Recruiting Automation Tech Stack Includes Staffing Referrals, Bullhorn, Herefish, and Great Recruiters
BridgeView has been providing technology consulting and placement services for over 15 years. They’re driven by a desire to form genuine connections with their candidates, which is why they’ve won numerous best in staffing awards.
One of the biggest challenges in IT staffing is the chronically low rate of unemployment in the industry. The summer before the pandemic, tech unemployment fell to 1.3%, a 20-year low. As a result, tech workers are subject to near-constant recruiter outreach, which creates communication fatigue for both the candidates and the recruiters.
To succeed in this highly competitive space, recruiters need to target the talent sourcing channels that deliver the best results. They also need tools that help them communicate with candidates smarter, faster, and at the right time. For BridgeView, that meant focusing on referrals.
“Referrals are the top driver in our business,” said Tim Glennie, BridgeView’s Founder and Managing Partner. “We are determined to find the top talent for our clients, and getting more referrals from our current talent pool is the best way to do that.”
While Glennie understood the importance of referrals, he also knew that they were falling through the cracks, which is common when recruiters use analog systems (i.e., spreadsheets) to track them. This was harming more than just the firm’s ability to fill open positions: “Without an automated system to follow up on referrals, we weren’t just missing out on business — we were damaging our relationships with candidates.”
To get more referrals and improve relationships with their current talent, BridgeView added Staffing Referrals to their tech stack. The stack, which also includes Bullhorn, Herefish, and Great Recruiters, saves recruiters time by automating outreach in a number of ways and allows the agency to source better candidates with less manpower.
BridgeView scales referral program by turning talent into brand ambassadors
“There’s no doubt that if you implement Staffing Referrals, you’re going to get more referrals. We’ve seen gains at every level of our referral program.” ~Tim Glennie
Staffing Referrals is an automated referral management system that helps staffing agencies track, manage, and scale their referral programs via an omnichannel approach. Using the platform, staffing firms can promote their referral programs via automated email campaigns, on social media, in recruiter email signatures, on the company website, and even on white-labeled recruiter sites.
At BridgeView, implementing Staffing Referrals eliminated time wasted on busywork and extended their reach by turning their existing database of candidates into digital brand ambassadors and providing multiple communication touchpoints with busy talent.
“Staffing Referrals helped us move toward an omnichannel sourcing model,” said Glennie. “We’re not just sourcing candidates from the same job boards as everyone else. We’re reaching out to our existing network — over social media, via email, at every touchpoint — to source new candidates from the ones we’ve already built relationships with.”
In addition, BridgeView no longer needs to worry about missing any referral opportunities because every candidate is automatically invited into their enterprise-level referral program.
Staffing Referrals amplifies functionality of BridgeView’s existing tech stack
Glennie is very deliberate in his approach to implementing new technology. Any new software must deliver real value for recruiters without becoming just one more tool they never use.
Staffing Referrals integrated seamlessly into BridgeView’s tech stack of Bullhorn, Herefish, and Great Recruiters. This not only facilitated recruiter adoption but also amplified the functionality of their existing platforms so their recruiters can focus on what’s important: building and nurturing relationships with candidates and talent.
“We’re in a relationship business, and referrals are a huge piece of that. We want to take as much friction out of the processes as possible using automation. Our tech stack does exactly that,” said Glennie.
Providing transparency throughout the referrals process
BridgeView uses Bullhorn as its applicant tracking system. With the Staffing Referrals – Bullhorn integration, when a referral comes in through Staffing Referrals, it’s automatically tagged in Bullhorn as a referral, verified as an existing candidate or a new lead, and tracked throughout the entire process. It doesn’t require any behavior change on the part of recruiters, and every recruiter has complete transparency into where their referrals are in the process.
“Before Staffing Referrals, we had a good system for tracking referrals within Bullhorn, but referrals would fall through the cracks,” said Glennie. “The integration between Bullhorn and Staffing Referrals is slick and seamless, and we capture and nurture every referral, every time.”
Staffing Referrals also provides that same insight to brand ambassadors and those they refer. “The Staffing Referrals dashboards give transparency to the person who’s giving the referral. They get their own brand ambassador page, and they always know the status of their referrals.” This real-time feedback incentivizes them to refer more friends.
Reducing busywork by automating referral outreach and follow up
BridgeView uses Herefish to automate their communications throughout the recruiting cycle with action-based outreach. With the Staffing Referrals – Herefish integration, once a brand ambassador makes a referral, the candidate is entered into an automated follow-up sequence that helps BridgeView nurture brand ambassadors and referrals with timely, meaningful communications.
“Instead of blasting all our referrals all the time, we rely on Herefish and Staffing Referrals to start them on nurturing campaigns that are based on the actions they’ve taken,” said Glennie. “That’s been a big game-changer for us.”
It’s not just follow-up that’s automated. By creating thoughtful referral marketing email campaigns and promoting their referral program to their entire network, BridgeView has steadily increased its number of referrals. “Referrals are consistently coming in,” said Glennie.
Generating referrals from positive candidate reviews
Finally, BridgeView relies on Great Recruiters to solicit real-time feedback throughout the recruiting process. “At key points throughout the candidate’s journey with us, we send out review requests,” said Glennie. “It can be scary, but it means we have consistent feedback on how our recruiting process is doing.”
The Staffing Referrals – Great Recruiters integration lets BridgeView turn those reviews into referrals. When a positive review comes in from Great Recruiters, it triggers a referral request from Staffing Referrals. “Hit them while they’re high. If you get a great NPS score from a candidate or a client, what better time to ask for a referral than that?”
Crucially, all of the information — from Staffing Referrals, Herefish, and Great Recruiters — syncs back to Bullhorn, providing BridgeView with a single source of truth.
Staffing Referrals makes implementation (surprisingly) easy
Technology implementation does not have a reputation for being easy. While Glennie saw the value of Staffing Referrals, he expected the type of arduous implementation he’d experienced with other software platforms. He, and the team, was pleasantly surprised.
“It was effortless,” Glennie said. “Honestly, I think it was a five- or ten-minute call. It worked intuitively with our workflow. I’ve implemented plenty of tools, and sometimes there are a lot of problems or not a lot of options. But the way Staffing Referrals rolled out, it was really easy. It’s a pretty powerful tool, and there’s a lot to it, but implementation was a breeze.”
Want to hear more about how Staffing Referrals can help you save on sourcing costs and increase your referral placements?