Three warehouses, three local hiring managers, three ways of reading the same application. A candidate turned down at one site is often a good fit for another. For a long time nobody could see it, because nobody was looking at both lists at once.

The roles themselves did not vary much between sites. Pick-pack positions, general warehouse operatives, the occasional forklift-certified opening. The same handful of jobs, opened and closed independently as headcount moved at each location.

Three readings of one job

The role description was identical across Ostvik’s sites. The reading of it was not. One manager weighted forklift certification heavily. Another weighted shift flexibility. The third put previous warehouse experience above both.

All three readings were defensible on their own terms. Together they meant something else: a candidate’s chances depended less on their record and more on which site happened to open the role. Nobody had set out to build a system that worked that way.

The gap showed clearest at the margins. A candidate marked borderline at one warehouse might have been an easy yes fifteen minutes down the road. The two hiring managers had no reason to ever compare notes on that particular person.

One shortlist, three sites

Ostvik now runs its warehouse roles through Yardstick Agents against a single definition of the job. Every application is read the same way wherever it came in. Site managers work from one shared shortlist instead of three separate ones.

A candidate declined at one warehouse stays visible to the other two, rather than disappearing from the process. If the fit is closer at a neighbouring site, that site’s manager can see the application. They can see the reasoning behind the first read too.

Where a site genuinely differs, that difference is written in as a named requirement on the role. A licence one warehouse needs and the others do not is now on the record, rather than left as a manager’s private weighting.

The managers still choose

Each site manager still decides who they interview and who they hire. What they no longer do, without meaning to, is decide what the job is for everyone else. The rubric is shared. The offer stays local.

Results across the three sites

22% of recent hires were matched to a different site than the one they first applied to. These are candidates who would previously have been declined and lost to the process entirely. That share has held steady since the shared shortlist went live, not just in the first busy month.

Time to fill has moved too. Sites report a 28% drop in time to fill open roles. Most of that gain comes from a simple fact. A manager with an open shift no longer starts sourcing from nothing. A neighbouring site often already has strong candidates on file.

None of that has changed who signs off a hire. 0 roles have been filled without manager sign-off since the shared shortlist started. Each site still runs its own interviews, on its own schedule, at its own pace.

What they are doing next

Ostvik is looking at whether the same shared-shortlist approach should extend to its two smaller satellite depots, which currently still hire on their own. A decision is expected before the next quarter’s headcount review.