David Folwell: All right. Thank you everybody for joining us. Sorry, we're running a couple minutes late having a couple of technical difficulties, but just getting up and running. I'm super excited to be joined today by the diversity team. And excited to have all of you guys here, a couple of housekeeping items while people are filtering.

David Folwell: If you have any questions at all, drop them into the chat on the side, we will answer them as we're going, or if we can't, we'll try to get to them at the end of the webinar. And also second, just thank you guys all for being here. Super excited to have the opportunity to talk with you guys and very grateful to have Jim and Amy on the line with us.

David Folwell: So today we're going to be talking about how you can source passive, improve the candidate experience and increase recruiter productivity with automated referral management software. I, again, am grateful to be joined by Jim . Jim Yoshimura who's the Chief Operating Officer of Diversant, and Amy LaScola, who is the VP of Enterprise Delivery at Diversant.

David Folwell: I am David Falwell, President founder of Staffing Referrals, and super excited to be talking with all of you today. To kick things off, Jim, if you would just give us a little bit of background on Diversant. 

Jim Yoshimura: Yes. So first of all, Diversant, I guess it would say was a $250 million staffing company you know, but in December, late December of last year, we were acquired by ACS solutions.

Jim Yoshimura: So together, I think it makes us the fourth or fifth largest IT staffing company in the country now. So we're super excited because we can take some of the things we've been doing, like our progress with Staffing Referrals and hopefully roll it out across all of ACS.

Jim Yoshimura: As they're just as excited about the platform because they know that referrals are just as important to them as they were to us. 

David Folwell: Awesome. And with that, what I'm excited about today is the diversity team working with them over the last year and a half has been just a case study in best case example of how to implement, how to integrate, how to bring on new software and also just been a joy to work with.

David Folwell: And it's pretty great to see the growth that they've had over the years as well. So real brief on sorry. 

Jim Yoshimura: Thank you for the compliment. Can really, we just messed up a lot of things. So we went well. 

David Folwell: So it was real, real quick on who Staffing Referral is. We are a software that helps you source, engage in place, scan it faster.

David Folwell: If you're having trouble finding qualified candidates, we can help. We are the number one automated referral management platform designed for staffing agencies and we work across all specialties in the staffing industry. Just to show you a couple examples of who we work with, we're with large and small agencies.

David Folwell: And really what we've found is if you make referrals easy, you automate the promotion and you incentivize the referral bonus. You will in fact, get more referrals from your account. Tell them. So with that, we're going to start a little bit with the result first. This is during conversations with Jim, he's been talking about what the results have been with the platform.

David Folwell: And maybe if you want to just comment on this Jim. Kind of what, you know, the last year and a half. 

Jim Yoshimura: Yeah. You know, I think ultimately you know, we believe in these things in terms of their value to the enterprise, but it's always important, right. To actually measure things, to measure the results that you've gotten versus the investment that you've made and so far, and we feel like we're just getting started and tip of the iceberg.

Jim Yoshimura: We have so far our investment return to investment ratio. 40:1. And so we're very pleased with that. And I think there's locally going to go up from here because we're just getting started in our journey of understanding how to take all these great candidates we're getting and turn more and more of them into placements.

David Folwell: And with that. So thank you for that comment, gentlemen, it's been great working with you over the last year. Today what we're going to talk about as we jump into kind of the meat of the presentation, trying to talk about what has changed in staffing over the last few years then we're gonna talk about how diversity has increased recruiter productivity and improved the candidate experience. And then lastly, we're talking about why referrals are the most valuable specifically for Diversant. And then also we're going to go through some of the steps that Amy and Jim recommend when implementing new staffing software.

David Folwell: So, first of all, when it comes to what has changed in staffing as most of you know, where you find talent has changed, how you find talent has changed over the years. I mean, we used to be in person, then it was newspaper and mail than online job boards. And now there is not an agency that we talk with that doesn't have some form of omni-channel sourcing strategy in place.

David Folwell: And when we talk about the omni-channel sourcing strategy or the newer sourcing strategies, we're seeing agencies shift from job boards towards the referrals, from their website to social and from cold calls to more automation and programmatic. And really what it comes down to is the old way or the historical way is focusing a hundred percent on the job board, which job boards are always going to continue to be part of the industry, part of the business and a key part of where you find talent.

David Folwell: The one issue with job boards is when you source from a job board, you are finding the exact same talent and going after the same solid talent pool. That your competitors are, it is the, you know, not, it's not passive talent. It's only people that are out there looking for the job, which isn't always the best candidate.

David Folwell: And what we're seeing, a lot of agencies are coming to us and saying, Hey, we recognize we've built. You know, we spent the last 10 years or 20 years building this talent pool. We have this amazing database of candidates and we have these great relationships. How do we get more placements from the relationships and database we currently have?

David Folwell: And part of that is by leveraging your unique network to drive referrals. And get candidates that can activate passive candidates that you wouldn't have found otherwise. So with that, one of the stats that kind of was astounding to me when I first started, but it was from staffing hub last year. Is that on average?

David Folwell: This is across all agencies of all sizes. But on average agencies are spending $112,000 per year with Job Boards. And yet I would guess everybody in this presentation would agree with me. That referrals are still the most cost effective and differentiated source of qualified talent. And we, there's a few reasons for that.

David Folwell: One of them is that they can be up to 55% faster to hire. They can increase retention by up to 70% and they can save up to $3,000 versus a traditional job board. And Jim, you had a couple of comments on your belief in referrals. If you just wanted to kind of comment on this. 

Jim Yoshimura: Yeah, I think I think it's everybody probably participating that works in the staffing industry knows this is why do we ask for referrals?

Jim Yoshimura: Right. We asked for referrals because somebody we know and hopefully have some confidence in refers to someone they know in any, when people refer a candidate to to affirm or to an opportunity. They're going to refer to people that they believe are going to do a good job, right? It's not just, they have the technical skills necessary, but that they have the attributes right there.

