How Woodbridge Pallet Screened 2,571 Forklift Drivers and Saved 35.5 Hours Using Lighthouse

The problem: 2,571 applicants, one forklift driver role

Woodbridge Pallet operates in an industry where time on the floor is everything. Manufacturing and logistics don't pause for hiring — every hour a recruiter spends buried in resumes is an hour not spent on the operations that keep the business moving.

When they posted a forklift driver position, the response was overwhelming: 2,571 applicants. In manufacturing hiring, high applicant volume isn't unusual — roles on Indeed regularly attract hundreds or thousands of applications. But volume creates a paradox: the more applicants you get, the harder it becomes to find the qualified ones. With only about 5% of applicants meeting 80%+ of role criteria, that means roughly 128 qualified drivers were buried somewhere in a pile of over 2,400 unqualified applications.

Manual screening: hours of work, minutes of value

Without Lighthouse, the recruiter would have needed to open, read, and evaluate each of those 2,571 resumes. Even at a generous 50 seconds per resume — barely enough time to scan for a forklift certification and relevant experience — that's 35.5 hours of work. Nearly a full work week spent on a single role, with roughly 95% of that time going toward candidates who were never going to qualify.

And that estimate is optimistic. Real manual screening is slower — fatigue sets in, quality drops, and the 128th resume gets the same rushed glance as the 2,400th. Qualified drivers get missed. Good candidates slip through because no human can maintain attention across thousands of near-identical applications.

How Lighthouse automated the screening

Instead of the recruiter opening 2,571 resumes one by one, Lighthouse screened every applicant the moment they applied. The system was configured with Woodbridge Pallet's specific criteria: forklift certification, warehouse experience, safety record, physical fitness, and shift availability. Every candidate was scored against those requirements automatically.

The recruiter opened their dashboard and saw a ranked pipeline — the most qualified drivers at the top, with detailed scoring on exactly what made each candidate a fit. No more guessing. No more fatigue. No more missed candidates.

What the team got back

The 35.5 hours Woodbridge Pallet saved wasn't just a number on a timesheet — it was nearly a full work week returned to their recruiter. Time that went back into the operational work that keeps a manufacturing business running: coordinating with hiring managers, managing the floor, supporting the team.

And the quality of hire improved. When a human screens 2,571 resumes, the 128 qualified candidates don't all get equal attention — the recruiter burns out long before reaching the bottom of the pile. Lighthouse gave every applicant a consistent, fair evaluation. The best drivers — not just the ones who applied first or had the most eye-catching resume — surfaced to the top.

For manufacturers hiring on Indeed, the math is simple. The average qualified rate is about 5%. If you get 400 applicants, you're spending 95% of your screening time on people who won't qualify. Lighthouse flips that ratio — so your team spends 100% of their time on the 5% who will.