Tential, a North America IT Staffing and Solutions company, deployed Bullhorn Amplify and quickly realized significant gains:
- 40% increase in client submissions YoY
- Reduced LinkedIn use by half
- Cleaned 90k job titles and identified 56k duplicate candidates to clean up data
CUSTOMER SNAPSHOT
Tential had a problem most IT staffing firms would recognize:
- a massive inbound applicant pool that recruiters don’t have time to work
- a team defaulting to LinkedIn instead of their own database
- mounting margin pressure from VMS programs
After deploying Bullhorn Amplify, Tential increased client submissions by 40% year-over-year, with the same recruiting team, and without sacrificing the quality standards the firm was built on.
The Challenge
As margin pressure from VMS programs increased and competition for quality candidates intensified, Tential’s leadership knew they needed to scale without proportionally growing headcount. The problem was the tools and habits in place could not support that.
Recruiters were bypassing Tential’s database. Whenever a new job order came in, the default move was to open LinkedIn. The result was millions of candidates already in Bullhorn went untouched.
“What tends to happen naturally is you get a job, you go to LinkedIn, and you’re missing out on the millions of candidates we have in our database.”
— Matt Gregoire, Field Partner, Tential
The volume of inbound applicants was more than recruiters could screen manually. They were essentially ignored. Candidates applied and heard nothing. Good fits disappeared into the noise.
Operational drags compounded the scaling problem. Repetitive, low-value tasks consumed time that should have gone to client and candidate relationships. Institutional knowledge lived in people’s heads. Onboarding new recruiters required weeks of shadowing, calls with account managers, and slow knowledge transfer.
Tential needed a way to do more faster with the team they had, and without letting quality slip.
The Solution
Tential has been a Bullhorn customer for 12+ years. When Bullhorn Amplify launched, the depth of their existing data made it a natural fit. No third-party AI tool could replicate what Amplify could do with over a decade of organizational history already in the system.
“No other AI tool is going to be able to know your data and be as intimate with so many years of collective, organization-wide data in one place.”
— Jared Drymond, Senior Associate, Recruitment Delivery, Tential
Tential deployed Bullhorn Amplify alongside Automation and Search & Match, starting deliberately on the recruiting side before expanding to sales. Their implementation centered on two core use cases:
AI Screening (“Alice”)
Every inbound applicant now receives a touchpoint. Amplify’s AI screener (Tential named theirs “Alice”) handles the top of the funnel automatically: screening, scoring, and surfacing qualified candidates to recruiters while filtering out poor fits. Now, former consultants and silver-medalist candidates are matched to new openings and automatically invited to screen, turning previously dormant talent into an active pipeline.
Amplify Chat
Amplify Chat became the team’s go-to tool across recruiting, sales, and operations.
Recruiters use it to:
- prep for candidate calls ,
- optimize resumes for VMS submissions, and
- pull rate benchmarking data for client negotiations.
Sales uses it to research dormant accounts and prepare for client meetings.
Leadership uses it to analyze 3,200+ historical job requirements for skill set trends and review current billing summaries in minutes.
When Tential onboards new recruiters now, Amplify Chat generates account-specific training guides from years of Bullhorn data in a fraction of the time it previously took.
The Results
The impact showed up in the numbers and in ways the team didn’t expect.
“We were able to keep that same level of quality while increasing the level of submissions and requirements we were able to touch by 40% year-over-year — with the same size recruiting team.”
— Jared Drymond, Senior Associate, Recruitment Delivery, Tential
This result came without adding producers and without sacrificing the placement success rate. Tential attributes it to cutting waste and noise.
A two-week internal experiment made the case even more clear. Tential challenged a group of volunteer recruiters to go without LinkedIn, working only from Bullhorn with Amplify tools. The recruiters without LinkedIn doubled the client submissions of their peers who kept access. The result was compelling enough that Tential now onboards all new recruiters without a LinkedIn license for their first two months, keeping them focused in Bullhorn from day one.
Beyond production metrics, the adoption spread further than leadership anticipated:
- The sales team began using Amplify organically, without formal training, to prepare for client meetings and re-engage dormant accounts.
- Teams shifted from reactive to proactive. Better visibility into open roles, coverage gaps, and candidate pipelines means fewer fires and faster responses.
- Speed to fill improved in VMS programs where Tential is directly measured on it.
- Amplify’s Enrich skill cleaned 90,000 job titles and helped surface 56,000 duplicate candidate profiles that created noise in the system.
Lessons Learned
Tential’s results didn’t come without missteps. Their willingness to share what they’d do differently is some of the most practical guidance for firms just starting their Amplify journey.
- Clean your data first. Tential discovered 56,000 duplicate profiles and thousands of records missing contact information after they were already live on Amplify. A data audit before go-live would have accelerated time-to-value across recruiting, search and match, and Amplify Chat.
- Assign a dedicated owner. When Matt’s responsibilities shifted and Amplify ownership was distributed across multiple people, results dropped significantly. Reinstating a single point of accountability got things back on track.
- Test before you launch company-wide. After initially launching Screener, Tential needed to adjust thresholds and knockout questions to get the results they wanted. In retrospect, they realized tightening their configuration would build better trust in the tool.
“Have a formal strategy in place, with KPIs, objectives, milestones, ROI, and a dedicated person to lead it.”
— Doug Pfeffenberger, Field Partner, Tential
Looking Ahead
Tential is building their strategy to rollout Amplify on the sales side with org-wide milestones, clear accountability measures, and a dedicated point person. In the near term, the team is focused on pushing their current tools closer to full effectiveness before expanding scope.
Further out, they’re watching the space for AI-assisted outbound sourcing — a capability that, if it matures as expected, would shift the recruiter’s role from active searching to managing a pipeline that builds itself.
See how Bullhorn Amplify can help your staffing firm scale smarter.
Learn more at bullhorn.com/amplify.
Ready to get started?
