Bullhorn’s Connected Recruiting strategy, designed to engage talent at every step of the talent lifecycle with a combination of best practices and powerful technology, can help you adapt your talent engagement strategy to the modern era. But what does Connected Recruiting look like in practice – and what can it help your firm achieve?

To find out, Bullhorn’s own Billy Davis and Susan Whalen sat down with Patty Comer, Co-founder and Principal Partner of Bullhorn customer Accrue Partners, at Engage Boston 2024. Comer walked us through how she and her team digitized their talent strategy, the most successful automation they’ve implemented, and how she measures—and celebrates—her team’s successes.

Read their Q&A below, then check out the Engage Boston Content Hub for more insights from recruitment experts.

This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Davis: Regarding your digitization strategy, what are you most proud of?

Comer: Over time, we became a Bullhorn-first belief system. But we weren’t in the beginning. It was the Wild West. We had a lot of information, but nobody could find anything. We had to be forced to advance our Connected Recruiting playbook, and the pandemic forced us to do so. We were already an Analytics customer, and we were in the early Automation phase, and it just exploded. We started to connect everything and become a Bullhorn-first organization. 

It is a funny little thing in the company, but you do have to be committed to the truth of the system. If I could go back and start from the beginning, I would have been married to the fields, and then I could have probably worked faster to where we are currently in the advanced stage.

Davis: I’m curious how you get your internal team and your business to adopt the technologies you’re bringing in. What are some of the best practices that you’ve seen?

Comer: We like to explore a lot of the vendors in the Bullhorn Marketplace, and then we decide who we’re going to use and where it fits into the sales or revenue side. Does it fit into delivery? Does it fit into the back office? Or does it fit into something else? For us, that “something else” is reputation management, branding, and marketing because we all know that how we’re represented on the internet matters. So those buckets were really important to us with all of our tech partners. 

Then, we choose to adopt or implement across the whole company or choose segments to try new things. We have six lines of business. Sometimes, if a division isn’t as busy, we’ll try something new there. Right now, for example, I’m willing to experiment in the technology division because they’re not slammed. I cannot go to my accounting team right now – because accounting is white hot – and implement something with them. So we try to decide where it’s best, tweak it, and manage adoption.

And we celebrate. So, if you have something going well, it’s no different than closing a deal or a placement. We celebrate doing good work in our Connected Recruiting playbook. So if someone gets an amazing Great Recruiters review, I’m standing up like, “Look at this!” We do try to celebrate the successes in the technology stack.

Whalen: When we last met, you were determined to measure ROI from automation. To initiate that process, you built an automation task force. How did you arrive at that decision?

Comer: It started because I was frustrated that I was the only one who knew what was going on. I had one person driving automation. I knew staffing, and he knew tech. He implemented all these things that automation could do, but I could never understand what we were winning.

I wanted to look at our tech stack, figure out what’s working, what we can measure, who’s bringing home real dollars, and let’s get out of one person owning automation. Let’s get somebody from delivery on the team. Let’s get someone from sales on the team. Let’s get someone from the back office on the team. Let’s get someone from marketing on the team. And then we all got together and started to get out of our Excel spreadsheet and get into something that works. 

We contacted Bullhorn and said, “Look, we’re struggling. We have a lot of your partners. We’ve got so much that looks fabulous, but we don’t know what’s working. I want real, measurable information.” So they came in, we put together a list of pain points, and we had a session and said, “What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong?” We started narrowing it down. One of my core values is to slow down to speed up. We needed to take a breather. Because the market at the time was slow, we asked ourselves, “Why not now?” And so we took a breather, looked at everything, and started measuring.

Whalen: Speaking of measuring, you implemented one automation that was targeted at re-engaging candidates who were highly qualified but passive. What were the results?

Comer: We have 997,874 candidates in our system, so we had to do some basic maintenance. We went through and found candidates that had no activity – they applied online, but they weren’t a fit, so no one called them. We did an automation that said, “Hey, we worked with you, but we haven’t heard from you in three years. We are interested in supporting your career. Would you like to work with us? If so, please update your email and phone number and send us a resume.” 

We ended up adding 2,000 new people to the system. We conducted 732 pre-screens, 218 of which were submitted, and 38 client interviews. We made 11 placements, or $250,000 in billings, all using a Bullhorn-first philosophy.

Now I have something I can measure. That has been a mindset shift for me. It really comes from how hard these last couple of years have been for all of us. You need to make sure that what you measure matters and that the clients are measuring us for performance. We should be measuring our systems to get the financial output we need to advance.

Boston and Greenwood Village, CO – July 16, 2024– Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, and Ingenovis Health, a leading healthcare talent provider, partnered to deliver the largest digital platform integration in healthcare staffing. Designed to transform the recruiter and candidate experience to create an ecosystem of opportunity, the ambitious effort integrated seven Ingenovis Health brand platforms onto a singular talent hub designed to position Ingenovis Health for future growth while solidifying Bullhorn’s leadership in healthcare applicant tracking and recruiting operations. 

