Engage Boston was a huge hit for Staffing Engine! The team went to a game at Fenway Park, met up with customers and partners, and had a great time at the first in-person Engage in three years.

As the keynotes and sessions started to kick off, we could tell there was a buzz about some very important trends and topics we’ve been talking about around recruiting acceleration AI and the on-demand experience. 

Here’s our breakdown.     

Apps can’t solve everything

To start the day, Art Papas gave his opening keynote about “Meeting the Moment.” He opened by reminding us that apps can’t solve everything in the staffing and recruiting process. 

For the last few years, staffing firms have been worried that an app might come in and replace the recruiter or even the entire staffing firm. Apps are a familiar topic for the Staffing Engine founders who have worked on over 100 apps as former mobile app developers. Learning that apps can’t solve everything was what led us to start TextUs and now Staffing Engine. 

When it comes down to it, building relationships and a community are what enable a staffing firm to grow. Rich Smith from Atlas MedStaff says it well, it’s all about the experience and you can’t manage the entire candidate experience in an app alone. 

Apps are part of building those relationships and are the most feature-rich way to maintain them, but they’re also hard to get people to use. We only regularly use a few screens of apps.

That’s where email automation comes in.

Automation is now a standard

Recruiting Automation has now become a standard for staffing firms. If you’re not using an automation tool, here’s your sign to reach out to Bullhorn now. 

Automating emails and tasks instead of doing everything manually is the first step to creating a better candidate experience. 

With email automation, you can begin to add communication touch points to complement the human engagement from your recruiters and sales reps. It’s been a must-have in most other industries for years now. Staffing has finally started to understand its benefits.

But email automation is just the base layer of a good experience. The challenge today is meeting candidates where they are, across multiple channels, as Bullhorn’s Ben Carter says.

Email automation gets us started, but now we have a new challenge. Candidates today expect an on-demand experience and omnichannel engagement. That means adding real-time messaging channels like text messaging, chatbots, and live chat to your experience. 

But there’s one big thing to consider when starting to use real-time messaging. Is it smart or dumb?    

Conversational AI is here to accelerate recruiting 

It’s the year of conversational AI for the staffing industry. There has long been talk of using AI in staffing, but it’s never been implemented in an impactful way. That’s all changing fast with conversational AI.  

In short, conversational AI enables you to make your real-time messaging channels smart.

One example is to start using chatbots and live chat. Live chat isn’t just for support questions anymore. Now marketing, sales reps, and recruiters can connect with candidates and clients in real-time on your website.

Text messaging is another example that has already become widely adopted by staffing firms, but is still currently managed manually by a recruiter. There’s no AI behind it. 

That’s where a Recruiting Acceleration AI platform comes in to put AI to work by combining all the real-time messaging channels onto one platform to enable you to create an omnichannel experience that’s smart. 

By smart we mean it’s not just a simple decision tree chatbot that frustrates people.  

We mean an actual AI with a central knowledge model (aka bot brain), natural language processing (NLP), and natural language understanding (NLU).  

As Staffing Engine customer Adam Sprecher from Salo says below, people are looking for quick answers and interactions with your firm. 

Email automation is much more basic when compared to the items above. Adding these real-time messaging channels will require investing in a conversational AI platform that’s intelligent enough to enable your omnichannel experience to work. 

Bonus: We’re now in the Bullhorn Marketplace

If you didn’t know, Staffing Engine is officially in the Bullhorn Marketplace! Becoming a marketplace partner right before Engage Boston was great timing. 

We had a blast seeing old friends and meeting new ones at this year’s event! If we didn’t get a chance to connect, you can reach out to your Bullhorn customer success manager to get an introduction or schedule a demo here now!