From Spreadsheets to a Scalable Hiring Machine: The Valard Construction Story
In the world of large-scale utility construction, the ability to hire quickly, consistently, and at high volume is not a luxury — it is an operational necessity. For Valard Construction, one of Canada's leading utility contractors specializing in power line construction and infrastructure, that reality has shaped every aspect of how the company manages talent. Over the past decade, Workable's Applicant Tracking System (ATS) has been the backbone of Valard's recruitment transformation, helping the company evolve from a spreadsheet-driven process into a professional, efficient, and candidate-friendly hiring operation.
Who Is Valard Construction?
Founded and headquartered in Canada, Valard Construction has established itself as a premier contractor in the utility and power infrastructure sector. The company's workforce is inherently dynamic, fluctuating between approximately 1,100 employees during quieter periods and surging to as many as 2,000 during peak project cycles. This kind of workforce elasticity demands a recruitment function that can flex with demand — and do so without sacrificing quality, speed, or the candidate experience.
With 200 to 250 new hires made every single year, Valard's talent acquisition team is not occasionally busy; it is perpetually in motion. Managing that volume requires tools, systems, and processes that are not just functional but genuinely powerful.
The Challenge: Hiring at Scale in a Demanding Industry
Before Workable entered the picture in 2015, Valard's hiring was managed through a combination of spreadsheets and email chains. While that approach may have been serviceable in earlier years, it quickly became a liability as the company grew. Tracking candidates across multiple job openings, ensuring timely communication, maintaining a consistent employer brand, and providing visibility to hiring managers — none of these were easy with legacy tools.
The construction and utilities industry is also uniquely competitive when it comes to talent. Skilled tradespeople and infrastructure professionals are in high demand, which means the window to engage, assess, and move a candidate through the pipeline is narrow. Delays in communication or disorganized processes do not just slow things down — they cost companies their best candidates.
As Valard began professionalizing its HR and recruitment functions, the need for a dedicated, purpose-built ATS became undeniable. That search led them to Workable.
A Decade-Long Partnership Built on Results
Valard has been a Workable customer since 2015 — nearly ten years of continuous use that speaks volumes about the platform's value. What began as a solution to replace spreadsheets has grown into a comprehensive recruitment infrastructure that supports every stage of the hiring lifecycle.
According to Valard's own team, the shift to Workable marked the beginning of a new era in how the company approached talent acquisition. The platform gave recruiters a single source of truth for all candidate data, automated communications that eliminated the frustrating problem of candidate ghosting, and an intuitive interface that made collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers significantly smoother.
Key Results: What Workable Delivered for Valard
The outcomes that Valard has experienced over its decade-long partnership with Workable are both measurable and meaningful. Several results stand out as particularly significant for a company operating at this scale.
- Improved candidate communication and the elimination of ghosting: One of the most common pain points in high-volume recruiting is the breakdown of communication between employers and candidates. With Workable's automated messaging and pipeline management tools, Valard was able to ensure that every candidate received timely updates, dramatically reducing drop-off rates and improving the overall candidate experience.
- Professionalized employer branding through a modernized careers page: First impressions matter in recruiting just as much as they do in sales. Workable enabled Valard to build a careers page that accurately reflected the company's brand, culture, and values — giving prospective employees a professional and compelling reason to apply.
- Increased efficiency and visibility in talent acquisition: With hundreds of hires happening every year and a workforce that can double in size during major projects, visibility into the pipeline is critical. Workable gave Valard's HR team real-time insight into every open role, active candidate, and upcoming hiring need — enabling more proactive and strategic workforce planning.
- Strengthened support and partnership from Workable's team: Beyond the technology itself, Valard has consistently cited the quality of Workable's customer support as a differentiating factor. In a fast-paced operational environment, having a responsive and knowledgeable support team available makes a meaningful difference in day-to-day recruitment performance.
Why ATS Technology Matters in Construction and Utilities
The construction and utilities sector is not always the first industry that comes to mind when people think about HR technology adoption, but it arguably has one of the strongest cases for it. The combination of high headcounts, project-based staffing surges, geographically distributed teams, and intense competition for skilled labor creates a recruitment environment that is uniquely demanding.
An ATS like Workable does not simply digitize paperwork — it fundamentally changes how organizations attract, assess, and secure talent. For companies like Valard, where a delay in hiring can translate directly into project delays and cost overruns, that difference is felt at the business level, not just within the HR department.
Lessons for Growing Companies: What the Valard Story Teaches Us
Valard's journey with Workable offers several important lessons for any company navigating rapid growth and high-volume hiring. First, investing in recruitment infrastructure early pays dividends that compound over time. The sooner a company moves away from manual, ad hoc processes and toward a structured, technology-supported approach, the faster it can scale without sacrificing quality or candidate experience.
Second, the right ATS is not just a tool — it is a strategic partner. The longevity of Valard's relationship with Workable is a testament to what happens when a platform consistently delivers value, evolves with the company's needs, and backs its product with reliable support.
Third, employer branding and candidate experience are not soft metrics — they have a direct impact on hiring outcomes. Valard's investment in a modernized careers page and structured communication workflows translated into real reductions in candidate drop-off and stronger hiring results.
Looking Ahead: A Foundation for Continued Growth
As Valard Construction continues to pursue major infrastructure projects across Canada, its need for agile, high-volume recruitment will only grow. With nearly ten years of Workable experience under its belt, the company is well-positioned to meet that demand. The data, processes, and institutional knowledge built up over a decade of using the platform give Valard's HR team a significant competitive advantage in the talent market.
For organizations in construction, utilities, or any other sector that faces dynamic workforce demands, Valard's story is a powerful reminder of what is possible when the right technology meets a committed team. Scalable hiring is not a matter of luck — it is a matter of systems, and Workable has proven to be one of the best in the business.