Without a sense of direction, today’s technological climate can be overwhelming. To unpack how staffing tech leaders can successfully navigate this challenging landscape, we spoke with the President of Oak City Advisors, Daniel Mastropolo, and the Senior Director of Technology and Innovation at Skillwork, Tim Ratliff. Dan and Tim describe their paths to staffing before examining the tech burnout pandemic in staffing leadership and other daily challenges that have consumed the industry. We compare the woes of big corporations to those of smaller businesses, our guests’ solutions to today’s most pressing market dilemmas, how to connect tech strategy to overarching organizational goals, how to manage expectations when introducing new tech products, and how to measure success and ROI from a tech leadership perspective. To end, Tim and Dan walk us through today’s standout AI and automation innovations and how they could improve the future of staffing, and share what excites them most about the upcoming Staffing Hub Tech Roundtable discussions.
[0:01:17.5] DAVID FOLWELL: Hello, everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of The Staffing Show. Today, I am super excited to be joined by Dan Mastropolo, who is the president and founder of Oak City Advisors, and Tim Ratliff, the senior director of technology and innovation at Skillwork. Tim, Dan, super excited to jump into the conversation today, thanks for joining me.
[0:01:37.1] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah, absolutely.
[0:01:37.4] TIM RATLIFF: Thanks for having us, David.
[0:01:37.4] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Absolutely, thanks for having us.
[0:01:38.5] TIM RATLIFF: Really excited.
[0:01:38.8] DAVID FOLWELL: Awesome. To kick things off, today, we’re going to be talking about technology, technology leadership in staffing, and having – digging deep into some of the challenges that a lot of staffing agencies are facing. But to kick things off, Dan and Tim, maybe we could do quick backgrounds on who you are, and I always like to hear how you guys got into the staffing industry.
[0:01:58.1] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah, so my background is software engineering. I did a lot of work for defense-type projects and a lot of development there. Moved into management, and found I kind of enjoyed the opportunity to make the work-life better for the engineers, followed that through to some other industries. A friend of mine I worked with for several years started Skillwork, which is a skill trade staffing company.
We’ve always stayed in touch, and he came to me and said, “Hey, I need somebody to head up my technology, we need somebody to understand the strategy. We’re going to understand the tooling, understand, you know, what will work best, just put together a whole strategy to lead it forward. Now, would you be willing to do that?” At that point in time, I was ready to make a change out of the corporate world and understand what a small business was.
But also understand what the staffing world was, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the size of this business and the opportunities that are here.
[0:02:48.4] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah, and where were you at before? You got some fairly significant corporate experience, right?
[0:02:52.5] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah, so I was at Raytheon for 17 years, again, working a lot of defense-related projects, things like that, and then I was at Union Pacific Railroad for just under 10 years handling a lot of logistic on empty car movements.
[0:03:04.1] DAVID FOLWELL: Awesome, that’s great. How about you, Dan? I know you’ve been on the podcast before, but for those of you that haven’t met you yet.
[0:03:10.8] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah, for sure. So, I’m Dan Mastropolo, like you said, president and founder of Oak City Advisors, but I’ve been in the staffing industry since 2011. Basically, I’m coming into year 15, started my career with Randstad, started as a general staffing consulting group to a top VP, and then really started in the independent side in 2017.
2017, to basically, current, you know, basically started and exited a couple of light industrial companies, staffing firms. I’m still on the board for a company, Staffing A to Z, and Shiftfillers, a high-volume client industrial company. But I started Oak City in 2020, really with a lot of the premise of what we’re going to talk about today. Having coming from my own agencies, having to map new softwares, ERPs, really try to, like, make my team’s ability to be able to operate within those systems.
I just ended up really, kind of self-taught into all the inner workings of multiple different softwares, primarily JobDiva, Bullhorn, and Avionté. But really, starting in a little bit past 2020, we were managing kind of the equivalent of the Neoware. Got introduced to Venture HR. Venture and I partnered on a couple of different things and ended up actually working with them as I helped build the Venture Staffing Alliance.
And while I was there, we took care of about 500 staffing companies, we had a lot of integrations into the prism world, and really, ever since COVID, it just hasn’t stopped with the amount of technology that comes into our industry. But one of the things I noticed was a lot of mid-sized firms were just really slow to hiring tech leaders, and the big reason I heard from them why that was the case was, you know, most of us that built staffing companies basically started in a recruiter sales seat.
We were not technology leaders, and so you know, there’s this little gun shyness that I could feel that most of us didn’t feel comfortable managing tech leaders and really, knowing what exactly that role was, and to be fair, even in the mid-market, we don’t necessarily need them all the time. We need them for system setups, some of the integrations, reporting.
I mean, obviously, that changes the higher up the scale you get towards enterprise and the sensitiveness of it, but it didn’t change the fact that it was still a skill that was needed to really optimize these systems. So really, when I started Oak City, it was really to bring that resource primarily to people outside of the Bullhorn world. Today, we do, obviously, also serve for their clients.
But it was just really critical to give people an outlet to have somebody that had been there done that. We take a lot of pride that we’re one of the top integration and third-party software companies for the industry today. We have about 18 clients, it’s just shy of about four billion dollars of revenue in the industry, and just have a really unique outlook of how everybody’s utilizing kind of similar tools, but very uniquely different in their own ecosystems.
