SYDNEY — 15 March 2024 — Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced the launch of its new AI solution, Bullhorn Copilot. Bullhorn Copilot will span the entire Bullhorn platform, beginning with Copilot Starter, a set of generative AI capabilities embedded directly in recruiters’ ATS/CRM. Copilot Starter debuted at the Bullhorn Engage event in Sydney yesterday ahead of an April product release. 

Like many others, the recruitment industry quickly adopted generative AI in 2023, with 63% of recruitment agencies in the APAC region reporting that they have experimented with AI, according to a recent Bullhorn survey of recruitment professionals worldwide. While the adoption of AI is still in its earliest stages, agencies worldwide that experimented with AI in 2023 were already 31% more likely to see revenue gains than agencies that have not begun experimenting with AI. 

Bullhorn’s unparalleled access to data on recruitment outcomes fuels AI investment

Bullhorn Copilot will span the entire Bullhorn platform, with AI-driven capabilities embedded directly into recruiters’ workflows. Bullhorn’s approach will apply AI technology to three categories designed specifically to serve the needs of recruitment agencies: generative AI, source and match AI, and directive AI. 

• Generative AI will help recruiters write content and messages more efficiently and effectively.
• Source and match AI will help recruiters and sales teams find the best candidates and jobs, allowing them not only to identify candidates that match search terms the recruiter enters, as they do today, but also to predict which candidates are most likely to be placed successfully.
• Directive AI will help recruitment professionals identify the most appropriate next step in their work, informed by past successful outcomes.

Copilot allows recruitment professionals to harness the benefits of AI right in the workflows they’re already using every day. At the same time, they are able to benefit from the wealth of centralized data and industry expertise within Bullhorn: using prompts informed by Bullhorn’s understanding of recruiting, leveraging algorithms that learn from the successes of the most productive recruiters, and being able to apply these insights across all aspects of the business. With 4.4 million placements made in the Bullhorn ATS alone in 2023, machine learning capabilities deployed within the Bullhorn platform are trained on an unparalleled volume of real job placement outcomes. 

Generative AI capabilities are the first to launch, with additional source-and-match and directive AI capabilities to follow later in 2024 and 2025. 

Copilot Starter offers generative AI purpose-built for recruiting

Copilot Starter, the first set of these new capabilities, puts generative AI functionality directly into the ATS to allow recruiters to draft candidate communications faster and more thoroughly. Using data they have already entered into the system, recruiters can craft more accurate and relevant communications, instead of building their own AI prompts in a second application. Copilot Starter uses generative AI to help recruiters with the following tasks:

• Creating pre-screening questions
• Drafting rejection messages
• Pitching a candidate for a job
• Updating a candidate’s resume
• Summarising a candidate’s profile
• Creating a client pitch
• Improving a message to a candidate

Copilot supports integrations to multiple AI providers, allowing recruitment agencies to evaluate and choose the LLM provider that best suits their business needs. Bullhorn Copilot will unlock new levels of quality and productivity, allowing junior recruiters to operate at the level of seasoned professionals and enabling experienced recruiters to work faster with greater accuracy. 

Bullhorn has partnered closely with customers on early adoption of this functionality to understand where AI can add the most value for their agencies. IT and healthcare recruitment agency IDR has been using Copilot Starter for four months. “The job duties that I want employees to be focused on are more of a priority now, because they can hand off some administrative tasks to Copilot. With Copilot, they have their own assistant sitting at their desk with them every day,” said Will Hayes, Chief Operating Officer at IDR. “I’m starting to see improvements in ramp up time with staff and in the amount of training in some administrative areas that we don’t have to invest as many resources into.”

Bullhorn has also taken into account recruitment agencies’ concerns with adopting AI in developing Copilot. “With Copilot integrated into Bullhorn, and connecting our own LLM, we have the confidence that candidate data isn’t being used to train AI models,” said Hamish Annan, Senior Operations and Systems Consultant and Marketing Manager at New Zealand agency ep.education.

