The equipment is your customer's.
The availability is your obligation.
Your own recruiting system for conveyor service technicians, mechatronics engineers and automation electricians – for operators maintaining other people's material handling and storage equipment. Built inside your company, yours afterwards.
No obligation – no lock-in contract
An intralogistics service operator hires technicians for equipment it does not own. That sounds like a formality and it is the core of the hiring problem: the candidate is expected to handle continuous conveyors, storage and retrieval machines, an automated small parts store and a sorter – from several suppliers, across more than one generation of controls, grown over years. Competing for the same people are the equipment manufacturer with its factory service and the site operator with its own in-house maintenance: one focused on a single product family, the other offering a fixed site with no travel. You need the person who can do both and still drives out.
What has changed is what sits inside the installed base. Automated small parts warehouses, sorters and automated guided vehicles now run in sites that were originally planned differently. Where a driverless vehicle shares floor space with people, every intervention carries a personnel detection function, a protective field and an operating mode that has to be right again once the work is done. Faults accordingly sit less often in a gearbox and more often in the controls, the fieldbus or the sensors. Then comes retrofit: for controls from the first wave of automation, both are getting scarce, the spare part and the person who can read the program – and whoever replaces a controller has to assess beforehand whether the conversion amounts to a substantial modification with a fresh conformity assessment. The profile you are hiring for has shifted from fitter to a technician who does not merely swap a controller but understands it.
Two things follow. First, the technician is not hired for a vacancy but for sites you already look after, and for the next one you win – what awaits them there has to be settled before they apply, not in the third interview. Second, a business with contractually committed availability needs access to the market that stays open even when no role is advertised. We build that access once – role profile, own careers page, channel, response rhythm, pre-selection – and hand it to your house, together with the accounts and the data.
One application. Answered the same day.
A technician applies in the evening after their shift – and usually not only to you. Whoever answers first gets the interview. That is not a service promise, it is the selection mechanism of this market.
First application within 72 hours.
Then a fixed rhythm: every application answered the same day – even when the service manager is at a customer site or on holiday. The process and the templates belong to your company after handover.
- Answers in minutes, not days – evenings and weekends included
- Asks the points your service manager defined
- Mr Krüger
Good evening, I saw your field service technician role. How large is the travel radius?
- Blacklyne
Good evening! Around 180 km, you sleep at home. Overnight stays about twice a month, company vehicle provided. Which controls have you worked on most recently?
< 3 s - Mr Krüger
Siemens 840D and Heidenhain, seven years of CNC service. I am used to on-call duty.
- Blacklyne
That fits. Our service manager has Thursday 16:30 open – shall I book it for you?
< 4 s
Every route. One entry point.
Careers page, ad, message, callback – all in one place, on your access and with your data. No agency inbox you have to have candidates forwarded from.
- One entry point instead of five channels and three inboxes
- All applicant data stays with you – from day one
What keeps your roles open.
The bottlenecks in this segment – and why they rarely sit in the market.
A new technician drives for weeks before touching a machine
Every site runs on the operator's rules: site pass, safety induction, clearance for restricted areas, keys and access rights – one site at a time, on their calendar, not yours. Those weeks appear in no role profile and the technician does not expect them. Name them upfront, together with what is paid during that time, and you lose fewer people in year one than the company that treats it as a detail.
You hire for other people's makes, not for your own product line
The equipment manufacturer hires technicians for one machine family and one control environment. You hire someone who can find their way around whatever the site operator has bought together over the years. In a job ad that reality reads like a wish list – suitable candidates back away instead of getting in touch. What actually counts technically therefore belongs in the pre-selection, not in the list of requirements.
Inspection authorisations attach to people, not to the company
The annual racking inspection requires a person formally competent to carry it out, and the recurring inspection of storage and retrieval machines does too. That competence attaches to the person and leaves with them. What does not leave, but recurs with every new hire: work at height with fall protection equipment is not permitted without a rescue plan and recurring instruction. The site operator asks about both in the next tender – not about your workforce planning.
Availability is in the contract, staffing is nowhere
Response and resolution times are contractual obligations for you, not service promises. If a technician is missing from the on-call rota, you cover it with overtime, bought-in labour or a renegotiation – paid out of the margin on the very contract you are fulfilling. The site operator sees none of that. They see the time until someone arrives, and the renewal is negotiated on that time, not on your staffing situation.
6 percent are searching. 62 percent would move.
According to the EY job study, 6 percent of skilled workers are actively searching while 62 percent are passively open to a move – an all-time high. A job ad addresses the first 6 percent. The rest are reachable, just not where you advertise.