[0:05:44.2] DAVID FOLWELL: Awesome. With both of your guys’ experience, I’m excited to kind of jump into some of the challenges that we’re seeing and hearing about in the market. I mean, Dan, I know you had a – there’s a recent article you put up on Staffing Hub about kind of the lack of tech leadership in the staffing industry, and I think even more importantly, and something that a lot of tech CTOs or in your role, Tim, who are feeling burnout from a tech perspective in the staffing industry?
I think it makes sense because we’ve had an unbelievable push into, adopt all of the tech, how fast can you get tech into the platform, and your staffing agency, and you know, the future is the staffing platforms, and obviously, as a tech founder, I believe in a lot of that. But I think that that also comes with a whole bunch of challenges that people in the industry are facing today.
And so, maybe we could start the conversation with Dan, you could jump into this, how you could describe the issue in terms of the tech burnout, and what you’re seeing from your perspective.
[0:06:39.3] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah, for sure. So, and I think it’s really unique, honestly, even how the three of us ended up together. Basically, Tim made a migration from Crelate earlier this year to Avionté and got a call because of we’re a certified integration partner for Avionté. But after that kind of integration and implementation on his side, he came to me and said, “You know, man, like, you are a major resource for us, coming into this world, right?”
“I can, you know, I wish I had more of that.” And I think a lot of tech leaders in our industry feel that, all right? Well, what ends up happening is, one, either, because of the lack of leadership, or you know, sometimes, the lack of corporate support and timing to actually see these things materialize, we, as tech leaders in the firms, we get a lot of pressure at the beginning of the year, right?
“Here’s your budget, here’s what I need from you, here are the things that we’re trying to optimize, here are the gaps and, basically, the operational efficiencies.” We lay out this beautiful plan for them, 12 to the 18-month roadmap, get a budget allocated, and it’s not even six months that all of a sudden, we’re getting the pressure of like, “Where are we on ROI?” Well, a lot of these things don’t materialize that fast, right?
There is timing mechanisms of exactly where we see the gains in that ROI and adoption, and typically, it comes after that 12 to 18-month mark as we start getting those principles actually, foundationally into the principles of the operating side, and a lot of us, that field of stress, and also the pain that comes with that comes from, “We never really get to fulfill the vision that we set forth in those plans.”
We’re constantly asked to pivot. We basically, typically end up having to be asked to migrate systems, which then involves a lot of us to essentially nothing but absorbing more and more tech debt, which then we basically have to then untwine and to kind of untangle, to then, to basically gain efficiencies of a new system. Historically, most of us change ATS’ every two years for something new, something shiny.
But the reality is, not everything is “The grass is greener on the other side.” It can get a lot greener if you just keep watering and keep holding those partners accountable and also work hand in hand with operations, and personally, for me, a big reason that we joke around that Oak City has such a good kind of momentum in the industry right now for helping companies like Skillwork and Tim is because we were all operators first.
So, we’re operators building tech, not the other way around, and our unique ability to take a vision like Tim and know how to kind of get there a little bit faster has been a staple, but I definitely know the days of just feeling deflated, and just never really getting to that kind of overall arching visions.
[0:09:04.6] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah, and I think, going back to the some of the demands that are on the role of anybody that’s in tech leadership in the staffing industry, Tim, maybe you could talk a little bit about what your experience has been, what challenges that you’re experiencing day to day?
[0:09:16.8] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah. When I came to Skillwork, one of the things I was tasked to do was to not only put together a vision but a roadmap for our technology that would allow us to be 10X. We didn’t want to be getting to be 10X, and then the technology was in the way, and then while you’ve got all of that pressure of all the talent, and then you’re trying to make a change.
So, we wanted to be out ahead of that and have the technology in place for you to do that, which I think is a great idea and the right vision there. The challenge that I faced initially, and where I talked to Dan was, it amazes me how many choices there are out there, from ATSs and reporting tools and messaging tools. Yeah, just all kinds of things are out there, and you begin to wonder, because they all say they all integrate with everything.
And there’s probably some truth to all of it, but the question starts to become, “Well, how well does it integrate, or what has been your experience on what it didn’t integrate or where did it-” Just a lot of that kind of thing. And so, as you begin to walk down that road, you’re also trying to understand, in my case especially, learn the different departments in the biz ops.
From the lead side of the business to the recruiting side of the business, to the mid-back office sides of the business, what are they doing, what do they need, where are they tripping, what are their dreams and visions for how it could be, and in some cases, they don’t have one. In some cases, they really have a really cool idea like, “I just want to push a button, and it all happens.”
[0:10:38.2] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah.
[0:10:38.6] TIM RATLIFF: And so, you’re trying to map all of that together and you’re trying to pick a solution. I feel like, with Avionté, we’ve picked a very good solution, and of course, now, it’s managing the change. Managing the change from, “Hey, it doesn’t work like I’m used to,” to managing the change of, “We need this to be a little bit better here,” to, “Hey, I want to be able to see this, this data or see this side of the business, how do I get there?”
And at Skillwork, we have very positive, very patient, gracious people, but even in that, as a tech leader, you take on, on your own, without outside influence, you take on the desire to meet the need and the want and the ask as quickly as possible. I mean, that’s just naturally how you are. If you are in this type of role, you’re in there because you like providing solutions that work, and that get there quickly, and that people value.
And so, it’s a natural thing to want to bring me the right solution upfront, and it can wear on you over time as you begin to understand, “Well, maybe I misstepped here, or maybe I didn’t understand this,” or, “Hey, is this going to take a little bit of time, can you wait till we get there?”
[0:11:43.5] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah, and how has, from a resourcing perspective, how does this compare?
[0:11:49.2] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah, well, small business to corporate is vastly different.
