How Manufacturers are Filling Roles Faster with On-Demand Interviews
The manufacturing industry is at a turning point. Reshoring, AI-powered automation, and sustainability initiatives are driving major shifts. As a result, the way manufacturers operate and who they need to hire is evolving fast.
This sector has long been ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting technologies like robotics, machine learning, and data-driven systems. But while production processes have advanced rapidly, hiring strategies haven’t kept up. Labor shortages, high turnover, and increasingly complex skill requirements make recruitment in manufacturing uniquely challenging.
Manual screenings, phone interviews, and the endless scheduling back-and-forth are no longer cutting it. If manufacturing is embracing advanced technologies, its hiring approach should evolve too. On-demand video interviews offer a flexible, scalable solution that helps manufacturers build stronger, more future-ready talent pipelines.
What’s Slowing Down Hiring in the Manufacturing Industry?
The current manufacturing landscape is shaped by a mix of strategic shifts and workforce challenges, all directly affecting recruitment efforts. Here’s what’s getting in the way of faster and more:
Strategic Reshoring & Advanced Growth: Post-pandemic supply chain issues and geopolitical uncertainty have pushed a renewed focus on domestic production. The CHIPS and Science Act alone has funnelled over $50 billion into domestic semiconductor manufacturing. As a result, high-tech manufacturing jobs are growing fast, but they require new skill sets that go far beyond traditional manual labor. This shift, intertwined with embracing technologies like automation, robotics, AI, data analytics, and IoT, changes the skill sets required on the factory floor, requiring manual labor with technical proficiency and adaptability.
Persistent Labor Shortage & a Shrinking Workforce: While not at the peak levels of 2021-2022, labor shortages remain a significant concern. As of early 2025, manufacturing continued to have a high number of job openings (e.g., over 400,000 openings in March 2025, per BLS data). In addition, many skilled workers are reaching retirement age, and there aren’t enough trained newcomers to fill the gap, leading to an exodus of institutional knowledge and skilled labor. This has led to a persistent skills mismatch and an urgent need to modernize and rethink hiring strategies.
High Attrition & Turnover: Beyond the struggle to attract new workers, the industry is also grappling with a persistent high attrition rate, significantly exacerbating the labor shortage. The increasing employee turnover rate is complicating the effort to maintain a stable and skilled workforce. High turnover rates continue to drain productivity and budgets. As of late 2024, monthly attrition hovered around 2.5% per BLS, with some segments seeing annual turnover rates as high as 15%. Early attrition is a major issue, with many new hires leaving within 90 days due to poor fit or unclear expectations. Notably, the manufacturing industry is listed among the hardest industries to attract and retain talent.
Fierce Competition & Shifting Workforce Value: The current workforce, especially Millennials and Gen Z, care deeply about sustainability, purpose, and flexibility. According to Deloitte, 70% consider environmental practices when choosing an employer. Manufacturers aren’t just competing with each other anymore. Tech, logistics, and clean energy industries are all going after the same skilled talent. To attract these value-driven workers, there’s a need to highlight the adoption of advanced technologies and demonstrate commitment to sustainable practices, ethical sourcing, and reducing environmental impact.
Rise of Sustainable Manufacturing & Green Jobs: Clean energy is booming, and it’s reshaping what manufacturing work looks like. With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentivizing clean energy initiatives from electric vehicles and battery production to sustainable practices, green jobs are growing fast. Manufacturers now need to hire talent who are technically capable and also aligned with a sustainability-focused mission.
Seasonal Workforce Fluctuation: While not all manufacturing is seasonal, some sectors experience demand peaks during a certain period, requiring rapid workforce growth. In sectors like food, packaging, and consumer goods, production needs spike during peak seasons. Meeting those short-term hiring demands can overwhelm traditional recruitment cycles, especially when onboarding needs to happen fast.
Specialized Role & the Need for Upskilling: The shift toward advanced manufacturing means more demand for workers skilled in robotics, automation, data analytics, and mechatronics. While machines handle repetitive tasks, humans are still essential for complex assembly, troubleshooting, and process optimization. Which means there’s a need to address the skill gap to fill the specialized roles; however, it requires significant investment in training. From apprenticeships and vocational programs to reskilling initiatives, manufacturers must rethink how they grow and sustain talent from within.