Jim Yoshimura: Their work ethic is good. They're dependable. And they're not going to refer to people who are the opposite of that. So obviously we believe, we all believe that the quality of the candidate is a lot higher. And that's something you don't know when you're just getting to meet somebody or talk to a candidate that you just found in a job board or another social media site that's completely unknown to you, right?

Jim Yoshimura: You don't know the Soft attributes of the candidate, and that's what referrals are all about is improving the quality of the candidate in areas, beyond their technical skills. Amy, I don't know if you want to make a comment about that. 

Amy LaScola: No I can't agree more. I mean, people don't always trust companies when they're talking about themselves.

Amy LaScola: Right. And so it's the voice of the people that are actually out there doing the job and we use the term brand ambassador. And I think that's, what's the big joy of working with David and working with this tool is that we have individuals that are out doing marketing for us besides our marketing department.

Amy LaScola: And that's, we have a great marketing department and she may actually be on this phone. So hello, but bottom line. You know, we know that people out talking about us are actually doing the job and the market is so huge that the candidate is worth more. Right. And it's because our competitors may not have that candidate.

Amy LaScola: And that's, what's been so exciting about working with David and team is getting this, taking this product and kind of making it our own and using it in our own version. And coming up with some great results from it.

David Folwell: I love it and with that. So, we're going to kind of jump in now to kind of the meat of the presentation. One of the first things that Amy and Jim and I have all had conversations around is, you know, why did Diversant decide to implement referral software in the first place? And Jim, if you wanted to kind of kick it off and talk about your thoughts on why you decided to go down this path.

Jim Yoshimura: Yeah, I think, you know, well, this all started up a couple of years ago because we were, you know, from a management standpoint, one day we woke up and said, guess what? We've got to do a better job of drawing driving referrals, because we know those are better quality candidates. And we had done those kinds of things.

Jim Yoshimura: The past four. And honestly, in other companies I've worked for, we always had similar initiatives or campaigns to drive more referrals. The problem. We were talked about though, is that they were just that they were campaigns. Sorry about that. Hold on one second. My dog is outside. Let me put them out.

Amy LaScola: I think what Jim was headed for was we basically bought mine. We're trying to figure out how to take our referrals up a notch, I guess, is what really it boils down to. And so we looked at a couple of different software platforms. To try to help our initiative. And when we looked at where our source of hire was actually coming from, our source of fire was truly coming from the job boards from some of our social media platforms and the referrals.

Amy LaScola: And redeployments, we're not in the top. And so our goal was to figure out from a source of hire, how do we get referrals and redeployment in that top 10, knowing that the referred candidate is such a differentiator. And so installing this and putting this program on the platform and trying to solve the problem of, we don't want our source of hiring.

Amy LaScola: Referrals to be 10th or 11th. We want it to be in the top five and for Q4 of 2021 and into Q1 of 2022, we are seeing that referrals and redeployment are taking fourth and fifth spot for source of hire and sometimes even higher in past quarters. And that's. By using this product and managing this product.

Amy LaScola: So, Jim, I kind of dumped in while you were taking, 

Jim Yoshimura: Thank you. Sorry. One of the perils of working from home. So he's safely in another room at this point in time. I just wanted to add that when we all started this program, one of the, one of the important things, once we said, you know, how have we done this in the past before?

Jim Yoshimura: And. I can't tell you the number of times I've worked for companies where we said referrals were important. So what do we do? We bring a committee together made of a lot of different people from across the organization. We bring out the old PowerPoint slides that we used to use. The last time we looked at this, we tuned up the slides.

Jim Yoshimura: We train our recruiters and salespeople. Maybe we even create some incentives for them. We have campaigns and we get all excited about referrals. Get better for a while. And then, you know, over the course of the next six months or so, our attention starts to fade and, you know, we're onto something else.

Jim Yoshimura: That's just as important, you know, if the business that time. So we want it, we just really felt it was important that what we did with driving more referrals became really part of the day-to-day business. And so it was part of our standard process instead of just another campaign or initiative that we paid attention to for some period of time, until we got our focus, went into something else.

Jim Yoshimura: So we said, okay, if we're going to make it part of the day-to-day process, that means we also. buying some software, right? That helps automate the processes. So that many of these things that we had to rely upon people manually pay attention to become automatic and become really ingrained in how we do business.

Jim Yoshimura: And that really drove us to go find a platform. There were some other reasons, too, in terms of solving problems with keeping track of payments, right. That always has been a problem with candidates before they would say, I refer candidates to you. You know, a year later one might say, Hey, look, I see they got placed six months ago, but I never got paid.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. And we just lost track of those kinds of things too. And so part of this as well is all about, you know, not just automating the flow of it, but making sure that we make this all visible to the candidates and the ambassadors who are referring to the candidates so they can see the status of the candidates.

Jim Yoshimura: So if they've been submitted, they've been interviewed, had they been placed and when they should expect payment and that visibility and transparency, I think lends a lot of credibility to them. Candidates and two ambassadors wanting to go ahead and submit the referrals to us because they see where things are.

Jim Yoshimura: They can track it down. If there's a problem, there's people they can contact to make sure they get paid. And so those are some of the big reasons why we went for an automated solution. 

David Folwell: Yeah. There's those great comments, gentlemen and Amy as well. And one thing. We are all the time as you know, staffing agencies are like, oh, well we do this big push once a year.

David Folwell: And once a year we get a ton of referrals. You know, Q2, we do this push and referrals go through the roof and then they die off the rest of the year. And part of what our platform has helped with a Diversant in is really just standardize it and make sure that there's communication going out at automated marketing and program and content going out at all times.

David Folwell: And one of the key things. I strongly believe that in the next three years, somewhere right now, it's a small adoption for you know, digital referrals. And I would guess within the next three years, somewhere between 70 to 90% of staffing agencies will have some form of digital referral program or automated referral management platform in place, just because it was kind of the modern way of doing business and really the reason for that and what we're hearing and what we see is because.

