Scaling toward a launch date? The hiring plan should be ahead of it.
Sherwood Recruiting comes inside your company, builds or fixes the recruiting function, makes the hires against your calendar, and hands it back working. Not an agency. No placement fees. One senior operator who has done it for a vehicle launch.
Larry Sherwood Jr., founder. The person on the first call is the person doing the work.Booking engagements that start in November 2026
Built for teams whose plan is ahead of their recruiting
The launch that cannot slip
A vehicle, an aircraft, a plant, a program. The date is fixed and the roles are not filled. The hiring plan needs to be built backward from the date, this month.
The search that has stalled
One role, open five months, two agencies deep, a hiring manager who has stopped reading resumes. The problem is usually definition, not supply.
The company with no recruiter yet
A startup of thirty to two hundred people, a founder doing the sourcing, an ATS at its defaults. The next hire should be a function, not a headcount.
Three ways to work together
The launch team build
Twenty to fifty hires against a launch calendar. The engagement starts with the date, not the requisition list. Three to six months, embedded remotely three to five days a week.
The stalled-search reset
One role that has been open too long. Two weeks: profile rewritten with the hiring manager, direct sourcing pass, shortlist of five, close plan. Fixed scope, fixed length. Take the two-minute diagnostic.
The first hire in talent
Stand up the ATS, the loops, the scorecards and the employer story, make the first ten to twenty hires, then hire the person who runs it. A function, not a headcount.
The launch hiring plan sprint
One week, fixed scope. The launch date turned into a full workforce plan with leadership: every role, when each search has to open, what is already late and the recruiting capacity it takes. A good first step before a launch team build, or a plan your team can run on its own.
Start with the free tools
Free toolLaunch Hiring Planner
Enter the launch date and the roles. See when each search has to open, which are already late and how many run at the peak.
Build the plan
Free toolStalled-Search Diagnostic
Ten yes or no questions that show why a role is not closing, with a verdict and the next step. Two minutes.
Take the diagnostic
Live dataMobility Hiring Pulse
Live counts of open roles across mobility, by vertical, function and company. See where the competition for your roles is heaviest.
See the live numbersEvery engagement is scoped to the plan and priced to the scope, never per hire. Book a call with the number of hires and the date; the scope comes back within a day.
Book a 30-minute callFrom the first call to the handover
- 01A 30-minute call. Bring the number of hires and the date.
- 02A one-page scope within a day. Roles, timeline, days per week and price. Fixed, not hourly. See a sample.
- 03Embedded from the first Monday. Remote, inside your ATS, your Slack, your hiring managers and your calendar, on site for introductions and milestones.
- 04A weekly plan review, then a handover. Leadership sees the plan every week, and the function is handed back working, with the documentation to run it.
The AFEELA U.S. launch at Sony Honda Mobility, 2025 to 2026
27 days to hire · 14 days to source · 19 hiring managers · U.S. headcount more than doubled
First dedicated recruiter in the door. Hiring had run through an HR manager and outside agencies for every role. From day one, every open search came in house and no agency was used again. Forty-eight of forty-nine offers were accepted because every candidate heard the whole picture in the first conversation. Five of the hiring managers had already hired with Larry at Fisker, and chose to do it again.
Every function, not only engineering: the 48 hires by team
The case studies
1,238 hires in 65 months across the last three recruiting functions, about 19 a month: 782 at Gurley Leep, 408 at Fisker and 48 at Sony Honda Mobility. That does not count the years of dealership recruiting before them.
Sony Honda Mobility · 2025 to 2026The AFEELA U.S. launch48 hires in 12 months, 48 of 49 offers accepted and about $1.5M in agency fees avoided, as the first dedicated recruiter.Read the case study
Fisker · 2022 to 2024408 hires on three continentsAbout 17 a month in the U.S., Canada, China and Europe, through growth from under 300 to more than 1,700 employees.Read the case study
Gurley Leep Automotive · 2019 to 2021782 hires in 29 monthsAbout $268 in recruiting advertising spend per hire, building the group's corporate recruiting function from scratch.Read the case studyHis own firm, founded 2012. Before building in-house functions, Larry founded and ran a national automotive recruiting firm; Sherwood Recruiting is the second firm he has built. The full history is at larrysherwoodjr.com. How the offers closed: the offer acceptance playbook.
Ten leaders wrote letters. They agree.
Ten leaders at Sony Honda Mobility of America wrote formal reference letters, each one independently. Every one of them said the same two things: the hires were right, and location never limited the results.
“If I were advising an organization on selecting a recruiting partner for critical roles, Larry would be someone I would recommend without hesitation.”