“Bullhorn’s approach to incorporating AI into our platform is deeply informed by nearly 25 years of experience serving the recruitment industry. We have the ability to build AI directly into recruiting workflows with the appropriate context to achieve the highest impact for both recruiters and talent,” said Matt Fischer, President and Chief Operating Officer at Bullhorn. “The extensive scope of recruitment data in our platform allows us to train AI to meet the specific needs of recruitment agencies, and we’re keeping compliance and privacy top of mind in the process.”

To learn more about Copilot Starter and Bullhorn’s vision for staffing and recruitment AI, visit the Bullhorn website.

About Bullhorn
For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact:
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY — 1 March 2024 —  Although 2023 was a challenging economic climate for the recruitment industry, agencies that adopted AI and automation technologies and improved productivity were more likely to see revenue gains, according to Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) 2024 Industry Trends Report.

In 2023, the number of recruitment agencies reporting revenue growth declined for the first time in three years. Despite market headwinds, 54% of survey respondents still saw revenue increase. These high-performing recruitment agencies had something in common: they were further in their digital transformation journeys and shared a focus on increasing productivity and efficiency. 

High performers are experimenting with AI

In the APAC region, 63% of agencies began experimenting with AI in 2023. High-performing agencies have higher adoption rates of AI tools. They are 4.5 times as likely to be using AI to help with interviews and more than three times as likely to be using it for candidate onboarding. 

High performers used more advanced automations

Agencies that heavily leverage automation were 50% more likely to have seen revenue growth in 2023. These high-performing agencies used automation for tasks such as job matching and time capture,  creating a smoother experience for all. Respondents that reported “excellent” success at winning new business were five times more likely to have automated candidate screening, and agencies that saw revenue growth were 25% more likely to have automated tools to help nurture client relationships.

High performers drove more top-of-funnel activity

Agencies that saw the highest revenue gains used technology to move candidates through the recruitment process faster and ultimately make more placements. They did so in part by getting creative with candidate incentives and investing in the talent experience to entice more high-quality candidates. The highest-performing agencies placed candidates in less than 20 days.  

Getting ahead of the competition remains a priority in 2024

The top challenge for 2024 reported by survey respondents is uncertainty over the economy and future growth (cited by 58% of respondents), although 68% of agencies expect the economy to improve in 2024 and 61% expect their revenue to increase this year. Aligned with this outlook, the top priority of recruitment agencies this year is winning new business (cited by 40% of respondents), followed by digital transformation (38%) and improving the candidate experience (28%). Another challenge that gained increased importance this year was competition from online freelance/gig platforms, with 33% of respondents citing this as a top challenge, compared with just 14% in 2022.

“Last year, the industry witnessed a shift in the market dynamics for the first time in a number of years, as the spotlight shifted from sourcing candidates to a focus on business development to counteract a slowdown in the flow of job orders,” said Aaron McIntosh, Regional Vice President, APAC at Bullhorn. “Recruitment agencies that make the most of technologies such as AI and automation are, and will be, in a better position to lower margins, increase productivity, and differentiate their businesses from the competition. Forward-thinking agencies are looking at technology to help candidates find the best-fitting roles, help clients get workers on the job faster, and win more clients.”

Read the full report here.

About the GRID Industry Trends Report

The 14th annual GRID Industry Trends Report is based on a multiple-choice, online survey of more than 1,400 staffing and recruitment professionals working across a variety of industries and around the globe, including North America, the UK and Ireland, Benelux, DACH, and APAC. The survey was conducted in late 2023. 

About Bullhorn

For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses. Founder-led and headquartered in Boston, Bullhorn employs 1,400 people across 14 countries focused on delivering an incredible customer experience – its core mission. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

BOSTON — 5 January 2024 — Bullhorn®, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry, today announced its acquisition of Mployee,  a provider of Salesforce-based solutions for recruitment agencies, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. Mployee’s technology will accelerate Bullhorn’s vision to deliver a full, end-to-end, enterprise solution for Bullhorn customers using the Salesforce platform.

