Why Qualified Candidates Are Harder to Find Than Ever (And How to Adapt)
You already know qualified candidates are hard to find. This session is about what to do with that reality. Amanda Elkins (Hirsh Precision Products) and Ashley Vogel (Innovative Machine Specialists) will share how they're reading the labor market, where they've changed their approach, and what's actually working inside their organizations right now.
60 Minutes
5 Panelists
Tuesday, March 31st, 1 PM CST
Thank you for the downloading the 2026 Industrial Hiring Benchmarks Report. You can access it here (link).
Want to hear from other industrial hiring leaders facing similar challenges? Sign up to attend our webinar on March 25th
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Episode 1 Panelists
Two companies. Two hiring realities. One shared problem.
Maria Abeal
Senior Global TA Partner
Grupo Tigre
Amanda Elkins
Talent Acquisition Manager
Hirsh Precision Products
Amanda is the Talent Acquisition Manager at Hirsh Precision Products, a precision manufacturing company. She brings a marketing background to recruiting, applying that lens to how she positions roles, reaches candidates, and aligns hiring managers around market reality.
Ashley Vogel
HR/Safety Administrative Assistant
Innovative Machine Specialists
Ashley is a strategic HR leader operating as a team of one for Innovative Machine Specialists, a custom manufacturing job shop in Marshfield. She specializes in navigating the unique recruitment challenges of a high-growth facility that serves the specialized food and dairy industries.
Virginia Aylesworth
Talent Acquisition Manager
Senior Global TA Partner
Halle
Head of Customer Onboarding · Facilitator
FactoryFix
Halle leads customer onboarding at FactoryFix, working directly with industrial hiring teams every day to build the playbooks and processes that turn recruiting challenges into repeatable results.
3-Part Webinar Series
Three episodes. One shared challenge.
Each session stands on its own. Register for one, two, or all three. Every registration includes the full 2026 State of Industrial Hiring Report.
EPISODE 1
UP NEXT
Thursday, April 16 · 12:00 PM CT
Why Qualified Candidates Are Harder to Find Than Ever (And How to Adapt)
Each session stands on its own. Register for one, two, or all three. Every registration includes the full 2026 State of Industrial Hiring Report.
Maria Abeal
Senior Global TA Partner
Grupo Tigre
EPISODE 2
Thursday, May 14 · 12:00 PM CT
Hiring Faster Without Lowering the Bar
How the best teams balance speed and quality. Where they're compressing timelines, where they stay deliberate, and how defining "qualified" upfront changes everything downstream.
EPISODE 3
Wednesday, June 11 · 12:00 PM CT
Putting AI to Work in Your Hiring Process
What AI adoption actually looks like inside industrial hiring teams today. Where it's working, where teams have held back, and what it takes to close the trust gap.
Virginia Aylesworth
Talent Acquisition Manager
Senior Global TA Partner
The Report Behind the Conversation
The report gives you the numbers. These practitioners give you the playbook.
We analyzed 1.2 million applications across 15,500 roles, surveyed 83 TA and HR professionals, and published the findings in the FactoryFix 2026 Industrial Hiring Benchmark Report.The data tells you what's happening across the industry. This session puts you in the room with two hiring leaders who are using that same data to make different decisions about where they source, how they prioritize roles, and what they've stopped doing.
The Starting Point
The data behind the conversation
88%
of hiring leaders cite qualified candidate shortage as a top challenge
3.1%
manufacturing unemployment, meaning 97 of 100 qualified workers are already employed
65%
say sourcing qualified candidates is their primary process bottleneck
63%
of organizations expect to increase hiring in 2026
Based on survey responses from 83 TA and HR professionals at manufacturing companies and industrial staffing firms · FactoryFix 2026
The Report Behind the Conversation
Built for people doing this work
This session is for TA and HR professionals at manufacturing companies and industrial staffing firms who are accountable for filling skilled trades and technical roles.
Everyone says they can't find people, but that's not really the problem. We get plenty of applicants. The problem is finding candidates who are actually qualified.
Staffing leader, FactoryFix 2026 Benchmark Report
Hear how two hiring leaders are navigating this market
30 minutes with practitioners who are making different decisions because of what the data is telling them. Walk away with a clearer picture of where to focus the rest of the year.
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