“Ingenovis Health is committed to building a home for healthcare talent, and having an industry-leading candidate experience is integral to delivering our purpose,” stated Bart Valdez, Ingenovis Health CEO. “With more than 30 percent of healthcare professionals leaving the industry and hospitals continuing to endure historical talent shortages, contingent workforce solutions are critical to delivering quality healthcare. Our new singular talent hub provides candidates access to diverse opportunities across our family of brands and enables our teams to serve our clinicians and clients quickly and effectively.”  

“Healthcare workers are the backbone of patient care,” said Art Papas, CEO of Bullhorn. “Bullhorn and Ingenovis Health are equally committed to deploying healthcare workers quickly and efficiently and approached this project the very same way. The implementation was a success, and proof that a large-scale product integration can happen quickly and scale efficiently.”

In Bullhorn’s 2023 GRID Talent Survey, findings indicate that the talent shortage remains a significant challenge – 38% of providers opting out of the recruitment process because it took too long. This is particularly notable in healthcare – an industry comprised of “essential” workers, including full-time and contingent doctors, nurses, and technicians.

Bullhorn and Ingenovis Health, a partnership that has been thriving since 2021, successfully completed the large-scale project in less than 30 months. This integration of data from multiple disparate systems enables a unified candidate information approach which significantly increased Ingenovis recruiting efficiency and improved the candidate’s experience. 

Together, the Bullhorn/Ingenovis Health team delivered an industry-leading digital applicant tracking and middle office operations platform ahead of schedule and fully meeting project expectations in a fully collaborative and committed partnership. 

“Through this partnership we created one talent ecosystem, streamlined our candidate matching process and accelerated our rate of candidate placement,” added Rick Link, Ingenovis Health EVP of Product and Technology. “Bullhorn’s solution enhances our ability to gain efficiency, drive compliance and optimized workflows, allowing for expansion of our talent hub and facilitate speedy delivery of high-quality patient care.”

To learn more about Bullhorn, visit bullhorn.com, and to learn more about Ingenovis Health, visit ingenovishealth.com.

About Bullhorn

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on LinkedIn or X.

About Ingenovis Health

Ingenovis Health is an ingenious new force in healthcare, combining the power of industry-leading workforce solutions providers and a technology-forward approach to advance the delivery of critical healthcare clinicians to systems nationwide. Brands in the portfolio include Trustaff Travel Nurses, Fastaff Travel Nursing, HealthCare Support, U.S. Nursing Corporation, VISTA Staffing Solutions, Springboard Healthcare, VitalSolution and Corazon. For more information, visit ingenovishealth.com.

Contact:  Kim Warth

kim.warth@ingenovishealth.com

To learn how industry leaders are building tech stacks that support smarter decision-making, Laura Bumby, Senior Manager, Analytics and Automation, Bullhorn, sat down with the following leaders at Engage Boston:

• Bill Halnon, CIO, GHR
• Darrell Hunt, VP, North American Analytics, Manpower Group
• Genine Wilson, President, Travel Nurse and Allied, Ingenovis Health
• Lee Boelens, CIO, GDH

Read on for their tips on how to construct a tech stack that not only complements but enhances your data strategy, while also equipping your teams with the insights that will help drive smarter decisions.

Getting started: Creating a culture of data

Daunted by the prospect of shifting your company’s deeply rooted processes while adopting a modernized tech stack? You’re not alone. Our panel shared that they set themselves up for success by understanding the technology and the tech stack they’re building before jumping into the process. “But so much of that also involves creating a culture focused on data,” shared Bumby.

In order to drive adoption, start with a clear goal in mind and build value with data-driven insights. Leaning on data can help unlock any resistance you may experience. Leaders can drive momentum by putting information in front of stakeholders at the right time — shifting trust with real-time insights. Additionally, our panel suggested inviting collaboration and engaging your stakeholders in the organization to help look at potential different outcomes. The more employees value the data from the products you’ve invested in, the more they’ll use it. Pretty soon, you’ve become critical to that business strategy.

“What is it that you’re trying to solve for, really? What are those core priorities, and in what order do you need to tackle them in order to accomplish your goals?”

—Genine Wilson, Ingenovis Health

Prioritization is key: Essential components of a successful data strategy

One size fits all? Not in the recruitment industry. Start with a baseline of clean data, then incorporate your custom tools along with additional solutions for data delivery. With access to so many different tools and automations, start with a foundation that is clear on the timeline and communication plan. 

“Everything goes back to benefiting the individuals that are producing.”

—Lee Boelens, GDH

Once your organization has a solid foundation, that platform can support additional content from new vendors and new relationships. Keep in mind that sequencing is about the prioritization of your business strategy. If your organization is adjusting after a tough year, you may need to focus on sales opportunities by driving more prospecting. Or you may have had a delivery-heavy year, in which case you’ll focus on driving efficiencies out of your recruiter base—incorporating new technologies and data to drive the delivery side of the business. 

“If you’re dealing with a board, show them dashboards and get their buy-in. All of a sudden, the curtains are open and they go, ‘Wow, this is really great data and a great presentation that we can use to make decisions.’”

