Metalcraft – A Sales and Recruiting Success Story

Metalcraft, a full-service metal fabrication business, became a Milwaukee client in November of 2021. Right from the onset, PJ Cusick, AE, explained that Tradesmen would be most successful meeting their skilled labor need by using our coast-to-coast footprint. Essentially, by not sourcing workers from the same depleted pool of candidates that Metalcraft’s own recruiters or other temp agencies were pulling from. He explained that Tradesmen had a national recruiting model and resources that would better yield the high numbers of assemblers and welders (25-35) they needed.

He went on to clarify that to bring in travelers, we would need to offer our workers from across the country greater wages than they could get in their hometowns. Also, understanding the traveler mindset, that we would need to “guarantee” our employees extended hours (50-60 weekly) and a market-competitive per diem. Metalcraft determined that to grow their business they needed to increase production output and reduce backlog to their customers. Ultimately, they did the math, including looking at how much they were paying in overtime, and agreed it made total sense to leverage Tradesmen’s national recruiting power, and bring in travelers.

As the relationship developed based on the quality of workers mobilized by the local Milwaukee office recruiter TC Muldowney, Metalcraft substantially increased their order volume. They conveyed a need for upwards of 100 additional workers, inclusive of assemblers, welders, and machine operators, over the upcoming months, for their 5 area plants.

To handle this volume, Jessica Miranda, RTL – working closely with Adam Szwed, GM; and PJ Cusick, AE – determined it made sense to put together a Metalcraft-focused recruitment team. Jess worked with the National Recruiting Center and the following team was assembled:

• Stephanie Hardy, ATL, who manages the account from a recruiting perspective, works directly with Adam, the Milwaukee GM to assess wages and discuss mitigation measures to control attrition. On a weekly basis she works with the Workforce Team Lead to assess application rates and to direct movement on ad placement, as well as to discuss the activity of the assigned Workforce Coordinator. Stephanie guides the Coordinating PC daily regarding interview statistics of the PC team and works as a liaison to the appropriate ATL. Finally, she creates a weekly presentation to assess wins, lost opportunities and report out on order activity.
• Molly Pepera, WFCTL, manages the specific client requisition and directs the assigned workforce coordinator on a daily basis. She collaborates with the ATL to plan future activity to stay ahead of client needs.
• Nine local office PCs who are the first to review the applications coming in and to do video/face-to-face/in-person interviews with candidates, qualifying them against Metalcraft specifications;
• Philip Caronia, Coordinating PC, works with the AE on a regular basis to understand client satisfaction related to our workers and to determine the volume of workers needed for the upcoming week and month; makes sure all appropriate paperwork is completed and does final quality control checks of candidates provided by the PCs. Upon ensuring they meet Metalcraft specs, Philip sends the list of employees to PJ discussing with him daily, the names and details of each employee to be mobilized to Metalcraft the following week.

On Thursday of each week, PJ informs Metalcraft’s HR leaders how many Tradesmen employees will show up the following Monday and provides specific data points on each worker. As our workers arrive from all areas of the country, PJ, together with Metalcraft’s on-boarding team, greets them in the various plant lobbies and the process to acclimate the workers to the company’s worksite culture begins. First and foremost, each worker is provided plant-specific safety training along with a thorough job-specific orientation, all aimed at making our workers comfortable in their new environment and more productive in their specific tasks.

This process has proved successful in helping Metalcraft increase their production output and reduce their product delivery backlog. The consistency of the process, including constant communication between our sales and operation teams, and the client’s five plant HR managers, has resulted in exceptional satisfaction by Metalcraft in the volume of workers provided on specific dates, the quality of our skilled workers, and with the overall retention of those workers.

As of the writing of this article, Tradesmen has just over 100 employees working at Metalcraft with expectations of providing an average 15-20 incremental workers weekly over the next 5 months. When all is said and done, PJ anticipates that Tradesmen will have more than 200 skilled workers on site at Metalcraft working an average 5,000 combined hours weekly and focusing on safety one minute at a time.

“Just want to let you guys know that my Metalcraft management team and myself are very happy with the quality of candidates we are getting. Thank you and keep up with this quality and good work.”

– Sonal Ramani
HR Manager
Metalcraft of Mayville Inc.