David Folwell: Traditional referral or an analog referral relies on what we call the mental Rolodex. If I were to ask any of you on this call right now, you know, who do you know that wants to work at staffing referrals? You're going to think. All right, well, who do I know that lives in Denver is looking for a job right now.

David Folwell: And once we're at a tech company and usually at best people can come up with one to three names. And what we do is we're going to give every single person in your network a link, a unique link that they can go out and share online so that you access their entire digital network. And the story that gentleman named me, I've heard a couple of times, but as a good friend of mine that I worked with that I knew 40 years ago.

David Folwell: It was working for a healthcare staffing agency that was using our product. And during the product testing days, I just asked, Hey, take your unique links shared on Facebook. See what happens. She posted on Facebook, another ER, travel nurse supplied through the link. And I was like, you know, a cool product that was supposed to get a referral.

David Folwell: But then I started digging in a little bit and I asked her why didn't you refer your friend? There's a $500 bonus. And the recruiter asked you for a referral. Why did that name not come up and she responded that she didn't know that person's email address or phone number and that they were just Facebook friends.

David Folwell: They worked together six months ago. And that's where the light bulb went off in my head. And I realized by giving people this unique link, by giving them a digital network, you are going to get referrals that you would never get by asking directly. You could have asked Mallory a hundred times for that referral job's name's never coming up, but because we have the link and access to the digital network, you're reaching talent.

David Folwell: You wouldn't have otherwise. David 

Jim Yoshimura: And I can jump into that's a great point because the other thing is that if you go to a recruiter and say, Hey, we need to get more referrals. They reached out to their network. However many people that might be, and they send an email and they say, I'm looking for referrals for the skillset.

Jim Yoshimura: Now, if I go back to that same recruiter a month later and say, Hey, we need to keep guessing for more referrals. They're going to the same group of people. They went there a month ago. Well, that same group of people that they're going to for referrals, probably aren't going to generate any different candidates than they might've generated a month before.

Jim Yoshimura: So, you know, part of what we're trying to accomplish with this is to increase the flow of people that we were asking for referrals from, right. That we had some relationship with. So how do we make that? So there's a constant steady flow of new brand ambassadors. You know, the term that Amy coined, who would find us referrals as opposed.

Jim Yoshimura: Going back to the same group of people, time and time again, who really weren't going to give us any different answers than they gave us the first time. 

David Folwell: Awesome. I love that. And that is a key component of it as well. And then one thing I was thinking about is how many people in your LinkedIn network or your Facebook friends do, you know, are actually looking for jobs.

David Folwell: And how many actually are looking for a job. There's quite a discrepancy there just in terms of what we know is active and what actually exists. So with that, we're gonna jump to the next slide here. And Jim, I know you had some criteria and. How, when you started going out and looking at who you're going to partner with and how you're going to select it, what you needed to be in place, if you want to talk to, 

Jim Yoshimura: I think the biggest thing is we're small.

Jim Yoshimura: All the platforms were automated, but a key was integrating with our ATS, right? Because so much of this information is contained in our ATS. We've got to get these candidates back to our recruiters, right? We need to be able to record the fact that the candidate came in because of the referral program and track the progress.

Jim Yoshimura: That's back to the referrals platform. So it was critical that the platform be already integrated or could be integrated to our ATS. Right. Which was Jobdiva. W we want to certainly accompany that was focused on referrals and it wasn't just, you know, an afterthought. Right. So that was important too, because you know, that meant that they would have a bevy of customers that were constantly improving the product.

Jim Yoshimura: And then most importantly, we wanted a certain kind of philosophy of the partner, which was a company. That would partner with us, right. To help us accomplish our goals. No piece of software meets all of our needs out of the box. And so we knew it was important that we'd have to be able to tweak it here and there and work with the company to help integrate it and to build the solution right out of the technology components, the sell, those were all the things we were looking for.

Jim Yoshimura: And you know, thankfully we got were for 

David Folwell: Thanks for this. 

Jim Yoshimura: Well, what's it didn't say it wasn't a stroll, David, you know,

David Folwell: The other component, which I just think is interesting probably for this audience is just, how did you guys set up your referral program in terms of the rewards and what does that look like from your guys' perspective and Amy or Jim, if you want to jump in on this. 

Amy LaScola: Yeah. I mean, I think, and honestly, David, we're going to take credit for this, but it was all you buddy.

Amy LaScola: So he came up with a great concept, I think, which is, and I'm going to use a word. That's not really a word. Right. But the referrer and the refinery, maybe not a word both are going to get compensated for the referral. So it's a little bit different than a normal referral process. And we did that to just honestly make it look a little different.

Amy LaScola: And from that. It actually, I don't know if it gamifies it or what you want to call it, David, but it does make it a little bit more fun for the candidate to be referred in and also getting a bonus. And so it encourages them to go out and be brand ambassadors for us. And I know you, you joke around a lot, and, that I love to use that brand ambassador term, but it is such a big thing for me because you think about all our recruiters and all our sales team and you and I and obviously David, you know, really talking about Diversant waht we do.

Amy LaScola: This is now at another 1500, 1600 people out talking about us and being our marketing arm. And so you get them into the system, you get them feeling like it's a little bit of a gamification and they get excited about it. And they're referring some more folks in. So really, you know, the joy of setting up our program.

Amy LaScola: And I also wanted to mention on the last slide, David, where you showed the. Pages, those are all customizable. And so I speak a lot about your brand and it's not just about the name Diversant but it's the recruiting brand and the recruiting brand that you're setting up. So you can see on this screen, like Cody Fisher recruiter, you can actually do more customization there.

Amy LaScola: You can add a quote and you can add some things. Personalizes the experience, which is a big thing. When it comes to recruiting, it shouldn't be a transaction. It should be a relationship event. And I think this makes it feel like more of a relationship than a transaction. I'm using this platform.

