Your tech stack plays a vital role in the effectiveness and competitiveness of your staffing firm, but building the right one requires more than just selecting the latest and greatest software. Your tools also need to integrate seamlessly, scale with your business, and adapt to the rapidly evolving staffing industry. Today’s guest is Chris Scowden, CEO of Newbury Partners, a business process and IT services consulting firm specializing in the staffing industry. With over 25 years of transformational leadership experience in the recruiting sector, Chris is well-versed in the most effective applications of cutting-edge technology. In this episode, he shares valuable tips and practical strategies to help you leverage AI, maximize automation, optimize your existing tech stack, and much more!
[0:01:14.7] DF: Hello everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Chris Scowden, who is the CEO of Newbury Partners. Chris, thanks so much for being on the show today.
[0:01:25.4] CS: Yeah, thanks David, it’s great to be here.
[0:01:27.6] DF: Awesome. To kick things off, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you got into staffing?
[0:01:33.7] CS: Okay, I just realized this week represents 27 years in the staffing industry for me, so the gray hairs certainly are starting to show it. I stumbled into staffing right out of college, was doing some door-to-door sales, and happened to walk into an Apple One office in Newport Beach. I was kind of getting tired of that old door-to-door marketing stuff and kind of walked in and said, “Hey, do you guys have a job for me? Can you put me to work?”
And they realized that a 22-year-old kid out of college with no office skills was pretty much unemployable for them but they liked my attitude. So, they offered me a position and said, “You can’t start for two weeks.” And so, I went home to Arizona, hung out, and as I’m driving back into LA, I get a call from them on Sunday before I’m supposed to start that says, “We have to rescind your offer, we can’t insure you. Your driving record’s too bad. You have too many speeding tickets.”
So, my career in staffing ended before it ever started but it was an interesting industry and so, I did what we do in the mid-90s and late 90s and started diving through the newspapers that Sunday afternoon and interviewed with several companies and started with what’s now Motion Recruitment, about two weeks later. So, I spent the first six years of my staffing career in IT staffing.
Bounced around the country with Motion and opened several officers for them and then, after 9/11, saw the dot-com implosion and got into accounting and finance and helped start what’s now RemX Financial, and then pivoted into RPO and spent about six, seven years with IBM leading their global RPO practice and then got back into staffing, doing some work with AMN and TrueBlue and ultimately just five years ago, decided I wanted to be in charge of my own thing.
I didn’t want to be part of any publicly traded companies anymore, I wanted to go to the entrepreneurial route. So, I took a step out and took a package and used that to fund the acquisition of Newbury, which I closed about three and a half years ago. It’s been great experience so far. So, now, we’re focused on applying all the lessons learned over the years around process and technology.
And helping staffing companies here in the US and UK on optimizing their tech stacks and their org design, their process, and really, getting ROI out of all the investments that they’re making. So, it’s a super fun experience, I’ve got an amazing team, great leadership team that I work with, an amazing list of customers, we’re having a lot of fun doing what we’re doing right now.
[0:04:17.4] DF: That’s amazing. You got a well-rounded background, it sounds like you’ve kind of taken what you learned at the largest publicly traded staffing firms, and now are applying some of those best practices from a broader perspective through Newbury. Can you tell me a little bit about Newbury’s background and how you guys are working with staffing agencies today?
[0:04:36.3] CS: Yeah, the history of Newbury is really interesting. It started in 2005 when Oracle acquired PeopleSoft, and there was a team of consultants there that were focused on the staffing vertical and Oracle made the decision they were moving away from that. So, the team stepped out and created Newbury Partners almost 20 years ago now, and they were focused initially on PeopleSoft or the staffing industry, and then over time, have kind of flowed with technology changes.
They created a front office company which was Newbury SI, which is the business I acquired, but they started into…business edition, and then went to Erecruit, and though as Bullhorn acquired Erecruit, they became the first SI partner for Bullhorn, and then over the years, we really have expanded our services at Bullhorn has made more and more acquisitions and we just really grown with Bullhorn over the years.
