Today on the Sense blog, we welcome Jeffrey Staats, Head of Marketing at Talent Launch, a nationwide network of independently operated staffing and recruitment firms consisting of community, specialty, and executive recruitment brands, to share how he’s been leveraging the Sense platform to address some of the challenges and opportunities firms are facing during COVID-19.
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This has been a truly unique challenge in that we’re all facing it the same way—things are changing daily and even the best laid business continuity plans couldn’t have prepared us for this. As the first few weeks of the pandemic have unfolded, we’ve been so burdened by the operational needs of the business that for many, strategy has gone out the window. But if all you’re doing is putting out fires, what’s left standing when it’s all over?
We’re operating in uncharted waters with no clear indication of when the journey will end. Between stay at home orders, furloughs, and an uncertain economy, we've had to throw our marketing playbooks out the window and think on our feet to navigate this new world of business. To do that successfully, we've had to become flexible to adapt to changing directions and opportunities by the hour. Our TalentLaunch network was already bought into Sense as a powerful platform for engagement, but with the head-on challenges presented by COVID-19, they’ve doubled-down on Sense as a vital part of our business continuity strategy as well. With an automation and engagement platform like Sense, we’re able to create a competitive advantage for our business.
At TalentLaunch, we’re leveraging Sense on three key areas—business development, internal reporting and controls, and operational engagement for placements. How do we get critical messaging, like work authorization forms, out faster? How can we utilize Sense for quick pivots into new markets and cross-selling, like offering our healthcare brand to all active clients who may need temp checks and healthcare assessments? How do we ramp up our internal controls to ensure the right actions are being taken, even with less people? These have been the critical areas and asks from our staffing brands. And while this has always been important, we're now seeing it as mission critical.
Below I share the top 5 ways TalentLaunch businesses are leveraging the power of Sense during this crucial time as a partner in pivoting quickly, disseminating information faster, and tightening up our internal controls so we have more accurate reporting - which is crucial as we try to forecast an uncertain future.
COVID-19 has increased demand for talent in new verticals and markets that firms may not have traditionally served or have abundant expertise in. With business volume decreasing in many other core businesses, it’s crucial to be able to pivot and target areas of new demand. Industries like mortgage processing, janitorial, payrolling and more are in need of talent quicker than they can possibly fill on their own. Add to that the new needs your current clients may have for workers to conduct temp checks and healthcare assessments, and there’s still a lot of business opportunity out there. Automating outreach to these in-demand verticals is like doubling your sales team without adding any additional work to your already busy team.
Unfortunately, for every client experiencing a hiring increase, there will be at least one being forced to scale down. It’s critical to your candidates and clients to disseminate status changes rapidly and at scale. Not only that, but your candidates will want to know what else is available to them if their assignment comes to an unexpected end. With Sense’s integration, TalentLaunch is automatically triggering these communications as soon as there’s a change to the assignment status in our ATS. Tracking and maintaining these internal status updates help furloughed employees and ensure we have accurate tracking and reporting on our side.
With the constantly evolving employment landscape right now, clients are more concerned than ever about finding reliable support. You can help calm those fears (and keep your prospects engaged) by proactively sending out messages to confirm that you’re still operating as usual and let them know you’re just a call, text or email away if they need anything. This is a great touch for any client, but is especially impactful for those experiencing an overwhelming increase in demand.
Every industry has its stressors, but essential businesses are under unprecedented pressure. From healthcare to insurance and grocery to production, it’s more important than ever to keep a pulse on your clients that are responsible for the nation's most critical workforce. With regularly scheduled check-ins, NPS surveys and sentiment analysis, you can take quick, actionable follow-up while letting your clients know you care.
If you're anything like us, your ATS is probably packed with talent—from qualified dormant candidates to alumni and silver-medalists, there’s a lot going on in there. We spend a ton of time and money finding the best available talent, but for one reason or another we can lose touch with them over time. With an ATS full of tens of thousands (or even millions!) of candidates, it’s understandable that recruiters don’t have the time to search through a bunch of old records. By automating re-engagement outreach to your database, you can expand your candidate pool, and keep your job-board spend low during tight times, without adding any additional time consuming tasks to your recruiters’ day.
It’s never been more important for businesses to foster real human connection, and that’s been our focus in innovating our tech stack over the last year and a half. By bringing on products like Sense that save time, reduce errors, increase engagement and just create a better experience, we allow our recruiters and sales teams to get back to doing what they're good at—build relationships.
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As veterans of the staffing industry, we at Sense understand how much even small shifts in the economy can have major impacts throughout staffing. The COVID-19 outbreak is creating unforeseen challenges to business operations throughout the world. At Sense, we’ve seen unprecedented and creative usage of both our Engage automation and Messaging two-way texting platform to tackle these challenges, ease manual and administrative burden, increase communication with clients, talent and employees, stay connected when your community needs to hear from you the most, and rapidly pivot strategies. For specific communication examples or to see Sense in action, reach out to our team to learn more today.
