Nacco Materials Handling Group: A Snelling Case Study
Quality Candidates Shorten the Hiring Cycle
Nacco Materials Handling Group (NMHG) designs, engineers, manufactures, sells and services a variety of materials handling equipment – from narrow aisle warehouse trucks to cargo handling equipment under the brand names Hyster® and Yale®. Since 1989, these counterbalanced lift trucks have been recognized as some of the most productive in the workplace.
NMHG’s dealerships were struggling in their search for quality sales representatives. The dealerships’ goals were to make each of their sales reps’ territories smaller in order to help increase product awareness. With smaller territories, sales representatives would have an easier time focusing on their specific customers – working with them to fully
understand the product line and helping them select the best equipment for their particular needs. Snelling of Huntsville was contacted to help NMHG reach these goals. While working with NMHG’s management team, the Snelling of Huntsville recruiter realized that there was an opportunity for NMHG to support a veterans’ re-hiring initiative – something that had not been part of the NMHG culture before. The Snelling team felt that there would be a good fit between NMHG’s culture and the personality/work style of former military personnel.
There is a strong talent pool of former military personnel in this country. Given their compelling leadership skills (plus a host of other intangible qualities such as critical thinking, capability to be a team player, strong work ethic, and ability to learn highly technical information), these men and women were the perfect candidates for the sales representative
positions that NMHG was looking to fill.
So Snelling of Huntsville designed a veteran recruitment model based on best practices. This included bringing the candidates to the different dealers, and having the various senior management teams spend the day interviewing and interacting with the candidates. Candidates were screened for salary requirements, location needs and culture (with culture being key). During their time interviewing and interacting with the management team, the candidates were given the chance to “live and breathe” the culture of the dealership. Snelling of Huntsville personally oversaw every
step of the recruitment process, including the onsite interviews at all 44 dealerships. The Snelling office worked hand in hand with the different senior management teams, making strategy recommendations as needed.
This model, after having been run as a pilot, was rolled out to the entire NMHG dealer network. It has been widely successful, allowing the different dealerships to hire over 90 candidates.
For NMHG and its dealer network, the entire recruitment and hiring process was streamlined, allowing them to make multiple, quality hires in one day. NMHG received huge cost savings from a shortened hiring cycle, plus received work opportunity tax credits through the initiative that Snelling developed of putting America’s veterans back to work. By working in close partnership, Snelling assisted NMHG in achieving their business goals of reducing sales territory sizes and increasing product awareness while providing them with quality, highly valuable candidate pool.