And so, that’s where the majority of our work is but we still do support other platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot and other – a lot of marketplace partners that sit on top of the Bullhorn platform.
[0:05:43.3] DF: That’s great. Yeah, when I think of Newbury, I immediately think of all of the work that I’ve seen and heard about through your partnership with Bullhorn. So, I’ve always seen you guys on that first. I know, when we were talking, the Salesforce and HubSpot, you guys are doing that, it’s awesome as well. How big is your team today?
[0:05:58.1] CS: So, there are 72 team members that are spread throughout the world. The majority of us are in North America, we’re all virtual, so there’s about six to eight folks that are in the UK, and then we got one person that is in Australia.
[0:06:11.3] DF: Got it. Jumping away from kind of the Newbury component of it, what are some of the – you’re working with so many different staffing agencies, I think that you’re probably seeing a different perspective on what’s happening in the industry, maybe than some of the staffing firs we’re talking to. Though, what are some of the kind of key trends that you’re seeing today?
[0:06:27.9] CS: Yeah, it’s been, I’d say, a tough 18 months for a lot of the customers in this space. The SIA indicator continues to show that we’re seeing a 10 to 15% decline year over year and those are starting to stack on top of each other. We saw that that start to happen in Q3 of like 2022 and that trend hasn’t changed.
As staffing volumes go down, that just puts a tremendous amount of pressure on the staffing firms to manage their costs properly and make sure we’re getting the right performance or productivity out of their team members, and every dollar they’re spending, they have to get ROI out of. It makes it harder to make investments unless they’re private equity-backed or venture-backed or publicly traded. So, those firms are the ones that we’re seeing still make investments in technology but also be very aggressive on the acquisition front, and it’s kind of the haves and the have-nots a little bit right now.
[0:06:27.9] DF: Yeah, it does feel like that and I think getting the most out of existing technology is something we’re seeing just across the board, hearing it from people, and I think that’s such a critical element always but especially when the market’s shifted downward like this. What are some of the activities or are you guys partnering with companies to help them identify ways to maximize your ROI, how are you guys approaching that?
[0:07:51.8] CS: Yeah. To back up real quick, I mean, I think we’re feeling a lot of hangover from COVID still because that was the impetus to really digitize the industry and what we saw was just this massive rush to go get technology to create remote work, to automate a bunch of stuff, and what we’re seeing now three years post is a lot of the promises that were made of those technologies are not coming to fruition.
What we saw kind of as a business at Newbury’s, we really rode that wave of implementation, and that grew our business 300% in those three years, and we were just keeping up with the demand for implementation. As over the last, call it, year we’re starting to see that slow down and it’s given us the opportunity to circle back to customers and check in and see how they’re doing, and what we’re finding is a lot of them are in the same spot that we left them, post-implementation.
They just haven’t had the resources or the skills to continuously improve and optimize the technology and take advantage of the new releases, and so that’s where our team is trying to go help them do an audit and assess their whole tech stack. Are they on the latest releases? Are they configured properly or integrated properly? All of those pieces will help them get ROI but also, what we start to see is these technologies have evolved and they’ve extended what they’re offering.
Now, you end up with duplicative kind of capabilities. You may be overpaying. You may not need the tech stack that you had. So, it’s just that constant cleansing and evaluating where you’re at and making sure that you are getting what is promised on the technology.
[0:09:43.9] DF: Ah, well, that makes a ton of sense. I always think of when you – as you’re talking about technology, it just reminds me of like, the approach everybody’s thought about with websites because I think a lot of people are like, “Oh, we’re going to build a website and okay, that’s done, now we can move on.” And it’s like with any technology purchase or investment and website, I feel like it’s like the equivalent when you launch it and it goes live, it’s like, that’s when you’ve opened the doors to a store.
And now, you need to make sure the store has people there to facilitate when it’s done, it’s been managed and operated and it’s not just a set-it-and-forget-it. As much as everybody wants it to be that, nothing’s quite fully at that stage yet.
[0:10:18.1] CS: Yeah, completely agree. I mean, it’s really the realization of living in a SaaS-based world. There’s constant new releases, there’s constant updates, you have to have highly competent people that are looking at that and taking advantage of it. Like, that’s how you really can differentiate from your competitors.
