From the Field

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About Hiring.

On veteran talent. On what industrial companies keep getting wrong. On why most recruiting firms optimize for the wrong things.

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What Industrial Hiring Actually Costs  ·  September 2026

The Real Cost of an Empty Leadership Seat During an Acquisition

Standard vacancy cost math breaks down during an acquisition or fast build out. Three costs a normal calculator never counts, and why speed alone does not fix it.

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Candidate Truth  ·  September 2026

The Fastest Cleared Hire Is the One Who Already Has a Clearance

Cleared candidates take four to nine months to onboard from zero. About 200,000 veterans separate every year already carrying that clearance. Most contractors are not sourcing from that pool before it scatters.

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Industry POV  ·  September 2026

Five Hundred Thousand People Who Do Not Exist Yet

The real math behind the 500,000 person skilled talent shortfall in aerospace, defense, and semiconductor manufacturing.

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Candidate Truth  ·  August 2026

Do You Know What You Need to Make That Hire Work?

Define success beforHow companies diagnose hiring problems by clarifying what hire success actually means.

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Hiring  ·  August 2026

You Adopted Skills Based Hiring. Now What?

You bought skills based hiring. But credentials are still driving the hire. Here's what you're missing.

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The Honest Assessment  ·  August 2026

Are We Screening for the Right Things?

Five years of experience stopped meaning anything in 2026. But companies keep screening for it anyway. Here's why your filter is broken and what you're missing.

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Hiring/Industrial Operations  ·  August 2026

The Skills You're Hiring For Are Already Obsolete

Why companies can't define the skills they need. Why job descriptions describe yesterday. Why hiring for today's competency is already failing.

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Honest Assessment  ·  August 2026

The Leader about to Leave

When your best ops leader is going to quit, and why you wont know its coming

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Leadership/Honest Assessment  ·  July 2026

What Is a Leader in 2026

As AI removes the coordination layer, what's left is judgment under ambiguity and the willingness to own bad outcomes.

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Industry POV  ·  July 2026

The Management Layer Was Hiding Your Leadership Problem

AI is eating the coordination layer of leadership jobs. What is exposed underneath is a promotion problem most companies have had all along.

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Industry POV  ·  July 2026

Hiring Events Make Sense Less Often Than Companies Think

A framework for deciding when a hiring event is worth running and when it just wastes everyone's time.

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Hiring Cost  ·  July 2026

The Cost of the Empty Seat

The real cost of an open role is not what you paid a bad hire. It is what you lost every week the seat stayed empty.

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Manufacturing  ·  June 2026

The Talent Gap Is the Constraint: What Reshoring Actually Requires

Private sector U.S. manufacturing investment sits at $1.765 trillion across 160 companies and 37 states. The facilities are being built. The workforce is not keeping up. And smaller manufacturers are losing the talent competition before the search even starts.

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Industry  ·  June 2026

The Funnel Is Full. The Pipeline Is Empty.

90% of companies missed their hiring goals last year. The industry diagnosed a speed problem. The data points somewhere else entirely.

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Field Service  ·  May 2026

Why Field Service Roles Stay Open 60 Plus Days

Most industrial companies blame the talent market when field service roles go unfilled for months. The real problem is almost always upstream. It starts before the search does.

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Industry  ·  May 2026

The Industry Is Over-Rotating on AI. Here Is What It Is Costing You.

Recruiting just got a new excuse to stop doing the hard part. AI can screen a thousand resumes before lunch. But the hard part was never the volume problem. It was the relationship.

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Access  ·  May 2026

The Talent Pool Most Recruiters Never Reach

Every generalist recruiter is fishing in the same water. ETG is not. Here is where we find the candidates most firms never see, and why that access changes the outcome of a search.

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Veteran Talent  ·  May 2026

The Junior Military Officer You Keep Passing Over

A candidate of 26 who led 40 people through a combat deployment is not a junior hire. Here is what hiring managers miss and what that gap is costing their organizations.

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