Groundworks

Catherine Petersen is the Vice President of Talent at Groundworks and a senior HR executive with over 20 years’ experience in high-growth talent acquisition, organizational development and people operations. She has supported workforces of up to 90,000 and driven multi-billion-dollar growth across retail, home services, manufacturing and consulting sectors.

At Groundworks, talent is our engine and when you are growing hyper fast, the pressure to fuel that engine accelerates exponentially. We have grown to over 6,500 employees, transforming from a scrappy startup into the nation’s leading foundation services company. With support from KKR, our pace has only quickened. “We are not just building a company, we are building ownership, careers, communities, and impact.”

And none of that is possible without scaling and building talent acquisition.

Hypergrowth is exhilarating, but it comes with risk. You need to double or triple your headcount without sacrificing culture, quality, or compliance. In home services a labordriven, customer-facing industry every hire directly affects the customer experience and brand reputation. Every interaction with every candidate must be treated as such.

At Groundworks, talent acquisition has become a strategic lever, not just a support function. That meant moving fast but deliberately and intentionally.

1. Linking Talent Strategy to Business Objectives

We started by aligning talent acquisition directly with our operational roadmap. Instead of recruiting reactively, we built a headcount forecast tied to branch expansion, service demand, and seasonal trends. This turned workforce planning into a meaningful partnership between HR, Finance, and Operations. Talent Acquisition was no longer a downstream function we brought our own seat to the decision-making table.

2. Building a Scalable Infrastructure

We quickly learned that what works at 1,000 employees doesn’t scale to 10,000. To support hypergrowth, we invested in the right tools and processes:

• A scalable ATS with built-in analytics. Our internal team leveraged Workday to transform manual metrics to a broader dashboard.

• Standardized requisition and intake processes

• A dashboard-driven approach to KPIs: time to fill, source of hire, funnel conversion

• An engaged Talent Acquisition team. Recruiting is hard, and turnover in the recruiter seat is currently an average of eighteen months, according to LinkedIn. For close to three years, we have maintained an average tenure of two years and achieved the second-highest engagement score. We built a team of highly motivated, professional talent acquisition specialists who all believed in the mission. They believe in the business results and can connect the dots between the top and bottom line. We talk about business metrics first and recruiting KPIs second. This drives the team to understand the why behind the efforts.

“We are not just building a company, we are building ownership, careers, communities, and impact”

3. Structuring for Specialization

Our TA team evolved into a high-performing unit with clear roles: talent acquisition specialists and coordinators. We specialized the teams in the core categories of the business. This allowed us to hire at a rapid pace. We implemented recruiter-to-requisition ratios based on volume and complexity and embedded TA leaders in key areas to stay close to hiring managers and the field. This specialization helped us maintain quality while handling massive volume resulting in thousands of hires per year. Additionally, we reduced overall cost per hire while increasing hire rates.

4. Branding Matters More Than Ever

In home services, competition for skilled talent is fierce. To stand out, we refreshed our employer value proposition and made it visible from job postings to social media. We leaned into our mission: helping people protect their homes and build their careers. We also turned our workforce into our greatest advocates. Referrals became a powerful channel, and we launched internal referral campaigns to tell the story of growth from the inside out. Referrals are our second-highest source of applications.

The TA team became embedded in branding efforts to ensure that our message was consistent. Marketing builds the brand to customers; we build the brand to candidates. The messaging is the same. We launched an effort to increase awareness across social media, including LinkedIn posts as a KPI for the team.

5. Candidate Experience at Scale

Speed cannot come at the cost of connection. We simplified and standardized our interview process, implemented scheduling automation, and trained hiring managers on real-time feedback. The result: faster hiring, higher acceptance rates, and stronger culture alignment.

6. Data-Driven Optimization

Finally, we built a rhythm of retrospectives not just celebrating wins but learning from misses. We adopted a mantra: progress, not perfection. We track source effectiveness and conversion rates by talent acquisition specialists and report on these metrics weekly. We adopted a mindset of radical transparency. This includes the implementation of a hiring manager satisfaction survey. Every single talent acquisition specialist utilizes the survey in real time to improve their relationships and efforts. That data fuels our TA strategy just as much as market insights or P&L statements.

Looking Ahead

Hyper growth demands bold moves but they must be built on scalable, sustainable systems. At Groundwork’s, we have made talent acquisition a strategic advantage by investing early, thinking long-term, and never losing sight of the people behind the numbers. In the home services industry, every hire shapes a home, a neighborhood, a future. Scaling TA is not just about growing a company. It is about building something that lasts.