[0:10:36.1] DF: Yeah, and with that, are you guys seeing any specific technologies? Are there different ways that you’re kind of working with staffing agencies to make sure that they’re investing in the right software and getting the most out of it? I know you talked about kind of the high level of overviewing of it, overview of it.
[0:10:50.5] CS: Yeah.
[0:10:50.9] DF: Do you have any specific examples of the types of things you’re doing?
[0:10:53.7] CS: Yeah. I mean, the big trends right now are all around AI, automation, and business intelligence. So, the foundation there is what we’re seeing on the data enrichment side of updating all of the candidate and the client contact data, making sure that’s fresh. So, when you go to layer on automation, it’s not landing at dead ends. It’s getting to the right person, and we’ve had a lot of good success with Candidate IQ and doing some data enrichment there on the candidate side. Now, they’re launching a ClientIQ solution here shortly.
[0:11:29.5] DF: Nice.
[0:11:30.8] CS: So, that’s been really cool, and they’re super cost-effective, it’s easy to just plug that in and go.
[0:11:36.2] DF: That’s great, yeah. Just on the data side, we just did a webinar on this but we’re talking about the – how so many staffing firms are like, “How do we get more out of our team, how do we get our recruiters to be more productive?” And then you’re going to look out like, what’s the recruiter’s process, and they’re searching for contact information. They’re trying to figure out who to reach out to.
They’re trying to figure out what software or what candidate fits the right job and it’s just like, between data enrichment software that’s out there, and then also I think a lot about match-making software like Opus, where you’re like, not only should you have the right data but then give your recruiters a starting point of, “Here’s the most likely person to fit in this job.” So that they’re not having to do that work and they can focus on what they do best, which is the relationship.
[0:12:15.3] CS: Yeah.
[0:12:15.5] DF: Yeah. You were about to jump into another area as well.
[0:12:18.1] CS: Yeah, I mean, the next area that we see is in automation, and a lot of companies have gone out and they purchased the license for Bullhorn Automation or Sense or some of the other tools that are out there, and unfortunately, what happens is they go through their implementation, they stand up their first 10 or 15 automations that are just kind of the standard basic that everybody does of “Happy birthday” and, “Please update your contact information and what’s your availability.”
And then they just drift back to their day job and a lot of times, they’re asking the recruiting director or somebody that that’s not necessarily thinking about automation every day or thinking about process every day to own that, and it just atrophies. So, what we see is the best practice is either having somebody that lives and breathes automation, at least, half of their day, and those companies will have a hundred, 200 automations and they get massive productivity out of it.
Or, find a partner that can come in on a fractional basis and do 10, 20 hours of automation work for you in a month, and generally, they’ll come with the libraries of best practices so that you won’t have to create or reinvent the wheel yourself to think about automation. They’ll come to the table with best practices and allow you to really accelerate that automation journey.
[0:13:39.2] DF: Yeah.
[0:13:40.1] CS: There’s tons of stuff you can do there.
[0:13:41.4] DF: There’s so much you can do and it can be complex and you do need somebody who has expertise or somebody who knows how to do it and manage it and then also like, checks in on it. I think I’ve managed HubSpot for staffing agencies for a handful of software providers as well. I used to be a HubSpot channel partner, I was just like, people think they can – another software and then buy it, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s okay, it’s good.”
It’s like no, you actually need to like, look at how it’s performing and make tweaks to it and make sure you’ve got the right journeys or playbooks or whatever you want to call it. So, that’s really great advice on that front. I think at one point, I had like five conversations, this is a few years ago but I have conversations. It’s like, “Oh, you use whatever automation tool, what are you using it for?” And he’s like, “Well, we got ‘Happy Birthday’ running.” And I was like, “What else?” “Like, I think that might be it, right?”
[0:14:27.8] CS: Yeah.
[0:14:28.0] DF: There’s got to be a lot more. There’s so much more that they can do but you really have to take the time to do it, so that’s great.
