GIFTED Healthcare is a rapidly growing healthcare staffing firm dedicated to optimizing their business through smart automation with a strategic tech stack that includes Staffing Referrals, Great Recruiters, and TextUs. Their culture is built on transparency and the strength of their recruiters’ relationships with nurses. 

In the first three months of adopting Staffing Referrals and Great Recruiters, GIFTED increased their referral conversion rate, reduced time-to-hire, and doubled their referral hires.

What’s more, during the COVID-19 pandemic and this unprecedented time in the healthcare space — and in the world — Staffing Referrals has helped GIFTED increase referral rates further, allowing the firm to get even more healthcare travelers into the hospitals that need them the most. 

Reflecting on the COVID-19 pandemic, Mullady Voelker, GIFTED’s President of Growth and Strategy said, “Right now, referrals are even more valuable. Having the Staffing Referrals platform has been very impactful for us and helped us meet heightened demand during this crisis.”

“In the first month of the pandemic, we’ve seen a 23% increase in referral placements through Staffing Referrals,” said Rachelle Arnold, GIFTED’s Director of Recruiting. 

Why GIFTED turned to Staffing Referrals

What GIFTED is doing works — they’ve seen 40% growth in the past year and have recently doubled the size of their recruitment team. 

Word of mouth is a crucial part of scaling up for GIFTED Healthcare. “Referrals are our highest conversion lead source,” said Voelker. “We arm our recruiters with all the resources they need to build a bigger pipeline. Referrals are the cornerstone of that strategy.”

Late last year, GIFTED noticed referrals were slowing month over month. To solve this slowdown, GIFTED ran focus groups and recruiter training sessions and weren’t able to move the needle significantly. “We weren’t seeing the results we were looking for,” said Voelker. 

So, GIFTED was in the search for tools or tactics that would help them grow their referral program. That’s when they learned about Staffing Referrals, the only automated referral management platform built for the staffing industry, and Great Recruiters, the experience and reputation management platform. 

“We were frankly stunned by the return that we’ve had on Staffing Referrals and Great Recruiters,” said Voelker.

Here’s how they doubled their referrals.

Step 1. Implementation: Quick and Easy Onboarding

Rolling out new software can be time-consuming. And many staffing firms worry about recruiter adoption. Great Recruiters and Staffing Referrals were built with this in mind. Each platform is designed to automate the entire referral and review process so that your recruiters don’t have to worry about learning new software. And implementation only takes a couple of days with about 3 hours of training. 

GIFTED was hesitant to invest time into onboarding Staffing Referrals and to gamble with their forward momentum. “But we were willing to take the risk because we believed in the platform. Thank goodness we did because our results have exceeded our expectations.”

“We were shocked by how simple, easy, and clear it was to roll out these two platforms,” said Voelker. 

“One recruiter told us she felt like the care that went into the launch and the commitment to the process made the transition extremely easy and flexible.”

“Since the tool started to work for us almost immediately, it helped everyone get on board, too,” said Voelker. 

“The service has been incredible,” added Mary Petikas, GIFTED’s Marketing Director. “Everyone in both companies is always really happy to jump on a phone call with us when we have questions or additional ideas. It’s been seamless.” 

Step 2. Increased Referrals Placements

“Both of these platforms have a direct impact on revenue. There’s really no comparison to other referral or review tools,” said Voelker.

In the first 90 days after adopting Staffing Referrals, GIFTED placed 2x more referrals than during the previous period and volume of referrals increased by over 100%.

“We’re averaging about 15 new nurse ambassadors joining Staffing Referrals per week,” said Voelker. 

As you likely know, it’s common for healthcare travelers to drop out of the process even after they’ve been hired. GIFTED found that their new referrals were bucking this trend, too. “Every single one of the referral hires we’ve generated through Staffing Referrals is currently billing.” 

When GIFTED added Great Recruiters, the returns increased even further. “Within the first 10 days of launching Great Recruiters, we got 20 more referral leads through Staffing Referrals than we were seeing before,” said Petikas. 

Step 3. Improved Reengagement from Dormant Contacts

Like most staffing firms, GIFTED has a huge database of dormant candidates. And up until now, meaningful reengagement with this group has been challenging. 

