Success storyBrasfield & Gorrie used Skillit to grow its craft pipeline and unite field and office
Brasfield & Gorrie needed 100 skilled pipefitters, welders, carpenters, and laborers in one month — but their linear, four-step hiring process created delays and misalignments between office and field teams that traditional staffing agencies and job boards couldn’t fix.
August 20242 minutes readGoals
Hire 100 full-time pipefitters, welders and laborers in under one month
Hit hiring goals while streamlining craft hiring process for field and office teams
Challenge
Job boards and company website were too slow and did not generate high quality candidates
Results
18% more craft hires
5.9X better top-to-bottom hire rate
8X more field users participating in the hiring process
Customer since: 2022
Brasfield & Gorrie is a top 25 Engineering News-Record general contractor headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama with over 4,000 employees and 220 active projects across 17 states. The company is known for its commitment to the "Golden Rule," which emphasizes putting people first, and self performing much of their own work so they can exercise greater control over time and money spent and mitigate risks related to schedule overruns and cost escalations.
Why traditional craft sourcing solutions weren’t working
Brasfield & Gorrie needed to hire 100 full-time skilled pipefitters, carpenters, laborers and welders within one month as they prepared to break ground on a big project near in Atlanta.
The hiring process has always been a critical input into maintaining high standards of project execution at Brasfield & Gorrie, but has traditionally been conducted through the company’s website, following a linear 4-step path:
The field expressed a staffing need
Recruiters drove applicants to their website
Candidates were passed to the field for review
Selected candidates were sent back to recruiters for processing
While this method had its merits, it often resulted in delays and misalignments between the office and field teams. Thus, Brasfield & Gorrie wanted a solution that allowed them to hit their craft hiring goals while streamlining the process.
Brasfield & Gorrie evaluated several traditional options, including staffing agencies and other digital solutions like job boards. However, these alternatives lacked several critical features:
Same-day implementation across office and field teams and immediate access to a fast-growing pool of vetted pipefitters, welders and laborers.
The digital infrastructure necessary to help them discover and reliably connect with the right workers at the right time.
Custom-built collaboration features that empower field and office recruiters to work together on the same pipeline of candidates.
How Skillit helped Brasfield & Gorrie boost hiring rates 5.9× and team collaboration 8×
Brasfield & Gorrie defined success by a measurable increase in the number of qualified self-perform workers they hired and an increase in the number of field personnel engaged in the hiring process. By integrating Skillit into their recruiting process, the company saw a significant boost in pipeline, hiring rates and field participation:
18 of the 100 hires were generated through Skillit vs. Brasfield & Gorrie’s website.
Top-to-bottom hiring rates grew 5.9X from 1.35% to 8%.
14 more field users participated in the hiring process (from 2 to 16).
Not only did Skillit generate a totally fresh pipeline of 1 in 5 hires in addition to those sourced through the company’s website, but once field recruiter Michael Ortigoza began using the platform, another 14 field personnel followed suit resulting in a marked improvement in Brasfield & Gorrie’s ability to source, screen, and hire skilled workers as measured by 6X better top-to-bottom hiring rates.
With Skillit, Brasfield & Gorrie’s 4-step linear process became a 2-step collaborative path with the field and office sourcing candidates and/or receiving applications directly via Skillit, and then selecting and sharing candidates back and forth as necessary for processing.
To be honest, we didn’t expect Michael and his team to hire so many skilled workers so quickly. Skillit has proven to be a highly effective resource in this process.
Corey Collier
Senior Field Manager · Brasfield & Gorrie
About Skillit
Skillit is America's fastest-growing network of vetted craft workers, intelligently matching enterprise contractors with qualified craft workers seeking full-time employment.