[0:11:53.3] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah-yeah.
[0:11:54.2] TIM RATLIFF: But what’s interesting is, I think the small business mindset can be very good. Some small businesses like Skillwork, we’re not afraid to invest in the right areas. We know that we’re not going to save ourselves prosperity, we know that. I think the corporate world, a lot of times, sometimes they feel that way, that they think that they can save their way to prosperity, and they don’t actually take the risk or step in, whereas I think small businesses, they’re here because they’re naturally okay with feeling risk.
[0:12:21.9] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah.
[0:12:22.1] TIM RATLIFF: But the resources are there, you know? A small business typically, like Skillwork, we did not want to be a tech company, that’s not what we wanted. We didn’t want to go out and hire 10 developers and integrators and do all that. That’s not what we wanted. So, then that also then leads to you relying on either the tech provider, the solution provider, or some outside vendors to really help you manage the integration and the needs you have.
[0:12:45.2] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah, and I was looking it up, I think the general business IT spend is like five to seven, five to 10%, and then for staffing, typically seeing two to 3%, which is not – I mean, honestly, it’s the same story that we hear, and I talk about frequently about marketing because of my background, where it’s like there’s an underspend on marketing, and again, tech investment is also an area where that can very – there’s a gap in terms of what could be and what’s actually happening.
What are some of the – you guys have talked about this a little bit in terms of resources and the network side of it, and part of the reason that we’re all here, but what are some of the ways that you’ve been able to solve these challenges within the market today?
[0:13:21.5] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Sure. Oh yeah, I can take that one first. So, one of the biggest gaps that personally we’ve seen on the Oak City Side is – with Tim’s point, all right? They go through this process where they go from sales, sales basically tells them all the great things that these things can do, and then there’s that sales team implementation handoff, and when implementation gets it, it’s really carte blanche kind of implementation.
They’ve got a checklist, they’re not necessarily looking at things like data validation and mapping and truly trying to understand the equivalent business of a Skillwork and a staffing company. For us, where we’ve really, I think, been able to help a ton is because of the intimacy that we have and the knowledge of the internal architectures of the system. And also, because we were operators and understanding the business themselves, and really where the directions are of the tech leaders, or of the business.
Tying things back to kind of the strategies or strategic plans for the year of the three, five-year vision, we’re able to kind of, like, not necessarily slow down, but I use that analogy, slow down to speed up, right? Taking the time to actually go through and understand and ask the equivalent of the staffing firm, “Why do you do this?” A million times through those processes, to truly understand, is it something that got added?
Is it something that was a nice-to-have, did it just solve a gap because the other systems couldn’t do what it was that maybe this new one can? It has led us to make better internal architecture decisions and really make sure that the data is validated to that then, ensure that you have a little bit better implementation, but that you’re also setting things up for scale, all right?
A lot of times, what I just see is people just make these quick decisions because they have something that’s pressing today, but that one thing is tied to one facet of the business, not this overall arching vision of that three to five-year plan. And so, what we do a lot of is not just mapping, but it’s also sitting there and really thinking about the progressions of those automations or potentially systemic configurations.
And really, just trying to keep those things more geared towards the scale, and what that business wants, which obviously, led us to being evolved and being one of the more recommended groups, but it’s so critical to starting this relationship software, right? We always joke that saying garbage in, garbage out. It’s the same thing. Like, you don’t necessarily need to take all your data from here to there.
Typically, most of the time, you had a problem with the data the way that it was, so why recreate the problem because you’re just going to have that now, kind of instant roadblock, right? So, the other thing that’s always tricky is, a lot of times that people do these migrations, the business doesn’t stop, right? It’s like that infamous saying, “You’re pouring gas in a car while you’re driving it.”
So, that’s where I just see a lot of times on the third-party vendors, they’re trying to check a box to get an implementation live and just get billing, but that’s a disservice to the staffing companies, and so personally, we take a lot of pride of really sitting in between that and making sure that we’re being mindful through those processing.
[0:16:08.1] DAVID FOLWELL: Absolutely, and you talked about a handful of things. So, one of the areas that I think is worth probably it could be you guys probably have some deep insight into how you connect the tech strategy to the organization’s overarching goals. I think that’s one of the things that I see a lot of staffing agency owners kind of doing the shiny object, where it’s like, “Oh, we want this thing, we want this thing.”
And it’s like, “All right, well, it actually does that. Have you thought about how that lines up with your three to five-year plan?” But what approach are you guys taking to ensure that you’re pulling the tech in and that is aligning with the overarching strategy?
[0:16:37.5] TIM RATLIFF: The first thing we did was, or that I took on was understanding from this, CEO and the COO perspective, where do they see this business going, why did they feel that in this case, they were able to articulate 10X. We don’t want to deal with the technology in the middle of it, and then what was it about the current stack we had that we felt like would limit that? Why wasn’t it the current stack we had, why wouldn’t it get us there?
One of the things I did was to evaluate not just the recruiting placement process but, more importantly, the onboarding and payment process. People don’t stick around when they don’t get paid. So, taking a look at that process and realizing you could have awesome recruiters and a great sales process in place, all kinds of people, but what are you doing on the onboarding and the paying side?
That is what gets them to have confidence, and you just stay, and so understanding all of that and getting the leadership to have that buy-in is critical. The other part that was very helpful was, as we began to look at ATSs and kind of zero in on one, finding other executives in the industry that had experience there and could speak into, “Yeah, the implementation is bumpy.” It is – you’re not going to be comfortable, you are going to be, at times, feeling like you’re flying blind, but it’s okay.
