Introduction
Staffing agencies spend years building candidate databases.
They invest in sourcing, recruiter time, resume screening, interviews, technical assessments, and candidate relationships. But when a new client role opens, many agencies still start the search almost from scratch.
At Brainner, we think that’s a missed opportunity.
For a staffing agency, the candidates already evaluated by your team may be one of your most valuable assets.
That’s why our work with SmartWorking has evolved from helping its team screen new applicants at scale to helping recruiters rediscover and rank previously evaluated candidates for every new role.
As Maria Clara Vallés, VP of Solutions Engineering at Smart Working, explains:
“Brainner helps our Sourcing team rediscover and rank pre evaluated candidates already in our ATS based on their match for each new role. This means that once someone has completed a technical assessment with us, they can be considered for future opportunities that fit their experience, rather than getting lost in our database.”
Meet Smartworking: Tech Talent as a Service
Smart Working specializes in building remote engineering teams for companies looking for technical talent.
Its model focuses on Software Engineers, Product Engineers, and AI Engineers, alongside other technical disciplines. The company describes its offering as “Tech Talent as a Service”: engineers are vetted and then embedded into client teams while Smart Working continues managing the relationship.
That model requires a significant recruiting operation behind the scenes.
SmartWorking receives approximately 100,000 applications per month, with only around 1% ultimately making it through its vetting process. Candidates can go through CV screening, technical assessments, recruiter screening, communication tests, live technical interviews, and background checks.
SmartWorking uses Lever as its ATS, making it the central database where this growing pool of candidates and previous evaluations lives.
And that creates an interesting opportunity:
When you evaluate that many engineers, the value isn’t only in finding the right person for the role you have open today.
It’s also in knowing who could be right for the next one.
It Started with AI Resume Screening at Scale
Our work with SmartWorking initially focused on the beginning of the funnel: AI resume screening.
At SmartWorking’s application volume, manually reviewing every new resume would create an obvious operational bottleneck.
Brainner integrates with Lever and helps the team analyze inbound candidates against the requirements that matter for each position, allowing recruiters to prioritize the strongest matches instead of navigating large applicant pools manually.
But as we worked together, another opportunity became clear.
SmartWorking had accumulated a large pool of candidates in Lever who had already been evaluated. Some had even completed technical assessments.
Yet when a completely new client requirement arrived, finding the right people within that existing database remained difficult.
That’s where Candidate Rediscovery came in.
From Resume Screening to Candidate Rediscovery
A traditional ATS is very good at storing candidates.
The harder problem is answering a new question months later: “Who have we already evaluated that could be a strong fit for this new role?”
Brainner Candidate Rediscovery allows SmartWorking’s Sourcing team to navigate its existing candidate database with AI.
When a new role arrives, Brainner can evaluate previously analyzed candidates against its specific requirements and rank them according to their match.
Instead of relying only on keywords, job titles, tags, or Boolean searches, recruiters can search based on the actual requirements of the position.
For example, a new client might need a Senior Backend Engineer with a particular combination of technologies, industry experience, and seniority.
Before launching a completely new sourcing process, Smart Working can ask: Do we already know someone who fits this role?
Brainner can surface candidates who previously applied for another position, reached an advanced stage, or completed a technical assessment, and rank them against the requirements of the new opportunity.
As Maria Clara explains:
“Once someone has completed a technical assessment with us, they can be considered for future opportunities that fit their experience, rather than getting lost in our database.”
This turns Lever from a record of previous recruiting activity into a much more active sourcing database.
Why Candidate Rediscovery Matters for Staffing Agencies
Candidate Rediscovery is particularly valuable for staffing agencies because they repeatedly recruit similar profiles for different clients.
A strong Software Engineer who wasn’t the right match for Client A might be exactly what Client B needs three months later.
Without rediscovery, recruiters may spend time sourcing another candidate externally, screening them, and putting them through an evaluation process the agency has already completed with someone else.
With Candidate Rediscovery, the existing database becomes the first place to search, rather than simply an archive of previous applications.
This can mean:
Faster shortlists. Less repetitive sourcing. Better utilization of previously evaluated candidates.
And importantly, it allows the value of every new evaluation to compound over time.
Why Staffing Agencies Are a Strategic Focus for Brainner
Staffing agencies are an important part of Brainner’s strategy for a simple reason:
For an agency, recruiting isn’t a support function. Recruiting is the business.
For an internal Talent Acquisition team, saving recruiter time creates efficiency.
For a staffing agency, increasing recruiter productivity can also create additional capacity and revenue.
If the same recruiting team can process more applicants, identify qualified candidates faster, and reuse talent already evaluated for previous searches, the agency can potentially manage more client requirements without increasing operational workload at the same rate.
That’s especially relevant for staff augmentation businesses like SmartWorking, where similar engineering profiles are recruited repeatedly across different clients.
Our vision is therefore straightforward:
AI Resume Screening helps staffing agencies efficiently process new candidate volume.
Candidate Rediscovery helps them get more value from the candidate database they have already built.
Together, they can help agencies increase recruiting capacity and ultimately support more placements without scaling manual work proportionally.
You can read more about Brainner for staffing agencies.
Every Search Should Make the Next Search Easier
That’s what makes our work with SmartWorking particularly interesting.
We started by helping the team screen new candidates at scale inside Lever.
Now, Candidate Rediscovery helps their Sourcing team go back into that same database and find previously evaluated candidates who match new opportunities.
For a staffing agency, that creates a powerful flywheel:
Screen candidates today. Rediscover the right ones tomorrow. Place more talent without starting every search from zero.
Because sometimes the fastest way to find the right candidate isn’t to source another one.
It’s to rediscover the one you already know.
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