“What impressed me most was Larry's ability to quickly understand exactly what kind of engineers we needed in a very competitive autonomous and ADAS talent market, and then deliver strong candidates with remarkable speed and accuracy.”
“Although Larry worked primarily remotely, his impact was no different from someone embedded onsite every day.”
“He brought credibility, enthusiasm, and momentum to the recruiting process. In competitive hiring environments, that ability to keep strong candidates interested and moving forward is incredibly valuable.”
Three more from the letters
“This was the most effective recruiter partnership I have experienced.”
“I have worked with Larry across two separate organizations, Fisker and Sony Honda Mobility of America, where he built out my team on both occasions.”
“In practice, it was indistinguishable from having him onsite.”
85+ recommendations. Different companies, same story.
Hiring managers and the people they hired, across Fisker, Sony Honda Mobility, dealership groups and dozens of other companies, wrote these on their own.
“Truly the best recruiter that I have worked with in my 20+ years in the automotive industry.”
“His responsiveness and professionalism made a significant difference in keeping the process moving efficiently, even under tight timelines.”
“He has a natural ability to make the process feel seamless and human, not transactional, and you can tell he genuinely cares about finding the right fit for both sides.”
What they mention most
- Process & systems
- Expertise
- Candidate experience
- Communication
- Culture & warmth
- Speed
- Partnership
- Advocacy
One senior operator, by design
Sherwood Recruiting is Larry Sherwood Jr. Not a team of sourcers under a name: the person on the call is the person doing the work.
More than two decades in automotive and mobility. The first decade was on the business side, as a top-performing sales, business development, marketing and finance leader at the manager and director level, where training people, recruiting them and implementing the CRM behind the team drove the results. It is why the recruiting runs like a sales operation: a pipeline, a cadence and a system the team actually uses.
Then recruiting: a national automotive recruiting firm he founded in 2012, the corporate recruiting function at Gurley Leep Automotive, Fisker through its growth, and the AFEELA U.S. launch at Sony Honda Mobility. SHRM-CP, verified on Credly.
The mark is the Sherwood family arms, a chevron between three stars, carried since before the name was a firm.
How the work is done, written down
Longer pieces from larrysherwoodjr.com on the problems these engagements solve.
- Workforce planning for hardware launch programsBuilding the hiring plan backward from a launch date.
- The sourcing playbook for mobility teamsDirect channels that replace the agency bill.
- The interview loop for hardware-software teamsA loop that measures the same thing at every step.
- Hiring OEM talent into a startupWhat works when people leave stable automaker careers.
- Competing for engineers against big tech payHow smaller companies still close the offer.
- Agency elimination economicsOne recruiter against the agency invoice, in numbers.
Before the first call
How is an engagement priced?
Every engagement is scoped to the plan and priced to the scope, never per hire, with no placement fees. The scope comes back within a day of the first call, with the price on it. Here is a sample scope.
Is Sherwood Recruiting an agency?
No. Agencies send candidates and bill per placement. Sherwood Recruiting works inside the company: your ATS, your hiring managers, your process, your candidates. The pipeline and everything learned stay with you. The math behind dropping agencies.
Is this RPO, a fractional head of talent or a contract recruiter?
It sits between the three. Like RPO, the recruiting runs inside your company and your ATS, but it is one senior operator, not a vendor team, and it is priced to the plan, never per hire. Like a fractional head of talent, it builds the function: process, scorecards, reporting. Like a contract recruiter, the searches get worked every day. For startups and growth-stage companies from about thirty to a few hundred people, it covers what those three would, without the placement fees.
Remote or on site?
Remote. Time on site is kept for the moments that need it, such as meeting the team at the start and key milestones. The AFEELA launch ran this way, and ten company leaders wrote that location never limited the results.
Who actually does the work?
Larry Sherwood does. The person on the first call is the person running the searches. If a plan needs more capacity than one person can carry, the scope says so up front.
Who owns the candidates and the data?
Your company. Every candidate, note and pipeline lives in your ATS from the first day, so nothing leaves at the handover.
What kinds of roles?
Engineering, validation and quality, operations and service, supply chain, sales and customer engagement, marketing, finance, IT, legal and leadership, for mobility companies in EV, autonomy, aerospace, robotics, energy and adjacent fields.
How fast can an engagement start?
Usually the first Monday after the scope is signed.
What happens at the end?
A handover: the searches in flight, the process, the reporting and a written guide to running it. For a first hire in talent, that includes hiring the person who will run recruiting next.
Bring the number and the date
Thirty minutes. The scope comes back within a day. If the fit is not there, you leave with a straight answer and a plan you can run yourself.
Book a 30-minute callPrefer to write first?
Send the number of hires and the date. Larry replies within one business day.