For the past 25 years, Bullhorn has dedicated itself to building industry-leading, cloud-based software for the staffing and recruitment industry. Through partnerships with 10,000 customers globally, Bullhorn has built a vast knowledge base of recruitment best practices and deep domain expertise to help firms scale their businesses.
At the age of 24, in 1999, Art Papas founded Bullhorn with co-founders Barry Hinckley and Roger Colvin, with the initial vision to create a freelance marketplace for graphic design talent.
I was a chance introduction to a staffing firm that led to a significant pivot that shaped the future of the company. The staffing firm needed a web-based system to connect their four offices, to improve collaboration by allowing the teams in disparate offices to use one database instead of separate databases.
Recognizing the potential of building a web-based system from scratch, Papas and his team were inspired. They decided to build a new web-based system from the ground up for the staffing industry. This decision effectively gave birth to Bullhorn as we know it today.
Bullhorn now offers an end-to-end platform that manages the entire recruitment lifecycle, from sourcing and candidate management to sales, time tracking, payroll, and invoicing. By leveraging these benefits, staffing agencies can be more efficient, productive, and competitive by building business processes tailored to their specific needs.
Today, Bullhorn is approaching its 25th anniversary, with Papas still at the helm as CEO. The company has grown to employ over 1,400 people across offices worldwide with more than 11,000 customers in over 150 countries.
Throughout its journey, Bullhorn has remained founder-led, demonstrating Papas' long-term commitment to the company and its mission of supporting the recruitment industry through innovative technology solutions.
By leveraging these solutions, staffing agencies can create a more efficient, productive, and competitive business environment tailored to their specific needs. By leveraging Bullhorn’s integrations, partners, and services, staffing firms can focus on their workflows and processes without creating a robust technology platform.
The Marketplace enables agencies to integrate multiple technologies into their Bullhorn instance, improving operational efficiency and eliminating duplicate efforts. Some integrations are built specifically for the Bullhorn CRM, offering unique capabilities not available elsewhere.
The Marketplace includes over 100 pre-integrated partners, providing staffing agencies with a wide range of tools to build customized, future-proof solutions.
The Marketplace includes partners offering strategic technology advisory services, such as Leap Advisory Partners and Newbury Partners, helping agencies optimize their tech stacks and operations
The Marketplace enables agencies to integrate multiple technologies into their Bullhorn instance, improving operational efficiency and eliminating duplicate efforts. Some integrations are built specifically for the Bullhorn CRM, offering unique capabilities not available elsewhere
The Bullhorn platform gives staffing companies the ability to scale their technology quickly and become more efficient in a competitive space. Bullhorn’s unique integration capabilities help staffing companies specialize in specific verticals and role segments, giving them the flexibility to differentiate while using the best-of-breed technologies that give them an edge in the market.
Bullhorn’s comprehensive product suite and Bullhorn's Marketplace are the key components of their software ecosystem, offering staffing companies the specific features and benefits that allow them to be more effective as they hire at scale and solve the puzzle of sourcing, recruiting, and matching candidates with employers.
Bullhorn has a variety of tools and services that allow agencies to address different aspects of their operations
The Marketplace helps agencies leverage data transparency to make better and faster business decisions.
Integrated tools enable productivity from anywhere at any time, helping agencies overcome challenges in system adoption and employee turnover.
The Bullhorn Marketplace features vetted partner technologies to help staffing companies build out a recruitment tech stack that caters to their specific business and gives them an edge in a very competitive space.
The Marketplace offers solutions to improve candidate and client experiences. From resume submission platforms to automated engagement and marketing tools, The Marketplace facilitates the adoption and integration of new tools and technologies to help staffing agencies grow and maintain their businesses.
Bullhorn is at the center of the future of staffing technology. As companies pursue digital transformation initiatives to remain competitive, Bullhorn is the answer to questions about how to use AI and automation to boost hiring success.
As Papas states, "I think all staffing firms will have to be digital, to have a self-service component.
The Bullhorn approach is to ensure that AI and automation tools can be leveraged by staffing firms rather than replace recruiters, whose human touch and ability to build relationships will continue to be the foundation of the recruiting process.
"It's very much about forming relationships with clients and talent and trying to match-make."
Papas also predicts a continued shift towards contingent labor and higher-wage jobs, stating, "All the tailwinds are in favor of a shift toward contingent labor and from lower-wage jobs to higher-wage jobs."
In the future of work, data-driven decision-making, the use of metrics, and reporting for success, will guide the most efficient staffing businesses toward building high-performance teams supported by data analytics
With Art Papas leading the way, Bullhorn envisions a future where the staffing industry embraces technological advancements to enhance efficiency while maintaining its core focus on relationships and making valuable matches between clients and talent.
Watch Bullhorn CEO and Founder Art Papas’ keynote, read the recaps, and explore top takeaways from Engage below.