So, having other executives speaking into them to get them to stay onboard with the change you’re recommended, and then another thing we did to get the business to be ready for us was, you know, we looked at change management, and understanding that and talking to all of our people about this, and then also trying to involve as many as we could in that decision because I think one of the worst things you could do is to come in as a tech leader and say, almost say, “Hey, this is mine.”
Because yeah, if it goes great, you’re the hero, but odds are, it’s not going to go smooth, and now, all of a sudden, it’s all on you. But when you have your other senior leadership or executives around you speaking into the users, “Hey, this is okay, this is what we chose, this is why we chose this. Let’s stay on track.” It’s, “All right, we got to see beyond the hurdle and to where this is going to allow us to go.” I think that’s been a critical piece for us.
[0:18:41.2] DAVID FOLWELL: And it’s something you kind of talk about, there’s the cost-benefit analysis of existing things now working with the broader staffing industry, as well as with the – internally. I think getting additional buy-in as well to make sure that you’ve got an alignment with it moving forward. How do you guys manage? One of the things I hear about a lot, and I hear this as a pain point, “We bought this software, we switched ATSs, and people are still unhappy with it.”
I think it’s a – I would call it maybe expect they shouldn’t, management within the staffing space. I think that there – this is my perspective on it is I see frequently kind of like, “Oh, the technology is going to solve everything” viewpoint and the reality is like, “Tech can only do what it can do.” But how do you guys manage expectations and then ensure alignment on that front?
[0:19:25.4] TIM RATLIFF: I’ll just go real quick, Dan. One of the first things that I’ve done is you need to be okay hearing the pain points.
[0:19:31.4] DAVID FOLWELL: Yup.
[0:19:32.3] TIM RATLIFF: You know, it doesn’t feel good. As a tech leader, you don’t want there to be pain points, but you got to be okay with, “Hey, tell me what’s not working. Tell me where your pain points are.” Sometimes it’s a simple thing of like, “Oh no, the tool does it, it’s just like this.”
[0:19:43.9] DAVID FOLWELL: Yup.
[0:19:44.4] TIM RATLIFF: Sometimes it’s like, “Yeah, you’re right, the tool just – it doesn’t do that at all. Man, let me go see what other options maybe are out there for us.” One of the things that we’re doing right now is what we call a gap analysis, we’re going through journeys of all of our departments.
[0:19:56.9] DAVID FOLWELL: Awesome.
[0:19:57.3] TIM RATLIFF: We are saying, “Okay, we’re using the tool now, we’ve got more comfortability in the tool, but where is it that not just this one tool but all of our tools, whether be outlook teams, word, all of them, DocuSign, where are we maybe having some rub?” And laying that out and say, “How do you want to attack this?” In some cases, what’s coming to light is it’s not necessarily a tool thing, it’s a decision that we’ve made and how we’re implementing and leveraging the tool.
[0:20:20.8] DAVID FOLWELL: Yup.
[0:20:20.8] TIM RATLIFF: That, if we change, it might smooth it out, but I think first and foremost, being willing to accept and listen and hear and not take it personally, that’s something I have to continue to work on all the time as not take it for – they’re not hating you because of the tool. Don’t take it personal, but open the door and allow people to be heard and then – that they understand that you’ve listened and you care about their pain points.
And you really do want that to be removed, I think, is a huge first step in managing that expectation. I don’t know, Dan, what do you say?
[0:20:48.9] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: No, I agree, and like kind of tying the two questions together. We honestly follow a principle that’s very much like, “Hey, tech company, rolling out a new software.” When we call it that SDLC processor, it’s the software development life cycle. But like to do those things because of the fact that a lot of us as leaders go into new ecosystems where you’re adopting, like, we’ll go right back to that tech debt conversation, right?
I don’t see a lot of people that take the time to actually draw out every single technology that’s in equation and really taking time to define what that system of record is or the tool or function of that software to take time to see that gap analysis, but also redundancies in the tech, right? Like, communication layer is a prime example. We have a texting platform, we have a text option in the ERP.
We normally have some VOIP system, we have Teams, we have Slack, we have this, it’s like, it’s so much almost overbearingness of communication in that this is one route, an example of a redundancy of that. But by taking the time to actually map that and get actual senior leaders on the same page of what’s happening, and then also looking at that wish list, we personally tie that back to the strategic plans.
And based, like, what I’m hearing from operations, if revenue is a north star, then I’m prioritizing those lifts based on what’s going to support that revenue or whatever that is that year that they’re basically telling me is that north star of what’s driving that strategic vision, but typically to avoid that misalignment and buy-in, it’s a lot easier when you include people into those, you know, you carve out your strategic plans.
You have those silo meetings between the executive team and tech, executive team and op, tech and operations, and bringing that collaborativeness together. When you do that, it automatically gets everybody bought into the process, they understand their voice is being heard, and they can also understand that when you say no, it’s not no forever. It’s no for now because it’s not the top thing that’s driving what basically the ROIs are being driven from.
The groups that we’ve been able to do that with, we just have seen time and time again, we have way more successful implementations, we see quicker ROI because everybody’s aligned to the metrics and how we’re going to track, and also feeling that buy-ins.
[0:22:56.9] DAVID FOLWELL: That’s great, and with that, so you’re going through that process, getting alignment, making sure you’ve got the right – you’re focused on the right activities. Do you guys either have any stories on big successes that you’ve had, and then kind of a follow up to that is, are there specific ways that you’re ensuring, like do you have a standardized format for measuring the success and the actual outcomes from a tech leadership perspective?