[0:14:32.7] CS: Yeah, and then I think the next biggest area is AI. It’s still emerging, everybody’s piloting stuff and trying to figure out what’s going to really resonate. What we find is right now, the best application for AI is really around the creative writing side and leveraging the LLM model and helping you with writing successful job descriptions and writing successful email campaigns, and thinking about the structure and the order of those email campaigns.
AI can do that stuff great. They can take the transcripts from your calls, like if you’re using Zoom, you get the AI transcript. You load that right into your AI and it gives you a nice summary and you could turn that into a submittal for customers. So, there’s just a lot of stuff you can do there. Also, you can fast start out in creating an SOW or some contract creation. It’s a good start there and so those are just some easy ways that we see it being applied.
That is kind of free, cost-effective, if you’re using the stuff that’s already out there. For products that are truly integrated and are part of a formal product, there is some really neat stuff that Kyloe is doing with their AI assist and they basically have created plugins into Bullhorn and have a dozen different kinds of applications or models running and just allow you to use an AI engine right in the Bullhorn platform and then you could select which language model you want to use for each transaction and each task.
[0:16:12.0] DF: Well, that’s cool.
[0:16:12.3] CS: So, is it Claude for this or is ChatGPT for something else? It’s really, really helpful.
[0:16:18.2] DF: That’s amazing. Are you using AI in your day-to-day personally?
[0:16:21.1] CS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, all the time. I always have writer’s block. I’m the worst, I can create an outline all day long and ask me to go start writing, I just – I took English 102 at the local community college just to get through it. So, I didn’t have to actually go to the like, real college. I’m just not a great writer or I don’t enjoy it, so it helps me get something started and as long as I get a draft, then I can really refine it and I can make it mine and I can expand on it but I just need help getting started.
[0:16:53.3] DF: Yeah, it is made from a brainstorming perspective. I am obsessed and I use Claude now, Claude and GPT but Claude, I am actually leaning more and more towards. You can like upload, you can upload a deck and ask it to give you a rate, grade it, and then give you feedback, like slide by slide, and it’s just – it’s unreal how much I’ve started to use this as like an assistant. It doesn’t give you the finished product but it can move things forward on the brainstorming side so much, it’s really incredible. So –
[0:17:21.4] CS: I would say the one other AI piece that we – that I really like that I think is kind of next-gen is what Claude is doing. So, this is really kind of the next generation of what you saw, what you see from Pandologic and Broadbean. So, programmatic job distribution using AI to identify the best location and return for your ad dollars, rewriting the job descriptions to make sure it lands, and has the highest click rate.
And then, a chat bot to screen and score every candidate and then drop the transcript right into the notes there and write a submittal for that and so it coaches the candidates along the way too if they are not fit for the job and explains why and it recommends some other jobs for them to consider too.
[0:18:11.4] DF: I actually like the initial screening use case for candidates is one of the best, just like a really good use case for AI that I think is going to get adopted pretty rapidly. Whether it’s coming from Bullhorn, from the ATSs themself, or products like Glide, I think that’s going to be a thing that’s out there.
[0:18:27.6] CS: Yeah, I mean, as an ex-recruiter, an old recruiter, like I would love nothing better than to create a job description, not touch anything until I come back the next day, and here’s 10 pre-screened candidates that are ready to go and I click a button, they self-schedule an interview with me.
[0:18:42.6] DF: Are you even – full circle, you said this but like taken the Zoom AI summary, having that create the job description and then like from the conversations and have that go through. Shifting gears a little bit since you are – I know we’ve been in more challenging times in the staffing industry in the last 18 months, it does seem hearing a lot more optimism from the companies I am talking to.
And also, actually, I looked at the Bullhorn indicator this week but that’s usually my north star for how things are going and I’m hearing more optimism. I think we’ve got it – maybe get through the elections yet but what are you seeing staffing agencies do that are navigating the market dynamics exceptionally well today?
[0:19:21.3] CS: Well, I would say this, so I am hearing the same optimism that folks have kind of – have really felt like things have stabilized and maybe we’ve hit bottom. We’ve started to see week-over-week incremental growth, most still down year over year. I think the optimism is there, the – as we talk over our tech partners, pipelines are getting stronger, so they’re having more conversations.
