with David Folwell, President of Staffing Referrals and founder of Staffing Hub.
The staffing industry is at a crossroads. Market conditions are tougher, technology demands are higher, and the old playbook for growth isn’t cutting it. Yet some agencies are thriving while others struggle. What’s the difference? That’s what we’re exploring today with the latest State of Staffing benchmarking report from Staffing Hub. Surveying hundreds of staffing leaders, the study reveals a clear pattern: the most successful agencies aren’t just moving faster — they’re moving smarter.
In this episode, David Folwell, President of Staffing Referrals and founder of Staffing Hub, breaks down this year’s research on transformation — how agencies are adapting, where they’re investing, and what separates the winners. He’ll share the key trends shaping the industry, the strategies fueling high growth, and how to build high-functioning talent pools that drive lasting success.
Casey Wagonfield: Let’s be honest. Everyone in staffing is feeling the pressure right now. The market’s shifting fast. Tech is evolving even faster, and the growth doesn’t feel as straightforward as it used to. But with every shift comes both challenge and opportunity. The chance to adapt, stand out, and grow. Which brings us to the big question.
How are agencies really feeling about their ability to succeed in the middle of all this change? Just as importantly, what are the fastest-growing ones doing that the rest aren’t? Well, there’s good news because we’ve got some answers. That’s exactly what the State of Staffing benchmarking report from Staffing Hub digs into.
It’s packed with insights from hundreds of staffing leaders, and today we’re talking to one of the main people behind the report to break it all down. Here’s a spoiler alert. The agencies pulling ahead aren’t chasing speed. They’re building high-quality, loyal talent pools and making smarter bets on where to invest.
So, if you’re wondering how to truly differentiate your agency in a market like this, this episode is for you.
[Intro Music]
Welcome to today’s episode of Staffing Made Simple, brought to you by Simple VMS, the most vendor-friendly VMS that’s out there. I’m Casey Wagonfield, Senior Sales Executive at Simple VMS, going on 17 years in the staffing industry. And as always, I’m joined today by my co-host and colleague, friend, and Senior Vice President of Simple VMS, Mr. Rob Geist. What’s going on, Rob?
Rob Geist: Hey Casey. How are you doing, brother? Excited about this guest. I always run into him on the conference circuit. So, really excited to have him on the podcast.
Casey Wagonfield: For sure. Well, let’s get right into it because today’s episode is going to be a good one.
We’ve got David Folwell with us. David’s the CEO of Staffing Referrals. If you’re in staffing, you know who they are. They’re the leading referral management platform built specifically for staffing agencies. It helps teams automate and scale the referral process so they can source, engage, and place qualified talent faster.
But that’s not all. David’s also the founder of Staffing Hub, one of the most trusted sources of business intelligence in the staffing industry. Each year, Staffing Hub puts out a State of Staffing report, a benchmark study that surveys hundreds of staffing agencies to uncover key trends, challenges, and opportunities.
This year’s theme is transformation. The report digs into what’s really happening inside of staffing firms, the pain points, the priorities, and most importantly, what the fastest growing agencies are doing differently. So, today we’re diving into this year’s findings with David, what’s driving growth, how top performing agencies are standing out, and what it really takes to build and engage high-quality talent pools that fuel long-term success. So, David, appreciate you for coming on.
David Folwell: Thanks for having me. Really excited to be here.
Casey Wagonfield: Let’s start by digging into this year’s report. Tell us, how did the idea for this benchmarking report come about in the first place, and what was the goal behind it? And how long have you been running it?
David Folwell: I’ve been running it for eight years. And the idea behind this: I’m just a data nerd. I got into staffing about 14 years ago, always on the supplier side. And at one point, we were doing a temporary housing quarterly report to try to understand what’s going on.
That’s when I started working with a couple of healthcare staffing agencies, and I just wanted to understand the DNA of a fast-growth company compared to a slow-growth company. So, I wanted to dig in and understand what tactics people were using, how they were operating, and it’s just evolved over the years. I think every year we get a little bit more curious, which makes the report a little bit bigger, and we just get more and more insights into how fast-growth companies are operating.
