RTX Streamlines Hiring Through Close Partnership with Sterling

Building a strong partnership proves to be a win as RTX needed to innovate and optimize their hiring program after acquiring United Technologies in a significant merger. The opportunity was clear to evaluate systems, processes, and technology to build a best-in-class hiring process supporting the combined organizations of over a hundred thousand employees. Ruz Patel, Director of Employee Life-Cycle Operations at RTX, explains, “If hiring doesn’t happen quickly enough, then production is impacted, which hits the bottom line. Sterling stepped up in a true partnership to help us hire thousands of people with confidence.”

Winning the Talent Race by Streamlining the Hiring Process

As a leading defense and space manufacturer, Ruz goes on to note: “If we can’t hire at volume, our business doesn’t move. Our #1 issue is helping our candidates to stay engaged and on-task during the hiring process. We want to get them excited to start the process, but meanwhile the candidate has so much going on when they are applying for a job that it can be a daunting task for them to complete all their required actions on time.”

The investment and care made by Sterling and RTX in the partnership is key to ensuring the hiring processes in place are as low-touch as possible. Sterling’s expertise, service, and capabilities combined have helped RTX to hire at scale while growing trust and safety in the workplace, all in accordance with RTX’s high standards and accountability as a leading government contractor.

RTX wanted to shift focus and minimize the time it takes an average candidate to onboard. Meanwhile, RTX also sought to address any existing roadblocks which might be extending the hiring process. Ruz designed an original approach leveraging modern technology to help solve these major business challenges. Following implementation, RTX gained significant hiring efficiencies which had a positive impact down the production line by streamlining their hiring process.

An Eye for Process Innovation and Improvement

Leaning into innovation and optimizing the hiring process led RTX to implement Ruz’s modernized approach quickly. Sterling helped facilitate the transition to modern platforms, handling the Workday integration and more. As a result, RTX had its client matrix adjudication in place and all its employees logged into Workday within a few months.

In addition, RTX depends on Sterling’s contractor solution, designed specifically for employers seeking to hire an extended workforce. This helped RTX achieve their business goals to hire at volume and quickly onboard workers by providing a positive candidate experience.

Looking ahead, RTX also aimed to stay ahead of any possible medical requirements in their hiring process. Sterling quickly set up a convenient vaccine tracking service and now documents all RTX’s employee vaccination data in a simple database for easy access by management and federal auditors.

Through Sterling’s services, RTX has full confidence to take the next step with its candidates. Ruz highlights this value: “With tens of thousands of people in our facilities standing shoulder-to-shoulder, ensuring each one has passed a consistent background check bolsters trust in every worker representing RTX.”

Compliance Expertise Helps Navigate Changing Regulations

As a leader in the defense industry, it’s paramount for RTX to meet audit requirements and legal obligations under the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) and other laws. In short, compliance is vital. Particularly, if an audit is failed, there are significant financial penalties including government-imposed fines along with possible reputational damage.

Sterling’s team of experts help employers like RTX to examine their adjudication guidelines and identify areas of compliance risk. State laws are constantly evolving and impacting the industry, (particularly drug testing laws), which can complicate background screening in some of the states where RTX operates.

Additionally, so many different hiring restrictions can make the hiring process quite complex. For example, many pending state laws can differ substantially from the mandatory federal laws RTX already follows. As those local laws and industry-wide regulations continuously evolve, Sterling proactively provides our expertise to help RTX determine in advance how they want to address it internally. This ensures that by the time a given state or local law goes into effect, Sterling’s compliance updates help keep RTX well-apprised of any potential impact and in some instances, enables them to quickly determine exactly how they’ll mitigate it.

Full Partnership Enables RTX to Hire with Confidence

This great collaboration has proven essential to streamlining RTX’s hiring process. Particularly, our primary client success partner now meets with Ruz weekly and has truly become part of the RTX team. “I quickly noticed that one of Sterling’s greatest assets is their people. Our Sterling CSP (Customer Success Partner) Maggie Will immediately plugged right into our daily operations with lots of suggestions on how we could improve our hiring process.”