Mployee expands Bullhorn’s Salesforce-based enterprise offerings

Uncertainty over the economy, pricing pressure, and fewer job orders have all forced the recruitment industry to streamline internal operations as much as possible this year. Centralizing all recruitment activity on a single platform helps agencies gain those efficiencies. As a result, Bullhorn has seen a significant increase in adoption of the Salesforce platform, especially in Europe. It is now the largest independent software vendor (ISV) for Salesforce serving the recruitment industry. Bullhorn revenue on the Salesforce platform has grown at an average annual rate of nearly 30% since 2019. 

Bullhorn products on the Salesforce platform are currently used across 40 countries, including by four of the five largest global recruitment agencies. By combining Mployee’s middle-office capabilities with Bullhorn’s front-office, Bullhorn can offer a true enterprise-grade, end-to-end solution built on the Salesforce platform. This solution will help solve a myriad of front- and middle-office challenges inhibiting agencies’ growth and differentiation.

Together, Bullhorn and Mployee will help global recruitment agencies excel

“We’ve seen tremendous growth in customers using Bullhorn for Salesforce globally in recent years, and this acquisition will help us better support those agencies throughout the world in delivering more efficient middle-office operations,” said Matt Fischer, President and Chief Operating Officer at Bullhorn. “We’re excited at the potential of combining Mployee’s offerings with Bullhorn for Salesforce to deliver a full, end-to-end solution.”

“We’re very excited to join Bullhorn to further our efforts to drive the digital revolution of the staffing industry,” said Mployee CEO Karen Weebers. “Bullhorn has the resources to invest in Mployee’s product roadmap and bring our solutions to even more recruitment agencies.” 

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs nearly 1,500 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

About Mployee

Mployee is a leading front and mid office solution for the staffing and recruitment sector. The company has established a strong market position and is recognized as a rapidly growing technology company in the Netherlands by Deloitte Fast 50 and Main Software 50. Mployee has proven itself as an innovative player in the industry, with a commitment to optimizing workforce management.

For more information about Mployee and the solutions we offer, visit www.mployee.com.

Media contact

Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

9 Nov. 2023 — SYDNEY — Contingent workers expect a smooth experience at every stage of the recruitment lifecycle, according to new data from Bullhorn, the global leader in software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Out of more than 1,000 contingent workers surveyed globally, 68% of contingent workers would work with their recruitment agency again, an increase from 57% of contingent workers surveyed in 2022. But there’s still opportunity to improve: meeting talent expectations at each stage of the hiring process stands to increase that loyalty significantly. 

Overall, contingent workers appear more satisfied with their experience working with recruitment agencies. In 2023, 57% of contingent workers are considering leaving temporary work for full-time employment if it is available, down from 64% in 2022. Still, with an increase in employers’ reliance on contingent labour and a persistent talent shortage, it’s more important than ever for recruitment agencies to exceed candidates’ expectations and increase the likelihood that they will want to work with an agency again. The GRID 2023 Talent Trends Report identified key areas in which agencies can do that by delivering a smooth recruitment process from start to finish.

Candidates’ experience throughout recruitment process impacts loyalty

Candidates were clear that at every stage of the recruitment process, a smooth experience would increase their likelihood of working with an agency by about 50%. At each of the stages below, a positive experience showed a corresponding increase in the likelihood that candidates would work with an agency again:

• Job search: 27% increase
• Interview process: 44% increase
• Filling out forms: 57% increase
• Job fit: 48% increase
• Logging and submitting time: 35% increase

Candidates expect frequent communication before and during assignments

Responsiveness is key to retaining talent: candidates are 73% more likely to keep working with a recruitment agency if they found their recruiter to provide prompt communication. Whether during the recruitment process or while on assignment, 60% of candidates expect to hear from their recruiter at least once a week; if recruiters meet this expectation, then 84% of candidates would work with them again. When it comes to candidates’ preferred communication channel, email still reigns supreme, with 44% of all candidates listing it as their top choice — although it’s important to pay attention to local preferences, as approximately one-quarter of candidates preferred WhatsApp or other app notifications in Europe. Meanwhile, 30% of candidates stopped working with a recruitment agency if they didn’t receive enough communication from their recruiter.

