How to Apply to Reliance Steel and Aluminum

12 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 370 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • Reliance Inc. is the largest metals service center company in North America, with ~$14B revenue, ~14,000 employees, ~310 locations across six countries, and an S&P 500 listing under NYSE: RS. The parent renamed from Reliance Steel & Aluminum to Reliance Inc. in 2024 and relocated headquarters to Scottsdale, Arizona.
  • Most hiring happens at the subsidiary service center level — Chapel Steel, Yarde Metals, PDM Steel, Metalweb, Valex, American Steel & Aluminum, and ~40 other family brands — not at the Scottsdale corporate office. Identify the subsidiary before applying.
  • The career site runs on Jibe (IBM's talent acquisition platform) at careers.reliance.com. Apply directly, complete all screening questions, upload an ATS-clean resume, and use exact metals-industry keywords from the job description.
  • Interview structure is typically two to three rounds: recruiter screen, hiring supervisor or operations manager, then general manager or regional VP. Corporate roles in Scottsdale may add a panel round and tend toward the more numerate, finance-led culture that Karla Lewis came up through.
  • Reliance is an industrial distribution employer. The pace, culture, and compensation reflect a durable, federated, acquisition-heavy metals business — not a tech company. Candidates who understand and respect that business model get further than candidates who do not.
  • For warehouse and production roles, certifications and shift availability near the top of the resume matter; for sales, book-of-business specifics and margin metrics matter; for corporate, metals-industry accounting and integration experience matter.
  • Reliance has completed roughly 80 bolt-on acquisitions over the past decade. Any experience integrating an acquired company, converting an ERP, or standardizing shared services is directly relevant and should be highlighted.

About Reliance Steel and Aluminum

Reliance Inc. — known as Reliance Steel & Aluminum until its 2024 corporate rename — is the largest metals service center company in North America and one of the biggest in the world. Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona after relocating from Los Angeles, the company operates roughly 310 service center locations across the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium. It employs approximately 14,000 people and generates around $14 billion in annual revenue, and it trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker RS as a member of the S&P 500. Karla Lewis became CEO in 2024, making history as the first woman to lead an S&P 500 metals producer, after more than three decades at the company in finance and executive roles. What Reliance actually does is less glamorous than the headline numbers suggest, and job seekers should understand the business before they apply. Reliance is a metals distributor, processor, and service center — it buys carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, alloy, specialty steel, titanium, copper, and brass from mills, cuts and processes those materials to customer specifications, and sells them to manufacturers, fabricators, construction firms, and infrastructure projects. A typical order is small, quick-turn, and customized: a customer needs 14 aluminum plates cut to a specific size by Thursday, and a Reliance service center turns that around. The company runs more than 40 subsidiary brands — Chapel Steel, PDM Steel, Metalweb, Yarde Metals, Siskin Steel, Tubular Steel, Valex, American Steel, Metals USA, Admiral Metals, and many more — because Reliance has grown primarily through acquisition. It has closed roughly 80 bolt-on acquisitions over the past decade, and on any given week, a portion of its workforce is either joining, integrating, or being rebranded under a new Reliance family company. That decentralized, federated structure matters to anyone applying here. Reliance is not a single corporate monolith — it is a holding company that lets its subsidiary brands keep their names, customer relationships, and local management in place. Day-to-day work happens at the service center level, with the Scottsdale corporate office handling finance, M&A, IT, legal, treasury, investor relations, and shared services. If you apply to Chapel Steel in Spring City, Pennsylvania or Metalweb in Birmingham, UK, you will be interviewed by that subsidiary's management, work under that subsidiary's brand, and report up through that subsidiary's general manager — with Reliance Inc. showing up on your pay stub and benefits portal. Honest framing: the culture is industrial distribution, not tech. The pace is driven by loading docks, crane schedules, shipment windows, and customer callbacks. Compensation is competitive for the metals distribution industry, the business is durable and famously profitable through downturns, and Reliance has one of the strongest long-term shareholder return records in the S&P 500. But it is not a fast-moving startup, and warehouse, inside sales, and operations roles involve the realities of a working service center — forklifts, noise, heat, steel, and early start times.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Start at reliance

    Start at reliance.com/en/careers, which redirects to careers.reliance.com — the unified career site running on Jibe's career experience platform. From there you can search by keyword, location, service center subsidiary, and job category across every Reliance family company in every country.

