Referrals have always been a core part of the business strategy at financial services consulting and staffing firm Heitmeyer Consulting. Norm Heitmeyer had been in the banking industry for 16 years when he started the company in 1999, and he had noticed that many of the external resources he encountered lacked the necessary industry expertise. In starting the company, his goal was to deliver real value by leveraging the highly skilled talent he had worked with during his time in the industry.
Since then, Heitmeyer Consulting’s network has expanded exponentially. The firm now has more than 65,000 financial services professionals in their network across the US and Canada in banking, asset management, investment management, insurance, and fintech. Heitmeyer Consulting has grown by over 450% since 2018, and in 2021 they made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies.
With so many consultants in their network, Heitmeyer Consulting needed an upgrade to the way they were tracking and managing referrals. They had tried to develop an internal program, but it hadn’t caught on. So, Toby Boeckman, Heitmeyer Consulting’s Director of Recruiting, talked to some colleagues in the staffing industry, and they pointed him toward Staffing Referrals’ automated referral management (ARM) platform.
“We’re passionate about referrals and our referral network. Staffing Referrals is a great partner to support this core part of our business. It’s been a phenomenal ride.” ~Toby Boeckman, Director of Recruiting, Heitmeyer Consulting
Boeckman knew what he wanted in a referral platform:
- A tool that was easy to use
- Automation that eliminated the time-consuming work of tracking and managing referrals
- Software that seamlessly integrated into Bullhorn
“We use Bullhorn, and the fact that Staffing Referrals integrates with Bullhorn was a huge selling point.”
Because the integration is so seamless, Heitmeyer Consulting’s recruiters can do almost all of their work directly within Bullhorn. “About 95% of our work with referrals is done in Bullhorn,” Boeckman said. “I go into Staffing Referrals about once a month just to make sure all of our candidates and placements have been invited to the platform — we try to send out as many invites as possible.”
“Within a week of launching Staffing Referrals, we got a referral for a very high-level, niche consultant we’d been looking for for a long time. It was a huge win for our company.”
In their first six months of using Staffing Referrals, Heitmeyer signed up almost 600 brand ambassadors, and those ambassadors referred nearly 500 applicants. The placements from those referrals delivered an additional $400K to $500K in revenue.
One of the biggest wins came very early on. There was a niche role that they had been trying to fill for a long time. Within a week of launching, a referral came in for a high-level consultant to fill the role. “I don’t know if we would have found that person without Staffing Referrals,” Boeckman said.
“Compared to other sourcing strategies, the cost per hire is low.”
Aside from the low sourcing cost, the biggest advantage of Staffing Referrals is that it automates the manual parts of referrals. “Our goal is to make our recruiters’ job as efficient as possible so our recruiters can spend their time recruiting,” Boeckman said. “Staffing Referrals lets them do that.”
Not only that, but the platform brings in referred candidates without them having to ask.
“Good candidates appear in your inbox without you having to do much. Everyone’s happy with it.”
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