How Growing HVAC partnered with Bullhorn to increase transparency across their business

Introduction

After spending 20 years in the HVAC industry, Michael Johnson saw a market need for specialized HVAC recruitment services. He founded Growing HVAC in 2021 as a way to elevate the industry through recruiting, consulting, and sales training. As a small but mighty team of three, Growing HVAC needed to find a solution that would centralize the management of candidates, jobs, shifts, and tasks in order to streamline the recruitment process and allow room for growth.

Challenges

Recruiter productivity challenges – Growing HVAC needed a solution that would increase their team’s productivity, and allow them to scale their growing business. With a small team running the business, Growing HVAC needed to take away some of the manual, admin tasks that they were spending time on so that they could focus on building relationships with candidates and clients. “As a recruiter, you talk to between 60 and 80 people a week, candidates and clients. I needed a system to organize my thoughts and notes,” said Johnson.
Lack of visibility across the business – Johnson knew that in order to continue to scale his business, he’d need a single source of truth, so his team would be able to access all pertinent candidate and client information. “If I truly want to scale this business, I can’t keep all of the candidate and client information in my head,” he said. “I’ve hired a few people, and will continue to do so. If this information is just stuck in my head, then I am depriving my team of the ability to be successful.” Johnson needed to invest in an ATS system that would create transparency across his team, making it easier to collaborate.

Solution

In December 2022, Growing HVAC decided to purchase the Bullhorn Platform as their ATS system. When looking for a solution, Johnson was drawn to Bullhorn because of the ability to customize the platform to suit their specific needs. “Bullhorn’s ability to customize and create reporting dashboards were of huge interest because they can help run a business at scale, and really highlight the areas of your business that need attention. We had to have it,” said Johnson.

While incorporating new technology into your business can be daunting, Growing HVAC was pleased with Bullhorn’s implementation process. According to Johnson, the Bullhorn team was invested in seeing him be successful. “Tyler helped with my implementation. Tyler is patient, professional, friendly, and he had a genuine interest in me and my business. He wanted to make my implementation process as painless as possible. Having people like that at Bullhorn makes implementation so much easier.”

Results

Improved efficiency – As a young organization, Growing HVAC is still building their database. They are able to use the Bullhorn platform to search for candidates, instead of scouring through LinkedIn or job boards. This has made them a more efficient team. “I can definitely say that our increased efficiency has been huge with Bullhorn! It’s been huge in keeping the whole team on the same page without having to constantly ping one another. It’s just one place that we can all go to and stay on the same page,” said Johnson.

In particular, Johnson thinks the candidate search function has saved his team time. “I have over 1,000 connections on LinkedIn, and most of those people are in Bullhorn,” he said. “If a past client calls in and they’re in Georgia, I can quickly pivot and see what candidates we have in Georgia and have a really impactful sales call.”

Increased transparency across the business – In addition to improved efficiency, Growing HVAC has seen increased transparency across the business. Specifically, the Tearsheet functionality has been valuable. While Johnson mainly focuses on sales, he will sometimes need to assist his recruiters when they become overloaded with contracts. The Tearsheets give access to candidate data that he needs to jump in and help. “Because everything is in Bullhorn, I can quickly go in and see people they’ve already contacted, where certain stages are, provide additional insights, and really just help. It helps keep our recruiters contacting the same people over and over.”

Improved internal training – In addition to improving internal collaboration, this data transparency also makes it easier for employees to learn about the business and their customers. “Maya is my account acquisition specialist, and Bullhorn has made her life so much easier. It keeps the two of us on track,” said Johnson. “It’s helped her learn the business faster. She can go in and check out my screening calls, read my notes, and learn how to enhance her calls with our candidates. So, it’s actually really helped her grow as a professional recruiter.”

This visibility and across the business and internal training will be particularly important as Johnson expands his team, and hires additional employees.

Truly, Bullhorn’s operating system is very intuitive and super easy to navigate. I think my favorite feature, if I had to pick one, is how easy it is to drag and drop a resume. That in and of itself is amazing when adding a new candidate.

Michael Johnson Founder, Growing HVAC

Looking to the future

Looking forward, the largest challenge Growing HVAC is facing is reducing time to submission. “Generally when we’re working with a client, and they’re paying a fee, they want good candidates fast,” said Johnson. As they continue to put more people into the database with notes, they want to set reminders to follow up with candidates that aren’t ready for a new opportunity now, but may be later in the year. According to Johnson, “Going into our database with people we’ve talked to is huge. If someone tells us they may be looking for a new opportunity later this year, it’s great to put a reminder in Bullhorn to ping them in six months. Bullhorn is helping my team overcome the challenge of time to submission, and I believe they will continue to help us with this challenge going forward.”

If you’re a small staffing company that is thinking about using Bullhorn, I’d say just go ahead and do it. You know, start out and make it part of your workflow. Once you just start working with it, the platform naturally incorporates itself into your life and becomes a massive resource. For us, it becomes more powerful and more valuable every day.

Michael Johnson Founder, Growing HVAC

Ready to Get Started?

Get a Live Demo

Growing HVAC