A Practical Guide to Recruiting in Manufacturing
Key Highlights
- Automation and AI are reshaping skill requirements and highlighting the importance of upskilling existing workers.
- A strong employee value proposition (EVP) centered on benefits, culture and career growth is essential for attracting top talent in manufacturing.
- This article includes tips for optimizing job descriptions for search engines and AI tools, as well as suggestions for revamping career sites for mobile-friendliness and simplicity.
- Out-of-the-box thinking that can give employers an edge locally includes geo-targeted ads and community campaigns.
A mix of layoffs and a dwindling skilled-labor supply have made for an unpredictable hiring pool in U.S. manufacturing. Robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) are fundamentally changing the industry and the skills required to perform critical jobs.
As these systems evolve and labor markets shift, so, too, do the technologies related to recruiting and hiring. We have seen so much change in how employers hire talent that outdated recruiting and retention practices are quickly becoming a hidden risk, potentially leading to slower hiring, higher turnover, missed production targets and talent gaps.
What’s Shaping the Manufacturing Workforce
As automation advances, demand is decreasing for lower-level skilled labor and increasing for mechatronics technicians, robotics programmers, automation engineers, CNC machinists and PLC (programmable logic controller) technicians, as well as for supervisory and decision-making roles.
To keep pace, consider reskilling workers into higher-responsibility, higher-skilled roles to shift retention upward. Jobs that naturally lend themselves to this type of progression include taking operators like CNC mechanists and upskilling them into technical specialist roles like CNC programmers. There are also more manual jobs that can be upskilled to take on digital or smart manufacturing roles, such as equipping a production worker with the skills to perform in a manufacturing data analyst role. The alternative is hunting for new talent and teaching them your unique systems and processes, which is far more expensive than holding on to the talent that already knows your business.
Candidate behavior itself has undergone significant changes. More than half of Gen Z and Millennial candidates review a company’s social media before applying to evaluate whether an employer aligns with their values, according to HireClix data, and DEI is still a driving factor for Gen Z (70%) and Millennials (63%) when evaluating job opportunities. Jobseekers of all generations (46%) are increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT to help write resumes, analyze job descriptions and identify ideal opportunities.
All these factors reshape who manufacturers need to hire, how they hire them and what candidates expect in return.
Revisiting Recruitment Strategy
Manufacturers can make some low-lift, high-impact recalibrations to account for these job-market challenges, involving job descriptions, benefits and where they are placing their job ads.
Identify and base all your recruitment communications around a well-thought-out and authentic employee value proposition (EVP). An EVP is the unique value you offer as an employer to your employees in exchange for their skills, experience and commitment to your company: salary, benefits, rewards, career development and work-life balance, as well as your values, mission, social purpose and organizational culture. Your EVP should be the core content of your career site, influence how you write your job descriptions and align with the messages delivered by executives, recruiters and hiring managers alike.
The image below was the product of the collaboration between Epsilon and HireClix on an EVP project. Regardless of the industry or size, all companies need to consider doing the work and having clarity around the value to current and future employees.
Put benefits front and center. Strong benefits are key to a competitive EVP. In manufacturing, standout benefits include performance and attendance incentives (like bonuses, pay increases and PTO/flex time rewards), paid training and upskilling opportunities, predictable hours, generous paid time off and lucrative retirement plans.
For example, HireClix worked with a major materials manufacturer struggling with low engagement in hard-to-fill roles. We were able to identify that while the company offered many key differentiators, like tuition reimbursement for technical certifications and predictable schedules, they lacked this distinction in their job ads and recruiting campaigns. Once we had clearly embedded the most valuable components of their EVP into their job descriptions and employer branding efforts, their engagement rates improved significantly.
Optimize your jobs for Google, Bing and AI search agents to get your content in front of job seekers directly, versus waiting for them to navigate in other ways. As we continue to see job scams rise and job boards become less trustworthy as a result, it’s important to note that each employer is the single source of truth for its own jobs. As a result, employers must take an active role in ensuring verified information is surfaced to job seekers through optimized career site content.
Some simple, high-impact things you can do to optimize your jobs are to rewrite job descriptions as clearly as possible, using skills-based language. You can also include FAQs on your career site to boost visibility in AI-driven search by directly answering the specific, conversational questions candidates are asking.
In that same vein, some companies are even creating phantom pages on their career sites, which are intentionally designed to be discoverable by search engines and AI, leveraging the types of natural, question-based phrasing that aligns with how candidates search in AI tools. For example, “what does a PLC technician do?”
Think out-of-the-box on where you post your jobs. You might use the biggest job boards to hit a broad swath of active job seekers, but you should also consider ways to get ahead of your competition.
We have started to see significant traction when promoting our clients with employer brand ads on sites like YouTube, Spotify, Reddit and Paramount+. These may seem like they are only for big brands, but we have been able to develop geographically targeted campaigns (geo-fencing) focused on specific content and locations to get our clients in unique places ahead of their competition. With manufacturing jobs, we also believe there is significant strength in committing to offline campaigns at movie theaters, gas stations and elsewhere as a way to reinforce your employer brand. These jobs are not remote jobs but specific to local markets where you have a presence. This overall employer branding and recruitment marketing effort is orchestrated to build up your organization’s employer brand while also driving more applicants to fill the open roles you have today.
Look critically at your career site. It’s the front door to your organization, and if it’s difficult to navigate or unclear how to apply, you will lose qualified candidates. In fact, 36% of respondents in HireClix’s 2025 job seeker survey said they would abandon a job application due to length alone. Today’s workforce expects a modern, seamless application experience, one that reflects the same ease and polish they encounter across consumer digital platforms and online shopping sites.
We have seen application rates double after a career site redesign that creates a better candidate experience. For example, we worked with a regional manufacturer whose application process required candidates to jump through many hoops: creating an account, uploading a resume and manually entering work history on top of that. The site was also on a non-mobile-friendly platform, excluding the 58% of job seekers who search on mobile devices. Our team helped them simplify the process, migrate to a mobile-friendly platform and clearly showcase differentiators like attendance bonuses and paid upskilling opportunities. This nearly doubled application completion rates and significantly decreased cost-per-hire.
There is real money hidden in all of these levers you pull to hire talent in 2026. Every CEO and CFO is asking recruiting teams to do more with less, but that won’t happen organically. You’ve got to look for smarter ways to get the manufacturing talent you need.
While these changes may require some creative thinking and backend work, they will pay off in the long run as manufacturing recruiting becomes increasingly challenging. These intentional adjustments can help regain momentum in hiring, even amid ongoing uncertainty.
About the Author
Neil Costa
Founder and CEO, HireClix
Neil Costa, founder & CEO of HireClix, has 25+ years of experience in digital marketing, e-commerce and recruitment marketing businesses with success driving marketing, strategic alliances, sales and business development.
Neil is a proven entrepreneur and leader, having grown the company over the past 16 years, building various service teams and expanding the business to better serve the talent acquisition market. He has a strong depth of knowledge managing the return on investment and the P&L impact of recruiting investments on businesses, along with extensive experience leading marketing, sales and customer service teams. He is also an experienced public speaker, leading industry discussions across recruitment marketing, recruiting analytics and employer branding topics.
Neil is passionate about the future of digital marketing, recruitment advertising, employer branding and the candidate experience and understanding how all of these impact the talent acquisition marketplace.