From $2.2M to $11M: The 18-Month AI Deadline Hitting Every Agency

Benjamin Mena [00:00:00]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:00:36]:
Coming up on this episode of the

Amanda Hendrix [00:00:38]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:00:58]:
Welcome to the Elite Recruiter Podcast with your host Benjamin Mena where we focus on what it takes to win in the recruiting game. We cover it all from sales, marketing, mindset, money, leadership and placements.

Benjamin Mena [00:01:16]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:24]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:02:33]:
I'm excited about this Episode of the Elite Recruiter podcast. Because here's the thing. This guest today helped scale a healthcare staffing firm up to the eight figure mark. And then the market normalized. We're going to talk about what she did and what her team did to

Benjamin Mena [00:02:51]:
get to that eight figures mark, what

Benjamin Mena [00:02:53]:
the things that you could replicate and then what you needed to do and what you need to do when the

Benjamin Mena [00:02:58]:
market got back to normal to keep

Benjamin Mena [00:03:01]:
on succeeding, to keep on winning, and to keep on growing. Because remember, we all live through the golden era of recruiting. And now back to normal, you have to work. So I am so excited to have you here, Amanda. Amanda, real quick 30 second self introduction.

Amanda Hendrix [00:03:19]:
Yes. Well, I'm Amanda Hendricks. I am the head of growth at Ember Hiring. We are an AI company. We provide an AI SaaS product to healthcare staffing companies. And I am a former executive at in healthcare staffing. So I used to run an agency myself like you said. I've actually led two teams in the, in the, the decade that I've been in this industry.

Amanda Hendrix [00:03:41]:
But my background's in sales and marketing and that's where my heart is, is really marketing and branding and building a brand for the companies that I work with. So I'm excited to be here.

Benjamin Mena [00:03:51]:
All right, let's just dive right in. Okay. You helped a agency, healthcare staffing firm grow to eight figures. In today's tighter market, which completely different world, what do you think separates the agencies that survive from those that start getting squeezed out by market normality?

Amanda Hendrix [00:04:08]:
Yeah, it's a great question. I think what I'm seeing and what I experienced myself is really those really close client relationships are so important. And really delivering for those clients is step one in maintaining those relationships. Because as the market started to contract, a lot of vendors were cutting agencies. And if you weren't easy to work with or didn't consistently deliver, then you're missing out on that. And replacing one lost client takes a really long time. So I think that's really step one is those relationships.

Benjamin Mena [00:04:44]:
What habits from hyper growth hurt agencies when the market contracts a bit?

Amanda Hendrix [00:04:52]:
I thought about this a few weeks ago actually is kind of how in any sales organization when you're really busy and the money's good and it's just falling off the trees. You know, salespeople, we tend to forget, choose to forget to do the little things, the little details, collecting all the information and making sure we're crossing our I's and dotting our T's because. Or wait, crossing our T's and dotting Our I's because it's easy, it's just like it's just handed to us. But then when things slow down and we have forgotten to do those things, we're no longer ready when things, when opportunities do arise again. And so I think that's really what it is is when we slow down then we're kind of, we a lot of times as salespeople we're backtracking and kind of scramb and trying to find those things that we missed before that could have helped us be prepared for when another opportunity comes along. So I think that's that, that's that.

Benjamin Mena [00:05:48]:
So out of curiosity because you helped a team go from like certain figures all the way to a figures you're now dealing with a lot of high growth firms within the healthcare staffing. If you had, although if you went all the way back to day one and you had to redo all this over again, what is one thing that you design differently?

Amanda Hendrix [00:06:07]:
I think for way back when, because I was brand new to staffing, I was actually recruited to come on and do marketing and then ended up doing so many other things I would have diversified where I got leads from. We really heavily focused on because we were so small, we had a small lead budget, we really only focused on one lead site or one lead source. And I think that's something I would do differently now. I would absolutely diversify where I'm getting leads from.

Benjamin Mena [00:06:40]:
So what you know, if you're looking at agencies and you're hearing agencies blaming the market, do you think it's the market or do you think it's like truly an internal execution issue?

Amanda Hendrix [00:06:51]:
Great question. I think that it can be both and I think for a while it was the market. Right. But then you have to get to that point of acceptance. So once you get to that point of acceptance then it's internal and you have to be like this is just where we're at and so how are we going to handle it? And I think that we, you know, can tend to stay in that blaming the market place for too long. But from what I'm seeing now, because I we work with almost 20 healthcare staffing agencies now. We've which is in from all different sizes. The ones that are consistently succeeding are the ones that are moving quickly and consistently.

Amanda Hendrix [00:07:33]:
And it's, it's just like there is no secret sauce. Consistency and delivering quality results always wins. Consistency beats charisma every time.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:42]:
Well, you know what, let's take a few steps back. Let's rewind this tape.

Benjamin Mena [00:07:45]:
How did you even end up in

Benjamin Mena [00:07:47]:
this land of misfit toys? Recruiting and staffing?

Amanda Hendrix [00:07:51]:
Great question. So my background's in sales and marketing. Like I said before, and I used to. After college, I was. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I ended up being a salon manager. So I ran a salon and. And ended up becoming in management and getting recruited to be a corporate sales trainer. And that was probably the best.

Amanda Hendrix [00:08:13]:
The cha. The moment that changed my life forever is when I got recruited to do that. And I had some incredible mentors. And I, at a very early age, in my mid-20s, was hired to fly out to all these different locations to train franchise owners and their sales teams on our corporate systems and processes. Because some of the things that I did made me so successful that we implemented them across a national brand, which was really, really cool. And the way that I fell into marketing was that was around the time that Facebook business pages became a thing. And I was fascinated with the idea. I know this kind of ages me.