  2. 2
    Identify which Reliance subsidiary runs the service center or office closest to

    Identify which Reliance subsidiary runs the service center or office closest to you before applying. Postings list the operating company (for example, Chapel Steel, PDM Steel, Yarde Metals, American Steel & Aluminum, Valex, or Metalweb) alongside the Reliance Inc. parent. Apply directly to that listing rather than searching by Reliance at a large job board — local managers see the careers.reliance.com applications first.

  3. 3
    Create a candidate profile on careers

    Create a candidate profile on careers.reliance.com. The Jibe system will ask you to upload a resume, answer screening questions about authorization to work, prior experience with forklifts or cranes for warehouse roles, specific software for corporate roles, and relocation preferences. Answer honestly — inconsistencies between your resume and screening answers are the fastest way to get filtered out.

  4. 4
    Expect a recruiter screen within one to three weeks for open requisitions at act

    Expect a recruiter screen within one to three weeks for open requisitions at active service centers. Warehouse and material handler roles often move faster (sometimes a few days) because service centers frequently have standing openings. Corporate roles in Scottsdale, senior engineering roles, and finance positions can take longer because they involve more interview rounds and cross-location coordination.

  5. 5
    Bring proof of certifications to in-person interviews where relevant: forklift c

    Bring proof of certifications to in-person interviews where relevant: forklift certification, OSHA 10 or 30, commercial driver's license, crane operator certification, welding credentials, and any metallurgy or quality system certifications (ISO 9001, AS9100, NADCAP). Service center GMs appreciate candidates who show up prepared and documented.

  6. 6
    Complete pre-employment steps promptly

    Complete pre-employment steps promptly. For production and warehouse roles these typically include a background check, drug screen, and physical. For corporate and engineering roles, expect background, education, and employment verification. International roles in the UK, France, and Belgium follow local employment law and may include right-to-work verification specific to that country.

  7. 7
    Follow up through the Jibe candidate portal rather than cold-emailing executives

    Follow up through the Jibe candidate portal rather than cold-emailing executives. The system tracks your application status and lets you message the recruiter assigned to the requisition. Silence for two or three weeks after an interview is not unusual at subsidiary service centers — the local GM and regional sales manager often need to align before an offer is extended.

Resume Tips for Reliance Steel and Aluminum

recommended

Lead with the Reliance business model in mind

Lead with the Reliance business model in mind. For a service center role, a hiring manager is scanning for metals experience, process experience (saw cutting, plasma cutting, laser cutting, shearing, burning, blanking, slitting, leveling), and distribution experience. If you have worked at a competitor — Ryerson, Metals USA (now Reliance), Olympic Steel, Russel Metals, Klöckner, Kloeckner Metals, thyssenkrupp Materials Services, Samuel Son — put that company name early and prominently.

recommended

Quantify your distribution and operations impact

Quantify your distribution and operations impact. Reliance evaluates inside sales reps on gross margin and revenue, outside sales on territory growth, operations managers on on-time shipment percentage and safety metrics, and material handlers on units processed per shift and incident-free days. Put the numbers in. 'Managed book of 120 accounts generating $14M annual revenue at 28% gross margin' reads very differently than 'Handled sales duties.'

recommended

Mirror Reliance's metal-family vocabulary exactly

Mirror Reliance's metal-family vocabulary exactly. Carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminum, alloy, specialty steel, titanium, copper, and brass are the product categories. Plate, sheet, coil, bar, tube, pipe, structural, and extrusion are the forms. If you have worked with a specific alloy series (6061, 7075, 304, 316, 4140, A36), list it — recruiters using Jibe keyword search will match on those identifiers.

recommended

Show that you have worked in a union or non-union environment truthfully, depend

Show that you have worked in a union or non-union environment truthfully, depending on the specific service center. Some Reliance subsidiaries have Teamsters, USW, or other labor agreements; others are non-union. If you have experience managing or working under a collective bargaining agreement, flag it — it is a hiring plus for leadership roles at unionized locations.

recommended

For corporate Scottsdale or subsidiary finance roles, emphasize acquisitions int

For corporate Scottsdale or subsidiary finance roles, emphasize acquisitions integration, multi-entity consolidation, ERP (SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, Infor), Sarbanes-Oxley controls, and metals-industry inventory accounting (LIFO reserves, lower-of-cost-or-market, standard costing). Reliance integrates multiple acquired companies every year — finance teams live in that work.

recommended

For IT, systems, and engineering roles, name the platforms and ERPs you have tou

For IT, systems, and engineering roles, name the platforms and ERPs you have touched. SAP S/4HANA, Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, Invera (a metals-specific ERP used across the industry), Metalware, Enmark, and Metal Exchange systems are all common at metals service centers. Mentioning any of them signals you understand metals distribution technology.