While the broader manufacturing sector has faced headwinds in recent months, leading to some job cuts, the long-term strategic goals of reshoring, advanced manufacturing, and filling the void left by retirements mean that the demand for skilled workers remains intensely competitive. Many critical sectors, like semiconductors and clean energy, continue to grow due to significant government investment. This environment makes an efficient and effective talent pipeline critical.
How Can Recruiters Hire Manufacturing Workers Faster?
Speed and efficiency matter in hiring, especially in manufacturing, where an open role can directly disrupt the schedule, drive up overtime, and stall operations. It is critical for specialized roles, filling vacancies quickly, and adapting to the fluctuating demand.
The traditional hiring method is often reliant on manual screening and arduous scheduling, involving multiple rounds of phone screening and interviews, all slowed down by scheduling conflicts and administrative overhead.
On-demand video interviews offer a direct solution to accelerate the initial stages of the hiring funnel. By allowing the candidates to record responses at a time that works best for them, you eliminate the back-and-forth of scheduling phone screening. It allows recruiters to review numerous candidates in a fraction of the time. This rapid initial assessment significantly shortens the time from application to initial candidate shortlisting, ensuring you can quickly identify and engage with top talent.
What are the Benefits of Using On-Demand Interviews in the Manufacturing Industry?
The advantages of incorporating on-demand video interviews into your manufacturing recruitment process are numerous and can directly address the industry’s unique challenges.
Efficiency at Scale: Manufacturing often requires hiring for high-volume production roles. On-demand video allows you to screen hundreds, even thousands, of applicants efficiently, moving them through the initial funnel much faster than traditional methods.
Reduce Time-to-Hire: By eliminating scheduling conflicts and providing a flexible screening tool, the time it takes from receiving an application to extending an offer can be dramatically reduced. This means less downtime on the factory floor and quicker ramp-up for new hires.
Wider Talent Pool: Manufacturing plants aren’t always located in major urban centers. On-demand interview removes the geographical barrier, allowing recruiters to reach candidates in broader regions, including those who may be working shifts or have limited travel options. This approach supports remote hiring and flexibility, especially for roles where in-person interviews aren’t feasible or necessary, expanding the talent pool.
Ensure Consistency & Fairness: Every candidate answers the same pre-set questions, creating a standardized and objective evaluation process. This mitigates unconscious bias, unstructured assessment, and ensures that all applicants are assessed on a level playing field.
Enhance Team Collaboration: Recorded interviews can be easily shared with multiple hiring managers, plant supervisors, or team leads for review. This fosters collaborative decision-making and allows diverse perspectives backed by data-driven insights for the sorting process.
Improve Candidate Experience: Offering the flexibility to candidates to complete their interview at their convenience from anywhere demonstrates a modern and respectful approach to recruitment. This convenience can be a significant draw for candidates, especially those with demanding schedules.
Reduce Hiring Cost: When you have automated and streamlined tasks, it reduces the time required for scheduling, lowers phone bills, and there will be fewer initial travel expenses. All this contributes to a more cost-effective recruitment process.
How to Build a Stronger Manufacturing Pipeline: Strategies that Work
In manufacturing, where a skilled workforce is hard to find and even harder to keep, building a strong talent pipeline is challenging. Instead of scrambling to fill every vacancy, teams should take a more strategic approach to identify future needs, source them even before the role opens up, and create a system that tracks and nurtures great workers over time. Here’s how to start building a pipeline designed for the evolving demand:
Start with Strategic Workforce Planning: Before sourcing talent, you need to start planning in advance. Consider the skills your plant will need months from now, skills that’ll be required with new automation or equipment, and identify the roles that are the hardest to hire for. Define your worker priorities based on your plant’s projected growth, operational goals, and technology roadmap. Having a clear understanding of your workforce needs will guide you in every other step of your talent pipeline.
