Your PLC posting got clicks and no good applicants
Let's start with the uncomfortable version: if a lot of people looked at your PLC posting and almost none of the right ones applied, the market is probably not the whole problem.
Controls people are scarce, yes. Everyone hiring in this trade in Canada knows that. But scarce people are also picky readers. An experienced PLC programmer who is currently employed — which is who you're usually trying to reach — will give your posting about twenty seconds before deciding whether it's worth an evening of updating a resume. Most postings waste those twenty seconds.
Problem one: you didn't name the platform
"PLC experience required" tells a candidate almost nothing, and they know it. Are you a Rockwell plant or a Siemens plant? Is it mostly Studio 5000, TIA Portal, or something older that needs care and feeding? Name it, name the HMI and drives if you can, and say whether you'll train a strong candidate from the other platform or whether you genuinely can't.
Candidates skip vague postings for a rational reason: they've been burned by them. They've applied, interviewed, and discovered on day two that the plant runs something completely different from what they expected. So now they wait for postings that are specific, and specific postings get a wildly better class of applicant — not because they paid more for reach, but because the right people recognised themselves in the ad.
Problem two: you hid the life that comes with the job
Shift or straight days? On-call, and how often? Travel, and how much in a busy month? One plant, or out to customer sites?
If those answers are in the posting, some people will self-select out. That's a good thing. The alternative — and it happens constantly — is hiring someone who finds out about the on-call rotation in week three and quits in month two, and then you're writing this posting again, except now you're also short a person during your busiest season.
The candidates you want are adults with lives, mortgages, and kids in hockey. They are not put off by honest shift or travel information. They're put off by surprises.
Problem three: no salary band, so the best people assumed the worst
You don't have to publish your entire pay structure. But a posting with no numbers at all asks an employed, in-demand candidate to gamble their time on your process — and most won't. A realistic band, matched to your province and the experience level you actually need, filters in people who can accept the job and filters out the painful late-stage collapse where everyone likes each other and the offer is nowhere near what the candidate needs to move.
If your band is lower than the big plants down the road, that's still worth stating and then selling what you've got: straight days, no travel, a plant five minutes from home, a crew that isn't miserable. Plenty of experienced people will trade some money for a life. They can't make that trade if you won't tell them the numbers.
The smaller stuff that still matters
Cut the filler. "Fast-paced environment" and "must be a self-starter" appear in almost every posting in the country and distinguish none of them. Replace each filler line with a fact: what the line makes, what a normal week looks like, who this person reports to, what the first three months are actually for.
Check your title while you're at it. If the role is hands-on programming and troubleshooting in one plant, a title that sounds like a senior office-based design job will pull the wrong pile of resumes and lose the right ones. Use the title the person you want would search for.
And make applying easy. If a good controls person has to create an account, retype their entire resume into boxes, and write a cover letter into a portal at 10 p.m., a share of them will close the tab and mean to come back. They will not come back.
None of this costs money
That's the good news buried in the blunt opening. Naming the platform, stating the shift and travel, posting a band, and cutting the filler take an afternoon, not a budget. Do those four things and the same posting, in the same place, in front of the same scarce market, will usually do noticeably better — because it finally tells the right person, quickly and honestly, that this job is for them.
When you're ready to post it, put the specific version up — and if you want, look at how the clearest postings on this board are written before you do. Steal their structure. Just not their filler.