How Bullhorn Automation Supported PGS Worldwide’s Rapid Growth

Founded in 2011, PGS Worldwide has become a leading staffing agency and subcontractor to the aerospace and defense industries. They have placed over 1,000 candidates with three of the largest and most innovative aerospace and defense companies working on cutting-edge projects for NASA and the Department of Defense. While working with clients of this caliber and size, PGS needed to expand their team to keep up with demand. They recently experienced rapid internal growth, going from 5 recruiters to 17 recruiters in the past two years.

The Challenges

  • Recruiter Productivity Challenges – PGS needed a solution that would increase their growing team’s productivity while supporting their new, accelerated business. They felt that recruiters were being bogged down with filling out timesheets and sending reminder emails to candidates. PGS needed to take away some of the manual, admin tasks that their recruiters were spending time on so that they could focus on building relationships with candidates and clients.
  • Payroll Challenges – PGS places candidates across the country, and they were struggling to have one effective payroll system. “Our payroll is a challenge because you’re trying to pay people all over the country who have different tax codes and clock systems,” said Dustin Couts, Vice President Business Operations at PGS Worldwide. “But the biggest challenge still is getting people to clock in and clock out and making sure time cards are turned in. It’s still the basic stuff that is the basic problem.” PGS was looking for a way to automate reminders to customers that would simplify the payroll process.

The Solution

While PGS has been a Bullhorn customer for the past nine years, they decided to add on Bullhorn Automation in February 2022. When evaluating automation vendors, one of the biggest selling points of Bullhorn Automation was the ability to automate and remove previously time-consuming manual tasks while increasing the team’s efficiency.

“I was sold on Bullhorn Automation because of the idea of eliminating some of the manual steps that our recruiters had to do,” said Couts. “We have a very step-by-step process for communicating with candidates. It made sense to us to have a tool that would make sure a lot of those communications were happening on a continuous basis.”

The team was also looking forward to applying automation to tackle their current payroll challenges and automating their process for verifying their candidate information is up-to-date.

Bullhorn is out in front of things, so we don't have to be out in front learning what's next and learning what tools would be advantageous for us in the future.
Dustin CoutsPGS Logo
PGS Logo
Dustin Couts Vice President Business Operations

The Results

Improved Efficiency: By using Bullhorn Automation, PGS’s recruiters have seen improved efficiency. While Couts doesn’t believe anything can replace the personal touch of making phone calls and building relationships, he said that incorporating automation allows recruiters to spend less time entering notes and sending emails, and more time having meaningful conversations with candidates. “Bullhorn Automation has had an impact on our recruiters’ day-to-day activities because they’re not having to set reminders for themselves on scheduling interviews or sending reminders for our candidates,” said Couts.

The PGS team’s automated communications have had impressive candidate engagement with a 40.5% response rate on text messages, an over 50% open rate on emails, and a 12.7% click rate on emails. According to Couts, putting some of the manual work on autopilot with these automated communications has also resulted in saving over 300 hours of time savings for his team.

Streamlined Payroll System: Before Bullhorn Automation, PGS was burdened by their payroll system. With employees all over the country, it was difficult to make sure everyone was clocking in and out on time, while turning in their time cards. Automation has streamlined PGS’s payroll system, making it easier to pay employees on a nationwide scale. “Bullhorn Automation  has helped improve our payroll system, because we now have automated communications that go out with reminders for folks to fill out their time cards,” said Couts. “We have also used it for interview reminders and first day messages. All of that stuff is automated through Bullhorn Automation, and that has been a huge value add for us.” As a next step, the team will be working to transfer files from Bullhorn into the payroll system.

Up-To-Date Candidate Information: PGS knows that it’s important to ensure candidates’ information is up to date in order to engage with them effectively, and most of this information is captured through resumes. They found that a lot of candidates struggle to build strong resumes, and they would send the recruiters documents that were outdated or formatted ineffectively. So, PGS created a technical writing team that writes new, achievement-based resumes for every single one of their candidates. “Then that new resume gets loaded into Bullhorn so everyone sees the most updated information,” said Couts. “From there, we utilize Bullhorn Automation campaigns to verify that the information is still relevant. For example, we ensure that the phone numbers and email addresses are still active and that candidates respond to them.”

But PGS Worldwide’s process doesn’t stop with new candidates. According to Couts, “We also have Bullhorn Automation campaigns that send out monthly communications to active and inactive candidates to try to make sure that all their data stays up to date in our system.” With Bullhorn Automation, PGS is making sure their candidates are set up for success.

Looking Ahead

PGS is always looking to evolve their processes and bring on new technologies so they can create the strongest candidate and client experience possible. According to Dustin, they often look to Bullhorn to see what new technologies are on the horizon. “I think you always have to be flexible and aware of what’s on the front of technology and innovation,” said Dustin. “Bullhorn is out in front of things, so we don’t have to be out in front learning what’s next and learning what tools would be advantageous for us in the future.” PGS is currently in the early stages of partnering with Bullhorn Marketplace partner, CloudCall, and they expect to add to their tech stack even more going forward.

Bullhorn is part of our day-to-day business. It's the centerpiece to everything our recruiters do every day. While many things are built upon it, it's still the central piece of our processes.
Dustin Couts
Dustin Couts Vice President Business Operations

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