Amanda Hendrix [00:08:51]:
Like, okay, I'm like, I'm 40. Okay. So it was like, I was fascinated with this idea that we had this tool that we could use for free to attract clients that were within a few hours or within a few miles of our brick and mortar loc. You know, this is before we even. Anyone was even thinking about building businesses strictly online. Right. And so I implemented some fun social media strategies to get people to like our Facebook page, and that ended up becoming our. The social media strategy for this brand that I was working with and for.

Amanda Hendrix [00:09:28]:
And so that kind of took me down this marketing road after that. I did that for, like, seven years. And I got recruited from that job to go work at a marketing agency as a brand manager. So I was a brand manager for. For 12 national brands at this marketing agency that was a direct mail company. And I thought, this is my dream job. This is it. This is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life.

Amanda Hendrix [00:09:51]:
Like, I am so excited. I didn't even have a degree in marketing, so this opportunity was everything to me. I was still very young. I think it was, like, 27 maybe. And I had some personal things that happened in my life that really took me away from doing the best that I could, and it affected my relationship with my manager, and I ended up getting fired from that job.

Benjamin Mena [00:10:14]:
Oh.

Amanda Hendrix [00:10:14]:
And, yeah, I got fired. I got let go. I did a really good job for my clients. But internally, the relationship I had with my manager was affected because of my personal challenges. I was dealing with so Yeah, I was like, I thought, you know, my life was over. And after I wallowed in that for a few weeks, I decided to move to a new city. And I got connected with a networking group of women. And I saw all of them doing things that I knew I could do because I knew I had the skill sets to do something totally different.

Amanda Hendrix [00:10:46]:
And I didn't want to end up at some big company where I was just a number. And so from that, I decided to launch a. I got a sales job I hated. And on the side, I started a side hustle as a social media manager for small businesses. And the very first client that I signed was a startup travel nursing agency. And I had a friend that was working with them as well. And she. I'm so grateful to her to this day for calling me and saying, hey, I know you're.

Amanda Hendrix [00:11:17]:
You're trying to start up, you know, a marketing thing, and we really need someone to help us marketing and sales. And do you want to. You know, we don't really have a budget right now, but do you want to get involved? And so I said, yeah, I would work for free. And in return, they bought me my very first MacBook Pro and I signed a. It was basically a handshake deal, but I was working for equity and commission in the first year, and then they brought me on, on a salary, so I left everything else behind and went all in on a staffing agency.

Benjamin Mena [00:11:48]:
Okay, let me, Let me, Let me stop this. Stop, stop, stop. This was a handshake deal. Like, this wasn't in. Right. Okay. Was there anything in writing for a little while?

Amanda Hendrix [00:11:59]:
Not at first, because it. And I was so. I would never do that now. I would never do that now. Never. But back then, I was so hungry and I wanted to prove myself and I trusted the people that I was getting into. I trusted her. She is like someone I knew for a long time.

Amanda Hendrix [00:12:18]:
And I knew that if I could prove myself to a certain point, then I would probably get something in writing. And it ended up working out. So. Yeah. And I started out doing marketing and recruiting and then went into working in client relationships and eventually leading the team. And. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:12:34]:
So I gotta ask, your first 30 days, what did you do or figure out how to do to prove that you belonged in this industry?

Amanda Hendrix [00:12:42]:
So I had no idea what recruiting even was like. I didn't even know recruiting was a thing for real. I thought a recruiter was like somebody who worked at a company. I didn't know that there was a whole company that did recruiting. And so it was very new to me and especially in health care staffing. But I was raised by a nurse. A lot of my friends are healthcare workers. I just felt, you know, it was something I could get behind to be passionate about and helping people with their careers, that is so rewarding and that was something I love helping people.

Amanda Hendrix [00:13:13]:
So I was just thrilled to be part of it. So the first thing I did was research. I tried to find anything, any kind of Facebook group I could find, any that was related to the industry. Podcasts. There's a podcast called the Blue Pipes Podcast that's a very popular in healthcare staffing, or it was. I don't know if he's still doing it at the time, but at the time he had already released like 50 podcasts. And it was the entire podcast, like taught you how to run and how healthcare staffing ran as an industry. And that is.

Amanda Hendrix [00:13:42]:
I literally listened to nothing else for 30 days.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:46]:
You'd love that.

Amanda Hendrix [00:13:47]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:13:48]:
In those early days, like the first, like six months, or we'll say the first year, what was one of the first painful lessons that you had to learn about this space?

Amanda Hendrix [00:13:56]:
The competition. I didn't quite understand how competitive it was and I, you know, at that time still really wore my heart on my sleeve. And I really thought that if I just did this, it would work out right. And so I had to really learn the lesson of scenario planning, of this doesn't work out, this is what you do. It really taught me how to pivot and really let go of being attached to a certain result and start to really build that thick skin.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:25]:
This industry will do that to anybody fast.

Amanda Hendrix [00:14:28]:
Yeah, totally.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:29]:
I remember when I first started two decades ago, they were like, I was like, but I want to help everybody. They're like, you can just not here.

Amanda Hendrix [00:14:37]:
Yep, totally. And learning those little signs of like, does this person really want my help or are they just having a bad day at work today? Do they really want a new job? Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:14:48]:
So I gotta ask. Handshake deal. Nothing on paper, like all commission based. So it's hopes and dreams. Like, when did you realize that this is like, wasn't just a side hustle anymore, this was your lane?

Amanda Hendrix [00:15:03]:
I guess, when they offered me a salary, but I think it was, there was a couple of moments where I, you know, I, I knew they ended up giving me a salary that would at least cover my bills, I wouldn't have to work my sales job, but I still was doing other things. And then we found out about some conferences in the industry and I begged my Boss, I was like, please just send me to this conference so I can like, figure out how to get more clients. And I think it was at that conference when I was able to go up to people and shake their hands and nobody knew who I was, but I think they, they could see, you know, that I was eager to deliver. And I just flat out asked people I probably shouldn't be talking to if I could have an opportunity. One hospital, one facility, access to one hospital. And walked away from that first conference I went to with four vendor clients. And that changed everything.