Fast and accurate job placement matters

When asked why they chose to work with a recruitment agency, 31% of workers said it was because the agency had access to the jobs they wanted, making this the top reason. Delivering on this perception pays off: there was a 48% increase in a worker’s willingness to work with an agency again if the recruiter found jobs that were a good fit. Speed is also a priority when talent choose to work with a recruitment agency. Nearly three-quarters of candidates (72%) indicated they want to be placed in a job within four weeks of their first contact with an agency – and 22% actually hope to be placed within a week. Most recruitment agencies fall somewhere in between these ranges, taking about two weeks, according to Bullhorn data. It is worth noting that 62% of candidates stopped working with a recruitment agency for reasons related to speed: either the process was taking too long or they found another job before the agency was able to complete the process. 

“As recruitment agencies strive to retain business and improve their margins, it’s more important than ever to cultivate a loyal community of satisfied talent,” said Andre Mileti, Product Evangelist, Talent Experience at Bullhorn. “The agencies that succeed in this climate will be those that can place candidates in the right jobs quickly, while offering a convenient, consumer-grade experience. And the recruiters who will be able to do this best are those who have the right talent-facing technologies accompanying their efforts.” 

Read the complete report here.

About Bullhorn
Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs nearly 1,500 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow Bullhorn on Linkedin or X.

Media contact:
Kara Prone
Director, Global Content and Communications
Bullhorn
media@bullhorn.com

SYDNEY, 1 March 2023 – While most staffing and recruitment agencies saw growth in 2022, certain practices were more likely to separate those who saw the highest gains in revenue from those who suffered revenue losses. Agencies with the highest revenue gains were twice as likely to have digitised their data as those with the greatest revenue losses and nearly twice as likely to use automation heavily, according to Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID) 2023 Industry Trends Report. 

Most (84%) recruitment agencies in the APAC region have begun implementing a digital transformation strategy, ahead of the global average of 77%.

However, many are still in the early stages. Only 30% said they use self-service technologies such as chatbots to streamline operations and engage candidates, and only 16% heavily leverage automation throughout their business. 

More than half (59%) of APAC recruitment agencies reported an increase in revenue last year, while a higher number (65%) expect to improve again in 2023. Both numbers are slightly below the global average. 

Acquiring new candidates remains the top priority

Perhaps given the severe impact of talent shortages, APAC recruitment agencies again cite acquiring new candidates (39%) as this year’s top priority. The second biggest priority is winning new clients (34%), followed closely by digital transformation (33%).  

Despite feeling optimistic about their business growth prospects, APAC recruitment agencies continue to face client-related challenges. The most pressing is an increase in job requisitions that are too specialised or demanding (according to 23% of respondents), followed by a reduction in overall job requisitions (21%), and a lack of communication from clients (14%). 

Engaging existing talent leads to higher revenue gains

For APAC recruitment agencies, candidate acquisition remains a challenge: 59% cite the talent shortage as a top challenge in 2023, compared to the global average of 56%. However, agencies that followed certain best practices in engaging candidates were 30% or more likely to report revenue gains in 2022, according to the global survey results. These best practices include engaging with passive candidates in the agency’s database, soliciting referrals from candidates, and using candidates’ preferred methods of communication, among others.

The two practices most correlated with success worldwide were redeploying candidates and database utilisation. The firms that lined up the highest proportion of workers for new roles before the end of their assignments and those that most frequently filled a position with a candidate already in their database were twice as likely to report revenue gains last year and 50% more likely to expect gains in 2023. However, fewer than 10% of firms use automation to redeploy candidates. 

