Introduction: The Challenge of Scaling Hiring in the Construction Industry
Recruiting in the construction industry has never been easy. High turnover rates, competitive labor markets, and the operational complexity of managing field and office roles simultaneously make hiring a persistent bottleneck for growing firms. For Elite Construction Solutions, a commercial roofing and general contracting company expanding across multiple major U.S. cities, these challenges were compounded by a decentralized, inefficient hiring process that was costing the company both time and money.
That changed when Elite Construction Solutions implemented Workable, a leading applicant tracking system (ATS). The results were swift, measurable, and transformational. Within months, the company had doubled its hiring volume, reduced its cost per hire by 41%, and improved employee retention by 20%. This case study breaks down how they did it and what other construction and field-services companies can learn from their experience.
Who Is Elite Construction Solutions?
Elite Construction Solutions is a commercial roofing company that provides reliable construction solutions for businesses of all sizes. Over recent years, the company has pursued an aggressive growth strategy, acquiring general contracting firms and expanding its geographic footprint across Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Phoenix, and Minneapolis.
This rapid expansion created an immediate need: a centralized, scalable recruiting infrastructure capable of supporting hiring across multiple markets and job types. In 2024, Elite Construction Solutions responded by establishing a dedicated recruiting team led by Sean Kelly, a recruiting professional tasked with bringing order and efficiency to the company's hiring operations.
What Hiring Looked Like Before Workable
Before implementing a dedicated ATS, Elite Construction Solutions operated with a fragmented and reactive approach to recruiting. The problems were numerous and deeply embedded in daily operations:
- Managers handled their own hiring on top of their regular operational responsibilities, resulting in slow response times and inconsistent candidate experiences.
- Heavy reliance on job board spending without a clear system to track which channels were driving quality hires, leading to wasted budget and poor ROI measurement.
- No centralized data or reporting, making it impossible to identify bottlenecks in the hiring pipeline or make data-driven decisions.
- Inconsistent processes across locations, meaning each regional office effectively operated its own informal recruiting system with no standardization.
The result was high cost per hire, longer time-to-fill, and elevated turnover — a particularly damaging combination for a company trying to scale rapidly across nine cities.
Why Sean Kelly Chose Workable After Testing Eight ATS Platforms
The selection of an ATS was not taken lightly. Sean Kelly evaluated nearly eight different applicant tracking systems before landing on Workable. His criteria were clear: the platform needed to be fast to deploy, easy for non-technical hiring managers to use, and scalable enough to grow alongside the company's expanding operations.
Workable checked all three boxes. The platform went live in less than a week — a critical factor for a company that needed to solve its hiring problems immediately, not six months down the road. Its intuitive interface meant that hiring managers across different locations could adopt it quickly without extensive training, reducing friction and accelerating the rollout.
Beyond speed and usability, Workable's robust job distribution network, integrated sourcing tools, and reporting capabilities gave Kelly's team the visibility and control they had been lacking. The platform allowed the centralized recruiting team to manage pipelines across all markets from a single dashboard, something that had been practically impossible before.
The Results: By the Numbers
The impact of implementing Workable was both rapid and significant. Here is a summary of the key outcomes Elite Construction Solutions achieved:
- Time to go live: Less than one week from contract signing to full deployment.
- Total hires up 78.3%: The company effectively doubled its hiring volume, enabling it to staff up for new markets and acquired businesses without proportionally increasing recruiting headcount.
- Cost per hire reduced by $1,400 (down 41%): By consolidating job board spending, improving sourcing efficiency, and reducing time-to-fill, Elite Construction Solutions achieved dramatic savings on a per-hire basis.
- Employee retention improved by 20%: Better candidate screening, more structured interviews, and a more consistent onboarding funnel contributed to hiring candidates who were a stronger long-term fit for the company.
Key Lessons for Construction Companies Looking to Modernize Recruiting
The Elite Construction Solutions story is not unique. Across the construction and skilled trades industries, companies are discovering that manual, manager-led hiring simply cannot keep pace with growth. Here are the key lessons that other construction firms can take from this case study:
1. Centralize Before You Scale
One of the most important decisions Elite Construction Solutions made was to centralize recruiting under a dedicated team before attempting to standardize processes across nine cities. Without that structural decision, even the best ATS would have struggled to deliver results. Hiring technology amplifies good processes — it cannot fix broken ones on its own.
2. Speed of Deployment Matters
In fast-growing companies, a six-month implementation timeline for new software is a luxury most cannot afford. Workable's ability to go live in under a week gave Elite Construction Solutions an immediate competitive advantage in a tight labor market. When evaluating ATS platforms, time-to-value should be weighted as heavily as features.
3. Track Your Sourcing Spend Rigorously
A significant portion of the $1,400 cost-per-hire reduction likely came from better sourcing attribution. When you know which job boards, referral channels, and sourcing strategies are producing quality hires, you can reallocate budget away from underperforming channels and invest where ROI is highest. Without an ATS providing that data, recruiting spend is largely guesswork.
4. Structured Processes Drive Better Retention
The 20% improvement in retention is perhaps the most strategically important outcome in this case study. High turnover is one of the most expensive problems a construction company can face. By standardizing screening criteria and interview workflows, Elite Construction Solutions improved the quality of hiring decisions — not just the speed. Better hires stay longer, reducing the recurring costs of recruiting, onboarding, and training.
Final Thoughts: The ROI of Getting Recruiting Right
The Elite Construction Solutions case study is a compelling reminder that investing in the right recruiting infrastructure delivers measurable financial returns. A 41% reduction in cost per hire and a 78.3% increase in total hires is not just an HR success story — it is a business performance story. For a company expanding across nine major metropolitan markets, the ability to hire faster, cheaper, and more accurately is a genuine competitive advantage.
For construction companies still relying on manual processes or outdated tools, the question is no longer whether to invest in a modern ATS, but how quickly they can get one deployed. As the Elite Construction Solutions experience demonstrates, the right platform can be up and running in less than a week — and delivering results within weeks after that.
If your construction or field-services company is struggling with rising hiring costs, inconsistent processes, or poor retention, the path forward is clear: centralize your recruiting, choose a scalable and intuitive ATS, and start making data-driven hiring decisions. The ROI will follow.