Benjamin Mena [00:16:01]:
Amazing. So I'd love to know your evolution there before we start talking about the hyper growth and things that you did. Like walk through your, your evolution.

Amanda Hendrix [00:16:11]:
Yeah. So initially I was hired to build the, build a brand reputation. So back then the Facebook groups for travel, nursing and healthcare staffing was, they were very lucrative. The nurses were super involved and active in those groups. And so that was really my main focus was to build brand awareness with our candidates, where they were at in their communities. So I would, you know, engage in those communities, post jobs in those communities, try to help as many nurses as we can, even if we couldn't find jobs for them, just answer questions. And then I just started recruiting. And then whenever I signed on some new clients, I started working a full desk.

Amanda Hendrix [00:16:49]:
I was recruiting and managing the accounts. And granted there was other people bringing on clients, wasn't just me, but managing those client relationships was really where I, I just loved it so much. And that's where I ended up focusing. The majority of my time over those seven years was managing all of our client accounts and eventually not recruiting anymore, but doing client relationships and marketing. And then it got to a point to where I was essentially running the team. It just happened naturally. Every. I was just.

Amanda Hendrix [00:17:17]:
Everything flowed through me. And then I ended up getting promoted to president and CEO and got to continue to manage those client relationships, but really start to focus on bigger level projects and really running the team fully.

Benjamin Mena [00:17:31]:
Okay, so before we start talking about the, the hypergrowth and everything, I want to talk about growth into leadership. So if there's a recruiter sitting at an agency right now, that's like, I, I want to go higher up the chain. I want to grow into a leadership position. What's the first piece of advice that you would tell them like to do?

Amanda Hendrix [00:17:50]:
Do what you're doing now really well and make your boss look good. So I had somebody give me that advice a long time ago and I didn't fully understand it for a little while, but then I I really started to get it. And what that means is if you're doing your job really well, then you're making the company look good, which makes your boss look good. So I think at first, when you are young, especially when you're young, if you're newer in your career and you want to grow, it's really important to find good leadership and listen to what they're saying. You won't always understand why they're asking you to do things a certain way, but with more experience, you will understand that. And if you are easy to work with and you will listen and you show up and you will do what they're asking you to do, then you're more likely to be involved in more special projects down the road. They may give you extra responsibility. And every little opportunity you're given, every time you're asked a question, if you're showing up with a good attitude and you're a good listener and you're easy to work with, then that will get you farther than anything.

Benjamin Mena [00:18:58]:
Were you doing, like, your job and then, like, creating additional work on top of it, or is there opportunities where they were working like leadership was working on something, and you're like, hey, let me help you out with that.

Amanda Hendrix [00:19:10]:
Yeah, always. I was a military kid growing up, so I just always naturally, like, wanted to jump in, and I had to learn how to, like, make friends quickly and be a part of new communities quickly. And that comes with serving people and just having a servant heart. And that's just always something naturally I've done is if I see something that's not working, I will immediately try to figure out how we can make it better. And then take that to our leadership and be like, hey, this has been a problem, but I think this is what we should do. And that I think that's naturally kind of put me on a higher, another level over time.

Benjamin Mena [00:19:45]:
Okay, so I want to talk about scaling now, but I want to go up to the point of right before COVID what were you guys doing to really help you guys grow up until that point?

Amanda Hendrix [00:19:59]:
So we were very new. We did bring on a couple of people that were experienced from the industry to help us understand, you know, how to navigate the industry. So that was a benefit. And we were, you know, really just. We had a couple, like, one or two clients, and we were just doing everything we could to get a candidate to go to a rural hospital in the middle of nowhere. Like, we will pay you whatever you need to go, please. We just wanted to deliver for this one client. So we could get a referral.

Amanda Hendrix [00:20:30]:
So that's what we were really hyper focused on. But I would say, you know, we. Then I went to that conference and that got us more clients. And so we had been in business for about a year and a half before COVID hit. And then when Covid hit, we were like, ooh, this is going to be either really bad or really, really good. And, you know, luckily it was really good. But we had, I think it was divine timing for us. We had all of our.

Amanda Hendrix [00:20:54]:
Everything in place that we needed to. To scale because we were already. We were already fully remote. We were all over the place, all over different places in the country. And most of the agencies at that time were still in offices. And so we. We didn't have any sort of adjustment period when it came to that. And I think, you know, just having all this pieces in place, we were just primed and ready to go.

Amanda Hendrix [00:21:18]:
Like, we knew it was coming.

Benjamin Mena [00:21:20]:
So Covid hit, what happened?

Amanda Hendrix [00:21:21]:
Oh, man. You know, I haven't thought about this in a long time, but something that really sticks out to me is Covid hit end of February, beginning of March of 2020, right early on into December, early January, we start to see a spike in job needs in different cities and specifically up in the northeast and up in Washington. And we were like, God, that's really strange. The flu must be really bad. And then me and our form, my who I used to work with, she was our chief nursing officer. She and I ended up on a phone call with a CNO from a huge hospital system up in the northwest of the United States. And they started mentioning words like quarantine. We were like, what are they talking about? This is so bizarre.

Amanda Hendrix [00:22:13]:
And then the word Covid started to come up. And so we knew like a month or two before the general public knew that this was coming. And that was very anxiety. Like we were so anxious about it. We had, you know, it was kind of one of those moments. We were like, we should call our families. Like, we gotta let people know, go buy the toilet paper. We don't know what's gonna happen.

