Aerotek Helps Life Sciences Firm Scale Hiring, Meet Production Demand

Client Profile & Challenge

As an organization, our customer conducts research, designs and manufactures medical devices, diagnostics technologies, and pharmaceutical products. Their mission is to promote healthcare innovations that contribute to patient livelihood and well-being.

In the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, our client was selected to receive government funding to support the research, design, and manufacturing of COVID-19 testing kits. With this new product line being added into their portfolio, our client had to build a new facility to accommodate for the high product demand and expedited production schedule. To maintain an adequate staffing level to meet demand, our client knew they would need over 2,000 contract laborers across a variety of skill sets; however, due to the project receiving government funding, numerous factors such as shifts details, pay rates, and overall skill set needs were unable to be disclosed until production was ready to begin. Knowing they needed a highly experienced staffing partner they could trust to deliver on high-volume staffing needs quickly and efficiently, they turned to Aerotek to support their ramp.

Aerotek's Solution

Knowing that their facility was in the final stages of preparation prior to opening, our client engaged Aerotek to develop a strategy that would lead to success in addressing their staffing needs. Given Aerotek’s local presence, deep life sciences manufacturing industry expertise, and access to robust labor market analytics, Aerotek was able to consult our client on current market trends to find differentiators for our client when attracting talent. Through these conversations, Aerotek worked with our client to raise pay rates and develop a success profile to assist our recruiters in identifying the skills and traits contractors would need to be successful within our client’s organization.

With these measures in place, Aerotek began our search in the local community where our candidates live and work. Aerotek utilized a multifaceted sourcing strategy, combining digital sourcing methods, such as targeted advertising, alongside local community efforts to find quality talent. Additionally, Aerotek heavily leveraged our proprietary applicant tracking system to source candidates and seek additional referrals.

Given the volume of candidates being hired and onboarded within a short timeframe, Aerotek had to develop a comprehensive and efficient onboarding process to get contractors ready to begin work. Due to a lack of available space onsite to conduct onboarding on such a large scale, Aerotek partnered with our client to find a nearby hotel with conference room space to house the process. Once candidates were successfully screened and provided offers of employment, they were brought in to complete the onboarding process. Aerotek’s onboarding process was designed to give candidates a realistic preview of the job – including an overview of their responsibilities and the facility – to determine if the job was the right fit prior to their first day.

Once our contractors started, Aerotek remained in constant communication with our contractors and site leadership through our on-premise team. Our On-Premise solution spanned three shifts and ensured the program was running smoothly and our employees felt supported and engaged. Aerotek’s on-premise team  regularly met with our client’s leadership to provide comprehensive program reporting to ensure our program was meeting their expectations and provide an avenue for continuous improvement. Additionally, the team conducted exit interviews with all contract employees to gather accurate finish codes and work with the client to identify any potential drivers of attrition to promote program retention.

Results

Within eight weeks, Aerotek was able to provide our client with over 1,200 contractors to meet their production demand. With sufficient staffing levels in place, our client was able to manufacture approximately 35 million COVID-19 test kits per month.