Staffing Referrals and Great Recruiters have helped GIFTED make the most of their existing database by reactivating dormant candidates. By sending automated emails and texts to ask for reviews and referrals, GIFTED was able to wake up nurses from their database and get more value out of their current assets.

“Staffing Referrals has been hugely useful in terms of reengagement,” said Voelker. 

“We see Staffing Referrals as a nontraditional marketing tool to access the middle of the funnel — those candidates you’ve already worked hard to connect with but haven’t gotten any return on yet,” said Voelker. 

Step 4. Improved Candidate Experience 

As a company that’s always looking to lead the staffing industry by putting talent first, GIFTED wanted to improve the candidate experience in a meaningful way. 

In alignment with their core value of transparency, Staffing Referrals and Great Recruiters provide candidates with more information about their recruiters and their referral bonuses, which improves their experience with the firm. 

“Our nurses have really been appreciating the fact that they have direct insight into the entire referral process. They feel safe that their bonus is being tracked and that they can check on it themselves,” said Petikas.

While Staffing Referrals lets GIFTED’s nurses in on the referral process, Great Recruiters sheds light on recruiter performance. 

“The feedback we get through the Great Recruiters platform is authentic. It gives us clear insight into what our nurses think of how we’re doing,” said Petikas.

GIFTED celebrates each recruiter’s positive reviews and referral wins company-wide, helping them build a culture of transparency. “We promote positive recruiter reviews both internally and externally,” said Voelker. 

Step 5. Empower Recruiters 

In a tight talent market, recruiters are your differentiators. Candidates may come to you because of your brand, but they stay with you because of the relationships they build with your recruiters. 

GIFTED wanted to build strong relationships with candidates and empower their recruiters to bring more nurses into their pipeline. 

“Great Recruiters complements Staffing Referrals because it gives our growing team of recruiters a platform to brand themselves,” said Petikas. 

With Great Recruiters, GIFTED’s team can let their good work speak for them. When recruiters reach out to nurses to ask for referrals or to see if they’re interested in a position, each recruiter can share their individual review site, highlighting what nurses have to say about them. This empowers recruiters to start the relationship off right.

What’s more, with transparent review sites, candidates know exactly what their nurses think of them. This eases the referral request process. “We’re not asking our nurses for referrals assuming they think we’re great, said Petikas. “We know exactly how they feel about us because of the reviews they leave for us on Great Recruiters.” 

“Great Recruiters takes the guesswork out of asking for referrals,” said Petikas.

Step 6. Improved Recruiter Coaching

To improve the candidate experience, staffing firms need the best recruiters. Great Recruiters gives staffing firms the exact data they need to provide meaningful advice to recruiters.

While most reviews through Great Recruiters are overwhelmingly positive, GIFTED sometimes gets critical review through the platform. With this early warning sign from a candidate in real-time, the leadership team triage any negative review, reach out to unhappy nurses, and re-engage them. This reduces turnover and improves candidate satisfaction. 

“When you’re managing as many recruiters as we are, it’s hard to get to the bottom of what the behavior is that needs to be changed,” said Voelker. 

“Great Recruiters makes us better coaches for our recruiters. It allows us to pinpoint behaviors directly, fix them, and move on.” 

Ready to grow your referrals and improve the candidate experience? 

Schedule a Demo of Both Platforms Here

GIFTED Healthcare
GIFTED Healthcare is a leader in providing creative workforce solutions around the work of the nurse. GIFTED simplifies workforce management by perfectly matching healthcare facilities with the highly-skilled, dependable clinicians most suited for a given clinical environment. 

This approach gives nurses the opportunity to thrive while providing efficient staffing solutions that healthcare facilities need to ensure exceptional patient outcomes.

Great Recruiters

The world’s first real-time experience and reputation management platform designed for staffing firms. Thousands of staffing industry professionals use their platform to automatically capture candidate feedback in real-time. Great Recruiters seamlessly integrates into your CRM, automates the review process, and makes it simple to measure, act-on, and promote real-time feedback and testimonials. Don’t tell people how great you are. Prove it.

Staffing Referrals

The only Automated Referral Management (ARM) platform that delivers up to 57% more referral leads in the first 60-days. Stop missing referrals by automating your referral process and integrating directly with your applicant tracking system.