Staffing Resource Group Improves Critical Operating Metrics with RefAssured
Introduction
Staffing Resource Group (SRG4), a provider of contract and temporary staffing services across six divisions including life sciences, government, finance and accounting, and technology, lives by their tagline of “people who know people.”
In addition to maintaining proprietary benches of talent and nurturing deep relationships with candidates and clients, SRG4 also prides itself on being agile and intelligent with how they place talent – and more importantly – who they place. For Kim Connors, Chief Operating Officer, and Leah Clark, Director of Operations, moving quickly is important, but relationships matter most of all.
“Our customers trust us to find them the very best people imaginable,” said Connors, “and you only get one chance to break that trust before it’s gone forever.”
The Problem
Lots of staffing agencies say that they have the most qualified and highly capable candidates on their roster, but few can quantitatively and qualitatively prove it. The process of vetting and assessing talent has traditionally been arduous and unscalable, varying tremendously based on individual recruiter habits and the type of role placed.
SRG4 had long been a proponent of using reference checks to validate that the candidates they placed were people of integrity – another company core value – but this usually happened during the onboarding phase, long after submittal, interview, and even placement. For Connors and Clark, who focus on thoughtful and smart operating procedures, doing reference checks so late in the cycle seemed like a mistake. Not only were recruiters submitting unvalidated candidates to clients, but any hiring decisions were based on increasingly unreliable criteria.
“How are candidates placed at most agencies?” said Connors. “Recruiters scan a pretty, AI-generated resume that someone put together. They interview the candidate for a few minutes on the phone. The candidate responds to the recruiter’s emails with AI-generated canned responses. The staffing agency is taking everything the candidate says at face value. They haven’t verified anything. They don’t even know who they’re placing.”
Connors expanded with a real-life example that had affected SRG: “We got a requirement from one of our founders’ longtime friends. He was looking to hire an HR manager. We found a person who responded to our posting with an amazing resume that hit every must-have that our client was looking for. After doing our screening and sending over the resume, we had the candidate interview. The comment we got after the interview was, wow, this is one of the best interviews I have ever had. The person was hired and started the job. It was evident out of the gate that she had used AI to write her resume, and also used AI to prepare her answers for the interview. This came to a head when this candidate – who was hired for an HR manager role, keep in mind – did not know the difference between open enrollment and onboarding. We knew something had to change in our process to combat AI fakery.”
For SRG4, whose relationships are currency, this type of risk was unacceptable. They couldn’t afford this type of damage to quality and reputation – not for their customers, their candidates, or their team.
Kim Connors
Chief Operating Officer
Staffing Resource Group
“With RefAssured we look better, we feel better, and we perform better. We are differentiating from our competitors on quality. We are executing faster. We’re more aligned internally. This is a game-changer, right? That’s the definition of ‘game changer.’”
The Solution
Ratios are a funny thing. These metrics are the lifeblood of staffing agency efficiency – submittal-to-interview being a crucial example – but many agencies hurt their operating health by prioritizing quantity over quality.
“The whole reference check process and how we were making decisions was maybe a little backwards in that the reference check process needed to be much sooner than later,” said Connors. “Let’s say we’ve gotten far down the line with Candidate A and everyone loves her, and the client is excited. Then we do a reference check, and it turns out she’s got a strong history of underperforming. Then what do we do? We could stop doing reference checks but just because you don’t find out incredibly important information doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and won’t show up to the client. They’ll find out pretty quickly that Candidate A is not a good hire. Putting our fingers in our ears does nothing to change that, except endanger our credibility.”
The executive team at SRG4 spoke with a longtime friend of RefAssured, who is a seasoned operating leader at enterprise staffing agencies, and he pointed out the necessity of conducting reference checks before submittal.
Connors continued: “He pointed out, in this scenario, that Candidate A should never have made it to submittal. We should have screened her out at the get-go and not wasted the client’s time. If we’re serious about being a partner to our clients, then we only submit the best – and we prove that they’re the best.”
Enter RefAssured, the platform for hire quality and candidate past performance insight that uses reference checks to provide comparative ratings of hard skills, soft skills, and culture fit.