Amy LaScola: And also because they're able the automated integrate. They're able to see when someone is referred to how they're coming through the process. And so I feel like I work for Diversant, but I'm a big, huge fan of this platform. They're like, I work for you too, David, because it has created quite a buzz for us within our organization, as well as just watching our referral numbers go up has been super exciting.

David Folwell: Awesome. And Amy has mentioned the dual-sided. Just a quick note on that is like the psychology behind shifting from just paying the ambassador or the, you if I were to refer Amy over and I get paid out, is it really takes it from being kind of a selfish thing where I'm making money, referring my friends in to being a win-win where both the applicant and the referral applicant and the ambassador get paid out.

David Folwell: And what it does is it increases the likelihood that it's going to get. So if I know that I'm giving my friends something, then I don't feel bad posting that on social media. If I know I'm just making money off of their action, it's a little bit less likely that I'll share it out there. And that's something regardless of the software you use that you can actually implement and highly recommend.

David Folwell: Dual-sided referral bonuses 

Amy LaScola: and David takes credit. That's not something in my very long staffing career that I've ever heard of. So you need to own credit for that. And we are doing a baseline recommendation. 

Jim Yoshimura: Well, and it's really 75% goes to the refer, the brand ambassador and 25% goes to the candidate and it gives the candidate a little bit of incentive, right.

Jim Yoshimura: To respond as well, too. So there is that vector. 

David Folwell: Yeah. And at one point to that gem, we actually hear that we'll give the applicant an incentive to respond, and then it also gives their friend a reason to say, Hey, I saw you applied. Are you going to take the job? What if you do, what are we going to do with our bonuses?

David Folwell: You want to go on a trip together and kind of move it down the funnel while. 

Jim Yoshimura: Well, it's not that big of a bonus. It wouldn't be that much of a trip, like

David Folwell: a road trip, you know, six 

Jim Yoshimura: flags, 

David Folwell: definitely. So, jumping to the next category let's talk a little bit about recruiter, pro productivity and automation. I know we've done quite a bit of automation on the back end here. Amy, how would you like to kind of discuss this. Well, 

Amy LaScola: I'll also say that we got kind, creative David, right?

Amy LaScola: So we were trying to come up with different ways to use the product and the platform. And it became working and partnering with my marketing group and saying, how do we target some of these brand ambassadors? Right? So we've got this great group that is bringing individuals into us. Can we look at them by skill set and do specific marketing campaigns for them?

Amy LaScola: And we started doing some just referral marketing on top of this platform. Kind of marketing our jobs to our brand ambassadors and hoping that they will then take it and put the links out and do the things that we're asking them to do. And so we've had a great return on that also, you know, I think the biggest thing, and I pulled the top 10 recruiters and what I mean by top 10, as they have the most degree ambassadors.

Amy LaScola: They have the most referral leads and they have the most placements from the product. And I basically just said, why do you love this product? Right? And so a lot of it was the automated features that they don't have to actually go out, click the buttons, do the things a lot of the work is being done on the backend for them.

Amy LaScola: And they're just netting. The reason. And so productivity wise, obviously we're, you know, we're making more placements because of the tool and the recruiters feel like it's something they're having to do, that they don't have to actually click the button to do things right. It's being done for them. And so that automated referral marketing is a really big deal and our brand ambassador.

Amy LaScola: We've actually, you know, sent some diverse swag out to our top rim brand ambassadors, because you can actually see on the product who's your top brand ambassadors and we've got ambassadors, they're referring 20, 25 candidates to us. And so that to me is they bought into it, right? They're a big believer.

Amy LaScola: And so we were trying to find a way to compensate them. And I always say there's a weakness in every program. Our opportunity for improvement is making sure that we're highlighting those brand ambassadors and doing more for them. You know, maybe even going into the market and taking them out for lunch and doing those types of things, because we haven't done that.

Amy LaScola: And so I'll say we're really good at this, but I still see that's the tip of the iceberg that we actually can do more. 

David Folwell: Yeah. And I think you guys have done just an excellent job of configuring the platform. I mean, you even had recruiters going out there who were configuring their messaging to make it custom to them.

David Folwell: And your adoption for the platform has just been amazing. And with that, I've been having over 1500 brand ambassadors who were actually like, commission only recruiters going out there helping you find talent for the jobs you're looking for. It's been really amazing to watch the success.

Jim Yoshimura: Just going to start at David. 

David Folwell: I completely agree. Completely agree. And another component, this was actually a feature that you guys kind of helped us create was an auto qualification component. One of the things that we've learned with the platform over the years is that recruiters don't need more tasks unless they are meaningful tasks.

David Folwell: They do not need a bigger to do. And sometimes people refer their friends in, but we don't know if their friends are interested yet or not. So one of the activity things we've added in. Auto qualification component. So that if I refer somebody in with just an email, there's a series of emails or texts that will go out to ask that person if they're interested.

David Folwell: And if they are to go ahead and fill out this form, complete the application, at which point we would then pass that information over to the recruiter as just something that's. Meaningful in terms of helping to improve, improve recruiter, productivity. Amy, I know you've even helped kind of build out a team to help with sourcing and making sure that you're going through to make sure all of these people are getting reached out to.

David Folwell: Is there anything else that you would like to add in terms of the qualification process or how that's going on the referral? 

Amy LaScola: No. And I think it's, to me, it's like anything, David, there's a we bought the tool and what is our commitment to the tool? Right? And so we joke a lot of, you know, recruiters always want more and more tools, more job boards, more social media platforms.

Amy LaScola: And we love to invest for our recruiters. I have to say at Diversant, we probably have more tools for our recruiters than anywhere that I've worked in my tenure. And that's exciting if we're making sure that we're getting the true ROI. The product is right. That we're purchasing. And so we've taken some time to just make sure that we have made this product kind of work for us and added some things to it, like the auto qualifier.