Build Partnership with Local Talent Source: Build relationships with trade schools, technical colleges, and community workforce centers. Offer apprenticeship, internships, or sponsored certifications to attract entry-level workers and shape their skills from the ground up.
Re-Engage Past Applicants & Former Employees: Use an interview management system, ATS, or other HR tools to revisit high-potential past candidates or top-performing past employees. Track their skills, experience, location, shift preferences, or previous roles applied for. A quick screening can determine if they’re still a good fit.
Invest in Upskilling & Internal Mobility: You do not need to make every hire externally. Create pathways for your existing employees to move into higher-skill and harder-to-fill roles through reskilling programs, cross-training, or certification. Make this a part of your formal talent pipeline, not just a side initiative. Track employee interest, unused skills, or career goals through surveys or manager feedback. This way, when a new role opens up, you’ll have someone ready to grow into it.
Strengthen Your Employer Brand: Your employer brand matters – today’s workforce, especially Gen Z and Millennials, want to work for companies that align with their values. Make sure that your job listings, interviews, and onboarding process reflect your company’s mission and values, including your commitment to innovation, sustainability, and workforce development.
Getting Started: How to Implement Modern Hiring Tools in Manufacturing Plants
Successfully implementing on-demand video interviews and other candidate screening software into your manufacturing plant’s recruitment process requires thoughtful planning and execution.
Choose the Right Platform: Select a tool that’ll integrate seamlessly into your existing hiring software. Look for user-friendliness for both recruiters and candidates, mobile-friendliness, robust data security, and other key features. If you have high application volume, make sure to choose one that can scale depending on your hiring needs.
Craft Effective Questions: When you’re setting pre-set questions, develop a mix of behavioral, situational, and technical questions tailored to the specific roles. Focus on assessing problem-solving abilities, safety awareness, teamwork, and adaptability. This will not only level the playing field for all the candidates but ensure that you’re assessing their technical, soft skills, and real-world readiness.
Train Your Team: Ensure that hiring managers, plant supervisors, and HR professionals are thoroughly trained on how to effectively review and evaluate recorded interviews. Implement standardized scorecards to ensure consistent and fair assessment across all reviewers.
Seamless Integration with Existing Workflow: Ensure the new tools fit logically into your existing recruitment process, minimizing disruption and maximizing efficiency. Automation of notifications and scheduling within the platform will be key.
Measure Success and Iterate: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as time-to-hire, candidate satisfaction rates, source of hire efficiency, and most importantly, early attrition rates to continuously refine your process and maximize ROI.
Final Thoughts!
The manufacturing industry stands at a pivotal moment, poised for growth and modernization, yet continually challenged by the critical need for workers. Expanding your manufacturing talent pipeline with on-demand video interviews is about embracing a strategic shift towards a more efficient and equitable recruitment strategy.
By leveraging these modern video interviewing tools, manufacturing plants can overcome traditional hiring bottlenecks, attract a wider pool of skilled candidates, mitigate the impact of labor shortages and high attrition, and ultimately build a robust and adaptable workforce essential for thriving in the new industrial era.
FAQs
How can video interviews help manufacturing companies hire faster?
Video interviews streamline the early stages of hiring by removing the back-and-forth scheduling. Candidates can record their responses at their convenience, and recruiters can review them at their own time. This speeds up screening, shortlists top talent faster, and reduces time-to-hire, which are all critical for manufacturing roles.
Is video interviewing suitable for blue-collar or shop-floor roles?
While video interviewing is mainly associated with white-collar roles, it’s suitable for blue-collar and shop-floor roles as well. Many blue-collar roles require evaluating soft skills, work ethic, and situational awareness, traits that a video interview can help assess quickly. It also helps reach candidates working shifts or in remote areas, offering flexibility that traditional phone screenings or in-person interviews don’t.
How can video interviews improve collaboration between HR and plant managers?
Recorded interviews can be easily shared with plant supervisors and team leads, allowing them to weigh in early. This ensures that hiring decisions are informed by both HR insights and on-the-ground knowledge, leading to better alignment, faster approvals, and hires that are a stronger fit for day-to-day operations.
