Case Study: Ramping Up Return to Office with Skills-First Hiring

The Challenge

Many companies have moved their corporate headquarters outside major city centers in recent years. While this can reduce real estate and operational costs, it often creates a new problem: attracting and retaining skilled talent willing to traverse longer commutes.

One leading retailer based in a suburban campus about 30–60 minutes from a major metropolitan area grappled with this issue. Remote work during the pandemic mitigated it temporarily, but as in-person and hybrid roles returned, the distance to headquarters emerged as a meaningful barrier in hiring.

“Getting candidates to the actual office was one of their biggest hurdles,” says Ainsley Castro-Charles, National Director of Strategic Partnerships at YUPRO Placement. “The location made it harder to compete for top talent, and when budgets were tight during COVID, they couldn’t risk making direct hires at the pace they needed.”

This isn’t an isolated phenomenon. Research demonstrates that:

• Commutes of 30–45 minutes one way substantially increase the risk of turnover, while shorter commute times are strongly associated with longer tenure and greater job satisfaction.
• 62% of jobseekers indicate a company’s location directly influences whether they apply for a role.

Dealing with Campus-Style Headquarters Trend

The retailer’s suburban headquarters isn’t unique. Beginning in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1990s and 2000s, many corporations opted for campus-style headquarters outside of city centers. The appeal was clear: lower real estate costs, room to expand, plentiful parking, and the ability to house thousands of employees in large, modern office complexes.

But while these campuses created operational efficiencies, they presented an unintended recruiting challenge. Workers often faced longer commutes from urban centers, and the lack of nearby transit infrastructure made driving the only viable option.

Today, this legacy continues to shape hiring. Employers with large suburban campuses often find themselves at a disadvantage competing with city-based firms that offer shorter commutes or transit access. As hybrid work normalizes, many are reevaluating how to make their suburban locations attractive again—and a skills-first, support-driven approach to hiring is one way to overcome those barriers.

YUPRO Placement’s client challenge tracks with this trend. The company’s campus is well over 1 million square feet and has expanded post-COVID.

The size and scale of this infrastructure make the location a material factor — many roles require in-office presence, and candidates often evaluate commute distance relative to pay, role growth, and quality of life.

The Solution

To tackle the location/commute barrier, the company chose to partner directly with YUPRO Placement under a comprehensive, skills-first workforce model. YUPRO Placement’s approach was multifaceted — not just recruiting, but supporting the entire candidate-to-on-site lifecycle:

• Skills-First Recruiting: Candidates were selected based on capabilities, potential, and willingness to commute, rather than strict criteria like degree or proximity alone. Our skills-first approach looks at actual capabilities such as technical skills, problem-solving, adaptability, and certifications, not just degrees or narrow job titles. This allows us to recruit talent with the skills to do the job today and the potential to grow into tomorrow’s roles.
  
• Contingent Staffing: YUPRO Placement handled payroll, compliance, and administrative burdens so that the client could engage contingent staff without carrying all the overhead and risk.
  
• Coaching & Mentoring: Once placed, candidates received high-touch support—soft skills development, one-on-one coaching, team calls, guidance on workplace norms, communication, etc.—which improved their ability to adapt to workplace demands and the commute stress. These supports are a critical part of the overall strategy. Without them, commute and culture can be deal breakers. With them, candidates are more engaged, stay longer, and convert to full-time at higher rates.
  
• Client Delivery & Management: YUPRO Placement used regular check-ins with hiring managers and the client leadership to ensure placements matched evolving needs, and to manage the contingent-to-full-time pipeline where high-performers could transition to permanent roles.
  
• Range of Roles: These services were applied across many professional functions—including buyers and purchasing specialists, recruiters, HR staff, and senior level positions as the model matured.

Program Evolution

What began largely as a solution for filling roles during a period of budget and hiring uncertainty (e.g. during COVID) evolved into a core strategy for building and maintaining workforce capacity despite geographic challenges.

As Ainsley Castro Charles puts it: “They came to us thinking about contingent hiring as a stopgap. But they realized that the contingent-to-full-time pipeline could serve them long term, especially with the commute challenge continuing to limit their applicant pool.”

The Results

This integrated approach yielded several strong outcomes:

• Broadened candidate pool: By selecting for potential and skills rather than location or credentials, the client was able to attract capable candidates who might otherwise have rejected roles due to commute concerns. Skills-first hiring has been shown to expand the talent pool by two to three times compared to degree-first models, making a significant difference for employers outside city centers.
  
• Improved retention: With coaching, EOR support, and a clearer path to permanent roles, candidates were better positioned to stick around despite the commuting burden. Finding people is one thing, but keeping them comes from the supports YUPRO puts in place—coaching, mentoring, and upskilling that help talent stick with roles they might otherwise leave. These supports can increase retention by about 20 percent.
  
• Flexibility & responsiveness: The contingent model gave the company agility during uncertain times, yet with the oversight and support systems in place, generated stability and long-term conversions.
  
• Quality outcomes consistent with industry research: Employers using skills-first hiring show about 60% higher odds of making successful hires and 94% report that those hires outperform degree-first peers. These metrics help show that solving for commute via flexible, skills-based hiring doesn’t require compromising quality.
  

“Even with challenges like commuting, we’ve been able to keep a steady flow of strong candidates,” says Castro-Charles. “The client has continued to bring us back month after month, which says a lot about the value they’re seeing.”