How Hoffmann Brothers Modernized Recruiting and Reduced Hiring Costs With Workable
For a company that has been growing steadily for over four decades, Hoffmann Brothers knows a thing or two about scaling operations. But when it came to recruiting, the company's process had not kept pace with its ambitions. Relying on a single job platform, a dated HR system, and a largely manual approach to candidate management, the talent acquisition team was leaving significant time and money on the table. That changed when Hoffmann Brothers adopted Workable — an applicant tracking system that transformed how the company attracts, evaluates, and hires talent.
Who Is Hoffmann Brothers?
Hoffmann Brothers is a full-service residential and commercial contractor with more than 45 years of experience in the trades industry. The company offers a comprehensive range of services including HVAC, plumbing, electrical work, drain and sewer services, appliance repair, and duct cleaning. With a workforce exceeding 500 employees and a growth strategy built around strategic acquisitions — including Ferguson Roofing and Blue Sky Plumbing — Hoffmann Brothers is one of the most established and fastest-growing service contractors in its region.
Leading recruiting through every phase of that growth is Talent Acquisition Manager Ryan O'Rourke, who recognized early on that the company's hiring infrastructure needed a serious upgrade to match the pace of expansion.
The Hiring Challenges Before Workable
Before implementing Workable, Hoffmann Brothers managed its entire recruiting process through a legacy HRIS that lacked the visibility, organization, and scalability needed to support a growing workforce. The limitations were not just inconveniences — they were actively costing the company money and quality hires.
The core challenges included the following pain points that will feel familiar to many talent acquisition professionals working in the trades and services industries:
- No centralized resume database: There was no searchable history of past candidates, which meant every new job opening essentially started from scratch.
- Single-channel dependency: All recruiting efforts flowed through one sponsored job platform, leaving the company exposed to price increases and platform limitations with no fallback options.
- Manual and inconsistent data storage: Information was scattered between systems with no standardized process, making it nearly impossible to track candidates through a defined pipeline.
- No passive recruiting capability: Without a talent rediscovery mechanism, previously qualified candidates who did not get hired for one role had no way of being considered for future openings.
As Ryan O'Rourke described it, the team's approach was essentially limited to sponsoring a job on Indeed and waiting. There was no structured note-taking, no pipeline visibility, and no strategy for reaching candidates who were not actively applying that day. For a company growing through acquisitions and constantly needing skilled tradespeople, this approach was simply not sustainable.
Why Workable? The Case for a Modern ATS
The decision to move to Workable was driven by the need for a platform that could do more than just collect applications. Hoffmann Brothers needed a system that could integrate with multiple sourcing channels, maintain a living candidate database, and give the recruiting team real-time visibility into their hiring pipeline.
Workable offered all of this and more. The platform's ability to post to over 20 job boards simultaneously meant the company was no longer dependent on a single source of candidates. More importantly, it allowed the talent acquisition team to diversify their candidate reach without dramatically increasing their workload — something that matters enormously when you are a lean HR team supporting a workforce of 500-plus employees.
Implementation: Fully Live Within Days
One of the most notable aspects of the Workable rollout at Hoffmann Brothers was how quickly the team was able to get up and running. Rather than enduring a months-long implementation process common with enterprise HR platforms, the company was fully live within days. This rapid deployment meant minimal disruption to ongoing hiring efforts and allowed the team to begin seeing value almost immediately.
Speed of implementation is often an undervalued metric when evaluating HR technology, particularly for growing companies that cannot afford to pause recruiting while a new system is configured and tested. Workable's ease of onboarding proved to be a meaningful differentiator in this regard.
The Results: Real Savings, Better Hires
Since adopting Workable, Hoffmann Brothers has seen measurable improvements across the metrics that matter most in talent acquisition. The key outcomes have been both financial and qualitative:
- Significant reduction in job sponsorship spend: By expanding to 20-plus job boards, the company reduced its dependence on paid promotions on a single platform, driving down overall recruiting costs while maintaining — and even improving — candidate volume.
- Expanded candidate reach: Moving beyond Indeed to a broader set of job boards increased the diversity and quality of applicant pools, giving hiring managers more options for each open role.
- Improved employee retention: Better-fit hires sourced from wider, more targeted candidate pools have contributed to improved retention rates — a critical metric for any service contractor that invests heavily in training skilled tradespeople.
- Structured recruiting process: The team now has a defined pipeline with consistent note-taking, candidate tracking, and communication, replacing the informal and inconsistent approach that existed before.
Key Takeaways for HR and Talent Acquisition Leaders
The Hoffmann Brothers story is a useful case study for any HR leader managing recruiting in a high-growth, operationally complex environment. Several principles emerge from their experience that apply broadly across industries:
- Single-channel recruiting is a risk, not a strategy. Dependence on one job board creates cost vulnerability and limits the quality of your talent pool.
- A searchable candidate database is not a luxury. The ability to rediscover past applicants is one of the most cost-effective recruiting capabilities a company can have.
- Implementation speed matters. The best ATS is the one your team actually uses, and ease of adoption directly affects return on investment.
- Retention starts at the top of the funnel. Better sourcing leads to better-fit hires, and better-fit hires stay longer — making a strong ATS one of the most impactful investments a growing company can make.
Final Thoughts
Hoffmann Brothers' transition to Workable demonstrates that modernizing recruiting does not have to be a slow or painful process. With the right platform in place, even a fast-growing company with complex hiring needs can move quickly, reduce costs, and build a stronger workforce. For talent acquisition professionals still managing recruiting through outdated systems or single-platform strategies, this case study offers a compelling argument for why the time to upgrade is now.