Connecting the Right Talent with the Right Mission — Faster
Northrop Grumman needed to hire thousands of new employees — fast. AgencyQ reimagined their careers search experience, connecting qualified candidates with the right roles in seconds.
Northrop Grumman needed to hire thousands of new employees — fast. AgencyQ reimagined their careers search experience, turning a sluggish job board into a precision matching tool that connects qualified candidates with the right roles in seconds.
The Challenge
Northrop Grumman Corporation is a global aerospace and defense technology company and one of the world's largest defense contractors, solving the toughest problems in space, aeronautics, defense, and cyberspace.
With a goal to recruit more than 10,000 new employees in 2024, NGC's existing careers search couldn't keep pace. Job seekers were navigating a catalog of 5,000+ open positions with limited filtering, slow data syncs, and a search experience that made finding the right role feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Candidates were dropping off before they ever applied.
NGC needed a search experience that could match the caliber of its mission — one that surfaces the right roles instantly, supports complex filtering, and stays current with a constantly changing jobs pipeline. And they needed it delivered on an aggressive timeline.
The Solution
AgencyQ started where we always start: understanding the problem before prescribing the technology. Our team mapped NGC's hiring workflows, documented requirements across their talent acquisition team, and identified the critical integration point — their Workday API, the system of record for every open position.
With NGC already migrating to Sitecore XM, the path forward became clear. AgencyQ implemented Sitecore Search as the careers search engine, integrating it directly with the Workday jobs feed so new positions appear to candidates within minutes of being posted. The implementation gave NGC's marketing team direct control over the search experience — tuning relevancy, managing facets and filters, and optimizing the candidate journey without relying on developers for every change.
From requirements to launch, the entire implementation took just four weeks.
The Results
The impact was immediate and measurable:
- 6x faster data sync — Job listings now refresh hourly instead of every six hours, keeping candidates connected to the freshest opportunities
- Instant search results — Candidates get real-time results as they search, dramatically reducing friction in the job discovery process
- Advanced filtering — Multi-facet search lets candidates narrow by location, clearance level, role type, and more — functionality that didn't exist before
- 4-week delivery — From kickoff to launch on an aggressive timeline that matched the urgency of NGC's hiring goals
- Marketing team empowered — NGC's team now manages the search experience directly, reducing developer dependency for ongoing optimization
The careers search transformation was just the beginning. NGC was so satisfied with the results that they expanded the platform to their thought leadership blog (Now.northropgrumman.com), their Suppliers section, and are evaluating it to replace their main site search engine.
AgencyQ and NGC are also now implementing personalization capabilities as part of a broader talent acquisition strategy — targeting use cases that attract women in STEM and candidates with required security clearances.