Head of Talent Acquisition High Volume Heavy Manufacturing

Head of Talent AcquisitionHigh Volume Heavy ManufacturingTravel: Regular travel across the plant footprintThe roleThis is the top talent acquisition seat in a multi-plant heavy manufacturing organization, and the job is defined by two numbers that most companies never manage together.The first is production headcount. Machine operators, welders, assemblers, fabricators, material handlers, and sanitation, across multiple shifts. This is a throughput problem. When a line runs short-handed, overtime spikes, safety incidents rise, and the plant misses schedule. The failure mode is rarely a shortage of applicants. It is offer-to-start leakage, no-shows on day one, and the people who quit inside thirty days before anyone learned their name.The second is skilled trades. Industrial maintenance technicians, electricians, millwrights, controls and automation techs, tool and die, machinists. These are the hardest requisitions in American hiring right now. Every plant in the country is chasing the same maintenance electrician, most of them are offering more money than the last posting did, and the qualified candidate is already employed nine miles away and not looking.Above both of those sits the salaried and technical bench: manufacturing and process engineering, quality and reliability, EHS, continuous improvement, supply chain, and plant leadership.One person owns all three. That person is you.What you will ownThe function. Lead and build the talent acquisition organization across the plant network. Structure the team by geography, plant, or discipline, set requisition load and coverage standards, and hold people accountable to output rather than activity.High volume production hiring. Own the hourly engine end to end. Application friction, screening speed, interview-to-show rate, offer-to-start conversion, and the pre-employment path where most of your losses actually occur. Background screening, drug testing, physical assessment, and orientation scheduling are not HR's problem downstream of you. They are inside your funnel.Skilled trades strategy. Build a real pipeline for maintenance and trades rather than reposting and hoping. That means proactive outreach, apprenticeship and technical college partnerships, referral programs with teeth, and honest compensation conversations with plant and corporate leadership about what these people actually cost.Early attrition. Own 30, 60, and 90 day retention alongside time-to-fill. In high volume manufacturing these are the same problem, and a function measured only on fills will quietly rehire the same seat four times a year and call it productivity.Contingent labor and agency spend. Own the staffing agency relationships, the temp-to-hire conversion path, and the spend. Decide what runs direct, what runs through a partner, and hold vendors to performance rather than to habit.Plant startups and ramps. Staff new lines, new shifts, and new facilities against a production schedule that will not move because hiring is behind.Workforce planning. Partner with operations and finance on headcount forecasting tied to production volume, attrition rates, and shift structure. Bring labor market reality into the operating plan before the budget locks rather than after it fails.Hiring manager enablement. Your hiring managers are production supervisors and plant managers who were promoted for running a line, not for interviewing. Setting the standard for intake, interview discipline, and decision speed is part of this role, not adjacent to it.Systems and reporting. Own the ATS end to end, including configuration, integrations, and data hygiene. Report time-to-fill, offer-to-start, no-show rate, 30-day attrition, agency ratio, and cost per hire on a cadence operations actually uses.Compliance. Ensure hiring practices meet EEOC, OFCCP where applicable, and state and local requirements across every location in the footprint, including any collective bargaining constraints on posting, bidding, and selection.Hard requirementsThese are gates, not preferences. Applications that do not meet all five will not advance.10+ years in talent acquisition, with progressive leadership responsibility and results you can describe in numbers rather than adjectives.4+ years leading a talent acquisition team, including managing through recruiting managers or team leads rather than only individual contributors. Hiring, performance management, and budget authority.High volume hourly hiring at manufacturing sites, across multiple plants. Owned end to end, not inherited as a dashboard. You have carried real annual production hiring volume across a distributed footprint and you know why one plant hits and another does not.Skilled trades and industrial maintenance hiring. Direct ownership of maintenance technician, electrician, millwright, controls, or comparable trades requisitions. This is the specific gate. Manufacturing experience limited to production and salaried hiring is not a fit for this seat.Contingent labor ownership. You have managed staffing agency relationships and spend, including temp-to-hire conversion, and you can speak to what you changed and what it saved.Preferred qualificationsExperience in a private equity backed or middle-market industrial operator where hiring targets are tied to an operating plan and reported upward.Heavy manufacturing specifically: fabrication, forging, foundry, capital equipment, building products, steel, or heavy equipment.Unionized environments, including hiring under collective bargaining agreement constraints.Rural and single-plant labor markets where the local pool is finite and passive outreach is the only viable channel.Greenfield plant startup or post-acquisition integration.A record of reducing agency dependency or first-90-day attrition, with the numbers to show it.Multi-shift hiring at scale, including second and third shift and shift differential strategy.What we are actually looking forSomeone who can stand on a plant floor at shift change, hear from a supervisor that the third shift is running four people short again, and know before leaving the building whether that is a sourcing problem, a wage problem, a supervisor problem, or an attendance problem. Those four require completely different responses, and most talent leaders treat all of them as the first one.We are also looking for someone willing to tell corporate leadership that the maintenance technician role will not fill at the current rate in that market, bring the data that proves it, and hold the position through the pushback.We are not looking for a leader who runs this function from a dashboard and a quarterly deck.Compensation$140,000 to $170,000 base, plus a target bonus of 15% to 20% tied to production staffing levels, first-90-day retention, and agency spend reduction.