—Bill Halnon, GHR

Addressing the challenges: building good data quality takes time 

In an accelerated environment, be mindful of change fatigue. Your organization will have to understand the rationale behind all of the changes they are being asked to incorporate. Some players may feel that it’s a distraction from what they’re trying to accomplish, so communication in advance of change fatigue is a core element of success. 

Additionally, organizations don’t understand the difference between automation, AI, and analytics. Though these tools are often coupled for optimized results, it is important to know the differences. Invest the time into educating stakeholders about the nuances of each. 

“The real success comes from when you ensure that the data strategy and the foresight of how you’re going to leverage that content are married with whatever technology strategy is happening.”

—Darrell Hunt, Manpower Group

Finally, recruitment is always changing. In a shifting environment, don’t wait for the perfect solution. “Just get started,” said Halnon. “Don’t try to develop the ultimate solution because we don’t know what that’s going to look like in two years. Things are changing so fast. Create a strategy for today, not for five years from now, and be ready to adapt.”

Want more insights from Engage Boston? Check out the Engage Content Hub for keynote videos, key takeaways, recap blogs, and more.

But what does moving forward together look like in practice? From embarking on a digital transformation project, or exploring a new offering or workflow, there are countless ways to find new opportunities and avenues for growth.

To highlight real-world strategies that staffing firms are putting into practice, we sat down with Brian Salkowski, Chief Experience Officer at Impellam Group, Leticia McAlexander, Vice President, Global Enterprise Applications & Enterprise Data at Allegis Group, Kathryn Krueger, Chief Operating Officer at DeWinter Group, and Brandon Simmons, EVP – Technology & Operations, DeWinter Group during Engage Boston 2024.

Check out what they had to say about finding new ways forward, working across organizations, and building a competitive edge – or take a look at key takeaways from their sessions in our Engage Content Hub.

Following the numbers

When choosing where to focus your digital transformation efforts and grow your business, our panelists advocated following a data-driven approach. When Salkowski and his organization consider building out a new service line or expanding an offering, they evaluate market intelligence to see where there may be opportunities for their business. “If I look at the recruitment marketplace and where it was 20 years ago, relative to today or even 10 years ago, the amount of advancement and progress is night and day,” he said. “If we’re not proactively assessing the marketplace and our business, we very much risk being left behind.”

Looking internally can also help guide your path. For McAlexander and her team, following the data led to a realization about a crucial gap they needed to address: “What we began to see as we looked at the data was that we were missing a focus on talent experience,” she said. “We were missing the voice of the talent, and we were leaving a lot of money on the table as a result.”

When experimenting with a new offering, model, or workflow, evaluate your success with performance indicators. “We have conditions of satisfaction,” Salkowski said. “Do we see cycle time improving? Are we seeing improvement in our level of effort? Are we earning a return, and does that return meet our conversion expectations? That’s the starting point.”

“It really has been a journey about data,” McAlexander added.

Learning from your network

The best ideas might come from the most unexpected places. Our panelists work to foster relationships with stakeholders throughout the recruitment process to better understand where they need to grow. “I’m a big believer in voice of customer, voice of employees, voice of suppliers,” Salkowski said. “This is where we really learn. Is there a gap in the marketplace? By staying close to our customers and actively leaning in and listening, that’s typically where we get our best ideas.”

“We realized these old initiatives were leaving out the user experience, whether it was an internal user or an external user,” McAlexander said. “So we started to do this outside-in thinking, bringing to the table the personas that were never represented in conversations up until now, which was our talent and the client.”

When working with stakeholders, learning should be a two-way street. Krueger and Simmons felt like they were able to call Bullhorn and Marketplace partners with concerns, questions, and commendations at any time, and worked collaboratively across organizations to develop a roadmap that was realistic and helped them achieve their goals. “We utilized partners and relationships to help them understand what we were looking for as a business, and to get the visibility to data that we needed,” said Simmons.

Adopting new tech requires constant internal communication as well. DeWinter Group had an internal technology specialist to advocate for the needed changes to their tech stack, as well as leaders to guide their decision-making from a business perspective, allowing for all perspectives to be considered. “Throughout the process, we really learned a lot about how to bring teams along, how to communicate, and how to make people feel like they’re part of the decision,” Krueger said.

“Our best ideas don’t come from the corporate office,” Salkowski said. “They come from the field because those individuals are close to the customer. Those individuals are living the process and working with the technology on a day-to-day basis.”

Finding your differentiator

Though a tough macroeconomic climate presents its obvious challenges, it also comes with opportunities. Finding a competitive difference is one. “If you have the right product, the right team, and the right service, it provides an opportunity to lean in and capture market share, Salkowski said. “So expand clients and service lines when others are in retreat mode.”

McAlexander put it plainly: “What has served you in the past, and what has gotten you here, is not going to get you to growth in the next ten years.” For Allegis Group, that meant doubling down on creating an incredible talent experience with the help of the Bullhorn Talent Platform.