“RefAssured is the only solution for quality of hire that we seriously entertained,” said Connors. “No other solution stood out. The fact that they’re built for staffing, they integrate seamlessly with Salesforce, and that all the reference information automatically writes back into our CRM and that everyone in the company can see the status of every placement – right from within Salesforce – is huge.”
Leah Clark expanded: “Everything is real-time with RefAssured in Salesforce. I love that I can see where any person is at in the reference process. With RefAssured, nobody has to document anything. It's just automatic. I don't have to ask where a piece of information is, because I can clearly see it. Whether a recruiter or salesperson left a note or not, it’s sitting there right where I want it, in the candidate record, and in the notes and attachments sections. No one likes to manually write stuff down, and with RefAssured, it’s just taken care of instantly. It’s been a huge boost for collaboration and productivity.”
But while RefAssured has the best technology of any quality of hire solution the SRG4 team assessed, there was something else that stood out about the company that made choosing the platform a no-brainer: the team.
“The RefAssured team is amazing, and I don’t use that term lightly,” said Connors. “We were the first customer to use RefAssured’s Salesforce integration, and even though it was a first for both teams, it could not have gone smoother. Everyone just worked quickly and thoughtfully to make sure we went live without a hitch, and they check in constantly to make sure we’re thriving.”
The Result
SRG4’s submittal-to-hire ratio has improved in just a few months since starting with RefAssured, and the agency has reframed their recruiting process to run automated RefAssured reference checks before submittal, instead of after placement.
“Our submittal-to-interview rate is better,” said Connors, “and so is our interview-to-offer and hire rate. Instead of submitting 12 candidates who may or may not be able to do the job, we empower our recruiters to take control and leverage RefAssured insight to fill in the blanks to get a 360-view of a candidate. Armed with that information, they don’t have to submit 12 candidates. They can submit three candidates who are all extremely qualified, and one of them is going to get the job. And all of these submittals are going to impress the client, who is going to give us 20 more job orders where previously they might’ve just given us one. This is how you grow a profitable business. This is how you become indispensable to clients.”
And the clients agree. “Sharing the RefAssured reports with our clients has been an advantage for us,” said Clark. “The questions are consistent. They tell us so much about the candidate. They encourage our clients to engage. They’re aesthetically pleasing and celebrate our brand. We never had that before.”
RefAssured’s built-in lead generation capabilities have also proven to be very popular with the SRG4 team.
“I love the amount of data it gives us,” said Clark. “In just a short time using RefAssured, we have 7% of the reference givers opting in as sales leads. And those are the ones that proactively decide to pursue us as clients. Obviously, if somebody’s three references are from a company that we’re trying to penetrate, we now have that information in RefAssured, and our sales team can work those leads and convert them into opportunities. If we win a new client from one of those leads or make a few placements from RefAssured talent leads, then boom – the platform doesn’t just save money, it creates revenue we wouldn’t otherwise have.”
Connors agreed. “RefAssured gives us so much insight – not just on the best candidates who we know will knock it out of the park in a role and make us look great to our clients – but also on new relationships that we can start to pursue that will prove hugely valuable to us. We make sure when we’re training our recruiters that they understand it’s not just about the reference, it’s about the infrastructure with Salesforce and the relationship-building with clients and prospects, and the growth that RefAssured unlocks for us.”
Final Thoughts
SRG4 is excited to continue to grow their usage of RefAssured and actively participate as partners in helping the RefAssured team expand their product offerings.
“The more we use this, the more benefits we’ll get,” said Leah Clark. “Operationally we’ve improved our submittal-to-interview numbers and our interview-to-offer numbers. We’re screening out bad fits early on instead of showing them to our clients. We’re separating candidates who look great on the surface from candidates who really are great, and whose past performance proves it.”
“With RefAssured we look better, we feel better, and we perform better,” said Kim Connors. “We are differentiating from our competitors on quality. We are executing faster. We’re more aligned internally. This is a game-changer, right? That’s the definition of ‘game changer.’”
About Staffing Resource Group
The Staffing Resource Group (SRG4) develops deep relationships with their job candidates and employers, allowing SRG to understand their needs and find the perfect fit. With six divisions within our Tampa, FL headquarters, we are able to support the entire United States and even our defense partners in OCONUS work. SRG4 partners with companies searching for the right candidates, and with jobseekers looking for the right position to SuRGe their career forward.
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