Amanda Hendrix [00:22:34]:
And yeah, I mean, as soon as the public knew that is really when I mean, we could look at our job board and it's like the map of the United States and there's like little dots on every place that there's a job. All those little dots started getting bigger and bigger clusters. So we went from having a job board of like maybe 2000 jobs to 9000 jobs in a matter of weeks. So we had 9000 orders that we could fill because of COVID And so it was crazy.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:04]:
How'd you guys like start attacking that? Because that's where you guys really saw that huge spike in like, revenue.

Amanda Hendrix [00:23:09]:
Yeah, I think we went from doing like our first. We went from. In year two, we did like 2.2 and then year three, we did like 11. You know, we were a small team and most of us had never been in this industry. And so we just did what we could do. We specifically just decided to. We're not going to hire a bunch of people because we don't know how long this is going to last, but we're going to do the best that we can with what we have. And so, yeah, just because kind of we had a lot of growing pains.

Amanda Hendrix [00:23:41]:
A lot of growing pains.

Benjamin Mena [00:23:42]:
Well, let me ask you this because, like going from 2.5 to 11, it just sometimes like feels like you could be like, you know, those old money guns just spinning around, just like shooting money everywhere. Like, this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. But with those growing pains, what do you think was one of the first true growing pains that you guys ran into?

Amanda Hendrix [00:24:02]:
I think two really stand out. One was funding because we were self funded. So we had to. Oh, we had to quickly figure that out.

Benjamin Mena [00:24:09]:
And then you guys figure that out.

Amanda Hendrix [00:24:11]:
I'm actually, I am not the finance person in business. I'm the one you just tell me when I can spend money. That's, that's who I am. So I can't really speak to that. But I know that, you know, who I used to work for. They had a lot of resources. They just had to kind of scramble a few times to figure that out. But compliance wise, that is really, I think where we were, like, we had a bottleneck is with healthcare workers.

Amanda Hendrix [00:24:36]:
There's a lot that goes into getting them compliant before they can start at a hospital, as you can imagine. So, yeah, it was, it was one of those moments where we had a week where we had, you know, we were going from just starting a couple of new nurses every week to like 20 to 30 nurses a week. And so we had to, you know, quickly figure out how does our one compliance person handle that? She doesn't. We all have to do it. So I think that was the biggest one. We had no, no problem finding the nurses, but it was like getting them there.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:06]:
What is something that you thought would help you guys with that scaling and growth, but ended up not helping at all.

Amanda Hendrix [00:25:14]:
My former leadership, he always would talk about, he was really anti throwing people at A problem. And, you know, he. He'd always say, well, like, you know, if hiring more people is not really going to fix this. And for a while, I was like, really? I would be really frustrated about it, but then, you know, it would just be a moment that I felt like we needed somebody, and then it would calm down, and then I'd be like, I'm so glad we didn't hire somebody, you know? So I think that what really helped us stay afloat when the market crashed was the fact that we did not grow our team exponentially. Otherwise, we would have been having to lay off all these people when, you know, we built a healthy company without it.

Benjamin Mena [00:25:55]:
So I remember that, like, when it did turn, I watch. It was like. It was like recruiters going to the slaughterhouse in the healthcare side. Sadly.

Amanda Hendrix [00:26:05]:
Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:26:07]:
Let me ask you this. So as Covid, the COVID surge started to cool off, bill rates started to normalize. What hit first? Was it revenue? Was it recruiter morale? Client behavior? Was it internal systems?

Amanda Hendrix [00:26:21]:
We could see the revenue coming. The new bill rates that we're posting, I remember in early 2023, I was still running accounts. I was looking at all the jobs coming in, the bill rates, all of that. And I remember in one month, our average bill rate dropped from, like, $145 to, like, 110, like, in. In 30 days. And that was, like, the biggest thing. That was the biggest red flag to me that things were about to shift drastically. And so I would definitely.

Amanda Hendrix [00:26:52]:
The revenue. It took the revenue a little bit to, like, trickle down. Right. But the new bill rates, that's really what struck a chord with me first. And then when my recruiter started to notice that their morale started to go down a little bit. They're like, ooh, this. How? What is this going to look like? And then I would say that after that, a year later or six months later, when the clients start reviewing their vendor panels, their supplier panels, we were just hoping and praying we didn't make, you know, that we would make the

Benjamin Mena [00:27:22]:
cut with all the pressure that you guys are having. Like, what was some of the hardest leadership conversations that you guys were having behind the scenes?

Amanda Hendrix [00:27:30]:
Cutting salaries. You know, there was definitely a few people that took a higher pay instead of hiring more people. And, you know, we had to be realistic about that. And that was tough. That was tough.

Benjamin Mena [00:27:44]:
Did the normalization of rates back to. I don't know if anything's like, back to pre Covid, but did it expose any weaknesses in your guys's systems?

Amanda Hendrix [00:27:56]:
I can't really think of anything. Right. The normalization of rates, do they expose anything? I would say yes. Okay. Yes. Now that I thought about, I would say our follow. Our follow up. During COVID I was.

Amanda Hendrix [00:28:11]:
Before COVID every candidate you talked to was a true traveler. People that were traveling before COVID they really wanted to travel, they would go anywhere. The rates were pretty good for traveling. During COVID everyone was a traveler. Everyone, like anyone would leave their house for five grand a week. And then now after Covid, you have to talk to three to four times as many candidates in order to, to get someone just submitted to a job not even placed. And so I think what really expo was really exposed probably at a lot of agencies is that now we don't have all these high pay packages, we don't have a large quantity of jobs. So what's it going to come down to? Oh, quality and consistency every time.