Amy LaScola: And even David, I think the other big thing. Before the recruiters will even call a candidate. They're going to see the resume sometimes because sometimes that referred candidate will actually upload their resume. So these are just some customization things that we've done in partnership with David to make the product even fit better for us.

Amy LaScola: And again, I think there is still an opportunity for us to do things differently and continue to enhance the productivity of the product for us. 

Jim Yoshimura: One of the things the auto qualification was about was getting the candidate to identify their primary skill sets. Right. And those aligned with the skill sets, we use our ATS.

Jim Yoshimura: So when the candidate goes in the ATS automatically, it records their primary skill sets. So that way later on when recruiters are searching for candidates, right. It will find those candidates based on. Find me all Java developers in a marketplace or something like that. So I think we're trying to really enhance the value of the resumes coming into the recruiters, by making sure that they really understand what skill sets that candidate has.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. And where they came from. So because the candidate, the recruiters also know what the candidate came in from the referral network. 

Amy LaScola: And that's tied to the campaigns to Jim. So when we have that skill alignment focus, we then can campaign out to those folks to just market our jobs to them. So there's so many reasons behind getting that data on the front end so that we can utilize it to push jobs out to these folks, because we know everybody knows.

Amy LaScola: We need, how many candidates, all the candidates. Right. And so knowing someone came in, that's the Java referral, even if they're not in the shed moving forward, we're still gonna push things to them, hoping that they have someone that they can refer to. You know, it's the six degrees of Kevin bacon, right.

Amy LaScola: David, that we're trying to we're constantly. You know, trying to make the product not only incoming, but outgoing, if that makes sense, outgoings, that we can do outgoing marketing campaigns, we can do outgoing job pushes to specific skill sets that's really has helped us.

David Folwell: And kind of the last part in the recruiter productivity. And I guess there's an overall company kind of in productivity as well. But one of the things that platform has offered is the ability to kind of track manage and scale the entire referral platform. What you're seeing here on the right is kind of a sample of what the admin or a manager dashboard would look like, where you can see all of the top ambassadors, as well as all of the top recruiters.

David Folwell: And Amy, I know this is something that you are probably. I'm more familiar with your dashboard. Is there anything on this that you'd like to kind of explain a little bit more about. 

Amy LaScola: I kind of annoyingly click here probably twice a week, David, probably even more because I want to see the progress and it's so fun to watch that ambassador number grow.

Amy LaScola: And I mean, sometimes you'll see the ambassador number grow like 100 in 2 weeks and you're getting so excited and you're like, that's a hundred more people out there marketing for us. And so we have made this platform really part of our performance management routines when it comes to working with our recruiters.

Amy LaScola: And so we'll open up the we'll open up the dashboard. We'll take a look, but we also, part of our performance management one-on-ones, is to look at how many referrals each recruiter gets, and then talk about. Why did you only get to Jimmy or Shamara? You know, I think that you are actually leveraging the product as much as you should.

Amy LaScola: I think you should be getting at least two a week, right? Not two in a month. And so we're just having those type of conversations from a recruiter productivity perspective. It's part of performance management because this product, if you use it. Now forget, they'll forget the F part. If you don't use it, if you're not posting links, if you're not responding to individuals coming in, then obviously the net result is not there.

Amy LaScola: And I know David, you alluded to, and I don't think I answered you that we did set up a team member to do nothing, but call the referrals the minute they hit our system and just touch base. You know, they may not be the person that's placing this referral, but we wanted to make sure that diverse people reached out because of the referrals.

Amy LaScola: Right. So it might be just a quick touch base. Look over all the jobs that we have, try to make the match and get that candidate if they have not been called out to our group of recruiters. And so I do see that team under Jim's too, allegedly getting even larger because I, I think this product we could, again, I keep telling myself of an opportunity for improvement.

Amy LaScola: It's great, but I do think there's more we can do to leverage the ambassadors and the leads that are coming in 

Jim Yoshimura: The other thing noted here is that above and beyond Amy's recruiters manually deciding to go ask for referrals as people they know and use the platform for that. Because we've integrated it in our workflow, what happens is that every time a successful interview is successfully completed, right?

Jim Yoshimura: This system automatically sends that candidate. Request to become a brand ambassador. So at that point in time, then they get the request that's connected to the particular recruiter that got them the interview. And then you know, they are invited to, you know, refer their friends and refer their coworkers right at that point in time.

Jim Yoshimura: So by doing it that way, we are constantly increasing the flow. As I said earlier, a brand ambassador, right? It's not just the same people who recruit. It goes on over and over because we're always expanding. There are weeks. It might go up to 40 or 50 new brand ambassadors because obviously we asked them to be a brand ambassador before.

Jim Yoshimura: We're not going to do that again. So there's some qualification criteria on it, but we're constantly adding a lot of new brand ambassadors and asking them for referrals automatically. All of this is automated and the candidate comes back. Any potential candidate comes back to the recruiter. So it's this really closed loop system that we've had.

David Folwell: Yep. And Jim, you kind of took the next slide. I mean, one of the things, oh, no, you're great. That one of the things that I've been just impressed with Amy and Jim you know, out of all the partners we've worked with as Jim. Drive to make sure that we are automating all of the touch points and as many of the touch points and also measuring it effectively, which I think you were kind of talking about that there, but I think one of the reasons we've seen the success as you're, you've really kind of mapped out what you needed internally and even pushed us at times to make sure, Hey, this needs to be automated.

David Folwell: This needs to be this place. And here's the metrics we need to hit. Which has been really great from a partnership perspective from our side as well 

Jim Yoshimura: On top of that, if you put too many manual steps in there, then Hey, recruiters are busy talking to candidates and trying to make placements.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. And you know, I think there's too many manual steps involving data entry and systems, then it just doesn't get done consistently. 

David Folwell: Absolutely. Absolutely. I do. The funny story is when we first built this, I think it was two and a half, I guess, three years ago now, but I initially planned on making a tool for recruiters that recruiters could go into every.