recommended

Keep the resume formatting ATS-clean

Keep the resume formatting ATS-clean. Jibe parses standard Word and PDF files well, but choking points include multi-column layouts, text embedded in images, skills expressed only as rating bars, and unusual fonts. Use a single column, traditional reverse-chronological structure, standard section headings (Experience, Education, Skills, Certifications), and a parseable date format such as 'Jan 2022 – Present.'

recommended

For warehouse, material handler, and production roles, put certifications, equip

For warehouse, material handler, and production roles, put certifications, equipment operated, and shift availability near the top of the resume. A hiring GM scanning thirty resumes in an afternoon wants to see 'Forklift certified, 12 years overhead crane, OSHA 10, willing to work second shift' in the first third of the page, not buried under a generic objective.

ATS System: Jibe (IBM Talent Acquisition)

Reliance Inc. uses Jibe, IBM's career site and applicant tracking platform, across careers.reliance.com for all North American and European postings. The site is built as an Angular single-page application (ng-app="jibeapply") with server-rendered job listing pages indexed under careers.reliance.com/jobs. Jibe integrates recruiter workflow, candidate relationship management, and structured screening questions, and it supports multiple operating companies under one parent careers domain — which is how Reliance aggregates Chapel Steel, Yarde Metals, PDM Steel, Metalweb, and the rest of its subsidiary brands into a single candidate experience. Analytics and tracking hooks in the page indicate Reliance actively measures where applicants come from and how far they get in the funnel, so recruiters have visibility into drop-off and response times.

  • Apply directly on careers.reliance.com rather than through a third-party aggregator when you can. Jibe tags direct applicants versus redirected applicants, and direct applications sit in the primary candidate pool that recruiters review first.
  • Answer every Jibe screening question, even the optional ones. The system uses answers to rank candidates for the recruiter queue, and leaving optional questions blank (authorization to work, relocation, shift preference, certifications) lowers your relative score.
  • Upload a resume file — do not rely only on LinkedIn profile import. Jibe parses uploaded files into its structured schema, and a cleanly formatted .docx or text-based PDF gives the parser the best chance to extract work history, titles, and dates accurately.
  • Use exact keywords from the job description for metals, equipment, and certifications. Jibe's internal search weighs keyword matches when recruiters filter the candidate list. 'Forklift,' 'overhead crane,' 'saw cutting,' '6061 aluminum,' and 'inside sales metals' are the kinds of literal phrases that surface candidates.
  • Keep the candidate profile updated between applications. If you apply to three Reliance subsidiaries, the profile follows you — outdated contact information or an old resume will attach to all of them.
  • Set up job alerts in the Jibe portal for the specific subsidiary, location, and category you want. Service center openings come and go quickly, and a same-day alert that lands in your inbox can get your application in before the requisition is saturated.

Interview Culture

Reliance interviews are traditional, regional, and shaped by which subsidiary is hiring.

Expect two to three rounds for most roles and three to four rounds for leadership or corporate positions. Honest framing: this is an industrial distribution company, not a consulting firm or a software shop. Interviews are grounded, practical, and focused on whether you can do the job on day one. A typical service center sales or operations interview opens with a recruiter phone screen covering your background, salary expectations, and basic fit. The second round is almost always with the hiring supervisor — a branch sales manager, operations manager, or shift lead — who will dig into how you handle specific situations: an angry customer who got shorted on an order, a crane that went down on second shift, a bill of lading that does not match what shipped, a credit hold on a major account, a forklift near-miss. Behavioral questions follow the STAR format (situation, task, action, result), but the scenarios are concrete metals-distribution scenarios, not abstract leadership riddles. The third round is often with the general manager or regional VP, who is evaluating judgment, work ethic, and whether you will fit the local service center culture. For outside sales roles, expect a conversation about your existing book of business, your territory, and how you currently prospect — if you have relationships with mills, fabricators, OEMs, or distributors in the region, say so clearly. For corporate Scottsdale roles in finance, IT, HR, legal, or M&A integration, interviews are more structured and may include panel rounds, case discussions, and exposure to multiple vice presidents. The corporate team has a reputation for being direct, numerate, and unimpressed by slick self-promotion. Karla Lewis came up through the finance ranks, and that cultural DNA shows — candidates who can speak fluently about gross margin, inventory turns, working capital, and return on invested capital do well. Across every round, interviewers at Reliance value candidates who are humble about what they do not know, specific about what they have actually done, and willing to work in an environment where integrating a newly acquired company or opening a new service center line is a normal quarterly occurrence. Dress business casual for service center interviews; business formal for corporate Scottsdale interviews. Bring printed copies of your resume to in-person interviews — service center GMs frequently still prefer paper during the conversation. Expect to be walked through the plant or warehouse during the on-site visit, with safety glasses and sometimes steel-toed boots required. Decisions come faster at the service center level (sometimes within a week) and slower at the corporate level (two to four weeks is common).