It’s been a passion project at the start, but it’s also the reason that Staffing Referrals exists because I saw what was going on in the market and realized there was a big gap.
Rob Geist: So, David, I know a ton of staffing industry leaders who follow the Staffing Hub closely. What felt different about it this time around, and what’s really standing out to you in terms of industry shifts or trends?
David Folwell: I think the number one shift that kind of surprised me, but it also makes a lot of sense, is that the quality of hire moved up to the number two most important thing compared to historically it’s been speed or cost.
We’re seeing a shift in the industry from transactional behaviors to more partnership-like behaviors where we’re focusing on quality of hire. Also, there were some other stats that, I don’t know if they’re necessarily surprising, but they are trends that I think are important to understand and know that they continue to drive the market forward.
One is that the fastest-growing agencies are 32% more likely to have a mobile app, which means they’re owning the channel to market. They’re 52% more likely to use referral software, which means they’re building their talent community. And then they were 37% more likely to prioritize AI for revenue-generating activities.
So, I think you’re continuing to see digital transformation drive growth for those who are adopting it and taking advantage of it. But you’re starting to see how the strategy is playing out, and I think it’s going to end up that the agencies that are winning in the long run are really focused on quality partnerships, delivering quality talent – not just on behaviors that can essentially be automated at this point.
Casey Wagonfield: That’s a good point. What do you think are some of the most impactful changes that are hitting staffing right now?
The one that I’m closest to day-to-day is that there’s a shift from job boards being the go-to number one activity. It used to be that job boards were just what we do. We figured out how to optimize our job board mechanics, where we get candidates in and we get them placed. And I think now the staffing firms that are doing things intelligently are looking at how do I drive more placements from my existing database? How do I get more out of the ATS platform that I’ve already built?
They’re now looking at how do I get more referrals from this network as well. And they’re starting to get more strategic in how they’re doing that. So, in eight years of doing this report, we have not had staffing firms say they care about the quality of hire, and now they are. And I think that is because they’re realizing people don’t want to work with you if the people you put on contract don’t stay for a long time.
They want to know you’re getting good people. You want to know they’re staying on contract, and you want to know that they’re going to be dependable. And I think that element is now becoming something that’s critical for how you operate with HR managers. I also think that the impact of AI is something that we all know and see, and it’s accelerating faster than I expected.
And I think it might even have a bigger impact than what most think it will. I saw a stat the other day that 99% of hiring managers are now using AI somewhere in the funnel. And what that’s going to do is eliminate a lot of the transactional behaviors.
I think that HR managers, one of the reasons they would hire a staffing firm was: I don’t have somebody on my team who can bang out 120 calls a day, but I know a staffing firm will do that for me. Well, you can now have an AI tool do that, and then maybe it’s not quite as good yet today, but it’s going to be.
And so, we’re starting to see these transactional behaviors get commoditized, and I think that’s the first step of some of the AI impact in the long run.
Casey Wagonfield: It’s funny you say that because I remember the days of the old post and pray, right?
You get a job order, and you just throw it on Indeed and CareerBuilder and just pray that somebody applies when you’ve got a database full of 500,000 candidates that you could go after.
David Folwell: Somebody did a big audit of major staffing firms, a few different large ones, and they looked at the Indeed people that were coming into their database. And it was like one out of every five was already in the database, and they’re paying for them a second time because they haven’t figured out how to nurture them correctly.
So, I think that there’s just a huge opportunity there. And I’m not saying job boards are dead. It’s a tool that should be part of your funnel. Probably always will be. But I think that using a job board and trying to differentiate your service and hold margin and say we’re doing something that you can’t do is difficult when it’s easy to post a job on Indeed and get a few hundred people to apply overnight.
Rob Geist: Yeah, we get a lot of people on the podcast talking about how you have to have a multi-pronged approach. The old ways aren’t just going to work for everyone. And the people who embrace tech are the people who are going to succeed, as you already know,
So, who are the companies that are benchmarked in the report? Can you give us a sense of the makeup of the respondents?
David Folwell: It’s about 400 agencies, all different sizes: Healthcare, IT, Light Industrial, and Professional are the biggest verticals in the data. But it’s been a pretty good slice of what’s going on in the market every year, and historically it’s been a good guide for where things are going and what tactics are working and what aren’t.