David Folwell: And very quickly learned that they do not need another tool to go into. So the entire premise now is that this all happens on the backend based off of a work that either a marketing director or operations person is doing, or just directly through the ATS integration. So it's really just happened through the recruiter's daily workflow without them having to take out any action.

David Folwell: Outside of following up on the roof, the applicant leads, which is one key component. So jumping into the next category in terms of the candidate experience, I know this was kind of a big thing for you guys when you were looking at the platform. One of the areas that we actually came up with this just from interviewing candidates that were working for staffing agencies, asking them about.

David Folwell: They're experienced with referrals. Jim, you mentioned this earlier, but the thing that we heard, and this is actually, I think the first time I heard it was at health, healthcare staffing with travel nurses, as they would say, oh, I referred my friend to this To this agency, six months later, I found out my friends working there.

David Folwell: I reached out for the referral bonus and they told me they had no record of it and they weren't going to pay me. And now they've taken somebody who actually cared enough to refer to their friend. And now that person's pissed off not going to refer anybody and has no interest in ever working with them again.

David Folwell: And isn't talking badly about them. This is kind of part of the platform where we're providing transparency to the candidates and to the brand ambassadors so they can see exactly where their referrals are and the status and how much they're going to earn. And I don't know if Amy or Jim, if you guys had any comments on this as well.

Jim Yoshimura: Oh, does she want to go first? You want me to Amy? I'll say this. So I think in, you know, before we implemented this, what would happen is somebody would get a candidate, you know, get a candidate referral. They'd interviewed the person, they put them in the database. Right. And then maybe they didn't get placed.

Jim Yoshimura: Well, maybe three months later, another recruiter finds the candidate. Right. And they successfully placed them. The problem is that if the recruiter didn't remember to indicate that was a referred candidate, then there's no way to tell. That the candidate was referred by somebody then got paid.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. And so there were a lot of holes in the process. I mean, it would be perfect if the recruiter who placed the candidate was the same one who got the referral, but once they go into that database, there was no way to tell. So one of the things we made sure we did here was that when the candidate comes in from this, from the platform, it's automatically noted that it came from Staffing Referrals.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. And who the brand ambassador was. So we can track that placement. So we'll get the placement. When we actually make the placement, we see that it came from a referral. We can track that back to the ambassador and we've implemented a process to keep track of all those placements and we pay them out.

Jim Yoshimura: I think it's. Maybe 90 days or six days or something like that after the placement. Right. But we can track the whole process. And we don't lose track of the fact that this candidate came from some, an ambassador referred, even though it wasn't the recruiter who originally brought the referral in.

Jim Yoshimura: And that's really important because that's where the gap was before.

Amy LaScola: And I think he covered it, David. I mean, the biggest thing is the truth and transparency, because if you refer somebody and you never hear back, or that person doesn't get a call and that's why we probably, we added the team member to make these phone calls. The candidate may get a phone call from the recruiter and they may get a candidate call from our referral team.

Amy LaScola: Right. And that's okay. And we're saying we're just really excited to talk to you, but that's just one piece. Making sure that through the whole process that they know what's going on and then don't pay a referral is the worst way to kill a referral program. Right. So, you know, we have a lot of steps that go in when we see.

Amy LaScola: The system is, you know, obviously API into our ATS. So the good news is we see it. It's all connected, but we're still auditing it. We're still making sure, just because there's so many different things that can happen where we're working to test for. And I was calling the recruiter. This actually came in as a referral.

Amy LaScola: Because we do want to celebrate true results, truth, and transparency, right. And give that truth and transparency back out to the community. And I'm sure anybody that's in the staffing world, that's ever not paid a candidate or not done a great job with a referral that does come back to haunt you.

Amy LaScola: So I think this process has really helped us make sure that we are being truthful and being truthful and transparent, but we also have management routines that are in place to make sure that. We're paying everyone effectively and that we're following up these, then that's a big part of this, 

David Folwell: yeah. And Amy, to that point, I mean, one of the cool things is that.

David Folwell: It's holding the agency accountable and it's also gamifying in a pretty meaningful way for the ambassador. And what we've heard from a lot of agencies is that they're like the people who are already referring are just now referring more people because they can go in and see, oh, wow, I'm going to earn as much.

David Folwell: Like now I have, I can actually track all of this and see the status. And that status is automatically updated from the ATS. So it's been a cool component for it as well. 

Amy LaScola: It's not just the financial peace and we learn that. And a lot of I've dealt with referrals in my career more than once, believe it or not.

Amy LaScola: And you know, we've talked about, do we even need to pay people? Right. So that's been part of the discussion because just the value of them referring, the person goes to work. They should just be excited for that. Right. Well, I always say money does help. And these situations kind of drive the behavior. So we do believe in the financial aspect and the gamification and the transparency.

Amy LaScola: And I think when you do all of those three things is where you truly have success. 

Jim Yoshimura: I think the other thing too, is that, you know, a lot of times, especially as companies get bigger, right? If you were going to ask six different recruiters, right? What's the referral program and how much are you paying and everything like that, you might get six different answers.

Jim Yoshimura: And we certainly had that challenge too. Right. Yeah, because you'll especially hire a lot of new people, everything like that. But because this is all done through a platform and we use the platform, whether the candidate came in because of the automated interview process or because the recruiter manually asked for the referral, because we use the platform to track in that way, too.

Jim Yoshimura: You know, at the end of the day, there's one place where they see the referral program. Right. And they see the amounts and they see the criteria because we have some criteria on as well, too. But it's all public and it's one place and it's consistent. And we don't have recruiters telling different candidates different things because they misunderstood it or weren't communicated.

Jim Yoshimura: We made a change and, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so that was important too. And you know, the funny thing is that like I said, especially when you work in a bigger company if you're not careful, people started communicating all these different rollsI thought we're in effect.

Jim Yoshimura: It might've been an effect two years ago. They just never got the news of change. Right. 