What Reliance Steel and Aluminum Looks For

  • Direct metals distribution experience — time at Reliance competitors or suppliers (Ryerson, Olympic Steel, Russel Metals, Klöckner, Samuel Son, O'Neal Industries, Steel Technologies), at a mill (Nucor, Steel Dynamics, Cleveland-Cliffs, ArcelorMittal), or at a fabricator or OEM that buys from service centers.
  • Quantitative comfort and commercial judgment. Reliance measures almost everything — gross margin per order, inventory turns, freight cost per pound, on-time shipment, safety incident rate, days sales outstanding. Candidates who can talk about their own work in those terms stand out.
  • Operational reliability over flash. A supervisor who has run a safe shift for five years, a credit manager who has not written off a bad account in three years, an inside sales rep who hits their number every quarter — these are the profiles that get promoted at Reliance.
  • Adaptability to acquisitions and integrations. Reliance has closed roughly 80 acquisitions over the last decade. If you have lived through an ERP conversion, a rebrand, a shared services migration, or a post-merger integration, that experience is directly valuable.
  • Safety orientation for any plant, warehouse, or operations role. Reliance is a heavy-industry employer with cranes, forklifts, saws, and processing equipment, and leadership takes recordable incident rates and near-miss reporting seriously. Candidates who lead with safety culture — not as a cliché, but with specific examples — earn trust.
  • Longevity signals on the resume. The metals distribution industry rewards tenure. Two-year stints stacked back to back can raise questions at some subsidiaries; five to ten years at a previous service center, mill, or related company is generally viewed as a positive signal.
  • For corporate Scottsdale roles: experience with multi-entity consolidation, metals-specific accounting (LIFO, inventory reserves), SOX controls, ERP implementations, treasury and capital allocation, or M&A diligence and integration — roles that map directly to running a holding company that absorbs several new entities per year.
  • For engineering roles: metallurgy, materials science, mechanical engineering, quality systems (ISO, AS9100, NADCAP), lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, and experience with metals processing equipment such as plasma and laser cutting systems, shears, plate saws, slitters, and cut-to-length lines.
  • Humility and respect for the people who actually move the metal. Reliance's culture — at the subsidiary level and at corporate — tends to value candidates who treat crane operators, loaders, and warehouse teams with the same respect as VPs. Candidates who come across as above the work of a working service center do not advance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Reliance Inc. the same company as Reliance Steel & Aluminum?
Yes. Reliance Inc. is the new legal name that Reliance Steel & Aluminum Co. adopted in 2024 to reflect the breadth of its business beyond steel and aluminum — the company also distributes stainless, alloy, titanium, copper, brass, and specialty metals. The NYSE ticker remained RS, the S&P 500 listing continued uninterrupted, and the ~310 service center locations kept operating under their existing subsidiary brands. The rename coincided with a broader refresh that included the CEO transition to Karla Lewis and the corporate headquarters relocation to Scottsdale, Arizona from Los Angeles.
What ATS does Reliance use, and is my application tracked?
Reliance uses Jibe, IBM's career experience and applicant tracking platform, at careers.reliance.com. Every application is tracked by requisition, subsidiary, source (direct versus referred versus aggregator), and funnel stage. You can log into your Jibe candidate portal to see application status, message the assigned recruiter, and update your profile. Applying directly on careers.reliance.com generally gets you into the primary candidate pool faster than applying through a third-party job board that redirects to Reliance.
Do I apply to Reliance Inc. or to the individual subsidiary brand?
You apply through the unified careers.reliance.com site, but the posting will identify which subsidiary or service center you are joining. The interview, the offer letter, and your day-to-day management will be at the subsidiary level (for example, Chapel Steel, Yarde Metals, or Metalweb), while payroll, benefits, and corporate governance run through Reliance Inc. The Jibe career site lets you filter by brand and location, so you can see which family company is hiring where before you commit.
Does Reliance hire for remote roles?
A limited number of corporate functions — primarily outside sales, some IT, some M&A and finance roles, and occasional project-based work — are hybrid or remote. The vast majority of Reliance's ~14,000 employees work on-site at a service center or at the Scottsdale corporate office because the business is physical: metal needs to be cut, staged, loaded, and shipped from warehouses. If remote is important to you, search the Jibe career site filters and the specific job description carefully — every posting states whether it is on-site, hybrid, or remote.