Rob Geist: Something that really stood out to me, being a salesperson at heart, 27% of the agencies reported revenue contraction in 2024. And it really seems like a lot of agencies right now are very optimistic, and they expect strong growth in 2025.
Why do you think that is? What’s fueling those expectations, and are they realistic or could they potentially be overlooking some tougher times ahead?
David Folwell: The data was collected in Q1. I’m guessing that if we asked it again at this moment, I don’t know if the optimism would still be there.
One thing I think is interesting is that every year, at the start of the year, we’re humans. If you’re in business, you’ve got to be optimistic about where things are going.
That said, it’s July right now, and we are starting to see some lift in hours worked in terms of what some of the reporting looks like. So, I think some positive things are happening, but I’m not sure if there was more behind it other than just that excitement and human nature of “we’re going to make it happen this year.”
Rob Geist: I might have some insight into that because, at Simple, we’ve seen utilization of our clients ticking down since post-COVID, effectively, and I’m starting to see that tick up and then, in addition to that, I think more people are shopping for what we’re selling, which to me is a positive sign because they want to get their arms around everything that’s going on.
Casey Wagonfield: David, you’re talking to staffing executives all the time. Is there anything in particular that they’re facing or challenges that’s keeping them up at night?
David Folwell: Two things I’m hearing: One – we need more clients; we need more sales. I think that’s been the number one priority from most of the staffing firms I’ve talked to over the last two years. And it’s rare for the client side to be harder than the talent side.
There’s also AI, and if it’s not keeping you up at night, it should. I think the potential for disruption that this has on our industry is fairly significant. I did a presentation a few years back on how digital transformation impacted the travel industry.
Before this, I worked at a company called Hotel Engine. The travel agencies lost 44% of their employees from 1999 to 2009 because of digital transformation. And it’s something that, if you look at the last five years, I’ve had this conversation probably 10, 15 times on our podcast, talking about is that what’s going to happen to staffing?
What does that look like? Because we are in a fragmented market, an easy-to-enter market, and one in which I think AI might have a fairly significant impact on the size and structure of the industry.
I will give you the light side. I don’t have the exact stat, but the travel industry has almost recouped back to where it was, I think, potentially even has more people working in it today. The jobs are different; the roles are different. It’s not a bunch of mom-and-pop travel agencies.
So, I think that the structure of the industry is changing right now, and I think AI is accelerating that. So, between AI and getting more job orders, those are the top two things I’m hearing in the market. And, I think, trying to figure out what does the future look like, and how do I navigate what tech and tools to use to effectively move forward and not get left behind.
Rob Geist: It’s crazy how all those mom-and-pop travel shops got gobbled up by the big players over the last two years. We knew it was coming. But to see it actually happen after people predict something that is kind of crazy.
David Folwell: We have some customers who have Staffing Referrals, which are small healthcare staffing agencies, and are growing.
One of them actually is an Avionté customer as well. They’re growing; they’re doing well. What we’re seeing is that if you are a smaller agency, an SMB, you need be aggressively niched down, you need to know what makes your agency different, and you need to lean into that.
And a lot of times at the smaller agency, it’s the relationship with the candidate. It is almost like you are building and doing things that you can’t do at a different scale.
Rob Geist: Clearly, there are firms that are still growing despite everything that’s going on, and the report says the fast-growing agencies grew 21% over the last year.
What else are they doing differently to have that kind of growth?
David Folwell: Yeah, again, focusing on quality. It’s trying to make sure that you hire the right person. The reason that it matters is that quality candidates stay on contract longer.
if you have people who are staying on contract longer, you make more money. We have an example of one of our customers, who three years ago, realized that their referrals were staying on contracts significantly longer. They leaned into that aggressively over the last two years, and their placement volume was down 8% last year, but their revenue was up 9%. So, they did less work and made more money simply by shifting to higher-quality candidates who stay on contract longer.
So, I think that strategic shift of where you’re going to get higher-quality candidates is important. Also, looking at your cost structure and automation and AI, and figuring out where you can reduce operational costs, whether that’s back-office admin work, which we’re seeing being done by AI operators right now.