Aaron McIntosh, Managing Director, APAC, at Bullhorn, comments: “Recruitment agencies are cautiously navigating a historic talent shortage, evolving candidate expectations, and fierce competition. A clear commitment to accelerating digital transformation plans will go a long way in addressing both client- and candidate-related challenges, as well as future-proofing businesses to thrive in an environment of constant change.”

“The agencies that excel in 2023 will be those that provide an exceptional talent experience, double down on sales and marketing, and use their technology investments as a tool to differentiate themselves from the competition.”  

Bullhorn will share more key insights and examples from the report at today’s Engage Sydney event. 

Read the full report here.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,600 people globally. 

To learn more, visit bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.

In the midst of a persistent talent shortage, success at redeploying talent remains a top priority, as two-thirds (67%) of temporary and contract workers in the APAC region are currently thinking about moving to a permanent role, according to Bullhorn’s survey of more than 500 temporary and contract workers across APAC’s professional, healthcare, and commercial sectors. Close to half of survey respondents would not commit to redeploying using the same agency – even if it can provide the right jobs. Therefore, providing the best possible recruitment experience is key to retaining access to the available talent.

When it comes to choosing a recruitment agency to engage with, there’s an opportunity for agencies to establish a lasting relationship by meeting talent’s expectations. The top priorities for temporary and contract workers include access to desirable jobs (34%), positive past experiences (20%) and a good reputation (13%). Over half of the respondents (68%) also stated that they want the flexibility to work remotely in any assignment, while 93% expressed interest in participating in any reskilling, upskilling, or certification programs offered by the recruitment agency.

Talent also want recruiters to reach out more frequently and proactively with opportunities. Close to two-thirds (64%) said they want to hear from recruiters at least once a week when looking for new opportunities. Email is the most popular channel for communication (48%), followed by phone (20%), text (15%), LinkedIn (10%), and app notification (6%). Identifying talent’s communication preferences has an impact: when recruiters don’t reach out via the preferred communication channel, respondents were 67 percent more likely to say they wouldn’t work with that agency again.

Timeliness is also a common concern, with 37% of temporary and contract workers reporting that they have abandoned a job search because the recruitment process simply took too long. A quarter (23%) reported that recruiters do not respond to their questions within a reasonable timeframe. The value of timely communication goes beyond the hiring process: workers who experience responsiveness while on assignment are 3 times as likely to say they may work with the agency again. Furthermore, three in ten (28%) stated that they have experienced a drop-off in responsiveness from the recruitment agency once their assignment began, and a similar number (25%) reported that recruiters didn’t respond proactively when an opportunity fell through.

Andre Mileti, Product Evangelist, Talent Experience, Bullhorn says: “Offering consumer-grade experiences through the entire talent lifecycle is more important now than ever before in securing positive outcomes for recruitment agencies. That could mean ensuring your reputation is stellar on Google and other rating sites, delivering intuitive onboarding and employment services, or providing authentic value in the form of timely communication and relevant job opportunities. These simple tactics, if done correctly, will deliver exponential return. It starts and ends with examining the entire talent journey, defining those moments that matter, and ensuring your efforts result in satisfied employees. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when ratings and reviews improve, time-to-fill decreases, and referral and redeployment rates increase.”

Read the full GRID Talent Trends Report here.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,400 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.

Media contact:

Definition Agency

bullhorn@definitionagency.com

The aggregated data on hundreds of recruitment firms across Bullhorn’s global customer base was collected to celebrate the milestone of one billion total tasks automated using Bullhorn’s technology. It also coincides with the release of Bullhorn’s chatbot, a branded digital communication tool that uses automation and AI to provide information to talent at their own convenience, at any time of day, through an integration with recruitment firms’ websites.

According to the data analysed, the average recruitment firm currently automates over 20,000 emails, texts, updates, notes, and tasks each year. Cumulatively, this represented an estimated savings of 2.5 million employee hours in 2021 alone, equal to freeing up three hours every day per recruiter.