“Technology is going to be the differentiator for a lot of staffing firms,” said Krueger. After their transition to Bullhorn One and the integration of their front and back office, Krueger noticed an increase in efficiency, greater visibility, and a more sophisticated ability to report on various aspects of the business.

Regardless of your chosen solution, now is the time to look beyond what you’ve done in the past and find new ways forward. As Krueger said, “We all need to ask, ‘How are we going to use technology to differentiate and help our clients have a better experience, our candidates have a better experience, and our internal employees have a better experience?’”

Learn more about how your firm can partner with Bullhorn by moving Forward together.

Bullhorn is a Salesforce Summit Partner and the #1 ISV for recruitment

Since entering the Salesforce ecosystem in 2017, Bullhorn has invested significantly in building our Salesforce portfolio, including ATS, Onboarding, Shift Scheduling, Automation, Candidate Engagement, and Middle Office solutions. Over the past six years, we’ve grown from having a small group of customers on the Salesforce platform to becoming the #1 Salesforce ISV for recruitment, five times larger than our next nearest competitor on the AppExchange, supporting over 85,000 users globally every day. As a Summit Partner, the highest status available in the AppExchange program, we are fully committed to the Salesforce ecosystem. Textkernel has been mission-critical to our explosive growth on the Salesforce platform, helping our customers parse, source, and match the best candidates for roles they are trying to fill. The acquisition of Textkernel deepens our commitment to the Salesforce platform and accelerates our AI strategy.

Textkernel’s best-in-class parsing and matching technologies accelerate Bullhorn’s AI strategy for Salesforce customers

Sourcing AI has been a huge focus for Bullhorn. In today’s competitive landscape, finding suitable candidates, whether from within a recruitment agency database or externally, presents a significant challenge. Talent acquisition remains a top three priority in our annual GRID industry survey. Textkernel’s parsing technology is unparalleled, and its matching technology is used by many of the largest recruitment agencies in the world. The combination of Textkernel and Bullhorn will substantially help our Salesforce customers solve their talent-sourcing challenges.

Textkernel unlocks the next chapter of solutions we can offer Salesforce customers. By aligning our collective roadmaps and working closely with our customers, we are opening a new chapter of possibilities on the Salesforce platform for our customers. We are excited to have Textkernel join us on this journey and to welcome members of the Textkernel team into our Bullhorn family. Congratulations Gerard, Guus, and the Textkernel leadership team!

Forward together!

Jeff Neumann, SVP Product Marketing

Accelerating Bullhorn’s AI strategy with Textkernel’s industry-leading parsing and matching technologies

In today’s competitive landscape, organizations grapple with talent and job shortages and the pressing need to swiftly fill new positions with top-tier talent. Furthermore, as Art Papas shared in his keynote at Engage Boston 2024, customers need a S.E.A. (Specific, Enormous, Actionable) of data to realize the full potential of AI. This is where the addition of Textkernel plays a pivotal role in our strategy. Textkernel’s parsing technology is second to none and will be critical to our AI strategy. Their matching technology is used by some of the largest enterprises in the world, both inside staffing and talent acquisition. Textkernel’s Labor Market Insights solution boosts agency business development and growth strategies, a critical lever in the current job short market. The combination of Textkernel and Bullhorn will substantially help organizations solve their talent-sourcing challenges and win new business. The acquisition of Textkernel significantly accelerates our AI strategy and unlocks the next chapter of solutions we can offer customers.  

Sourcing AI is a strategic focus for Bullhorn

The staffing industry has grown to over $600 billion in revenue globally. With growth expected to pick up in 2024, this acquisition offers a significant step forward for us to harness AI’s full potential to benefit our customers and the industry. As we shared with customers in Vision for Innovation at Engage Boston 2024, Sourcing AI is a huge investment area for Bullhorn, and we are truly excited to embark on this journey with Textkernel. We congratulate CEO Gerard Mulder, COO Guus Meijer, and the entire leadership team at Textkernel and welcome the Textkernel team to the Bullhorn family. This acquisition is a significant step forward for us, and we are committed to maximizing its potential to benefit our customers. As we set our sights on the future, I’m optimistic about the impactful solutions that will stem from merging our teams and our shared dedication to advancing AI in the talent-sourcing landscape.

Please stay tuned for an upcoming webinar where Gerard and I will share more insights about how our two companies are developing industry-leading Sourcing AI solutions.

And if you’d like to learn more about what this acquisition means for our customers on the Salesforce platform, take a look at this blog from Jeff Neumann, SVP Product Marketing at Bullhorn.

In order to compete with larger rivals, small staffing agencies must embrace automation in order to streamline candidate sourcing, cultivate enduring relationships with both talent and clients, and stand out from the competition.

The benefits of automation

By automating mundane tasks in the hiring process, recruiters save precious time to better focus on the human-centric aspects of recruitment. With recruiters under pressure to deliver quick results, automation can unlock greater efficiencies and pave the way for recruiters to excel in their roles, ensuring a seamless experience for candidates and delivering high-quality results for clients.