Amanda Hendrix [00:28:54]:
And so, you know, we had to, to recognize like what we're, who really has it on our team to make it through the hard normalized market because this is not an easy job and it's not for the fainted heart.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:07]:
So and I gotta ask you this because you saw the growth, you saw the recruiters, you saw like the money guns running around the office. Those bill rates with that many starts per week can make almost any. Most recruiters look like a top biller.

Amanda Hendrix [00:29:21]:
Totally. Yes.

Benjamin Mena [00:29:23]:
When the market tightens, what actually defines a great recruiter?

Amanda Hendrix [00:29:28]:
I think it comes down to consistency over anything. If I'm dealing with a recruiter and they have a great personality and I really like them, but they don't answer the phone when I call them or they don't call me back in a timely manner or they don't follow up with me about whatever I'm doing. Any application I have in that I'm going to move on. Like I, and I'm, I want to work with somebody who I feel like really cares and is going to be consistent in their communication. And if you don't have that kind of bandwidth as a human being to be able to support people like that, then you're never going to build a book of business. You have to be able to handle that and not everybody can, you know,

Benjamin Mena [00:30:06]:
take a step back and like looking at the firms, looking at the firms that you talk to and how the health care industry is still constantly evolving. I'm seeing, you know, at least from, you know, I don't live in the health care world, but I'm seeing like news of like cuts and bill rates dropping Even more.

Amanda Hendrix [00:30:23]:
Yeah, well, so the first of the year is usually the best part of the year for us because of the hospitals are trying to get staffed up for the year and usually they'll lock in all their travelers for the year and they'll stay for a couple of contracts. They do 13 week assignments. And in the hospitals, the census kind of ebbs and flows throughout the year. So you'll see, you know, the census go down in the summer a little bit and there'll be another dip kind of around the holidays right after. So that we'll have like, you know, it'll be pretty busy leading into the summer and then we have, you know, some up and downs. But I think that what we see right now is it's a pretty healthy stabilized market across the board. I think definitely the, the rates are a little bit better than they were pre Covid and it has to be because of cost of living. But, you know, unless we have another pandemic, it's never going to be like that.

Benjamin Mena [00:31:18]:
It was, I know, like, you know, I'm not expecting another pandemic. But let's fast forward in the future. Let's look five years out. Let's look at these healthcare staffing agencies. Five years out with everything that, you know, now growth, stabilization, what you're doing with artificial intelligence. What do you think is one capability that every staffing agency in this space needs to do, understand and be prepared for to survive five years from now?

Amanda Hendrix [00:31:43]:
It's, you know, the thing that we all keep talking about is AI. The way that AI is, is transforming and how rapidly it is transforming is mind boggling. About a year ago, when I was talking to our engineers and some other people that we associate with in tech, they would say to you, if you don't develop AI in your business, you'll be out of business in five years. Now they're saying that if you don't layer in AI in multiple places that you will be out of business in a year and a half. That's how quickly it's evolving. That should be alarming to people. I mean, we work with agencies of all sizes and the agencies that see what we're doing and implement it immediately, they're like, yes, we want this is. They're already a few steps ahead of everybody else and they're stacking on other AI tools with ours, which they should.

Amanda Hendrix [00:32:38]:
And yeah, I think it's that automation and you know, I think that if you can harness it in the right way, you're not going to replace people, but you're just going to make your agency more competitive and stronger. And I've even seen predictions that they think that right now there's probably 4 to 500 actively competing travel nursing agencies out there. And they think in within less than 10 years it's going to be down to like 50. So that's how quickly the consolidations are happening. The M&As are happening and people are either, they're either, you know, harnessing AI and they're merging and they're growing, you know, merging their companies together or they're not advancing their technology and they're not merging and they're not signing on new clients and they're getting squeezed out. And that's just the nature, that's just what's happening.

Benjamin Mena [00:33:29]:
So you're seeing a consolidation and you're predicting a large consolidation within the healthcare staffing?

Amanda Hendrix [00:33:36]:
Oh, huge. It's already happening. One of our clients, they merged five agencies into one about a year ago and since then have acquired four more. So they've got nine agencies, they've merged into one and they're not stopping. It's the smaller to medium sized agencies. It's the only way they're going to be able to stay in the game long term. Saying that, and I will add one more thing. There's an agency, a healthier staffing firm that their vendors and staffing, an agency and a vendor, they're in the top three.

Amanda Hendrix [00:34:05]:
Like they have, they're doing almost a billion dollars in revenue. They are developing several hundred AI agents, several hundred in their tech stack. So if they're doing that and the smaller agencies are just like, nah, we're not, we don't need AI. It's going to be wild in the next couple years.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:29]:
Like what are these agents doing?

Amanda Hendrix [00:34:32]:
All kinds of tasks, Engagement, administrative tasks, all kinds of things.

Benjamin Mena [00:34:38]:
So if you're sitting on the sidelines, I don't want to say sitting on the sidelines but like, if you're sitting there like, hey, it's not really going to do anything. It's recruiting. Like it's all about the relationships. It's all about like, you know, what I've been doing has worked the last 10 years. Yeah, I can keep on doing that. Can I keep on doing that and still win?

Amanda Hendrix [00:34:56]:
No. Like I was saying earlier in our conversation, what we're seeing in our data is that these recruiters, they're having to talk to four to five more candidates than before. Four to 5x times of minutes, candidates to get someone submitted and then to get someone placed. It's even higher than that. One person can only do so much. So you're going to have to put things in place that allow you to track more people with quality and efficiency and faster. And so, you know, if you can find a way to merge all of those things together and harness technology, then yes, you can compete and stay in the game.

Benjamin Mena [00:35:34]:
Okay, let's pretend that I'm a healthcare recruiter. You're sitting there looking at my desk or you're predicting the way that my desk is going to look like a year or two from now for me to actually succeed. What does my desk actually look like?

