Common Sense

It’s such a weird time, isn’t it? We’re either out in public wearing masks, or we’re at home having conversations with colleagues and family through a screen. We inherently crave human interaction and because we’re living in a pandemic, we’re finding new ways to try and meet our basest human needs. 

The pandemic has presented all sorts of challenges and uniquities that none of us could have foreseen at the beginning of the year. Staffing firms who serve essential industries like home care, healthcare, grocery, retail and construction (to name a few) are seeing massive surges in demand for talent. Other industries may have fewer reqs, but a surge in demand for jobs that is overwhelming their already-stressed recruiters. 

Uncovering a Challenge

As a family of premier staffing and recruiting brands, Staffmark Group has long been at the forefront of industry trends. Before partnering with Sense, though, Staffmark had a familiar problem. Their recruiters were tasked with hiring and placing great candidates, but engagement beyond the hiring phase often fell to the wayside. Little structure was in place to enforce best practices and track follow-up with newly onboarded employees, and Staffmark hadn’t yet found an engagement automation tool that met their needs. 

The firm’s annual NPS survey showed that contractors were feeling abandoned after being placed, noting a lack of communication during and after assignments. Contractor satisfaction was dropping, and the Staffmark team knew it was time to do something about it.

There’s a lot about recruiting in a post-COVID 2020 that is different than it was a year ago. In fact, has recruiting ever changed so much, so quickly before? 

Revamping Communication and Engagement

From sourcing java developers to QA analysts and project managers, recruiters at DIVERSANT fill temporary and direct hire IT roles across a wide variety of industries. The firm ranks among the top 25 IT staffing firms in the country, a position they’ve held in large part thanks to their innovative culture and collaborative approach to staffing.

So it wasn’t a surprise that the firm had aspirations to stay ahead of the game when it comes to technology. When marketing pro Charlean Parks joined the team, she was tasked with revamping DIVERSANT’s contractor communication and engagement strategy, with a focus on cultivating satisfaction and increasing NPS.

There has been a potent shift in the recruiting dynamic in these past few months. While the push for candidate engagement remains (and is more important than ever), we are now largely in an employer-driven market. 

This changed (and continuously changing) market brings with it a newfound focus on business development. And there’s some good news - many of the things we’ve learned and discussed about automation over the past year or so will work just as well in sales!

Although maximizing resources has always been a priority for staffing firms, it has seemingly never been more important. With teams still spread between the office and remote locations (and in many cases, still fully remote), your ability to help drive productivity and reduce stress for your recruiters is paramount. 

In a time where every decision and every action has the potential to significantly impact your bottom line, it’s imperative that you gather important data and make decisions to improve based on that data. 

Implementation and adoption of the Sense
System of Engagement during a time of rapid change

Communication and engagement:
old school style

The Aequor Healthcare Services and TherapyStaff brands have been in
business for over 20 years, and they’ll proudly tell you, for most of those
20 years, they did business ‘old school style.’ The business was built on a
physical file system, an effective model that served the company for over
two decades even through massive, 3x growth in the last few years. It was
a reliable strategy until the team realized how much further ahead other
staffing firms were with technology and knew they needed to catch up.

After realizing how much opportunity was ahead of them, the team made it
their mission to fill at least three critical gaps with technology in the first
quarter of 2020 alone. Having implemented Bullhorn the year prior, it
came time to select key solutions that made their teams work smarter,
deliver better experiences, and accelerate hiring. When it came to their
current approach to talent outreach, Aequor Healthcare Services knew
then that they needed to get serious about prioritizing communication and
engagement technology.

“We had a lot of problems. We did a lot of mass communication, emails,
and things like that in the past and we just couldn't get results. We would
be flagged a lot,” says Klabo. “We weren't working with companies or
technology to monitor our delivery or success.” On top of delivery issues,
the messages that did make it to candidates weren’t personalized or
compelling, and recruiters didn’t have an easy way to get in touch at scale
aside from individual emails or single text messages.