What are the key processes that typically need automating, and which ones can make the greatest difference for small recruitment agencies?

Candidate communication

The capability to sift through and match CVs quickly and schedule interviews lifts the administrative burden on recruitment teams. Setting auto reminders when candidates have interviews and scheduling follow-up phone calls with clients means that recruiters can keep on top of every important detail and the status of every candidate application. They can then relay any feedback received to candidates quickly to keep everything moving seamlessly so that applicants don’t drop out of the process.  

Additionally, communicating with candidates who have not made it through the selection process is also important, given that they may be a fit for future roles. Candidate relationship management for all candidates—not just the ones who get placed—is absolutely critical, as your company’s brand reputation is on the line. Keeping those candidates informed at all stages and sending them new potential job alerts will create an excellent impression. In today’s ultra-competitive hiring landscape, no stone can remain unturned in the name of quality. 

Where many recruiters fall short is a lack of communication. In some cases, there simply isn’t an opportunity for candidates, which leads to them inadvertently being “ghosted” – they apply for a job and don’t hear back presumably, because they can’t be placed. Automation can be used to ensure that this doesn’t happen and, if handled with due care and sensitivity, can ensure that even candidates who haven’t been placed can leave the process feeling valued thanks to a positive experience.   

Efficiency and productivity gains

As part of the screening process, and as a means of better helping recruiters to qualify and identify the right candidates for their roles, video interviewing can be a game-changer. A simple link with some questions can be sent to a candidate to complete in their own time, from anywhere in the world. This technology can really help to provide a more complete picture of the individual and their interpersonal skills. Perhaps more importantly, it reduces the time constraints that recruiters can face when trying to schedule video calls with candidates, which will often fall outside of traditional working hours. 

Using recruitment software to automate job postings also enables recruiters to quickly distribute and integrate their roles across global job boards, social media, and search engines. The software can ‘multi-post’ jobs to these different outlets, saving recruiters time with individual uploads. With this approach, recruiters can also track and measure performance, enabling them to not only rank candidates but also see which channel is performing best. This, in turn, provides critical insights to help with budget spend and where to allocate money for optimal returns. 

When choosing the right recruitment technology, small recruitment agencies must do their homework to find the right, affordable solution for their needs and budgets. This could mean automating one or two key parts of the recruitment process to begin with. Once you can prove a return on investment, more budget can be directed into other areas of the business. 

Time savings

Automation has multiple benefits for smaller recruitment firms, but the greatest is the time-saving potential. One hour saved a day adds up to more than 250 hours each year or around a month’s work for each recruiter.

In the vast majority of cases, the outlay on tech automation will pay for itself in the long run. Ultimately, if small recruitment agencies don’t take the plunge and automate processes, they will lose out when it comes to connecting with top talent and partnering with key clients. 

Ready to boost productivity, improve data health, and enhance communication? Learn more about Bullhorn Automation.

During the annual Vision for Innovation presentation at Engage Boston 2024, Matt Fischer, President and COO at Bullhorn, and Jason Heilman, SVP Product – Automation and AI at Bullhorn, shared more about the impacts AI can have on staffing firms, Bullhorn’s approach to AI, and what the future of staffing AI might look like.

Check out a recap of their session below, or take a look at the video for the full session:

The benefits of staffing AI

Matt kicked things off by setting the stage for how Bullhorn is approaching AI: “Even in an AI-first world, the recruiter’s job is still the same. They’re trying to achieve the same outcome, which is to go get a job from a client, find the right candidate, screen the candidate, interview the candidate, and place the candidate. All of that is still required and still true, and still what the recruiter will do. They’ll just do it differently and it’ll be more effective and more efficient with AI.”

The journey to leveraging staffing AI requires firms to first digitize their systems and maintain that digitization as they add more components to their tech stacks. Then, staffing firms should leverage automation to remove manual tasks from recruiters’ to-do lists and enable them to focus on higher-priority work, like building relationships.

What type of outcomes can staffing firms expect when they start using AI? Matt and Jason highlighted three main benefits:

Decrease time to fill by dramatically reducing the time required to complete key tasks

• Quickly find the best candidates to reach out to; searches are built with the click of a button
• Reduce time writing emails and formatting resumes
• Keep your recruiters focused on the highest-value tasks

Improve quality and consistency by finding the right candidates faster and interacting with your candidates and clients at a more human level

• Ensure every search is finely tuned to the job requirements
• Create highly personalized content without knowing the details of the domain
• Make sure key points from every conversation are tracked and actionable 

Achieve greater scale by unlocking the power of AI through automation

• Focus everyone on the highest-value tasks
• Have confidence that your data is reliable
• Complete even more tasks with automation

The power of the platform and the importance of having a S.E.A. of data

In his keynote at Engage Boston 2024, Art Papas, CEO and Founder of Bullhorn, introduced the concept of having a S.E.A. of staffing-specific data – Specific, Enormous, and Actionable – to fuel staffing firms’ AI efforts. As Matt explained, “There’s only one way to create that S.E.A. of data, and that’s to have everything on a singular platform and all of your workflow digitized on that platform.” With everything on one platform and the S.E.A. of data as the foundation, staffing firms can effectively apply AI, leverage automation to enable AI to scale, and get the full benefits of reporting and analytics to point their users in the right direction. 