Amanda Hendrix [00:35:47]:
That's a great. I love that question. Ooh, this is a fun game. I think what your desk looks like is you have three. You have three, basically three tabs open. You've got leads coming in from one place that AI is funneling in for you and they're already pre qualified. And then you've got your book of business in front of you. And then over here you've got the people you've submitted and so you have like these three buckets and it's all automated.

Amanda Hendrix [00:36:14]:
And your job is to literally pick up the phone and just talk to them and develop a relationship. And then when you hang up, everything is done for you. And so when it gets to that point, you're going to have to. Right now you might be a recruiter that has 40 or 50 candidates working for you. So as when you're doing this business, it's not like per placement where you just send them off and that's it. They're working on your book of business constantly. They're always on your book. And so I would say probably for a year and a half to two years from now, you should expect to be able to be expected to maintain well over a hundred.

Amanda Hendrix [00:36:54]:
You're going to have to maintain way more candidates at that point.

Benjamin Mena [00:36:58]:
So if AI or technology is solving like giving me the leads, working with the candidates, doing all this over here, you know, I can see this like firms are like, well, I don't need like 25 recruiters, I just need five.

Amanda Hendrix [00:37:12]:
That could be possible. I think it's. What is the recruiter going to be doing then? Overseeing the technology? Honestly, it's like you're going to be overseeing it, making sure it's working right, approving certain things. There are still certain things that I don't think the AI will ever be able to do, especially in healthcare. When it comes to compliance, that's ever changing. And when it comes to specialties and all the little nuances that a healthcare worker has to or a healthcare recruiter has to know about their job. And you got to think about, I don't know if you're aware of like how much a hospital itself evolves. All the different units and the different specialties and the different surgeries that they do.

Amanda Hendrix [00:37:55]:
So really just being a subject matter expert and a human being that these nurses can connect with and then you're. I think they'll be really leading a team of AI agents. They'll be like running their own team.

Benjamin Mena [00:38:09]:
So a recruiter listening to this, like, with all the AI, what skill sets do I need to start focusing on for the next 1, 2, 3 years to still be a player in the game?

Amanda Hendrix [00:38:23]:
I would just educate. Always continue to educate yourself. Look at yourself like an entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs, we constantly have to stay on top of all of the newest technology. We constantly have to stay on top of sales processes and practices. Always look at yourself like a learner and a beginner. I mean, there's all kinds of free content online. You can learn how to build AI agents for your own workflows.

Amanda Hendrix [00:38:49]:
Don't wait on your company to do it. Build your own workflow if you can. Like, you know, there's resources out there like Udemy, I think that Google puts out, they have a whole university. Take the classes now, do it now. Don't book another trip, take a day off so you can put yourself through some sort of boot camp, like an

Benjamin Mena [00:39:09]:
AI focused bootcamp to figure out what the hell's going on and how do you like use like Claude code or cloud bot, open bot, open claw, whatever the hell it is.

Amanda Hendrix [00:39:18]:
I mean there's so many resources. But yeah, just educate yourself. And I don't think that recruiters should be scared. They should get excited. Like there's a lot of evolution that's going to happen and you just want just be a part of it. Don't be so resistant to it.

Benjamin Mena [00:39:32]:
In all this, like looking at a recruiter's ass and the recruiter's time now and over the next cycle, two years. What's a thing that you see that recruiters waste the most time on that they need to like offload or just stop doing.

Amanda Hendrix [00:39:48]:
It's always going to come down to the admin work, which is, you know, kind of like where my company lives, we live in that data space where we're trying to lift a lot of that off of the recruiters. So all they have to do is focus on engagement and our AI, you know, reads their conversations, updates The ATS for them. And I know there's a lot of, you know, there are other tools out there that do similar things, but ours is specifically built for healthcare staffing. So I would find that's something I would point out is look for AI that is custom built for your industry. That is really where AI is going, is custom build. So our LLM is proprietary and it fully understands how healthcare staffing works. A lot of AI companies out there, they're generic models, so they're only getting things right about 70% of the time where our accuracy is like 97%.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:39]:
That's kind of nice.

Amanda Hendrix [00:40:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. We spent a year and a half building the model and training the model with five beta agency clients before we brought it to market.

Benjamin Mena [00:40:48]:
It sounds like you guys are trading it, right? And you guys aren't just like a ChatGPT rapper.

Amanda Hendrix [00:40:52]:
Exactly. So, yeah, when we first had, like, the concept, they would, you know, kind of copy and paste things into generic models and the accuracy was like 67%. So we knew we had to build our own.

Benjamin Mena [00:41:03]:
Looking at the future, I want to play the the future game. The future recruiter. The future. This. Over the next five years or over this next year, what should an agency firm owner be building to prepare for the future?

Amanda Hendrix [00:41:16]:
I think this year has to be the year the agency owners are removing as much friction as possible, and that is people and technology. Get rid of the shelfware, get rid of the people who aren't performing. If last year wasn't a pruning year for you, this year should be a pruning year. And the reason why I say it like that is because my very favorite analogy is if you can think of your company and your tech stack like a tree, your data is the root system, which is where we live. Your tree trunk is your ATS and everything else on top of that is your. Your leaf products, and that's your company. And this is for any business owner. Honestly, your business is only going to run as well as your data is clean.

Amanda Hendrix [00:41:57]:
And that it really boils down to that you can't make business decisions on dirty data. I hate to say that as my answer because that's also, like my pitch for my company. But it's the truth. It's the truth.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:10]:
And we live in a world of the dirty data as recruiters.

Amanda Hendrix [00:42:14]:
Mm, totally. Yeah.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:17]:
Always joked around with a lot of people. I was like, the worst place data can ever be is the applicant tracking system. Because can't you just go there to die?

Amanda Hendrix [00:42:25]:
It goes there to die. Yeah, yeah. It's so funny.