There are tools out there that are literally replacing data entry pretty quickly. And then also looking at the front-end side of this—on the sourcing side and the sales outreach—where can you create automation that’s going to reduce the admin overhead you need to drive your business forward.
And then, lastly, a huge focus on building the talent communities, building it in your database, and making sure that you are focused on curating the talent because I think, in the long run, that is the one thing that is going to make your agency unique. It is your database, your talent pool, is one thing that others cannot replicate.
Casey Wagonfield: That’s a good point. One thing you mentioned, and one of the big trends in the report, was that agencies are prioritizing quality hire over speed, and the quality of hire is also rising fast as a key metric for measuring recruitment.
David Folwell:
It is single-handedly one of the most effective ways to drive profitability.
So, if you are putting higher-quality candidates on the job, they’re going to redeploy at higher rates. They’re going to work longer. We’ve done research with different customers, and it holds true that candidates in your database, along with the referral candidates, are going to be more profitable on average than any other hire, which is why the quality counts.
And then I also think if you want to retain your customers, if you want an HR person to come back to you, you can’t put somebody bad on the job. I was at a sales summit recently where they asked everybody in the room: “You get a job order for 20 of these positions, are you going to fill it as fast as you can? Or are you going to make sure everybody that you put on contract, like even if you can’t fill it all the way, are the right people?
And two years ago, it would’ve been: “Get ’em on site, butts in seats. Let’s do it.” And now everybody in the room agreed, we’re not going to fill it all the way. We’d rather go short and have it be good people than have it be the wrong person that makes it so we don’t get to work with them again.
Rob Geist: So, one of the three key growth drivers in the report is around boosting efficiency with tech. And I know we’ve kind of already touched on this a little bit, but what are all the tools that you’re seeing that are making the biggest difference right now?
David Folwell: AI obviously is having a huge impact in just reducing operational costs. We’re seeing it on the outreach side where it’s doing prescreening. There are a lot of AI interview tools that I think are cutting costs down pretty significantly at the initial stages. But you still need a human in the loop at the later stages.
Also, one of the cooler tools that’s out there is the back-office side of it, where it’s literally having an AI operator control your computer and do the manual entry from one platform to another. So instead of building an integration, if you have somebody copying and pasting from one sheet to another sheet, you can now do that with an AI operator.
Mobile platforms are such a core element of agency strategy. I spent an entire summer studying channel strategy. And the thing that I learned is that when you have channel-to-market, you have something that you can repeat, scale, and grow.
And I believe that mobile platforms for staffing agencies allow you to keep your community in one spot and allow you to send push notifications or text notifications. If you have an engaged mobile strategy, I think that’s critical. I think that the referral platforms, or any talent network platforms, that allow you to grow your community over time and grow your database are also going to be critical.
And then recruiting automation. It’s a must-have. If you are a larger staffing firm, you need some form of automation that allows you to do simple outreach that used to take manual effort. And I think that that is an area where, if you’re not doing some form of automation, it’s going to be hard to operate on the scale that you want to. It’s going to be hard to grow in the future.
Casey Wagonfield: And you mentioned job boards earlier. I know that’s a major theme. And they’ve been a go-to for agencies for a while now, but we’re starting to see a shift. Why do you think some firms are intentionally moving away from them? In your opinion, does leaning too hard on job boards end up hurting the business in the long run?
David Folwell: I think so. Anecdotally, the agencies I talked to may not be in the same growth state, 99% of their placements are coming from job boards. And I think the problem with that is if you are getting all of your talent from a job board, your customers have access to that job board. Your competitors have access to that job board. Indeed is going to your customers and working with them, too, and trying to help them optimize it.
So, you’re literally fishing from the exact same pool as everybody else. And when you’re fishing from the same pool, it’s hard to say why somebody should work with you. So, when you’re trying to get net new sales, one of the tactics we’re seeing in the industry right now is people saying, “When you work with us, you get access to this talent pool.”
And I have a personal experience with that. I was hiring a developer last November, and one of our customers was an IT staffing firm. I reached out to him to let him know, and he is like, “It’s pretty easy to find people right now. You can use a job board.”
