Growth was accelerating at Barge Design Solutions. With expanding offices across Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Ohio, and new market momentum, Barge’s leadership recognized that scaling the business required more than adding headcount. It required rethinking how talent was found, measured, and retained.
To support two critical initiatives, significant growth and industry-leading talent retention, Barge engaged Thrivence, its leadership and strategy consultancy arm. One of the primary tracks: reimagine and transform talent acquisition. At the center of that transformation was Cornerstone Recruiting.
From manual processes to measurable performance
When the initiative began, Barge’s talent acquisition function wasn’t structured for scale.
“We did not have dedicated recruiters, well-documented workflows, or system-driven dashboards in place,” said Deb Casaubon, Senior Consultant at Thrivence and Talent Acquisition lead for the transformation.
Recruiting data lived in spreadsheets. Reporting was manual and time-consuming. There was no single taxonomy or unified reporting mechanism. As hiring demand increased, visibility into performance; time to fill, offer declines, DEI hires, requisitions per recruiter, became essential.
The team began by baselining performance inside Cornerstone. For the first time, Barge could systematically track:
- Number of hires
- Requisitions per recruiter
- DEI hires
- Number of offers
- Offer decline reasons
- Time to fill
We created the ability to track project success by measuring ourselves against our goals,” Deb explained. “We now have a single taxonomy and reporting mechanism. This is super useful for management updates and our own team’s governance.”
The shift to a centralized, system-driven approach eliminated reliance on error-prone spreadsheets and established a true single source of truth. By the end of 2023 and continuing into 2024, Barge achieved its hiring goals, supported by its newly structured talent aquisition organization and Cornerstone-powered reporting.
Optimizing for efficiency and insight
With foundational reporting in place, the team turned its attention to optimization. They refined ATS steps and disposition codes to generate more granular insights, enabling visibility into candidate time in HR review, candidate time in manager review, verbal offer decline root causes, and recruiter and hiring manager performance by status.
This level of detail allowed Barge to identify bottlenecks, improve workflow efficiency, and begin building service-level agreements (SLAs) by status. Gabby Dooly, Recruiter at Barge, saw immediate impact. “By tracking the original requisition number, we've been able to capture more accurate time-to-fill metrics, allowing for better workforce planning and efficiency,” she shared.
The implementation of LinkedIn referral widgets further strengthened sourcing visibility, while new disposition statuses improved candidate data accuracy and surfaced areas for continuous improvement. “We've experienced several successes and notable achievements directly attributed to the utilization of your products,” Gabby added. “These advancements have collectively strengthened our recruitment processes and overall operational effectiveness.”
A partnership that enables self-sufficiency
As Barge upgraded to Cornerstone’s Choice Plan, the team gained additional configurability and insight into system changes, empowering them to implement enhancements independently. “Cornerstone’s assistance has enabled us to successfully implement solutions on our own, further enhancing our overall experience.” Gabby noted. That self-sufficiency has accelerated innovation and positioned the talent acquisition function as a strategic contributor to business growth.
Real-time visibility and AI in the future
Barge’s transformation continues. The team is now developing on-demand dashboards to monitor performance against 2024 and 2025 objectives in real time. Career site metrics will provide deeper insight into candidate activity and return on investment. And perhaps most exciting, Barge plans to explore AI initiatives to augment its recruiting processes.
“We’re excited. Our plan is to continue to work on developing an on-demand dashboard for talent acquisition and we would like to engage on AI initiatives to augment the work that we are already doing in the artificial intelligence space.” explained Deb. With a data-driven foundation in place, Barge is not simply hiring to meet demand, it is engineering a scalable, measurable, and continuously improving talent acquisition function designed to fuel long-term growth.