Benjamin Mena [00:42:29]:
So with the consolidation with AI, if you had to bet your own money on whether a staffing firm can survive all this, what would you bet on?

Amanda Hendrix [00:42:44]:
What do you mean?

Benjamin Mena [00:42:45]:
Like what is it tools, Is it process? Is it people? Like where should these agency owners be betting on to survive and not be completely knocked out, washed out or crushed?

Amanda Hendrix [00:42:59]:
I think it's processes and people. You gotta make sure you have the right processes in place and scenario plan with your processes. Certain processes can support certain volumes, but when your volume goes up and down, you have to have a team that's going to be willing to understand how to shift those processes with the increase in volume and a decrease in volume when needed. And you have to have people who are going to be willing to play ball. And so I think we are far past the point. You know how people say like be slow to hire, quick to fire. I think we are way past that. I mean, you know, if you're not already doing that, then you have to.

Amanda Hendrix [00:43:38]:
And I hate to be that way because I'm, I'm the one. I never would never want to let anyone, anybody go. I had to learn that the hard way that it wasn't about that person, it was about the company as a whole. And we have to be good shepherds to our businesses.

Benjamin Mena [00:43:52]:
So we've talked about a lot. We've talked about the rapid scale, what broke, what you would do almost do over again, how an agency or a recruiter can survive. Before we jump over to the quick fire questions, is there anything else that you want to go deeper on?

Amanda Hendrix [00:44:09]:
I would just say if you are a recruiter right now and you're trying to figure out how to grow in this industry like we were talking about before, how do I work my way up? How do I become a leader? I just want to encourage you to know and to understand that every level that you get to will require a different version of you. And so you know, if you want to get to that certain level, there are going to be certain things and habits and behaviors and patterns that you're going to have to self correct. And you need to be open to feedback. And if you are open to those things and you do some self reflection and you're open to feedback and you're willing to change and grow, then you'll grow in your role as well.

Benjamin Mena [00:44:53]:
I absolutely love that because as these organizations grow, especially if you're at a small one, there are so many growth opportunities. I was just had a conversation last week with somebody that when they started Their company, the company was already at 300 million. I was like, does that mean you already missed out on all the opportunities to grow?

Amanda Hendrix [00:45:10]:
Yeah. And that you have to be open minded, you have to go, look, hunt for those opportunities.

Benjamin Mena [00:45:16]:
Jumping over to the quick fire questions, they don't need to be quick answers. If a recruiter hits you up and is like, hey, out of curiosity with, you know, you being a leader, you recruiting, you doing sales, everything that you did, if I want to go from average, too elite, what is the piece of advice that you would give me?

Amanda Hendrix [00:45:35]:
Work now like nobody else is working. Put in the time, nights and weekends. I mean I, for years I worked like 50, 60 hours a week. I think some, some week I'm still doing, putting in 50 hours, come back in startup mode. But to be a recruiter, you have to be available when your candidates are available. So you need to understand their schedule and adjust accordingly.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:02]:
What is a book that's had a huge impact on your career?

Amanda Hendrix [00:46:06]:
Oh man. I would say there's two. One is Atomic Habits. I'm sure everybody has. A lot of people have read that, but it really talks about like value stacking. That's something I really like. Like if you already in a habit of, you know, sitting down to read in the morning or meditate, then you add something else to that, like journaling. And I think that can be applied professionally as well.

Amanda Hendrix [00:46:30]:
Like if you have a process in place that really works, what's something else you can add to it that would amplify it even more? And so I would say Atomic Habits.

Benjamin Mena [00:46:39]:
I gotta ask you, you know, you're in the AI world deeper than most people. Do you personally have a favorite tech tool that you cannot live without and you love?

Amanda Hendrix [00:46:49]:
Yeah, chatgpt. I just started using Claude. I'm trying to get more comfortable with that. But yeah, I wouldn't be. I also use Granola, which is a note taker, which is amazing because it'll just, any kind of meeting you're on, it'll open up. You can just open it up. And if you're on a phone call, it doesn't have to be like integrated with anything. And so I would say Granola, my note taker and Chachi BT where I have built some assistance for myself.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:20]:
So two funny things. The last interview that I just had for the podcast, the person said granola too. Yeah. If I remember right, it's a Mac only product, right?

Amanda Hendrix [00:47:31]:
Is it? Well, I'm a Mac only girl, so I would, I don't know, maybe I

Benjamin Mena [00:47:35]:
got a PC So I'm always, I'm always being left out. And then secondly, I found out a way to get all your ChatGPT information into Claude within about two minutes. Your entire history.

Amanda Hendrix [00:47:50]:
Oh, I need you to tell me. I was trying to figure that out yesterday actually and I asked Claude and they didn't know.

Benjamin Mena [00:47:57]:
You have to go export your information in there, go into conversations, pull that conversations into a project in Claude and now you can ask anything in that project and it'll have your entire history of chatgpt.

Amanda Hendrix [00:48:11]:
Beautiful. Thank you. Because I have this whole brand management.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:15]:
I mean that's a, that's, everybody's like been using it for so long. Our lives are attached to it.

Amanda Hendrix [00:48:21]:
Yeah, you just unlocked a secret code.

Benjamin Mena [00:48:24]:
Well, anyways, back to, back to recruiting. What is one of the biggest challenges that you had to walk through and deal with in this industry?

Amanda Hendrix [00:48:34]:
You know, my team was so small. I left that company that we mainly talked about two years ago. So I haven't been there in two years, but I saw there was for me personally, it was time for me to move on. I think most marketers feel that way. Like I'm the kind of girl you bring in to help you go to market and scale for your first few years. I'm probably gonna stick around for three to five years if I really like you for seven and hope that we exit. Right. But I was getting to a point to where it was like time for me to move on to something new.