And I was like, “Well, you know what? I want to run a little competition. I want to see who can win. And, I posted on LinkedIn, got over 300 different applicants for the job in one week. I’m going to go on a little ADHD moment here, but a sign of the times, that exact same job posting, three years ago, got eight applications; this time, it got over 300. Same job posting, same pay rate, same role. So that gives you a little idea of what’s going on in the market.
And secondarily, a third of those applicants didn’t even have the required skills for the role. So, I found myself just weeding through so much junk. Meanwhile, I talked to my buddy at the staffing firm, and he is like, “I don’t even have to post. I’ve got five people I could text right now. I’ve already vetted, curated. I know who you need.”
So that I think that is where staffing agencies have the ability to differentiate their services and to add value. So, by saying when you work with us, we’re not going to go to job boards; we’re going to go to our talent pool. We’re going to go to the community of pre-vetted, pre-selected people that we know are good. And when you work with us, you’re choosing quality, and you’re saving all this effort of vetting through and risking working with somebody that you just found on a job board.
And then additionally, this goes back to the quality side of it again, but the show-up rates increase. When you put somebody on contract, you want to know that they’re going to show up. And if you can improve the odds of show-up rates by 30%, 40% – which you can – if they’re people you’ve put on assignment before, then you are going to end up looking better and just being a better partner with the people you’re working with.
I think is so insane to me is staffing firms spend all of these years building these huge databases. They’re like, “I’ve got like a million contacts in my database I could reach out to.” And then you ask “Well, how are you sourcing talent?” They’re like, “Oh, our recruiters go to Indeed or Vivint for most of it.”
So, just really looking at what is in your database, what’s in your ATS, who’s in it, how are you keeping it clean? How are you keeping that data aligned with where you need to go strategically?
And then we’re seeing some of the smarter people in the room talking about how they’ve segmented all of the different job titles in their ATS, so they know exactly who they have in there. And then they’re using that as part of their go-to-market and actually advertising this is how many of this job title we have in our database.
So, when you’re thinking about sales, think about strategically what you already have. That’s an asset that you can leverage and use as a unique value proposition when you’re going to market. Some of our customers, on the Staffing Referral side, they’ve started promoting, “We have this ambassador network of 10,000 people who are referring to us. So, when you come to us, we’re going to go get referrals, we’re going to get people that aren’t on job boards. So that’s another way that you can leverage the data and ATS to be strategic about how you’re going to market.
Casey Wagonfield: That used to drive me crazy. You get a big order, and the first thing is, let’s go get some yard signs and go post this online.
And then you run a search, and there are a hundred thousand candidates within 10 miles in your database. Just because they didn’t interview last week doesn’t mean they’re not interested. Let’s use this database to our advantage.
David Folwell: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Rob Geist: So, to summarize some of the things that you’ve said, it seems like the agencies that are growing fastest are the ones that are optimizing their talent database.
They’re working closer with the talent that they already have versus constantly searching for new. You’ve even talked about the lifetime value of talent and how optimizing that is key to an agency’s success. Is there anything else that you can add to that?
David Folwell: Candidate lifetime value is a metric that I think will be commonplace in staffing over the next few years.
It’s not new to SaaS or in the software-as-a-service world. We talk about customer lifetime value, and you look at customer lifetime value by the source, where you got that customer. That same model, that same methodology, applies to candidates. So, you look at: What is the gross profit on a placement by source?
How much did I make from the people on Indeed, on Vivint, from referrals, from our database? And you look at all of the hours worked over the lifetime of that talent.
The one example that I think will help this hit home: What do you think the lifetime value of a Starbucks customer is? How much gross profit does Starbucks make from a customer on average?
Rob Geist: Well, it depends. If you’re talking about my wife and kids who go every day, it’s going to be a heck of a lot more than the guy who stops at the airport and grabs a Caramel Frappuccino on occasion. What? 5K?
Casey Wagonfield: I’d say, 12,000.
David Folwell: Oh, that’s pretty good. So, $14,099 on average. That’s what they’re making in gross profit. So, the average customer visits Starbucks 2,820 times over the course of 20 years. And that’s just the average.