“We [have] 22.6 billion records in the Bullhorn platform today. That’s 22.6 billion records that we can use to train AI. 20 billion of those are just related to communication, emails, call logs, and notes. There’s this treasure trove of information that is currently locked in all of this unstructured data,” explained Matt.

Bullhorn’s goal is to ensure staffing firms can get insights from that unstructured data and use those insights to run their businesses. Matt explained that the successful placement count is among the most here “because we know what success looks like, and we know what it looks like at scale.”

Another source of data is Bullhorn One, which helps firms run every aspect of their recruiting business, from intake to payroll. Bullhorn One customers have paid 225,000 payees weekly, and 768 million hours have been worked in the last 12 months. Customers have also sent invoices totaling $13 billion through the platform. Bullhorn reached these exciting milestones by enabling digitization and automation of the entire pay and bill workflow, helping staffing firms improve client relationships and add to the S.E.A. of data. 

Data Hub expands the S.E.A of data

Another way to expand the S.E.A. of data is by bringing it all together in a tool like Data Hub. First introduced at Engage Boston 2023, Data Hub combines data in Bullhorn with data outside the platform, like metrics from Marketplace partners, financial software, and payroll providers.

Once the systems are connected and the data is brought into one place, firms can analyze the entire workflow to uncover deeper insights like lead conversion, customer or client satisfaction, and margins. From there, firms can apply AI to turn all of that data and analysis into action.

Customers today achieve a 36% productivity improvement with AI sourcing

As our GRID 2024 Industry Trends Report confirmed, staffing firms are focused on winning new business and improving existing client relationships this year. But, as Art shared in his Engage keynote, old playbooks for business development aren’t working anymore, and firms need to leverage the S.E.A. of data and new technology – like AI – to get ahead. 

That’s where AI staffing tools like SourceBreaker by Bullhorn come into play. SourceBreaker searches through job boards to bring every job into a singular database, enabling firms to get more value from open jobs and find more opportunities with potential clients. As Matt illustrated, “There are 380 million jobs that sit inside of this data lake today. 17 million of them are live right now. That means there are 4.6 million customers looking to fill 17 million jobs just today. So talking about how the old sales playbooks didn’t work and how we have to think about that differently going forward, this is an awesome starting point for that.”

It’s not enough to have a repository of data. Firms need to be able to search and interact with their database to get the most value from their data, see the biggest returns, and win more clients. Here, Jason shared how Bullhorn users can sort and filter opportunities in SourceBreaker to uncover clients that have open roles their firm is skilled at or that they have candidates for. From there, recruiters or salespeople can engage with that client and, ideally, add them into Bullhorn to nurture the relationship, improve the conversion rate, and add to the S.E.A. of data.

And firms utilizing this strategy are already seeing huge results. Customers using automation and SourceBreaker achieve a 24% increase in speed to submittal, a 53% increase in redeployment, and 36% more placements per recruiter.

The future of staffing AI

So, how does this entire vision come to life? From the power of the platform and the S.E.A. of data to turning unstructured data into structured data, Bullhorn Copilot, our suite of staffing AI capabilities, will span the entire recruitment process, impacting everything from the front-office ATS to the back-office operations. 

Matt and Jason introduced 13 ways that Copilot’s staffing AI features can add value to the staffing workflow, covering everything from business development to searching external job boards.

Please note: some of the functionality below is still in the concept phase. Please contact your Bullhorn Account Manager for more information about current availability. 

1. Business development: Firms can identify opportunities with clients that match their service offerings and add data about those opportunities directly to Bullhorn. 
2. Actionable dashboards: By pulling in information from the entire platform, Copilot can suggest jobs that need attention, candidates to reach out to, key metrics, and more.
3. AI prompts throughout Bullhorn: Using pre-built prompts right in Bullhorn, users can summarize a candidate profile, create screening questions, or pitch a candidate for a specific role.
4. Suggested prompts: The goal of suggested prompts is to direct users to what activity they should do next. After a candidate is submitted to a job, Copilot can suggest the recruiter create screening questions, for example. 
5. Updates records from notes: Using the call log, which is added as a note on a candidate record via a VOIP provider, Copilot can add relevant information from the call to the candidate record.
6. Tagging notes: Based on notes added after candidate calls, Copilot can tag each note with the relevant topic to make searching and filtering even easier.
7. Chat with your notes: Before an account manager contacts a client, they can use Copilot to ask specific questions, such as the current state of the consultants already working there. Copilot can also suggest places where the Account Manager can find more information.
8. Submit with Copilot: When submitting a candidate for a job, recruiters can utilize Copilot to review all the notes, craft the pitch letter, format the resume, determine which attachments are needed, and package it up to review and submit in just a few clicks.
9. Slack and Teams integration: Instead of waiting in Bullhorn for a particular action to complete, like finalizing a call log and adding it to a candidate record, Copilot can send an alert to Slack or Microsoft Teams to alert the user that the action has been completed.
10. Core search upgrades: From saved searches to new suggested “intents” at the top of the Bullhorn Search field, Copilot’s impact will extend into our core search functionality. This also includes an updated UI and new smart filters.
11. Text to search: Instead of navigating complex Boolean searches, users can simply type in exactly what they’re looking for, such as “Project Managers in Boston.” The AI-powered search will suggest and refine a query as the user adds more information. 
12. Recommended candidates and auto build searches: Wherever a recruiter might need candidates for a given role, Copilot can suggest candidates who might be a fit. Or, when a new job is added, Copilot can automatically build a search to find recommended candidates using relevant keywords. 
13. External job board searching: Instead of only running a search within Bullhorn, Copilot can search across job boards without the user needing to craft the same complex search multiple times.