Amanda Hendrix [00:49:08]:
And there was, it was a two sided coin. It was, I needed growth and I wanted to cross over to tech and build something meaningful to help business owners. And then the other side of is I didn't want to leave my team and I was so emotionally invested in that. But I also knew that that company, we were, we were going to have to sell or merge. There was no way we were going to survive on our own in that market long term unless a few things shifted. And it, I had to ask myself, is this my problem to solve or is it time for me to move on so I can grow? Ultimately, you know, I decided to leave so I could grow. And they ended up getting scooped up by another company kind of recently. So that was, you know, good for them.

Amanda Hendrix [00:49:50]:
But I think that was probably the hardest. It was like making that decision to. But I'm glad I did because, you know, we're doing something really great here.

Benjamin Mena [00:50:00]:
You started off in marketing, you grew to recruiting, you grew to sales, you grew to leadership. You left, you're working with an AI tech firm in the rec tech space. If you could go back to those early days, like we'll say a few months in of that handshake deal, you got that MacBook, you're going to work, what would you go back and tell yourself, Amanda?

Amanda Hendrix [00:50:23]:
I would tell myself I'm going to quote one of my friends. He says this all the time. This is the thing that leads to the thing. I think what I mean by that is sometimes we think that the opportunity in front of us is what is going to like make or break our career or it's going to be, this is what I'm going to do for forever. And I was, you know, I had to kind of. I was so racked up in it. I didn't realize at that time, I did eventually, that I was in school. I was in school, I was learning all the things that I would need to learn in order to get to where I am now.

Amanda Hendrix [00:50:57]:
And I even feel that way now is I'm back in school because tech is new for me. Working on the SAS side, I feel like I'm learning all these things for whatever's going to be after this. And so just remember whatever you're doing is the thing that will lead to the next thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:51:12]:
About that, thanks. You've gotten the chance to talk to a lot of recruiters and I'm sure you're talking to more, especially that you're in the growth Mode with the SaaS product. But in especially when you were sitting there working with a team and working with recruiters and salespeople that were on your team, I'm sure you were dealing with questions like, how do I, how do I grow? How do I scale? What do I have to do? What do I have to do to build more? What do I have to do to make my tech work for me? All those conversations that you've had over the years, is there ever a question that just bugs you that's like, I wish they would just ask me this, what is that question? And what would be that answer?

Amanda Hendrix [00:51:47]:
Yeah. I think the question that bothers me the most is how do I find better leads? My follow up is what are you doing with the leads that you're getting now?

Benjamin Mena [00:51:56]:
Ouch.

Amanda Hendrix [00:51:58]:
Yeah. And you know, it's still a problem. I still see it every day. And I think when you really dig into it, there's no secret sauce. It's hard work and consistency. And if you're not following up with those leads, you're not going to win. Especially in healthcare staffing. Let me throw a stat at you in healthcare staffing, less than 10% of the candidates applying for jobs actually get the initial job they apply for, because by the time they get their application into, an agency calls them, they get all their paperwork in their submission packets built they're qualified, and then we get that submission packet to the client, the job's already filled.

Amanda Hendrix [00:52:39]:
That's how quick it moves. And so you have to really form a relationship with that person, build trust with them, keep them engaged, and continue to follow up with them. If you don't do that and you're not prepared for the time the next job opens for, when that matches their preferences, then you're already going to be behind. In today's market, speed is actually preparation. You want to be prepared for when that next job opens to get them in there and not just wait on these new leads coming in, because less than 10% of them are going to get placed. So you're never going to build a book of business on. On that.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:16]:
Ooh, that's good. This has been an amazing conversation, and I lied. I actually have two more questions for you.

Amanda Hendrix [00:53:22]:
Okay, sure.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:23]:
If somebody wants to connect with you or follow you, how do they go about doing that?

Amanda Hendrix [00:53:27]:
They can Find me on LinkedIn. Amanda Hendricks, associated with. I'm a founding member with Ember Hiring and then my Instagram is startup with Amanda. I also do some business coaching and consulting and like I said, brand, you know, reputations and go to market is kind of my. My thing.

Benjamin Mena [00:53:46]:
And is there anything else that you want to leave the listeners before I let you go?

Amanda Hendrix [00:53:52]:
I would say get excited about what you're doing and if you're not, move on.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:00]:
Ooh, yeah, that's. That's good. Amanda, I just want to say thank

Amanda Hendrix [00:54:04]:
you for coming on and thank you for having me. Ben, this has been amazing.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:08]:
It's one of those stories and, you know, we talk about a lot of the successes here. And going from 2.5 to $11 million, my God, that is a dream for any recruiter, any agency owner, any biller man, money, guns. But here's the thing. When the market stabilizes, when things change, it really shows who you are.

Amanda Hendrix [00:54:34]:
Yep.

Benjamin Mena [00:54:36]:
Everything gets shown. Your habits, your work ethic, your relationships, those defining moments, those is what makes you great. And as Amanda said, the consistency moving forward is what is going to keep you either going to make you an elite recruiter or keep it as an elite recruiter. Don't forget to learn some AI too. But this is the year that I truly believe that you're going to crush it. I truly believe that this is the year that you're going to go all in. Be delusional because the people that go all in work work their way, do everything they need to do. I believers is going to win.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:12]:
So make it happen. Keep going. Let's fucking go.

Benjamin Mena [00:55:16]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:55:50]:
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Benjamin Mena [00:56:25]:
Get started with Atlas today and unlock your exclusive Listener offer@reruitwithatlas.com

Benjamin Mena [00:56:33]:
thanks for listening to this episode of the Elite Recruiter Podcast with Benjamin Mena. If you enjoyed, hit, subscribe and leave a rating.