So, they feel like the second half of the year certainly improving. The companies that are navigating it really well are the ones that are looking internally to optimize what they have. They are hyper-focused on the productivity management of their teams. Do we have the right data? Are we focused on the right activities? Are we getting our junior-level people up to comparable performance with our top people, so can we shorten that ramp time?
And that’s really where we see AI cutting that time down a lot and so, it’s a lot of continuous improvement activities, they’ve cut costs already. Now, they’re thinking about, how do they each outperform their peers and just out-hustle folks right now?
[0:20:30.3] DF: Yeah, and it does seem – I mean, I think there are some agencies leaning into investment right now as like this is the best time to get ahead, which I think is true if you can do it. If you have to find to stand in to do it, it is a good time to accelerate or to kind of spread from where you are today but the whole component of bringing the junior recruiters up faster, what are some of the activities that you see staffing agencies do to make sure they are bringing the junior people up to a senior level more rapidly?
[0:21:02.7] CS: Yeah, it’s a lot of what we’re talking about of how to apply AI on the writing side and – because your senior folks that are top performers, they can write a submittal letter in five minutes and they just – it will be high quality, you’ll know it’s good. You get a junior person and this is the first 10, 15 times they’re doing it, it’s going to take them an hour or so just to like, they’re going to grind over it.
They’re going to think every word, they’re going to question everything. So, if you had an engine writing that for you that you knew is quality and you trusted it, that just speeds that process out a whole lot, and then also if you got a chatbot or something that’s screening it, they’re going to answer. They’re going to get more information out of that and ask more relevant questions than maybe a newbie would.
And some of the research that we’ve seen out there is candidates are more likely to spend more time with AI in chat than they are with an actual person and they will share more relevant details, which is scary. They prefer talking to the bot and AI versus the person.
[0:22:08.2] DF: That’s crazy, it’s also – it’s funny as you are talking about using AI to scale become a better recruiter faster and I think I’ve heard this at every conference for the last year now but I think it’s still worth repeating as the recruiters say in our – “Is AI going to take my job?” and it’s like, AI is not going to take your job but a recruiter who uses AI will take your job and I mean, that is such a tool for becoming better and doing more faster.
I think that is such a key element of it. One thing you just touched on there as well before that but – or you and I talked about at least was the roundtables that you guys do. What – can you tell me a little bit more about what the roundtables are and how that operates?
[0:22:43.4] CS: Yeah. So, we’ve got I think four or five different roundtables that are focused on various topics. So, we’ve got a CIO roundtable that has 11 or 12 tapping CIOs get together every month. We’ve come together with like pre-packaged topics and what’s on their mind, what do they want to talk about. I mean, they’re sharing best practices and what products are they piloting or what challenges they have with implementations, who do they know, and so it’s really a networking opportunity but it’s a chance to share best practices.
We’ve got one that’s focused on Bullhorn admin, so new releases and configuration questions. We’ve got one that’s focused on automation, and then there’s another one that I don’t recall at the top of my head it is, but those are the three that I sit on and I enjoy those calls every month.
[0:23:35.1] DF: That’s great, so getting people together, best practice sharing but doing it, it’s like kind of a strategic roadmap or like, “Here are things we want to solve, let’s get some people together.” Are they across all verticals? A non-competitive is the kind of the approach or?
[0:23:48.6] CS: I mean, there are folks that are in the similar industries. I don’t know that they are in the same markets and maybe geographically different but I mean, the sense that I get is everybody feels like there is enough business to go around and we’re solving the same problems that it’s not proprietary information. We want to help each other grow and support each other.
[0:24:08.7] DF: That’s great, I love that. So, with that, we’re going to go and jump into the speed questions. So, we’ve got a few last for you, and then we’ll close it out. So, the first question we’ve got is what advice do you wish you were given before entering the staffing industry?
[0:24:22.9] CS: Let’s think about this.
[0:24:23.9] DF: Or would you give, would you give today?