I’m sure they’ve segmented that out, and they know if you are this person, you’re going to be worth 40,000, and they’ve started to look at that strategically. And I think in staffing, if you could start to apply those same kinds of consumer-level strategies to candidate acquisition and candidate lifetime value, I think you can get a lot more strategic, and you can find ways to grow even in a down market.
Casey Wagonfield: I love that analogy.
And with everything we’ve talked about, where do you think AI fits into all of this? And are you seeing it actually move the needle anywhere yet? And if an agency is just starting to dip their toes into AI, where do you think they should start?
David Folwell: I think the back-office automation is low-hanging fruit. A lot of us are unaware of how that exists or that it can be done. There are ways to do things more efficiently with the new operator tools. Also, the most prevalent and probably the one that I think is going to change the world pretty quickly is the screening side of it. So, whether it’s qualifying the candidate, screening them in or out, and giving you some initial assessment, that has already moved really aggressively.
There’s one platform that said they were going to do 2 million AI interviews for the Fortune 500 this year. And it’s just pre-screening, but that’s a huge impact.
And then there’s AI matching. Today, you can get better quality matching leads, you know, and we’ve been doing HubSpot for a while, but now it’s on the candidate side. It’s what is the candidate match to this job? How well do they fit? And that’s something that is just a no-brainer when it comes to AI today. Going forward, I think we’re going to see it kind of level up the same way that somebody would in their career where it’s going to get into automated strategic coaching and enterprise sales enablement.
I’m using it in ways that I never imagined I would, and it’s changing my life pretty drastically. Way down the line, the new concept that I think sounds crazy to many people right now, but is going to be a thing, is the concept of a digital twin.
The idea is that you are going to make a twin of yourself, or of your clients, whatever it may be, so that you can engage with and interact with it as a tested environment. And I would bet money that in the next two years, we’re going to be sending a digital twin to meetings. And it’ll have some constraints on what it can communicate and what it can’t. But I would guess that we’re going to be moving down a path where that’s a reality at some point.
And there are already people doing it with clients, where they’re saying: “Okay, let’s take everything we know about this client and then make a twin.” And it’s not going to be perfect, but it will create an environment where you can then sit there and practice, sell to it, and work through engagements with that digital twin of your customer.
It’s wild. I’ve been dipping my toes pretty deeply into that already, and it’s really exciting stuff.
Rob Geist: Sounds like the future is now
David Folwell: It sounds nuts, but it’s happening. I just replicated my voice, I sent it to my dad last night. He’s like, “I can’t tell.”
Casey Wagonfield: Not to get too far off track, but we recorded an episode where we briefly talked about AI making a difference. What if the CEO of your agency sent a video to every person who was hired, and it’s AI, right? But they’ll say their name, welcome to the family, etc. It’s a different experience for the candidate.
And you’re right – when you look at the back office and using AI there, that’s another thing we’ve touched on: using AI to do the busy work so you can focus on revenue-generating activities.
David Folwell: It’s crazy. I’ve had interactions with AI where I was like: “That’s better than a junior salesperson would’ve had, because it had all the answers. Sat there, listened, and repeated everything back to me.” So, it’s a weird place that we’re moving into with AI.
Rob Geist: So, in the report, it says the third biggest growth driver is having a more formal referral program developed. The report even says that fast-growing agencies are 52% more likely to use referral software. So, it sounds like having a staffing referral platform is important.
David Folwell: Absolutely!
Casey Wagonfield: If an agency wants to start building a better referral program, where should they even begin? What makes a referral program successful?
David Folwell: The basics of it are: standardize it, make sure everybody knows the talk track, and make sure that it’s very easy to communicate. Everybody understands the bonus amounts. Our data shows that if you use a dual-sided referral bonus, meaning a give and a get, that’s a 29% lift in referral placements.
Incentivize your team. It’s easy to go to Indeed or Vivint; it’s easy to go to the job boards, and they’re saying, “Well, we know that these are worth 40% more. So, let’s give our recruiters a little bit more credit when they get referrals through the door.”
So, we have people who are incentivizing the recruiter team to align incentives internally. And then, obviously, when you are ready to scale it, software is always there to automate and take it to the next level.