David Folwell: And to that point, we actually had a client who said that he's like if I didn't get a single additional referral, just to have it standardized and know who I'm paying and what to pay, that alone is worth it.

David Folwell: So it can be pretty valuable on that front. One other component that we do in terms of improving the candidate experience. And this is really on the ambassador's side. So we've just made it as simple as possible for ambassadors to be able to refer their friends in. We give them the ability to refer via email or phone app.

David Folwell: If they do know that information, if they don't know their friends' email, they can connect to Gmail and just grab any of their contacts directly from Gmail to refer. Or as I mentioned earlier, with the story with my friend, they can grab that unique link shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter. They can put in blogs wherever, and they will get credit for every person that applies through their unique link.

David Folwell: So we really just make it as easy as possible for everybody to share out. So I'm jumping in and kind of the second half of this Jim, you have some interesting stats when you're looking at the analysis of redeployed and referrals. I would love to just hear a little bit more about that. 

Jim Yoshimura: Sure. And just FYI, you mentioned the second half, we've only got 15 minutes left.

Jim Yoshimura: So we're going to have to pick the pace up here a little bit, right? So, this was really kind of a separate thing, but one of our, one of our teams did an analysis on candidates that we placed because they were either referred or redeploy candidates, which if you're in this business, you know how important those are too.

Jim Yoshimura: But the commonality between redeployed and referred candidates, is there a much higher quality candidate, the ones you simply find on a job board that you don't know because we know something about these candidates, right? So we went back and looked at our productivity when it was referred or a redeployed candidate versus.

Jim Yoshimura: The rest of the population. And we found out that our success at placing these candidates, I E the submit to fill ratio, right? How many candidates does it take to submit, to make a placement was three to four times less for redeployed and referred candidates than just someone that we just picked off of a social media or a job board, or that we didn't know anything about.

Jim Yoshimura: So basically you're saying you only have to submit one third as many candidates this way as you would normally. 

David Folwell: I think it was pretty powerful. Andin IT we're seeing, you know, placement rates of three to four times of what you would normally see in a job board. And healthcare we're seeing it upwards of 17X, what you would get on a job board.

David Folwell: So it really does depend on the vertical, but you can see that it just saves cam save recruiters quite a bit of time. And then Amy, you had some, I know you had reached out to recruiters to get feedback on the tool. Just love to hear some more comments on that. 

Amy LaScola: And I think, you know, I, again I mentioned it early.

Amy LaScola: I surveyed about 10 of the top 10 producers and the bottom line it's that it's one platform. And so they don't have to worry about going to emails or texts or trying to find the information. Right. It's all contained into one set email. And then, you know, we use harvesters in our ATS. And so the system also is what they refer to, which I thought was a great quote, is that it's actually harvesting referrals for me at all times.

Amy LaScola: I don't have to do anything. I sit back as a recruiter and I let this tool harvest candidates for me. And how awesome is that? Because the referrals, which again, we know are gold in the staffing industry. And so again, the feedback has just been amazing from both the candidate side, as well as the recruiter side.

Amy LaScola: And so the recruiters were telling me too, that the referred candidates and the ambassadors are telling them it's just an easy product to use. And that's what you want. You want something that's simple, they click a button and I, anyone that's on this call, please join my LinkedIn network, and you can see I'm constantly resharing a lot of recruiters' posts. And I've shared some of this morning that have the referral link right at the bottom. So you can kind of see how easy it is. They've added it to their LinkedIn profile. So there, anytime they post they're saying, Hey, refer a friend, this is our program. And so it's constantly being marketed out there, and then they sit back and let the referrals come in.

Amy LaScola: Right. And so that's, I wish I could read 10 quotes, but I think I bore you, but they were pretty amazing. The quotes that I did receive from the recruiter group. 

David Folwell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Amy. And now to the last section, so we were way past the second half there jumped. So we're going to the last section on how you can successfully implement news mapping software.

David Folwell: And I would just, Jim and Amy are experts at this and have done. More thorough, detailed job of this than most clients I've worked with. And I've just been really impressed with working with your team. And I think everybody in the audience could probably learn from you guys on how you did that.

David Folwell: So, if either of you want to kind of jump in here and talk about your process, I think it'd be super valuable for the audience. 

Jim Yoshimura: I would just, I'm going to start this off on an internal Amy and really, you know, I had a team that really went to go find the software alternatives and to present the recruiting team.

Jim Yoshimura: But I'm a big believer that when you want to implement a new technology, it has to be owned by the business that it's there to support. Right. And if they don't buy into the justification for the need it's solving, if they don't buy into the selection process, they've gotta be part of the selection process.

Jim Yoshimura: If they don't buy into it. Using this, making it part of their standard processing and having it be something that's driven by management in Amy's case, from herself to her recruiting directors, down to the staff on a regular basis, then it's going to fail, right? It's either going to fail because you don't implement it correctly, or it's going to fail because it's going to be another fair that you go out and you buy some salt for foreign.

Jim Yoshimura: It sounds good, but because the business didn't own it, the business did it embedded in their process. Right. They were even part of the testing too, which was critical. But you know, we just. We're not going to do anything unless the business, in this case, recruiting owns the whole process from guide the process to make sure we don't skip any steps.

Jim Yoshimura: We test things thoroughly. I think Amy, we went through two to three rounds of testing, right. For example, before we released, we had a pilot team because we wanted to make sure that before we rolled it out, it was Bulletproof where as much as we could make it. And so I give all the kudos to Amy and her management for being dedicated to it and just maybe a small amount of credit to the team that found it to just keep.

Jim Yoshimura: No, we're not doing anything unless, you know, you guys hold it. 

Amy LaScola: And I think, you know, the key is not just to buy the platform. And I've talked about that throughout this presentation. Management routines are part of it as well as continuous learning and what I mean by that. And it's on the slide.

Amy LaScola: I know, but we actually did the official training through the date with David's team. We probably did that two or three times because we wanted to show different parts of the templates that you can use. There's a. Pieces and parts to this product that folks need to learn. And we know adult learners do not learn everything in 1, 35, 45 minutes session, right.