[0:24:26.0] CS: So, 27 years, I’ve got lots to reflect back on. I would say, I would be more patient in the role that you’re in because I was always the guy that felt like needed to be in charge and I should have or had the top job a long time before I did and if I see where some of my friends and peers are now, I didn’t need to change every five, six years, and get bored. I could have stuck it out and got there.
I ended up in a great place anyway but being patient and riding the wave a little bit longer, you’ll see the career progress and you’ll eventually get there. So, you don’t have to be CEO at 38.
[0:25:06.6] DF: Even though we think we all know.
[0:25:08.3] CS: Absolutely.
[0:25:09.3] DF: And then you get there and you realize what you don’t know.
[0:25:11.4] CS: Oh, yeah.
[0:25:12.2] DF: Yeah, in the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
[0:25:16.7] CS: I would say the work that we’re doing with Petra Coach. So, we partner with them to implement Scaling Up as a methodology, it’s born out of entrepreneurs, organizations, and MIT, the kind of the birthing of giants class there. It’s all about how to take a business from 10 million to 100 million, and what foundations do you need to put in place, how do you develop leaders and kind of grow businesses into better businesses?
That’s really been exciting to see us adopt and put in place over the last three years here in Newbury and really, it feels like by doing that, we’ve got a well-run business, we’re controlled, we’re developing leaders, and we’re creating the right culture, which has shown up in our NPS scores that are like 84 this year and –
[0:26:06.6] DF: That’s great.
[0:26:07.0] CS: Yeah, our employee NPS scores are in the mid-70s. So, if we can have happy employees, we’re going to generate happy customers, and so that’s kind of the focus for us.
[0:26:17.2] DF: I love that and I second Scaling Up or Traction, I feel like I’ve used both the different points of it. It’s such a good framework. What books or book have you given most as a gift or have been most influential to you?
[0:26:28.0] CS: So, two things here. So, I am an Ayn Rand nerd, so I love Fountainhead. It’s kind of not always thought of when you usually think of Atlas Shrugged but I liked Fountainhead but I’ve given that quite a bit because I think she gets a bad rep but it’s a great read. It’s scary how right she got a prediction like 70 years ago she wrote this book and like it feels like it’s predicting what is going on right now.
So, that’s really interesting, and then on the stuff I do now is more listen to podcasts because I’ve got three teenage daughters, so I spend a lot of time in the car driving them around and a podcast has been really helpful has been Founders, and basically, the host reads an autobiography or biography of one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, founders, leaders, and then does an hour and a half review of that and he’s at like, 350, 360.
360 that he’s done so far and he ties them all together and so it’s really educational and I’m kind of – I’m a history nerd. So, I love reading all about that and kind of learning what business leaders have done before and their stories and the personal interference that they had to go through. So, it’s really relevant for the role that we’re in right now.
[0:27:45.7] DF: Well, that’s great. I’m going to have to check them, I’m a big podcast guy as well, and I think maybe I’ve come across it but I haven’t listened to it and I think I’ve heard it probably. I’ll check it out.
[0:27:52.1] CS: Yeah, it’s cool. It’s really cool.
[0:27:53.7] DF: Well, it’s been really nice having you on today. Do you have any closing comments for the audience?
[0:27:58.1] CS: Thanks for having me, David, it’s great. I loved the conversation. For folks that just want to get an idea of where they’re at, give us a call. We’ll come in, we’ll do a full month assessment for you for free. We’ll give you recommendations on what we think you may want to consider. You can use us or go on your own but we’re happy to lean in and help folks out. Just reach out to me, chris.scowden@newburypartners, or just sales@newburypartners and we’re happy to help you.
[0:28:27.8] DF: Are you guys still doing that complimentary tech stack optimization? I want to put that out there.
[0:28:30.8] CS: Yeah.
[0:28:31.1] DF: Yeah.
[0:28:31.7] CS: Yeah, that’s effectively we’ll come in and do a tech stack audit for you for free, for sure.
[0:28:36.2] DF: That’s amazing. That’s great. Chris, it’s really great having you on today. I enjoyed the conversation and have a good one. Thanks for joining.
[0:28:42.9] CS: Awesome, I appreciate it. Have a good week.