The one caveat: Sometimes people haven’t figured out how to do referrals. They say, “We don’t get any referrals. We need referral software.” But if you aren’t getting any referrals, sometimes that’s because of your reputation. And so, it is important to know what your reputation is.
The better your reputation, the higher your NPS, the better you’re doing referrals today, the more impactful referral software and referral automation will have on your referral program. This is a little bit counterintuitive because we also hear people say: “We’re doing great. We don’t need to do anything.” Well, you’d probably benefit the most out of anybody because you have it in place and working without automation.
Rob Geist: So, what should the staffing agencies look for when they’re evaluating referral programs or automation to help these programs?
David Folwell: One of the key areas, from a candidate perspective, is that you want to make sure that the talent has visibility into the status of their referrals so they can see what’s going on. It gamifies the process. We had one candidate who had forty-three $500 payouts. We had another one, an Avionté customer, where they had a candidate who did a bulk job order for 30 roles, and the guy got 14 of them for himself. He just texted all of his friends.
So, when you have software that gives candidates the links and the ability to share and the visibility into seeing what’s going on, some people will look at it as a side hustle. We’ve had bloggers pick up links and almost look at it like affiliate marketing. So, that can be impactful.
We just did a case study with Partners Personnel. They cut their job board spend by 18% last year, which is pretty amazing. So, they’re not only getting higher quality candidates and getting people to stay on contract longer, but they also straight up cut job board spending because they were reducing their dependency on job boards.
Healthcare staffing… we have a company care team that grew last year by 12% in the travel nursing space, which is amazing. The industry saw somewhere around a 37% reduction on average in healthcare staffing. And they were up 12%. And they did that by, again, shifting their focus to referrals.
Making sure that when people choose to work with them, it’s because they like the people they’re working with. So, they’ve taken that S&B approach of ‘our advantage is our people,’ and they’re really focused on that. And then they’re layering in automation so that their people can have more actual conversations with people.
Rob Geist: So, if someone’s listening and they think: Okay, I want to grow like the agencies that you’re talking about in the report, where do you think they should start? What are the first changes they should make?
David Folwell: We’ve talked about this before, but I think showing up with solutions that maybe they haven’t thought of, like SimpleVMS. Walking in and being like: “Look. We want to help you do something better. I’m not here to just try to sell you. I’m here to give value to you to make sure that you can approach this more strategically.” So, I think looking at that from that angle as well.
If you are on the smaller side, I think you need to niche down as far as possible and be a specialist. I think that’s critical. Focus on what your advantage is, whether it’s flexibility, agility, or the relationship.
If you’re on the larger side, I think that you’ve got to dig deep into your data, get more strategic with the approach, and make sure that you are just smart about how you’re sourcing talent.
And I think looking at your talent pool as your competitive moat in the future—the more that you nurture it, the more that you understand it—the bigger impact it’s going to have in the long run.
Rob Geist: So, David, if you had to sum it all up, based on everything we discussed, any final thoughts or advice you want to give leaders in the staffing agency to look ahead?
David Folwell: I think we’re at an inflection point from a technology perspective, from a value chain perspective. The way that agencies have historically operated and how they’ve created value is changing. And I strongly believe that the moat in the future is going to be the data that you have, the talent community that you’ve built, and your access to that, and how you’re delivering it. That is something you need to look at. The way you are leveraging tech to keep costs down and focus on differentiating your brand in a meaningful way.
And so one thing we didn’t talk about deeply, but I think that your brand, your digital presence, your mobile experience, all of these things tie together to create a candidate experience that’s going to make it so they’re choosing you over someone else. And it’s going to be critical that you are reducing friction, delivering consumer-level experiences, and focusing on the talent community that you built over time.
Rob Geist: David, I really can’t thank you enough for being on Staffing Made Simple. It was a great conversation. Also, I want to thank all of our listeners. If you like what you heard here today, please like, share, and subscribe to our series. We’re available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, as well as on staffing-madesimple.com.
Casey Wagonfield: And if you want to learn more about SimpleVMS, you can visit our website at simplevms.com. Until next time, keep it simple.
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