Amy LaScola: I'm an adult learner. You're going to have to teach me something at least three times. And so we made sure in our learning that not only did we have David and team from the staffing referrals side, train. But we, in the pilot, had three individuals that really stood out as subject matter experts.

Amy LaScola: And so we did training. We had those three individuals really lead and guide the training on how they were using the product. And I think not only is it that the staff, your team do a great job from a training perspective, David, but I think having the SMEs as subject matter experts from the recruiting side, speaking to their peers, saying, this is how I use this.

Amy LaScola: These are the templates. And they were showing like there, even the recruiter page, I think that was hugely beneficial on the front end and kind of reminds me, we probably knew that need to do that again with some new hires that we've had in the last, you know, 60, 90 days, making sure that we're taking that training and sending it back out to them to learn from the SMEs also.

David Folwell: Yeah, absolutely. And Amy, I don't even know if we've announced those two, but we do have, we now have weekly recruiter training every Thursday. So you can throw any of your team on that if you'd like, but I also Amy's team just did an unbelievable job of training the team.

David Folwell: And I think the one thing I would just add is like, we've implemented this. You know, thousands of recruiters and what we've seen is that unless you get the right people in place and bought in, I had the time it's just, you know, it's like buying the, you can go buy the best gym membership in the world.

David Folwell: I mean, never show up here. You're not going to lose it anyway. There is a while we all want it, the silver bullet that can be super impactful, but there is a little bit of effort that goes into it. And there has to be a commitment from the leadership team on that front. So I think. Engaging business leaders is a key component of that. 

Jim Yoshimura: By the way, I am planning on using the five gym memberships I currently have.

David Folwell: So that, that kind of wraps it up for what we had for presentation and opens up for Q/A. I appreciate all of you joining us. I've got Amy and Jim's contact information here on the slide, also mine as well. If you'd like to schedule a demo, you can do that with the QR code, but if you, anybody has any questions, feel free to drop those into the chat.

David Folwell: And we can, 

Jim Yoshimura: I think there was one there, David, he didn't answer, which is kinda solver we use for healthcare staffing. Oh yeah, 

David Folwell: absolutely. So we actually healthcare staffing is where we started. So I, my, my background was actually a Traveler's Haven and then came over and started. We've had a lot of success in the travel nurse segment per diem segment, and more recently with locum tenants.

David Folwell: So it can actually be used on the healthcare side of the business as well. Are there any other questions anybody wants to drop into chat?

Jim Yoshimura: You know, there were a couple of questions and referral fees, and I think every company is unique and you know, it's not just the company, it's the skill sets and how much margin you're making. And I'm sure paying people. So it's all kind of unique for us. It was a question of standardizing it and making sure it was a consistent message and we know we're going to change it.

Jim Yoshimura: Right. We made it simple to start with. We just decided to be one fee for all skillsets. We know we're going to change that over time because it's not going to make sense to pay that. Start this out. Let's not over-complicate it. Right. And down the road, if we need to change it, we can change it to only do it in one place.

Jim Yoshimura: Right? It's all the systems docket. The policies are documented in one place that we make that change. It'll be a consistent message that goes out, not just to our recruiters, but to all the brand ambassadors and candidates as well too. 

Amy LaScola: Yeah, I think simplifying, it was really big, Jim and I reflect on building a referral program before, and we did tiered pricing basically, or tiered referral fees and it just became so confusing and you're like, well, why are we putting more value on this title than this title?

Amy LaScola: And I think the way we rolled it out with the dual bonus, as well as the fee structure just made it easy. And so David, to your point, going back and saying, Asking six recruiters, what is your referral policy? And everybody tells you something different that can hurt you as an organization, not having a common operating model when it comes to referrals.

Amy LaScola: And so I think what the platform not only did for us, giving us the platform, an online platform, but it also gave us that consistency and that consistency when it comes to fees, because I think that was a big deal. 

David Folwell: Yeah. And on the referral fees we do have some benchmarks that we're pulling together across all of the different campaigns in our platform and are able to provide as well as we can tell you by.

David Folwell: What the different bonuses are. And I would like a second, Amy and Jim's comment and comment on simplifying it. A lot of agencies want to pay, you know, 20 different referral fees based on every job. And while that makes sense, from a recruiter standpoint, where the commissions are different. When it comes to communicating about your referral program or an ambassador understanding what they're going to get paid out and what they're actually doing.

David Folwell: It can make it a little bit complicated and I can think of making it a little bit harder to actually move the needle. So 

Jim Yoshimura: Amy, somebody asked, what suggestions will we give to a recruiter to have a good submission rate to the client? 

Amy LaScola: Well to be Frank it's and I'm a big believer in this. It's not only, it's not just using one source.

Amy LaScola: And so, you know, you might be a huge LinkedIn fan and I think that's great, right. From a source of hire, but it's making sure that you're using everything. And that's the one thing with this. When we look at performance management and we look at the source of hire by the recruiter, and we say, okay, you had a great placement month, but you had no referrals.

Amy LaScola: So that speaks to something it speaks to your can experience. It speaks to are you leveraging the tool? And so, you know, to me, that's my greatest recruiting tip is just because you have a lot of success with one tool that does not make a full life cycle recruiting process work. Right. You've got to be making sure that you're touching everything that you have at your disposal.

David Folwell: Okay. Yeah, absolutely. And it looks like we are just about two minutes out. If there are no other questions, I think we can go ahead and close it up for the day. But Amy and Jen, thank you so much for joining me today and thank you for all of the comments. And after that you guys put into this, I really appreciate it.

David Folwell: And for all of you on the call, thanks for joining. If you have questions, feel free to reach out directly to any of us. And I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoy the rest of the conference. Thank you guys again. 

Jim Yoshimura: Thank you, David. 

Amy LaScola: Have a good day.