What is the interview process typically like for a service center role?
Expect a recruiter phone screen, an interview with the hiring supervisor or operations manager, and an interview with the general manager or regional leader. Behavioral questions using the STAR format are standard, anchored in concrete service-center scenarios (customer escalation, safety near-miss, order discrepancy, shift coverage). Site visits almost always include a plant or warehouse walk-through — wear closed-toe shoes and be ready to put on safety glasses. Decisions at the service center level often come within a week after the final round; corporate Scottsdale decisions take two to four weeks.
What should I highlight on my resume for an inside sales role at a Reliance service center?
Lead with quantifiable commercial metrics: book-of-business size, annual revenue or tons sold, gross margin percentage, account count, and specific metal categories you sold (carbon plate, aluminum extrusion, stainless sheet, alloy bar, and so on). If you have worked at a competitor, a mill, or a fabricator that bought from service centers, name the company — recruiters scanning resumes on Jibe will recognize and flag those names immediately. Also mention any ERP or quoting systems you have used (Invera, SAP, Metalware, Enmark), and whether you are comfortable doing your own quoting, sourcing from multiple mills, and managing credit holds and delivery exceptions.
What is the culture like at corporate headquarters in Scottsdale?
Corporate Scottsdale has a finance-led, numerate, understated culture — reflecting CEO Karla Lewis's thirty-plus years in Reliance finance and treasury. Expect direct communication, high expectations around data and analysis, and steady integration work as newly acquired subsidiaries are absorbed into shared services, reporting, and financial consolidation. It is not a flashy office culture; it is a working holding company headquarters. Candidates who are rigorous, low-ego, and comfortable with metals-industry specifics (LIFO inventory, multi-entity consolidations, long-cycle capital allocation) do well. Scottsdale also offers the practical upside of a favorable tax environment and a growing business district, which contributed to the decision to move from Los Angeles.
Does Reliance acquire a lot of companies, and does that affect job security?
Yes to the first, and generally no to the second in a negative sense. Reliance has closed roughly 80 bolt-on acquisitions over the past decade, and the model is to keep acquired brands operating with their existing leadership, names, and customer relationships wherever possible. Acquisitions usually expand Reliance's footprint rather than consolidate it, and the company's stated approach is decentralized operating autonomy at the subsidiary level. That said, corporate finance, IT, HR, and treasury roles at Scottsdale regularly support integration work, and sometimes standardization does lead to back-office consolidation at acquired companies. Ask about integration history and autonomy during the interview — it is a fair and expected question.
How should I prepare for the physical parts of a warehouse or operations interview?
Bring copies of every relevant certification (forklift, overhead crane, OSHA 10 or 30, CDL if applicable, welding, rigging). Expect a walk-through of the plant or warehouse — wear closed-toe leather shoes, long pants, and a collared shirt, and be ready for safety glasses and sometimes a hard hat. Be prepared to talk through specific equipment you have operated: overhead cranes by capacity, forklifts by type and fuel (propane, electric, sit-down, stand-up), saws (cold saw, band saw, plate saw), plasma tables, shears, and slitters. Service center GMs respect candidates who describe their work with precision rather than in generalities.
Is Reliance a good long-term employer?
By the numbers, Reliance has one of the strongest long-term shareholder return records in the S&P 500, a durable and profitable business model, and a reputation for steady employment even through metals industry downturns. Tenure is high at many subsidiaries, benefits are competitive for the metals distribution industry, and promotion from within is a genuine pattern (Karla Lewis herself is a thirty-plus-year Reliance employee who rose to CEO). Honest framing: it is not a company that will make you rich quickly with stock options, and it is not a company that will put you on a rocket ship of title inflation. It is a company that rewards people who do the work, stay safe, grow a territory or a service center over many years, and integrate well with an acquisition-heavy, federated, industrial culture.

Open Positions

Reliance Steel and Aluminum currently has 370 open positions.

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Related Resources

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Sources

  1. Reliance Inc. Careers —
  2. Reliance Inc. Corporate Website — About Us —
  3. Reliance Inc. Corporate Website — Careers Landing —
  4. Reliance Inc. — NYSE: RS Investor Relations —
  5. Reliance Inc. Family of Companies —
  6. IBM Talent Acquisition — Jibe Career Experience Platform —