BrightSpring Health Services
"They [recruiters] have more capacity to actually engage differently with our business partners, and to come to the table better prepared to advise on the talent landscape, rather than just being transactional over filling vacancies."
Maria Schaefer, VP of Enterprise Talent Operations
How BrightSpring Health Services turned recruiter time into strategic advantage with Indeed Smart Sourcing and Sourcing Assistant
Summary
- The problem: BrightSpring hires at extraordinary volume in a high-turnover healthcare market, while 64% of reqs still failed to hit the company’s definition of healthy applicant flow.
- The solution: BrightSpring invested in Indeed’s Smart Sourcing and Sourcing Assistant to help automate sourcing work, expand outreach, and free recruiters to spend more time advising the business.
- The top result: The biggest impact is not just more sourcing activity, but more recruiter capacity for higher-value work — with one incoming recruiting team expected to operate with 50% less headcount.
Background
BrightSpring Health Services hires at extraordinary scale, ~33,000 hires each year, across a national post-acute healthcare footprint. Hiring volume alone is not the challenge. BrightSpring is also hiring in one of the country’s tightest labor markets, where recruiters are already managing heavy workloads.
Maria Schaefer is the VP of Enterprise Talent Operations, leading a team of ~90 recruiters, plus a network of ~150 HR generalists in the field whose work is about 50% recruiting-related.
| Count | |
|---|---|
| Annual hires | 33,000 |
| Recruiter Count | 90 |
| HR generalists supporting recruiting | ~150 |
| Recruiter req load | 50–55 reqs per clinical recruiter |
The breaking point
BrightSpring was balancing multiple pressures at once:
- Healthcare labor conditions have tightened.
- Applicant flow is uneven: BrightSpring can be flooded with applications for some roles, while 64% of reqs still do not meet its healthy-flow threshold.
- Recruiters are full-cycle and spend the majority of their time on manual sourcing and manual follow-up.
Maria described the underlying tension clearly: recruiters were being pulled into high-effort sourcing work that often looked more like cold calling than strategic talent acquisition. In her words, recruiters were seeing roughly a 15% return on cold outbound effort, which made process automation tools especially attractive.
The stakes
If BrightSpring did not solve this, the likely outcome was not just slower hiring. There was continued recruiter overload, reduced ability to serve as advisors to hiring leaders, and a TA function spending too much time doing transactional work instead of strategic initiatives. Maria’s larger goal was to build a recruiting organization that would deliver a positive candidate experience, connect with top talent on the Company’s behalf, and could advise leaders on what it would take to win in any given talent market.
"I feel like there’s a higher return to the recruiter’s time in that scenario than it is, like, just cold "
Maria Schaefer, VP of Enterprise Talent Operations
BrightSpring Health Services
The Solution
Enter Indeed’s Smart Sourcing and Sourcing Assistant
BrightSpring’s must-haves were clear:
- More efficient outbound sourcing for reqs with weak applicant flow.
- Less manual recruiter work on applicant search and follow-up.
- Faster visible value so recruiters would adopt the tool.
According to Maria, BrightSpring’s recruiters have access to multiple outbound tools, but “Smart Sourcing is always their number one favorite.” The high engagement with this tool resulted in an additional 5,000 contacts purchased, all being used within 30 days.
The biggest payoff has not simply been more outbound activity. It has been better use of recruiter time.
Maria shared one recent example: a recruiter came prepared to brief business leaders on the Charlottesville, Virginia nursing market, complete with competitive pay data, benefits comparisons, and mileage reimbursement insights. In the past, she said, that recruiter would not have had the bandwidth to do that kind of market research and advising.
That shift is strategic. Instead of being purely transactional, recruiters are increasingly helping hiring leaders understand what it takes to win in competitive local talent markets.
The Results
Maria said BrightSpring is currently absorbing a recruiting team from one of its lines of business into her organization. As a result of being supported by tools like Smart Sourcing and Sourcing Assistant, recruiters should have significantly more capacity.
“Messaging 10 passive candidates on Sourcing Assistant only takes 10 minutes of setup time. That’s another time-saving advantage for the Sourcing Assistant.”
For BrightSpring, the value of AI in recruiting is not just speed. It is leverage.
Smart Sourcing and Sourcing Assistant are helping recruiters spend less time chasing candidates manually and more time doing the work that changes outcomes: advising leaders, understanding markets, and operating at the level the business needs.
As Maria put it, that was always the dream. Now, BrightSpring is starting to live it.
Before vs. After
| Before | Now with Smart Sourcing + Sourcing Assistant |
|---|---|
| Recruiters manually researched candidates and followed up one by one | Sourcing and outreach can be automated and accelerated |
| Recruiters spent disproportionate time on transactional tasks | Recruiters have more capacity for market intelligence and advising hiring-managers |
| Weak-flow reqs required high-effort outbound work | Teams can scale outbound activity more efficiently |
| Tool adoption was inconsistent compared to past tech investments | Smart Sourcing became the team’s favorite and was used heavily enough to use 5,000 additional contacts in 30 days |