The aggregated data also shows contract and temp recruitment firms that use automation redeploy 20% more of their talent when an assignment ends. Similarly, those that use automation for talent communication report 20% higher click rates and 30% higher open rates than the industry averages.

Jason Heilman, SVP, Automation and AI at Bullhorn, says: “One billion automations is a huge milestone for the recruitment industry, Bullhorn, and the companies that leverage automation to drive their business. We are thrilled to have given recruiters so much more time to focus on building relationships and connecting people with opportunities.

“The adoption of automation has accelerated in tandem with some of the most turbulent market conditions in recent memory. During the pandemic, digital transformation presented much-needed opportunities for recruitment businesses as circumstances forced them to cut costs and operate as efficiently as possible.

“Today, automation can take on an incredible range of tasks, and we are constantly working on finding more ways it can further enhance the recruiter and talent experience. It already represents a way of overcoming common pain points, from poor communication to time-consuming scheduling and regulatory compliance, and the data clearly shows that firms that embrace it have a competitive edge.”

According to Bullhorn’s findings, the three most common use cases for recruitment automation are:

1. Talent engagement: The number one reason that candidates become frustrated with recruiters is poor communication. Automation enables recruiters to manage communications more effectively and keep candidates informed at every step of the process. Many firms already automate emails, surveys, and texts to talent.
2. Data health: Recruiters automate several data management and compliance functions, including anonymising records and updating job, company, and contract status for all the records within the applicant tracking system (ATS).
3. Internal operations: Automating simple tasks within the ATS like creating notes and alerts gives recruiters back valuable time to spend on building candidate and client relationships.

These use cases also help to support recruitment firms’ ability to adopt Connected Recruiting, a methodology developed by Bullhorn that empowers staffing firms to engage talent at every stage of the talent lifecycle. By leveraging Connected Recruiting best practices, staffing firms can ensure an incredible experience for their talent, create an ever-growing and consistently engaged talent pool, and lower their cost of talent acquisition. Automation plays a key role supporting activities throughout this cycle.

Learn more about how Bullhorn customers are using automation.

About the dataset

All metrics are based on the aggregated activity of 850+ Bullhorn Automation customers, spanning 60,000 active users, in compliance with all data protection and privacy regulations.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,400 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.

Media contact:

Definition Agency

bullhorn@definitionagency.com

SYDNEY, 3rd March 2022 — The last year saw a dramatic rise in the number of staffing and recruitment businesses employing a digital transformation strategy, according to Bullhorn’s 2022 Global Recruitment Insights and Data (GRID), a survey of more than 4,000 recruitment professionals.

Eighty-nine percent of recruitment firms in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region now have a digital transformation strategy in place, compared to 46% a year ago. Digital transformation adoption has more than tripled since 2019 when just 23% of firms in the region reported the presence of a digital transformation strategy.

Matt Fischer, President and COO at Bullhorn, says: “The leading staffing and recruiting firms today are focused on digital transformation to unlock new levels of productivity and truly transform the way they interact with their talent and clients. With the candidate experience at a premium, firms are leveraging automation and self-service to create talent journeys that match modern expectations and put more people to work”.

Other key GRID 2022 findings:

The industry rebounded in a major way in 2021

2020 was a historically challenging year for recruitment agencies in APAC, with two out of five reporting year-over-year revenue losses. For most agencies, 2021 represented a tremendous rebound. Two thirds (66%) of respondents reported revenue gains in 2021 and just 11% reported year-over-year losses.

Firms in APAC specialising in hiring for consultancy roles (88%) and legal roles (87%) reported the strongest performance in 2021. Government recruitment firms were on the other end of the spectrum, with just 43% of respondents reporting YoY revenue gains from 2020.

Reskilling dominates the agenda in 2022

With labour shortages biting, reskilling candidates has emerged as the top challenge for APAC recruitment firms in 2022, cited by 40% of respondents. Firms cited candidate acquisition as the top priority for the year, with candidate experience and digital transformation rounding out the top three.

