Career and Technical Education (CTE) is a commonly-cited teacher shortage area, yet little is known about variation in and potential solutions to CTE staffing challenges. We therefore surveyed and interviewed district CTE directors in Massachusetts and Washington to better understand the CTE staffing challenges that districts are facing, their preferences in hiring CTE teachers when constrained by these staffing challenges, and additional strategies they are employing to address these challenges. Surveyed directors report wide variation in staffing challenges across CTE clusters, and their responses to a discrete choice experiment suggest that they prioritize hiring CTE teachers with relevant industry experience over candidates with full certification. But follow-up interviews suggested that meeting the salary requirements of candidates with these relevant industry experiences was the biggest hurdle to addressing CTE staffing challenges, particularly since the CTE clusters where districts want to expand tend to be the very clusters where it is most difficult to recruit people away from industry.