[0:23:19.2] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah, I think so. I mean, honestly, we could probably take one that we did together a little bit, right? Like, Tim basically came in like I said, migrated currently to Avionté. One of the biggest concerns he had was, they had a skills assessment with our criteria, and they also used e-skill, but really, in this case, we were the most concerned about swivel chairing, right?
Nobody wanted to have managing outside system, where you try to get those things into good business practice, but Tim was able to articulate a lot of those things to me as the consultant, and I was able to bring in, he brought in the direct users, and kind of what we call those SMEs, right? Subject Matter Experts that were going to own that and champion it, which is one thing I left off in that last comment, right?
Most of the time, we want a project manager sponsors, those things that help gain that adoption, but it didn’t take us very long to build the integration. Then, we waited for them to get out to implementation, and from day one, we basically had not too much of a different process of that. I will let him talk to more about how he’s quantifying that in terms of our investment in the ROI side.
But for us, because of the fact that we had all of those parties involved, it made it more collaborative, and it also helped our relationship as the consultant, an outside party. He felt like we were an extension of his team. I felt like his team was invested in us, and that allowed us to do that in about 45 days, right? That’s not normal, most of that it takes six months, eight months, whatever prioritized through the product, but because we’re the outside, we’re not dependent on that product teams. We were able to do it a lot faster.
[0:24:43.6] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah, I’ll use that example Dan was talking about alluding to. We, one of the things I looked at to measure that ROI was, in this case, for this particular feature it was how many times were my people having to go outside of the tool to send of this testing and then get the results back and push it back in, and so in that particular case to your point David about asking how we measure it, in that particular case I was measuring the times that we stepped out of the tool and stay in the tool.
And what I was trying to do with this was to, if I could eliminate their stepping out to send the email and get the document and put it in, and it would just be there, then that was an opportunity for them to flow a little bit easier in how they do their work. So, that was one way that we measured and one success that we’ve had, and we want to – we are going to find ways to actually sharpen that a little bit better since we pulled it out or rolled it out.
I’ve talked to people about how we’re using it, is it working the way you thought it was going to work, where would you like to see improvement, and again, once you put it out, I would love to be like, “Hey, we’re done, it’s working, but you need to follow up, and open that door.” You really need to open that door and be okay allowing people to speak into, “Hey, it’s not what I thought,” and being okay with, “Okay, I need to get a little sharper.”
A lot of times, when we, like in the gap analysis we’re doing right now, a lot of the things we’re going to be looking at to measure how we’re, you know, did we really improve it, some of it is measurable directly, quantifiable as far as either number of clicks or the amount of time. If it takes you on average 20 minutes to open a job and we make this change, how long do you think it’s taking your route right now?
Man, it’s really simple, now it’s on like five, so you can measure that. Sometimes – and one of the things we’re going to do is go back through these journeys and say, “Hey, this was a pain point before. What is your emotion about this right now?” It’s like, “You know what? Hey, I’m really happy with this right now. That was really, really slick.” So, maybe some of the measurement is just an emotional gauge on that. The other part that I look to measure when I do some of these projects is also cost.
[0:26:33.0] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah.
[0:26:33.7] TIM RATLIFF: I mean, it’s like, “Hey, if I can implement this and I can maybe get rid of this tool or sunset this tool, or if there’s something custom that I sometimes would build in-house, and I don’t have to spend my time, or somebody else, or my team’s time to build it in-house, that’s another avenue that I look at.
[0:26:48.4] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah, one other example I have is actually like your – it was like what we did with Shiftfillers and Staffing Referrals, right? Basically, for us, like we implemented, we were probably one of your earlier clients a little, all right? And when we started, right? Like, we were trying to stay out of an ERP completely, right? So, that was the key one integration.
We went from ATS, basically put you in the middle of the ATS, and we were going straight to scheduling. Well, we grew so fast, implementation, and our field team basically was like, “I need a middle office, like we need it, and bad, we want to bring everything to that in compliance.” So, we went to Avionté, you had integrations, but they weren’t as mature as what they are today. So, we essentially had some manual in this, right?
We were able to at least get candidates in, we could get those things, and it was great because we didn’t have people coming out of that system, but maybe we were a little bit lacking in kind of that continuous like now they’ve been actually interviewed, and now they’re on assignment, and now we’re pending payment. However, we did an NPS after our second year, I think we had like a score of a 12 because we did have that fragmentation.
[0:27:49.5] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah, yeah.
[0:27:50.1] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: We reconnected, right? We basically sat down looked at that, where do we broke in, you told me about integrations and optimization rate with Avionté and the partner for our product-to-product integration. We once again got that interface, though. So, now, we’re now in the candidate screen, we can see referrals, we could see the ambassadors, and that whole UI made it a lot easier on the field teams.
But we also advanced on our side that integration with our third-party payroll system. Well, now, that’s kind of that, we went V1, V2, now really onto a V3, and now it was fully automated. Well, our referrals jumped 40%, you know? All of a sudden, I saw that not just the referrals jumped but the average length of assignment grew for weeks, right? Like, there were all these other more quantifiable measurements of the ROI.
But that’s a prime example of where most people may have just left after year one and say, “Oh, it’s not working, start all over.” We stayed committed and now watched you mature, watched Avionté mature, and we influenced a little bit of that maturity, and now all of a sudden, like now we have actual true measurable results, which is equally to an extra 900 a month per candidate, and gross margin, and all these other things I’ve just mentioned.