Covid-19’s impact is still felt

The impact of Covid-19 on the jobs market, which was last year’s top challenge, is still the number-three challenge for APAC recruiters in 2022. Firms cited it as a contributing factor to the talent shortage as well as the top obstacle to providing an incredible candidate experience. It does not dampen their revenue outlook  for 2022 however; three-quarters (75%) of APAC recruitment firms expect revenue to increase in 2022.

To read more about Bullhorn’s Global Recruitment Insights and Data research, visit the GRID site.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,300 people globally.

Media contact:

Bob McHugh

Senior Manager, Global Content and Research, Bullhorn

bob.mchugh@bullhorn.com

Investment will help global recrutiment agencies of all sizes accelerate their digital transformation and scale without friction

BOSTON – NOVEMBER 09, 2021 – Bullhorn®, the cloud computing company that helps staffing and recruiting organizations transform their businesses, today announced that it has acquired cube19, a longstanding Bullhorn Marketplace partner and the provider of analytics and reporting solutions for the Bullhorn platform. This acquisition is the latest major investment by Bullhorn in helping staffing agencies around the world to transform their businesses in an era of ubiquitous digitization. The combination of cube19’s analytics suites and Bullhorn deliver real-time, actionable insights to business executives and operational leaders to help them achieve highly scalable growth.

Staffing as an industry is undergoing a massive shift towards digitization accelerated by the unprecedented increase in technology reliance necessitated by a distributed and frequently remote workforce, as well as rising expectations from clients and talent alike. C-suite executives at staffing firms are grappling with not only navigating through periods of intense change and uncertainty, but also on maximizing financial ROI and propagating smart operational improvements that are well aligned with an organization’s long-term growth strategy.

cube19’s suite of solutions are uniquely designed to provide dynamic, activity-level metrics to manage at any level of the organization: recruiter, team, office or region. cube19’s highly usable and accessible interface makes powerful reporting easy to generate for non-technical users, which results in better performance on the front lines while also providing macro-level insight that helps leaders make better business decisions. Ultimately, by enabling staffing companies to grow their revenue quickly while growing their costs more slowly, cube19 facilitates highly scalable growth. Additionally, cube19’s offerings are purpose-built for staffing agencies using the Bullhorn platform.

The acquisition of cube19 comes at a pivotal moment in the trajectory of the industry as a whole, and addresses a critical need among senior staffing leadership. Through research conducted by Bullhorn, staffing agency executives unanimously voiced a desire for truly real-time, actionable business intelligence and reporting that could help them connect their financial decisions to operations and delivery optimization and connect functions and business units towards improved service levels and growth. The combination of cube19 and Bullhorn provides exactly that.

“I’m excited to welcome Dan, Joe, Nick, and the cube19 team to the Bullhorn family,” said Matt Fischer, president and COO of Bullhorn. “This joining of our companies feels very right in large part due to the amazing culture that Dan and his team have built, and how well it aligns with Bullhorn’s focus on creating an incredible customer experience. The cube19 team builds analytics products that customers love and pair those with excellent service, and I know they’ll fit in perfectly at Bullhorn. I’m also thrilled to work with Dan as he leads the development of new purpose-built analytics products in the near future, meeting our customers’ needs and wants in the new world of work.”

“When we started cube19,” said Dan McGuire, founder and CEO of cube19, “we set out to transform the way staffing companies operated and I’m incredibly proud of how the cube19 team has turned that vision into reality. Since we became a Bullhorn Marketplace partner in 2013, we’ve had tremendous success helping Bullhorn customers achieve highly scalable growth and we’re all very excited to join the Bullhorn team as we continue that mission together.”

cube19’s executive team, including Dan McGuire, Joe McGuire, and Nick Graves-Morris, will join the Bullhorn leadership team in key positions, leading the company’s growing investment in real-time business intelligence across its global customer base.

