Thrive Therapy is an ABA therapy service provider which employs about 250 clinical providers in the Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh areas and growing.
Melanie Skoofalos knows a thing or two about looking ahead.
As the Chief Strategy Officer for Thrive Therapy—an ABA therapy service provider that’s operated for almost nine years, with facilities in the Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and Pittsburgh areas—she’s overseeing a new expansion into Florida and a mental health outpatient program launching in Philadelphia. Aside from growing the company, which employs about 250 clinical providers, her main focus is to increase the access to care for their clients, who range from children to teenagers and adults.
“It’s really about being able to help people,” Skoofalos says. “And also to serve, because we understand that there’s a lot of need out there. It would be great if we could decrease those barriers and get people to services faster, and improve the quality of some of those services.”
Which is why the administrative director of Skoofalos’ company led the partnership with Apploi for all Thrive’s hiring and onboarding needs—because not only do they have to contend with the fact that there are more open ABA roles than there are clinicians to fill them (by 2030, ABA therapist demand will increase by 19%), but they also want to stay focused on the horizon, instead of getting stuck in the day-to-day of staffing duties.
Addressing the BCBA Shortage
Simply put: there aren’t enough BCBAs coming into the market.
“There’s a greater need than the provider numbers that we have,” Skoofalos says.
“It is also very difficult to obtain that BCBA master’s degree.” Before implementing Apploi, Skoofalos’ team struggled to meet their staffing needs by announcing openings in disparate places—LinkedIn, various job sites, via their website and social media, and through word of mouth. But they were doing far more work than was netting them quality candidates.
Betting On a Better Way
Partnering with Apploi immediately saved her team time, and Skoofalos loved the Apploi hiring interface right away.
“Apploi streamlines things as far as automations, because the system provides a lot of those initial emails and follow up emails,” Skoofalos says.
“It provides you an overview of where you are in the process with any given applicant. It lets you rate applicants. So when you’re scouting for someone, you can see the top tier five applicants. It makes it easier for the team to pull information to see a visual outline, and it’s accessible.”
A Fast Favorite Feature
“Skoofalos loves Apploi’s user-friendly design and helpful applicant tracking system. “Once somebody applies for a position, you can see everything on their Employee Profile,” she says. “But then you also have the ability to right click into the resume and have everything sitting there, and the status notes that others added. So it’s really a very nice holistic picture of that applicant right off the bat.”
The Biggest Problems: Solved
Getting out in front of top candidates first—and staying there—was most important to Skoofalos. Prior to using Apploi, her team was spending precious time trying to keep their postings visible on each hiring platform. “Once a week at least, you have to go in, and you have to refresh your application, or it drops to the bottom of the list,” she says. “If you have so many applications out there, your hiring team has to constantly follow up on that, and with Apploi, listings are optimized for the best reach. So that is something that we see as a big advantage of using Apploi.” Beyond the ease and visibility, Skoofalos is also impressed by the quality of candidates that have come their way.
“From what we’re seeing, getting applicants in faster and having a greater pool to pull from, I think it’s definitely worth the investment,” she says.
The Time-Saving Results
Apploi has cut down Skoofalos’ team’s time-to-hire and onboard by 30%. “Apploi decreases the time that you go back and forth, usually between emails and folders on a drive or whatnot, because it has everything in one place,” says Skoofalos. “It is also cutting time of communication between team members by a lot, because you don’t always have to update everybody. You can put everything in the system if they want to see it. It’s right there.” Keeping everything related to hiring and onboarding in one easily-accessible place is “crucial,” according to Skoofalos. “Because it saves so much time, which is another really good feature of Apploi,” she says.
Support for the Duration
Skoofalos also loves that she can always count on the Apploi team to answer questions or troubleshoot issues. “We have had a really good experience with customer support,” she adds.