I just think it’s a good example to kind of point out how those evolutions kind of happen and how you can actually redefine those measurables as maturity takes off.
[0:29:06.3] DAVID FOLWELL: I think that’s a great example of, and this is for my personal experience with tech investments and having launched a few different companies. I used to – I think it’s the same for even your website, if you’re going to go down to that basic of a level is like when you invest in these things, the optimization, I think a lot of the value comes from the refinement and the optimization after the fact.
Depending on what the software is, what it is you’re trying to achieve, but with an ATS payment system, time tracking, whatever that may be when you’re doing that, it’s, “Okay, we got it up. Now, how do we get it to take these steps to get it to exactly where we need it to be, to be super impactful?”
[0:29:39.9] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Tim said something really quickly earlier but you kind of just reiterated it. A lot of these things, like you’re going to have different levels of where the gaps are and what the business pressures are, but most of us will go into these things with that like stabilized, normalized, optimized mindset. What I see the most in the industry is we get to that stabilized.
We may get to normalized, that optimized side is typically lacking because of, once again, those pressures from typically there are investment groups, PE groups, ownership groups. They just want it instantly and not give that time of the maturity. So, we caution all the time, like if you are aligned to, once again, those measurables and where you’re going to gain, and put processes in place to be able to report those back, you can normally get the time to get to that third level, so.
[0:30:22.7] DAVID FOLWELL: I love that. I agree as well, I think that there’s a– the folks on the optimized part it’s always nice to go to what’s new, what’s next, or new.
[0:30:30.1] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Right, for sure.
[0:30:31.5] DAVID FOLWELL: But, well, you know what? Let’s go back and look at where could we optimize with what we have, and especially in the last couple of years, I know we’ve had more and more conversations with people that are like, “Well, how do we get more out of our database? How do we get more out of the existing tech back we have?” Because of the additional resource constraints that we’ve seen in some of the agencies.
One area that I wanted to jump into, and I feel like we have to talk about in every podcast, is AI but also not just AI but future tech trends. Where do you guys – there is so much going on right now. With machine learning and AI, the automation is mostly adopted, and I don’t know, remember the latest numbers, but the majority of staffing firms have some form of AI that they are using, and also some form of automation in place.
But what are some of the key trends that you guys see and things that you’re excited about in terms of the future of staffing?
[0:31:16.0] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: I can take that one first, probably. So, let’s start with the AI side. One of the things that I see, right? Everybody’s new shiny object is AI this, AI that, but what I’m seeing most in the industry is AI is almost being 100% used in like the attracting gauge higher functions of the staffing business, all right? It’s basically about identifying candidates either in the database or in those prescreens to really try to drive higher quality candidates, higher volume of applicants.
You know, basically so that what you’re spending your money on in the job world or the programmatic world, you are actually getting a better value to the dollar. Personally for me, I’ve just been in a different spot than some in the industry of like where those things actually have value. What you’re hearing a lot of today is most of us, on at least the commercial side, high volume staffing, lower skill side, we are not having problems getting applicants.
I actually have way too many applicants than I do to the demands of the jobs, all right? So, what it’s actually done is, as we’ve put AI in, we’ve actually reversed bottleneck potential issue in the supply chain. Now, use simple math, let’s just say we paid a thousand dollars to get a thousand candidates. Back in the day, my recruiters would only touch maybe 10 or 20% of that applicant volume, but now AI touches, let’s say, 80 or 90% of that applicant volume.
It means now I just went from potentially 200 applicants now progressing through my compliance channels to 800, and now potentially I’m like, “Where am I getting the demand to follow?” Most of my customers cannot onboard that exponent, exponential value of candidate just because I solved and touching more of them and getting more people into a qualified setting, right?
So, but likely for me, I always get nervous with those things because if you are not safeguarding compliance, you’re making, you know, those conditional offers, you’re potentially hiring people for jobs you don’t have, which comes with co-employment risk, plus on top of that because we can’t make biases and decisions of the actual AI, I still keep human processes in those equations to make sure we’re not violating any of the UX.
So, for us, where we’ve actually tried to move more of our attention into AI is actually focusing more into like the equivalent of like what we call kind of digital twins, or where do we have basically within functions of the business human action that we can basically use more things like virtual chatbots, and be able to field more of those day-to-day questions for payroll, for injuries, for those types of items.
That just cut back a lot of the call volume or progress those conversations. So, we keep that time off of those individuals that we’re normally getting distracted with those things and keep them tied to the revenue-generating or revenue-preserving activities. In terms of future product and where I see those things evolving is more to things like sales, and more to things like mid and back office because that’s typically the areas that we either can’t get demand or we have basically the erosion for our industry because bad principles, either dealing with third-party systems and no way to validate against those things.
Companies like Timerack and others that I’m involved in, I am seeing them do a lot better job of starting to bring some things for middle office and helping with that aggregation of data. Over time, as we start to get more data into the databases of those, those are primary as of using small language modules, there are large language modules to look at patterns of those behaviors and actually get into more predictive compliance areas, right?
Same thing there also in compliance, that’s another area that we’re seeing, right? Tacking in knowledge centers and using AI to help our candidates understand policy or how we actually want them to work with us, and what tools are there to aid those days, and kind of gamify that in their day for me is a better use of time with AI today than some of that top of the funnel.
A lot of these ERPs have AI built in, so getting auto-matching, or you know, as we evolve more of the platform place, right? The whole idea of having matching criteria there is to re – kind of re-bring to life the kind of staler database moments. So, for us, we’re just spending more time on those areas, and we also see that as a unique differentiator of how we’re using it to some others.
