How AI Adopters are Becoming Growth Agencies

More staffing agencies are adapting AI staffing solutions into their recruitment processes to help eliminate mundane tasks, match talent faster, and improve overall efficiency. As you assess the AI for hiring tools you are currently using or are thinking about using, you may ask yourself: “How is it going to help your staffing agency grow?”

According to the 2026 State of Staffing Report from StaffingHub, deep AI adopters are more than twice as likely to be growth agencies as those using no AI. 39% of heavy AI adopters and 38% of moderate AI adopters grew, compared to just 17% of non-AI agencies.

How AI is Helping Staffing Agencies Grow

One of the biggest ways AI can help staffing agencies is by making faster, more accurate placements. AI can match talent to jobs more quickly and make the right matches the first time, based on the criteria you set – skills, certifications, education, etc. When you make the right placements the first time, it leads to higher retention and client satisfaction. Rematching candidates can be costly; it wastes time you could spend on new placements and hurts your client relationship. Faster, more accurate placements mean you can take on more new placements.

AI staffing solutions also help eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks, allowing staffing teams to get more time back in their day to build meaningful candidate and client relationships.

Voice AI and Chat

Voice AI and AI chatbots are being used by staffing agencies to screen candidates. One of the biggest advantages of this AI staffing solution is that it works 24/7, so if a candidate applies for a job at night, they can be screened immediately. The next morning, the recruiter can see who applied and how the pre-screening went. This can significantly speed up the process and save the recruiter time.

In a recent SIA article, they also discussed how voice AI can be used to call large talent pools, screen them, and re-rank them based on qualifications for a job. In one example, a candidate remained in the staffing firm’s database for three years without any communication. Later on, the candidate received an unexpected call from a friendly AI recruiter acknowledging it had been a while since the agency connected with them. The AI recruiter asked about his interests and discussed a role that matched his experience. The candidate accepted the opportunity. He was so impressed by the experience that he ended up emailing the staffing firm’s founder about it.

This shows how AI Voice recruiters not only can be used for screening, but they can also re-engage talent pools in your ATS for opportunities.

AI Talent Matching

AI talent matching helps match candidates to jobs in your ATS. What would normally be a long, tedious process of scouring your database for candidates can now be done in seconds. Top candidates in your ATS can be ranked and weighted based on the qualifications you are looking for– skills, education, certifications, location, and more. The top candidates that match the criteria are quickly identified, and they can be reached out to for further screening. This kind of AI talent matching is built directly into Ultra-Staff EDGE’s front office staffing software, so recruiters can act on top matches without leaving their existing workflow.

Generative AI

Generative AI is also helping staffing companies quicken the hiring process through AI job description creators and resume builders. Tools like these may even be built directly into your ATS. If so, the job description can be created by using AI and pulling the details for the job in your ATS (pay, location, skills needed, etc.) Think about how many times you tried to put together an enticing job description? Now it can be done in moments. Similarly, if a candidate is lacking a resume, a resume can be built in seconds based on their information on the candidate record in your ATS. A resume can help a candidate make a great first impression when they are being presented to the client.

Both tools eliminate tedious tasks so you can make quicker placements and get more time back in your day to connect with candidates and customers.

AI Note Summarizer and Predictive Insights    

Activity note summaries are also helping staffing agencies summarize notes in their ATS. ATS’s have hundreds and maybe even thousands of notes between candidate, client, and job order records. An AI note summary summarizes all activity notes on each activity type to help staffing teams understand their next move, instead of needing to read through every note to get up to speed.

AI for hiring is also helping staffing companies prep with call prep summaries and make smarter hiring and partnership decisions through predictive insights. How likely is a candidate to ghost you? Does a prospective client look like they pose a financial risk? Intelligent insights like these can help staffing agencies make the right decisions to grow their business. You can see how these insights come together in Ultra-Staff EDGE’s data analytics tools, which turn your ATS data into dashboards your team can act on.

Concerns About AI Overlooking Soft Skills

Many people believe that AI can overlook some of your best candidates because it can’t identify soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and more. AI should be used as a qualifier. There are basic qualifications for every job: hard skills that AI can assess. AI talent matching, AI Voice, and AI Chatbots are perfect for this. In some instances, AI Voice and AI Chatbots may even be able to identify a candidate’s soft skills based on the questions they ask.

Once AI identifies the hard skills and they meet the basic qualifications for the job, then recruiters can get involved in interviewing that candidate and further identify other skills they have that make them a good fit. Incorporating AI and humans into the process also helps avoid bias and discrimination concerning AI.

Younger Generation Preference for AI Over Humans

Another concern with AI is the risk of losing the human touch. Organizations may worry that using AI staffing solutions will  sacrifice their relationship with candidates by creating an impersonal experience. When you use AI to screen or call candidates to re-engage them, the first interaction candidates have with you is an AI tool. Can this make the experience impersonal? Can it be an immediate turnoff with your staffing agency?

While AI recruiters may be a turnoff for some, the good news is that younger generations don’t mind AI and, in some instances, prefer AI. Did you know that 81% of millennials have to summon the courage to make a phone call? Before making a call, millennials may try to find the answer online rather than speaking to someone. This is completely different than the generations before them that would rather pick up the phone right away to get an answer.

Millennials also want answers fast. 60% of millennials believe they shouldn’t have to wait more than 5 minutes to speak with someone on a customer service line. Millennials are tech-savvy and are interested in using technology so utilizing AI chatbots or voice recruiters for pre-screening can be a good fit because it brings instant gratification after their application, and they don’t need to talk on the phone with a human. This fast-moving application/pre-screening experience may actually really impress them, similar to the example mentioned earlier in this article.

The Gen Z generation also feels strongly about AI. A quarter of Gen Z would rather talk to AI than a human, and more than two-thirds of young people would rather cancel plans in order to spend time online, according to a recent UK survey. Gen Zers are growing up with AI; for them, it is more common to use and interact with AI.

Millennials are the most populous generation after the last census in 2020, and Millennials and Gen Z make up 40% of the population. As younger generations continue to enter the workforce, staffing companies can gain an advantage by offering an AI recruiter for the initial pre-screening.  More candidates will be interested in speaking with an AI recruiter, and this can help widen the candidate pool for agencies.

Staffing Growth with AI

Adapting AI into recruiting processes will be inevitable in order to remain competitive and boost agency growth. If you are still debating about using AI, the best place to get started is with one tool at a time. First, see what AI solutions your ATS provides. From there, start with one tool and slowly add on more. Dedicate select individuals to experiment with the tools first. Once they get a handle on them, you can implement them across your entire organization. When doing this, it is recommended to create an internal manual so everyone knows how to use the tools to be most effective and successful. As we see in this article, AI can help eliminate tedious tasks, significantly speed up the hiring process, and even help narrow down the best candidates for the job. By adapting AI into your staffing agency, you can boost growth, scale with confidence, and form lasting candidate and client relationships. If your agency is exploring healthcare, light industrial, or professional placements, Ultra-Staff EDGE’s industry-specific staffing software solutions are built to support AI-driven growth across every specialty.

Ready to drive staffing agency growth with AI? Schedule a demo of Ultra-Staff EDGE Staffing and Recruiting Software and see how you can utilize AI to match talent to jobs faster, make strategic decisions through intelligent insights, and drive growth. 

Written by Jennifer Roeslmeier Mikels

Jennifer Roeslmeier Mikels is a Sr. Digital Marketing and Brands Manager at Automated Business Designs, developers of Ultra-Staff EDGE Staffing Software. Jennifer regularly publishes articles about key topics surrounding the staffing industry with both local and national staffing associations.

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