Screening, engaging, and qualifying job candidates

Effective outreach to new job candidates

Santo Brocato

UpSmith

Over the past few years, many small business owners have seen increased economic anxiety due to inflation and a tightening labor market. In fact, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there are nearly ten million unfilled job vacancies. Over the past month, the number of new hires has been around six million.

It remains a glaring challenge to identify, hire, and retain new employees. No business is immune.

Whether you’re a company looking to hire new employees or a staffing firm helping others fill their open roles, it never hurts to augment your efforts with additional resources.

Santo Brocato, Head of Operations at UpSmith, and his team wanted to increase speed-to-lead and grow engagement among prospective job candidates. In a hyper-competitive job market, this type of proactive strategy is essential for keeping the recruitment funnel filled.

UpSmith

Dallas, Texas

The problem

A need for faster candidate screening to meet demand

Our solution

Live agents who engage and qualify candidates

UpSmith is a staffing and workforce development firm helping prospective job seekers find new career options by learning skills without incurring debt. They work with businesses that finance “Learn and Earn” programs.

UpSmith was founded in 2021 and conducted its first career upskilling program in the summer of 2022 in Memphis, Tennessee — working with various local B2B businesses looking to fill open trade-based roles.

UpSmith’s business quickly grew. Santo wanted to increase operational efficiency when working with new job candidates and employers. Simply put, his team needed to make more calls and contact more candidates. They couldn’t do that based on their current staffing makeup.

UpSmith collaborated with Smith.ai’s Outreach Campaigns team to create a workflow that was personalized and tailored to their mission — as they expanded their business footprint on the West Coast.

Using Smith.ai’s Outreach Campaigns, UpSmith was able to improve its speed-to-lead based on new candidate applications. Speedy responses are critical since there’s a limited talent pool and recruiters are all fighting for the best candidates.

In addition to helping with engagement, Smith.ai’s live agents also screened for minimum job qualifications and potential fit for the open roles. This allowed the UpSmith team more time to meet with candidates that were the best fit to potentially hire — saving their clients significant time and creating more efficient hiring workflows.

24/7 outbound calling

Call intelligence and metadata

Online dashboard

“The Smith.ai team is wonderful to work with. The level of customer service that you're going to get from their client services team is exceptional.”

UpSmith is a Dallas-based employee staffing firm founded in 2021 with a mission to address the skilled worker shortage by creating high-dignity, high-paying career opportunities. The company solves employers’ needs by identifying high-potential candidates and facilitating sponsored, accelerated, foundational training to rapidly qualify them for entry-level roles in skilled professions. UpSmith’s initial focus is on addressing the 1.3 million unfilled construction and manufacturing jobs in the U.S. It requires calls to potential candidates to screen their qualifications for many available positions. Unable to handle all the vetting calls themselves, a solution like Smith.ai’s Outreach Campaigns helps augment the work and boost efficiency. Smith.ai’s agents make outbound calls to prospective job seekers who’ve expressed interest, screen them based on UpSmith’s job criteria, and advance the best ones along in the hiring process.

Smith.ai is a superior 24/7 customer engagement solution. Our North America-based agents are skilled at having high-quality conversations. We reach, engage, and convert leads through outbound calling to create more opportunities.