[0:35:15.4] DAVID FOLWELL: That’s awesome.
[0:35:16.1] TIM RATLIFF: Yeah, that’s – yeah, Dan’s accurate. Where I’m looking to see the AI come in is really – and yeah, it will be there on the recruiter’s side helping us to – we want the personal touch to our talent and candidates. So, we want to be able to get to the right ones faster, easier, smoother, that will definitely will be there, but as Dan mentioned, it’s really a mid and back office where eliminating billing mistakes, eliminating the ability to understand what potential states our clients are maybe costing us a little more, and recognizing that.
And pitching ideas at the front end to say, “Hey, this what our bill rate should be because of these areas are what we see there.” Being able to understand that my people don’t have to learn a new tool. Really, as you mentioned, the language models, I would really like my people to be able to speak to it and not have to learn, “Okay, I got to go click over here, and I got to go click here then.”
But just say, “I’m looking for areas in the time sheet that have, are consistently missing.” If they could just say that, that is where I see the potential on the back office just because there’s really a lot of opportunity to pick up things that fall in the floor and smooth that out, and I think that’s one of the areas I’m pushing more towards, and not so much on the front of the funnel.
[0:36:24.4] DAVID FOLWELL: I’m excited for that personally.
[0:36:24.9] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Well, one other one that’s unique there, like, I mean, imagine being in a position that you can analyze decades of data around payment history, right? You have a customer that historically pays you 20 days late, 40 days late. Now, all of a sudden, you’re getting a request to basically say, “Hey, you should probably add this amount to your markup to offset this cost, right?”
That’s a big area of where we basically end up in pressures of cash flow and all these other things, but to me, it is a better use of where we get those dollars back in and more potentially recoup that margin that we are used to just writing off at the end of the year.
[0:36:56.5] DAVID FOLWELL: Absolutely, I’m personally excited for the replacement of UI with AI. I think that moving towards a – what is the – instead of remembering what tab something is filtered under, it’s what questions do I have, and can you solve that with natural language?
[0:37:12.6] TIM RATLIFF: The other one that I’d say that’s also really big is maybe a little bit kind of mid-market and enterprise-driven, but I am seeing there being a lot of uses where, like, let’s just say you take a company like ours working out of 15 or 20 different vendor management systems, getting to a point where you can basically look at a candidate profile from your ATS, and know the 10 jobs across multiple vendor management systems not just the one you’re looking for.
There’s some really cool companies coming out, one of my friends, Rebecca, she owns Jobify, we’re seeing that in the recruiting world. The same thing I think a couple of others are looking at similar things, but you know, those are major, right? Most of us have manual processes to go submit different roles between the MSPs of what we have to abide by, but once again, sitting in some of that mid-ware of like that data aggregation and trying to hold accountable third-party systems is critical because once again, most of us are a victim by fat fingering something wrong, right?
Like you know, those things always equal problems, right? We have tight deadlines to dispute those things, so anything that speeds us up in the life cycle of hitting this, five days from invoice post turnarounds, dispute things, and do those things faster, easier, they’re critical for us, especially on the margin.
[0:38:20.8] DAVID FOLWELL: That’s great, and to kind of wrap things up here and jump to the last section of this conversation, I’m pretty excited that we’re all going to be – these conversations that the three of us have had over the last few weeks, we’re going to be introducing Staffing Hub Tech Roundtables. Dan, I think this is especially, this is kind of your brainchild, so maybe you give a little bit of a concept of what these roundtables will look like and maybe the why they exist, having to talk about next steps for those of you that are listening today.
[0:38:46.7] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: For sure, well, I won’t take any real glory in this, but this was really honestly Tim coming to me in our relationships, and man, like I don’t know what I would have done without the outlet of you through these processes, right? Like I feel isolated, I don’t have really peers in this industry yet. If it wasn’t for people like you and people that got referred to me through Avionté and some of these other places, right?
Like, I don’t really know what that would have looked like. Well, personally for me, like I said going back to how I started my intro, I have always felt like this unique kind of position because I have sat in a staffing company, I’ve sat as vendor, and now I’ve sat as a consultant that have had such this unique kind of perspective of what these technology leaders are going. I’ve been also a part of the enterprise CTO Roundtable Group for the last couple of years.
But it really only exists. I mean, we limit that group to like 30 people. So, when you really think about the difference of enterprise versus mid-market, mid-market has quadrupled the size of enterprise, and to be fair, they’re typically a little bit more under-resourced, right? So, when Tim brought that to me, it was no-brainer for me to take this on, and just because it’s a passion of my life to basically collaborate with leaders like Tim.
I’ve always had the foundational principle that we get there faster working together, and you know, you hear that term like, you know, we’re more coopetition than competition, right?
[0:40:03.6] DAVID FOLWELL: Yeah.
[0:40:04.0] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Because there’s a big enough pie in this for all of us to get what we want. However, having been on the pioneer and the innovative side now almost a decade, it’s impossible for me to get client adoption with these things unless we have more people asking them to come into the workforce, and the reality is, like, everybody still kind of has a mindset of, “Maybe there’s a program. I need my brick-and-mortar 25 miles within the territory of the site.”
The reality is there’s a lot of that changed in COVID, and we’re just at a different world to where more things are able to be done virtually and at a high level, no differently than how the brick and mortars have always operated. But more importantly for us, these people that we interact with through these ecosystems at this point have become peers to a lot of us.