These 13 concepts make up Bullhorn’s long-term vision for the future of staffing AI, and we want to ensure it has the most impact on our customers. Jason put it simply: “What can we really do that’s going to build lasting value to your business and allow you to scale more effectively and achieve all these outcomes?”

Learn how to transform your business development efforts with SourceBreaker and embed the power of AI right into recruiter workflows with Copilot. 

And check out more Engage highlights and resources on our Engage Boston Content Hub.

At Engage Boston 2024, few topics were discussed as much as AI, and the enthusiasm for this transformative technology could be felt across the 1,000 staffing industry attendees who joined the event in Boston. 

To kick off the event, Art Papas delivered an opening keynote where he looked back at how far the industry has come, how staffing firms are navigating a challenging market by leveraging AI, and the improvements early adopters are already seeing using AI-powered staffing tools. 

Read on for a recap of his keynote, or check out the video to see his full address:

A look back at 25 years of Bullhorn 

Engage Boston 2024 was not only an opportunity for our staffing community to connect in person but also a celebration of 25 years of Bullhorn.

Art Papas, CEO and Founder of Bullhorn, kicked off his opening keynote by shining a spotlight on the customers who have been with us since the beginning. 

Over the past 25 years, Bullhorn has empowered staffing firms to put the world to work, including working with 164 million candidates annually to fill 23.1 million job orders across 55.3 million submissions.

Throughout the past 25 years, we’ve relentlessly pursued new ways to leverage data from across the recruitment process to help drive your business forward, regardless of market conditions. And as firms are navigating one of the most challenging markets since the Great Recession, harnessing data to identify actionable insights has never been more important.

The power of AI in staffing

Our GRID 2024 Industry Trends Report revealed that winning new clients is the top priority for staffing firms this year: 59% of firms reported that they’re focused on client relationships, either winning new clients or strengthening existing relationships. 

But old playbooks for finding and winning new clients won’t cut it in today’s market. It’s been 15 years since cold calling was the go-to method of securing job orders. Today’s newer staffing professionals haven’t developed the same sales skillset as their veteran colleagues, and the old playbooks don’t work anymore… So what’s the answer? AI holds a lot of promise. 

While AI might seem like a new player in the staffing technology space, high performers are already incorporating it into their tech stack. “It’s still early, and we’re still figuring out what AI can do…But what we’re finding is that half of the folks we surveyed are actually experimenting with AI, and a third of them are expecting to see real results from it,” Art shared.

The lifeblood of any strong AI-powered staffing strategy is data. As Art put it, “You need specific data. You need a lot of it. It needs to be an enormous data set, and it needs to be actionable data.” Art introduced what Bullhorn calls the S.E.A. of data – Specific, Enormous, and Actionable – which will fuel staffing firms’ AI efforts. 

But what does this actually look like? 

• Specific: For AI to have an impact on the staffing industry, the data involved needs to be as specific to staffing as possible.  Bullhorn can provide staffing-specific data to ensure our AI solutions are tailor-made for the industry.
• Enormous: No single staffing firm has enough data to fully train an AI model, but with Bullhorn’s large, industry-specific data set, we can bridge the gap left by traditional AI models to better serve the staffing industry.
• Actionable: Similar to tools like Waze, which provides driving directions and traffic alerts, the most effective AI-powered staffing tools provide actionable insights and outputs to help users dial in on the most important actions and information. Rather than providing outputs or suggested actions based on non-staffing outcomes, our AI model will base its outputs on successful outcomes—placements—to help every recruiter perform like the most successful recruiters.

With the S.E.A. of data aggregated and used to train the AI model, staffing firms are able to reap the benefits of having everything in one platform, from front-office records to pay and bill data, and can glean insights to help run their business.

Staffing firms are already putting AI and the power of the platform into practice and seeing incredible gains. Those leveraging AI are seeing a 24% increase in speed to submittal, a 53% increase in redeployment, and 36% more placements per recruiter than those not using AI. In an industry where speed is everything and getting more value from existing candidates and employees is key, those improvements can make all the difference.