Every application is answered the same day.
Here is what changes for you.
What awaits them on site is settled before the first interview
Maintenance window and shift pattern, on-call rhythm and allowance, a fixed site or changing deployments, makes and control environment, work at height including the rescue plan, vehicle, access and clearance arrangements. A service technician compares offers on these points. So they are in the role profile, and they are there as your company actually works – agreed with your service manager, not with a template.
Pre-selection against the equipment you actually run
Control environment and fieldbus, experience on storage and retrieval machines or on the sorter, existing inspection authorisations, fitness for work at height, on-call availability: your service manager decides which of those count. The measure is not the wish list but the question of which sites the candidate can take over from day one and which only after training. The path asks for that before the first appointment goes in the calendar. The questionnaire stays with you and gets sharpened for the next site, not rebuilt.
An answer the same day, even when nobody is in the office
The first application arrives within 72 hours, then every application is answered the same day. People working in intralogistics service write after a night shift or from on-call duty – at times when nobody at your place is at a desk. So the system settles who answers and with what, instead of leaving it to your service manager's calendar.
The next contract starts without a supplier
Careers page on your domain, ad accounts, audiences, questionnaire, applicant data and a written operating manual pass to you. Win a site in an area where you have nobody based, and you look for the technician before the availability is owed – not once an external provider has capacity.
4 steps.
Then it is yours.
First we check whether the role can be filled in your region. Then we build the system inside your company, fill the role with a guarantee on the hire – and hand it over.
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Feasibility check
Can the role be filled in your region, and is your area still open? We put in writing what “the right fit” means technically. We decline roles that cannot be filled – even when that means one engagement less.
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System build
Role profile with travel radius and on-call, careers page on your domain, a 90-second application path, pre-selection on your service manager’s criteria. Every account runs under your name from day one.
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Filling phase
Then a fixed rhythm: every application answered the same day. You run interviews instead of sorting. If a committed role stays open, we keep working – at no further cost.
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Handover
Access, ad accounts, audiences, templates, applicant data, training for your team and a written operating manual. We are done when you can launch the next role without us.
Honest answers.
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01 There is already a page on material handling and intralogistics. What is the difference?
The other page is about visibility – how a mid-sized company gets noticed alongside corporate careers pages at all; it applies to manufacturers and service operators alike. This page is about the role profile itself: other people's makes, maintenance windows set by the site operator, site access, contractually committed availability. The build is the same in both cases. If you both build equipment and service other people's, we settle in the first call which profile the role actually needs. -
02 What does the build cost?
No price on the website, we settle that in the first call against your numbers. The build depends on how many roles you want filled and across how many catchment areas your sites are spread. We clarify both there, and then the figure is on the table. -
03 Can you find us technicians who already hold the inspection authorisation?
Rarely, and we do not promise it. Anyone competent for racking inspection or for the recurring inspection of storage and retrieval machines is settled and seldom moves. You hire the technician and qualify them afterwards; the training runs on your budget. What the system contributes: it describes that route on the careers page, because for a maintenance technician working in-house at an operator it is a reason to move. We commit to nothing beyond that. -
04 We look after sites in several regions. Does each region need its own system?
No, it is built once. What differs by region is not the system but the radius a technician drives from home to the site in the morning. The outreach is cut along that radius, not along your head office. When a site is added, you re-cut the radius yourself after handover. -
05 What if nobody suitable comes through?
Then we keep working, at no further cost. The guarantee is on the hire, not on the number of applications. Whether a role can be filled in your catchment area at all is something we check beforehand – if it cannot, we do not take it on.
Articles for this industry
Practical guides and levers – straight from the field
Finding field service technicians: why the role stays open for 168 days
The travel radius belongs in the first line, not the fourth interview
What a recruitment agency costs in machinery – and when it stops paying off
Calculating vacancy costs in machinery: what the open role really costs
In-house recruiting or agency: the calculation almost nobody makes
Finding CNC machinists: four details that decide the application
One company per area. See if yours is still open.
A field service technician hired in fourteen days. A machining company with three candidates for two roles in the first month. No magic pill – a system that stays in the company afterwards. The feasibility check tells you whether your role can be filled in your catchment area. If it cannot, we decline before you spend a cent. One company per field and area.
What happens on the first call
- We run the numbers on your catchment area: how many suitable skilled workers are within range and whether your role can be filled there.
- You see the filled cases with role, company size and time to hire – and you may question every figure.
- You learn what the build costs in your case. Including when we advise against it.