At the end of the day, revenue is the most important number for any staffing firm. But you can’t drive revenue if your other core metrics aren’t strong — especially candidate and consultant engagement.
That was the issue for MissionStaff, a staffing firm founded in 2003 by Brett Pinto. While MissionStaff has grown to 160 people over the past 15 years, Brett knew they couldn’t reach their next level of growth without solving one core issue: client communications.
“I was getting feedback from both my recruiters and client relationship managers that people just weren’t picking up their phones anymore,” Brett says. “They’d leave a voicemail but calls were rarely returned.”
Brett sought out simply to improve response rates. But by improving engagement, he ended up driving more than $600k in additional revenue in one year.
Using tech to streamline candidate and consultant communications
“I’m old-school,” Brett admits. “I’ve been in the staffing business since the early ‘90’s and always believed the job required tons of phone calls. While I still believe in the power of relationship building through phone conversations and meetings, I’ve seen that our clients and candidates prefer engaging digitally. The culture has changed.”
Brett was initially only looking for a text recruiting solution to improve response rates, but he found Sense while at a staffing conference evaluating texting vendors.
“The Sense product blew me away,” Brett says. “I was just looking for a text messaging tool, but Sense showed me how I could build workflows for delivering touchpoints throughout the lifecycle of consultant engagements,” Brett says. “We could send texts or emails that trigger pre-written messages, and that was a game changer.”
Once MissionStaff implemented Sense, they started to get countless thank you messages because they remembered consultants’ birthdays, or because of the clear instructions they got via text the day before they started a new job.
For most staffing firms, it’s been a while since your consultants sent you a thank you message like that. But the results aren’t just for a warm-and-fuzzy feeling — they translate into real revenue.
Turning engagement into $600k in additional revenue in one year
For recruiters, Sense Messaging has helped them reach candidates at the right place and right time.
“We had a difficult role to fill for a demanding client and were able to quickly identify a candidate in our database, but he was on a train. Because he received our text and replied immediately, we knew he was still available,” Recruiter Josh Wieller says. “That candidate would not have answered his phone given the circumstances and noise. The text worked like a charm.”
MissionStaff has made more placements using Sense Messaging simply because a recruiter was able to reach a candidate who had previously been unresponsive via other channels. For example, one candidate who hadn’t responded in five years to their outreach responded in just ten minutes to a text. Brett estimates that Sense has added at least $600,000 in additional revenue from placements in just their first year on the product.
The additional revenue isn’t the only benefit. MissionStaff has also used Sense Journeys, sequences of email and text messages, that proactively answer consultant questions about where they go on their first day, who their manager is, what the dress code is, and more. As a result, they’ve seen a 30% reduction in the number of issues that have come in from consultants since using Sense.
What could an additional $600k in revenue mean for your staffing firm?