Terms of the transaction will not be disclosed.

About cube19

cube19 is the business intelligence platform of choice for the global staffing industry, delivering easy to understand, real-time, actionable insights to every employee from desk level to C-suite. Staffing companies use cube19 to deliver highly scalable growth by optimising their two most important assets – their people and their data.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,200 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.

Media Contact

Laura Hillier
Marketing Director, EMEA
Bullhorn
laura.hillier@bullhorn.com

As the world emerges from the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, recruitment firms have recognized that accelerating their digital transformation initiatives will help them compete with the emerging threat of online staffing platforms and other potential disruptors. Subsequently, forward-looking agencies are leveraging a digital arsenal of tools to compete and grow in an era of automation and self-service.

Additionally, recruitment firms are facing the growth of shift-based work over the last 24 months and the challenges associated with managing their workforce at scale. To address these challenges, Bullhorn has acquired Sirenum to help Bullhorn for Salesforce customers leverage complex shift management and workforce management solutions in order to grow and scale their businesses on the Salesforce platform.

Sirenum’s suite of solutions encompasses scheduling and shift management, compliance in complex regulatory environments, and optimization for workforce deployment. Almost 500,000 workers currently use the Sirenum mobile app, and the company processes 300,000 shifts per month.

“We’re incredibly excited about the progress we’ve made in driving efficiencies for recruitment agencies using Salesforce, and we’re looking forward to Sirenum’s accelerated growth as part of the Bullhorn family,” said Benjamin Rubin, founder and CEO of Sirenum. “We already have many joint customers with Bullhorn, and they’ve seen such tremendous results from the partnership that joining forces is a natural next step. Together we’ll be able to help firms transform their approach to workforce management to grow and scale their businesses.”

“We’re dedicated to helping large, predominantly European staffing companies, many of whom manage thousands of workers per day and have built their businesses on top of the Salesforce platform, succeed in a complex business environment where supporting shift-based workers is a key competitive differentiator,” said Art Papas, founder and CEO of Bullhorn. “Sirenum’s customers already manage half a million workers using the solution, and we’re looking forward to accelerating that growth and unlocking greater value for recruitment agencies using Salesforce in Europe.”

Josh Pines, co-founder and head of corporate development and marketing at Sirenum, will join the Bullhorn leadership team to drive success for Sirenum and Bullhorn customers around the world as part of this exciting new chapter. With the global reach and expansive R&D resources available within the Bullhorn family, this acquisition will expand Sirenum’s product roadmap and development efforts to deliver the greatest customer value.

Bullhorn’s last corporate acquisition was in January of 2020 when it acquired Herefish, a provider of automation and candidate experience solutions. Like Sirenum, Herefish was a best-of-breed staffing software provider with a proven track record of excellence and numerous joint customers. Since being acquired by Bullhorn, Herefish has seen its revenue increase by 350% percent, growing from 100 customers to 450, now automating 2.3 million interactions daily on the Herefish platform, and saving customers more than 1.5 million hours of administrative work per month.

Terms of the transaction will not be disclosed.

About Sirenum

Sirenum powers the dynamic workforce. As a leading global provider of cloud-based workforce management technology, Sirenum provides transformational scheduling, monitoring, financial, and compliance technology to innovative employers, streamlining the management of hundreds of thousands of workers globally. To learn more about Sirenum technology for dynamic workforce management, please visit www.sirenum.com.

About Bullhorn

Bullhorn is the global leader in software for the staffing industry. More than 10,000 companies rely on Bullhorn’s cloud-based platform to power their staffing processes from start to finish. Headquartered in Boston, with offices around the world, Bullhorn is founder-led and employs more than 1,100 people globally. To learn more, visit www.bullhorn.com or follow @Bullhorn on Twitter.

Media Contact

Vinda Souza

Vice President, Global Communications

Bullhorn

vinda.souza@bullhorn.com

617-951-4319