Common Sense

You’ve probably interacted with a chatbot at some point or another. And maybe you’ve interacted with a conversational assistant. The terms “chatbot” and “conversational assistant” are often used interchangeably (honestly, even here on the Sense blog), but in all truth they’re actually quite different.

As the parent company to three unique staffing brands, Advanced Group fills a wide range of roles from finance to healthcare to creative services. With smart tech at the forefront of their engagement strategy, the firm has been using texting as an important component of their communication plan for years. 

Earlier this month, our friends at Avionte held their annual CONNECT conference, and like all events these days, it was entirely virtual. And truthfully, they nailed it. We were proud to be Platinum Sponsors of this event, and were excited to see what happened with their all online agenda.With a compelling agenda filled with everything from thought leadership presentations to user-centric help sessions, virtual ‘booths’ that attendees visited live to chat with partners, and fun virtual activities like scavenger hunts and video competitions, CONNECT really had it all. 

You’ve spent a lot of time and resources over the years to build up your candidate database. The only problem is, at any given time, most of your database sits dormant. Some may have applied and never interviewed, while others simply applied and never heard back, or even interviewed but didn’t get the job.

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.

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.