and efficiency—and your workforce is no exception. So when you trust your staffing partner’s hiring process, you’ll benefit in multiple ways:
- Faster starts. Skip the back-and-forth. Let your agency send a vetted candidate directly, ready to hit the ground running.
- Reduced risk. If the match isn’t right, let your agency know. At Alliance, we’ll remove the candidate, replace them, and you won’t be charged.
- Peace of mind. The trust meter will be pointing high again. Focus on your operations while they handle the heavy lifting.
Fast, Reliable Hiring Starts With the Right Staffing Partner
Here at Alliance Industrial Solutions, we share the same goal as you: the right person in the right steel toes, as quickly as possible. That’s why we:
- Specialize in industrial staffing. Manufacturing, warehouse, distribution, logistics—it’s all we do at Alliance. Our expertise in these verticals allow us to identify top talent quickly and accurately for our clients.
- Ensure alignment. Our team is obsessed with understanding your hiring priorities, whether that’s speed, quality, or cost so we can keep everything on track. We regularly share employee feedback, performance data, and business intelligence reports so you know where things stand at all times.
- Stand by our proven process. Our hiring process goes beyond collecting basic information and resume review. Through 1:1 interviews, we assess work experience, skills, reliability, and personality. We don’t send anyone who doesn’t meet our standards for representing both our agency and your business.
- Make first days awesome. At Alliance, we make sure that temp hires know where to report, their shift details, and what to expect before their first day. We even coach them to let us know if a position isn’t a fit instead of walking off the job so we can refill the role without disrupting your operations.
According to Staffing Hub, the average time to hire in the industrial and logistics sector is approximately 11 days— but with the right staffing partner, it can be much faster. Our average time-to-fill manufacturing and industrial jobs is just 5 days.
Are we perfect? Well, our mom says we are, but she’s also never had to fill a third shift packing position on zero notice.
The reality is that no staffing agency is perfect. However, we are consistent, and that consistency helps us deliver great hires time and again.
Trust the Process (and Your Staffing Partner)
We get it. It can be hard to relinquish control and trust a staffing partner, especially if you’ve been burned before.
But the right agency doesn’t just save you time. With a proven process and relationship mindset like ours, you can hire faster, minimize staffing disruptions, and keep production moving—without the hassle.
That’s what a fully charged workforce with the right partner looks like.
Let’s Get Started
Stop letting old hiring frustrations slow you down. Get in touch and let us take staffing off your plate.
No extra hoops.
No unnecessary delays.
Just the right person at the right time.
Our only question for you is: What time should they start?