Art concluded his keynote address with his outlook on the future of AI-powered staffing technology, noting that this “S.E.A. of data” will make machine learning and AI truly useful and powerful for everyone working in the staffing industry. 

Check out more Engage highlights and resources on our Engage Boston Content Hub.

Read on for highlights and best practices shared at Engage Boston that you can put into practice today.

Winning new business and strengthening relationships

As our GRID 2024 Industry Trends Report confirmed, it’s all about winning new business this year. But how can staffing firms turn challenges into opportunities and differentiate themselves from the competition? 

At this year’s Engage Boston, leaders from staffing firms of all sizes and Bullhorn product experts shared tangible ways to pair technology with strategy to find and nurture client relationships.

Zelda Savage, Enterprise CSM for Bullhorn Analytics at Bullhorn, explained why you should focus less on ROI of client accounts and more on ROE: 

“Focusing on return on effort (ROE) can lead to a return on investment and enables you to move the needle without extra effort.”

Chris Choe, Vice President of Transformation at ZRG Partners, discussed why they made the transition to Bullhorn for Salesforce as a way to better serve their clients:

“We needed solutions to help accommodate our growth. What was holding us back was our tech strategy, so we went on a journey looking at different vendors to figure out the right approach. We landed on Bullhorn for Salesforce so we could leverage the Salesforce backbone and their marketplace. The embedded knowledge of Bullhorn made it an easy answer.”

Brian Salkowski, Chief Experience Officer at Impellam Group, explained why keeping up with the latest in technology advancements enables his firm to explore new business offerings and get ahead of the competition:

“As a business, we always need to iterate. Looking at the recruitment marketplace in the last 10 years, the amount of advancement in service offerings is night and day. If we’re not proactively assessing the marketplace and our business, we risk getting left behind.”

Providing an incredible talent experience

From tight talent pools and changing candidate expectations to fewer job orders and slowing demand, staffing firms are dealing with one of the most challenging markets in recent memory.

Speakers at Engage Boston shared best practices for delighting talent in innovative ways and making the most of candidate databases. These included using automation to help recruiters focus on relationships and streamlining the talent lifecycle.

Catherine Pearson, EVP and General Manager for Fastaff and Springboard, shared how a compliance strategy rooted in technology improves the candidate experience:

“It’s the work behind the work. Compliance isn’t a one-time event. It’s ongoing during the lifecycle of the candidate at each placement. Once you set that up and leverage automations and the Bullhorn talent platform, your candidates will get the right documents with the right information, and recruiters will have confidence in the process.” 

Patty Comer, Co-founder and Principal Partner of AccruePartners, explained why commitment and curiosity are key when working with automation and analytics:

“You have to be committed to wanting to advance how you work when you decide to engage automation and analytics. Be curious. Explore the technology options available and leverage experts at your vendors.” 

Leticia McAlexander, Vice President, Global Enterprise Applications & Enterprise Data at Allegis Group, emphasized the importance of meeting candidates where they are during the hiring process:

“We were able to show that we were leaving money on the table when candidates were dropping out of the process because they were not able to use their mobile phone, or there was no single sign-on, or there was a bad experience.”

Making the most of your tech stack to increase efficiency

A successful staffing firm is built on a foundation of internal alignment and a solid tech strategy. At Engage Boston 2024, we explored how firms are empowering their teams with technology, doubling down on data, and finding ways to move forward together.

Darrell Hunt, VP – North American Analytics at Manpower Group, shared why trust in your firm’s data is the key to unlocking its value:

“To give folks trust in the content you have, it’s all about creating value from insights. Insights turn value into action. You need to put the information in front of your stakeholders at the right time, and the more they use it, the more they start to trust that.”

Genine Wilson, President, Travel Nurse and Allied at Ingenovis, discussed key things to keep in mind as you build your data strategy:

“Don’t design your data strategy for the C-Suite first and the actual users last. Ask ‘What do you need,’ not ‘What do we think you need.’ If you don’t have transparency from the beginning, you will constantly be selling it to your teams.”

Kathryn Krueger, Chief Operating Officer at DeWinter Group, shared the benefits of being an early adopter of new technology:

“If you are an early adopter, you have the growing pains, but you also get a direct line to provide feedback. We built strong relationships and have great partners within Bullhorn and many of the Marketplace partners we work with. The biggest impact has been the end-to-end visibility. Front office to back office in one interface is huge!”

Will Hayes, COO at IDR, illustrated why partnering with your technology vendors is key to success with AI:

“There is risk with AI, but the reward far outweighs it. Work with your vendors who are using AI. They are using and understanding AI at a level we often aren’t. They won’t make AI decisions for you, but they will educate you and inform you. There is a learning curve, just like any tool, but this is a technology that isn’t going anywhere. The faster you start educating yourselves and your team, the more competitive you’re going to be.”

Thank you to all of the attendees, speakers, and sponsors who made Engage Boston an incredible and unforgettable experience. We can’t wait to see you next year at Engage 2025!

Did you miss us at Engage Boston 2024? Learn more about Engage and catch us in London, Sydney, or Boston!