And we’re at industry conferences, we only may get a 30-minute, a little window, or if you think about some of the industry groups, it’s always been CFOs, CMOs. The reality is, almost everything we touch is centered around technology, and our technology leaders are the ones that are having to sit here and really process this information quickly, and sometimes it’s, “This vendor is in the – we’ve lost the key relationship, and I need to switch this now because I’m not confident that I’m going to have this, this and this.”
Well, you can’t really do those things without having the necessary resources and tools at your disposal, but brilliant concept. As we’ve talked about this, we’ll be keeping this segregated by ERP. So, basically, your Avionté user, some people are technology leaders and Avionté, Bullhorn, Tech Ports, JobDiva, either those types of things, and there’s a big reason for it.
A lot of it is, as you get to see it, a little bit more under the hood like I do, even though people used the same tools, there’s product integrations, there’s always the outside API, and everybody’s using something a little bit different, right? No terminology of mine and Tim between Skillwork and Shiftfillers is identical, it’s very different. He calls his stages something, I call my stages something.
We call things talent, he may call them employees or contractors, right? There’s all these different vernacular of what people use, but typically, we see a little bit more similarity, and really, the goal is most of us that have come together and partnered with the Avionté’s and Bullhorn’s are really truly there to help them get their products to what we believe that they can be, and for us to do that, it’s really important that we start bringing likeminded thought leaders together and giving them an outlet.
But more importantly, having lived it, touched it, breathed it, felt it for a decade, we understand that there is an emotional side of what we all go through on a day to day, and to be fair, there’s not an outlet for technology leaders today, and we live to bring that to market, and I’m looking forward a lot of being that resource for people that are drastically, like really desperately asking for the knowledge, right?
And that’s really what everybody getting behind us is willing to help us deliver, and I’m just really, really excited to bring that. I just feel like that’s a calling that got put on my heart, and Tim, thanks for giving it.
[0:42:55.4] TIM RATLIFF: Oh, it’s my pleasure. One of the things that I get excited about, and I naturally like to do this, I love connecting people. I’m – knowing someone, and they say, “Man, I really needed to do this,” or we have really, “I really wish I knew how to do this. I need somebody to do this.” I love saying, “Hey, I know someone,” and I love getting them together and then watching it be like, “Wow, they really benefit each other.”
And so, I really like doing that, and so that’s something that I value when I have relationships, and so as I was getting into the staffing world for the first time, and just trying to understand, not only just what staffing is, but all the technology that is there and available, and how do you pick it out and how do you work with it, and I’ve just found myself wanting somebody to talk to or just find. “Okay, who would you recommend to talk about this, or what lessons learned, or how would you go about deciding if you should do something?”
And so, I’ve learned it over time being in this industry, now, for a very short time, but as Dan mentioned, it was that kind of relationship there, but then as I’ve met others, it’s been the opportunity to really care about their success. I care about their success of my platform and wanted them to be as successful as possible. I care about the success of, to what Dan mentioned, people who have potential in competing with me.
But I really want them to be successful and how they are able to serve their people and enjoy their job, and so that’s one of the things I’m excited for with this group is to bring that ability to help people be successful in what they’re trying to do for their companies.
[0:44:20.0] DAVID FOLWELL: Absolutely, and I feel like the need is there, and there are – as we’re all trying to learn and grow and navigate all of the market dynamics, having the network can be so powerful, and I’m excited to be moving this forward with you guys. For those of our listeners that are interested in learning more about the round tables, there will be a form and more information on the website and the podcast notes.
So, go check that out. We’ll also have additional information on Staffing Hub as this kind of firms up and has more details in terms of the first round table being scheduled, but any closing comments from either of you for the audience?
[0:44:53.0] TIM RATLIFF: For me, I’ll just say, first of all, thank you to Dan and to David for this. You know, the opportunity to learn from both of you and to understand how to get better on how I’m doing this job is tremendous. I would say to the people that are out there we would love to have you be a part of this. There’s things I want to learn from you, there’s things that I want to, hopefully, be able to add value for you.
But really, it’s just the desire to see you be great at your job and actually love your job and not be burned out all the time is something that we really want to be able to provide.
[0:45:20.9] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Yeah. For me, I think what I’m really the most excited about is honestly taking this down to a granular level of really hearing the real-world problems so that I can hear pretty regularly from people, but getting those things more to a higher level of discussion within people that can actually make a difference is how we get there faster.
But once again, I think the other side of this is kind of continuation of this article. Like, you’re not alone, like, you’re not. Most of us have been feeling those pressures, demands of the industry for a long time. It’s honestly, probably, my opinion, one of the more depressing things that come in an industry that we actually get to have a lot of fun, and just to be able to be resources to each other and be able to pick up that phone when you do have that bad day.
Like, that’s a lot of joy that we get to bring to this. So, just don’t give up, keep going, and if you haven’t started, start because it’s definitely the way the industry is just moving, and you’re not alone in having to figure it out. There’s plenty of people like us who have been there, done that, and can help get you started. So, don’t hesitate to fill that form out and come and try to learn with the rest of us.
[0:46:21.4] DAVID FOLWELL: Awesome. Well, Dan and Tim, I really enjoyed having you guys on today, great conversation, and excited about the future of this roundtable and where we take things and connecting with all of the people that are listening and looking for help with driving their tech platform forward.
[0:46:35.2] DANIEL MASTROPOLO: Thanks, David.
[0:46:36.3] DAVID FOLWELL: Thanks guys.
[0:46:36.3] TIM RATLIFF: Thank you so much, David. Thank you, Dan.
