Dual Power: How Roush Shifted from Passive Reviewing to Active Candidate Engagement

When Tanisha Thibodeau, Talent Acquisition Manager at Roush, introduced her six-person recruiting team to their new Phenom Talent CRM, she knew the technology itself wouldn't be the challenge. The real work would be changing how her team thought about recruiting.

For years, her recruiters had developed an efficient rhythm: sign into the applicant tracking system (ATS) each morning, review candidates who applied recently, move them through the pipeline based on qualifications. But Roush — an automotive company that engineers, develops and manufactures high-performance components for street and competitive racing cars — needed to fill specialized roles that weren't attracting enough qualified applicants.

A CRM could help them proactively source candidates, but first, Thibodeau had to shift her team from passive reviewing to active engagement.

Watch her entire IAMPHENOM session here, or continue reading for the highlights!

When Your Team Doesn't Know What a CRM Is

Thibodeau's first challenge: her team had never used a candidate relationship management system. "A CRM was a foreign concept to our team," she said. "I knew what one was in theory, but I had never used one."

The immediate questions: "So are we using this instead of the ATS?"

"No, you're not using it in conjunction with our ATS," Thibodeau told them repeatedly. That distinction proved harder to communicate than expected. An ATS is designed for managing applicants who've already expressed interest. A CRM helps build talent pools, craft outreach campaigns, refine AI-generated leads, and track multi-touch relationships over time.

"The main difference is there is action required," she said. “That was something I had to drive home with my team."

Meeting Remote Recruiters Where They Are

With her entire team working remotely, Thibodeau built CRM coaching into her management routine. "I have one-on-ones with most of my team members every week," she said. "We'll talk about the recs, the day-to-day stuff, but I would also say, 'Hey, we have 10 minutes left over, pull up your Phenom dashboard. What's that one position you say is hard to fill? Oh, I see that you have 40 leads. Have we gone through those?'"

She also modeled the behavior herself. "I cannot ask my team to do something that I am not willing to do," Thibodeau said. When she recruited for roles, she showed her team how she was using the CRM to find and engage candidates.

The key was celebrating small wins: a lead responding, someone applying after CRM outreach, an interview scheduled. "It's a longer runway, if you will," she said. "It takes a little bit more patience, but… you keep at it."

She identified Kelly, her sourcer, as the team member who naturally gravitated toward the new system. Thibodeau regularly reinforced Kelly's progress, reminding her she was ahead of the rest of the team. When analytics were run, Kelly and Thibodeau were in the top three CRM users. Kelly's assessment: "Phenom's personalized communication tools have improved our response rates and have made tracking and managing candidates super easy."

Resetting Hiring Manager Expectations

Introducing a CRM also meant changing how hiring managers understood recruiting work. Previously, if they didn't see activity in the ATS, they assumed nothing was happening.

Thibodeau started showing them both systems. "I can sit down with a manager and say, 'Okay, here are all the candidates in our applicant tracking system, but here are some potential people that I have found in this other system.' For them, they're like, 'Oh wait a minute, so you mean to tell me that if I don't see something, there could be something else happening on the back end?'"

She's careful to set realistic expectations. "I tell them, these people have not applied yet. But it's about engagement. Yes, it might take a minute for them to engage back with us. But it's really about how you introduce yourself to a potential candidate."

That consultative approach helped managers understand that quality sourcing takes time and that CRM work represents real recruiting effort even when it's not immediately visible.

Join us at IAMPHENOM 2026 to hear more stories from TA leaders solving today's toughest recruiting challenges.

Making AI Smarter Through Detailed Notes

Thibodeau emphasized the importance of detailed dispositioning notes. "If I see someone that has a mechanical background, but they're not at a senior level, but I know members on my team are currently recruiting for a mechanic one or a mechanic two, I'm going to share that information with them," she said.

Those notes become visible to the entire team, creating shared knowledge about candidate fit across different roles. One feature she particularly values: using an ideal candidate's resume as a template for future searches.

"Even if you know that a candidate is beyond your budget from a salary standpoint, you can still use their resume to identify the skill set that you're seeking," she said. "The system is like, 'Oh, this is what you're looking for,' and it tries to find a match."

Reaching People Who Didn't Know Roush Existed

Roush's Phenom Career Site generated more than 4,500 application clicks and captured over 5,700 unique leads in their CRM — people who viewed jobs but hadn't applied yet.

"These 5,700 may represent people that didn't even know about your company," Thibodeau said. "So even if someone doesn't turn into an actual lead, I feel like you still have made some form of contact with someone."

For a company doing highly specialized engineering work, reaching passive candidates who might not actively search for Roush jobs represents real pipeline growth.

What It Takes to Shift Your Team

Thibodeau was candid about where Roush stands. "We're kind of in the middle," she said, referring to the spectrum between basic adoption and scaled innovation, but the support from Phenom's implementation team has made a difference.

"I've gone through implementations before and I have been ghosted by consultants after the implementation is done," she said. This time, the team had training sessions, office hours, and recorded sessions to reference. "For me being a user as well, that was really helpful."

 Her parting advice for other TA leaders:

• Give yourself grace. "You don't know what you don't know. There is no dumb question. If you don't understand an answer from your consultant or from your account manager, keep asking the question."

• Keep stating the why. "I talk about it in our staff meetings, but I also talk about it in one-on-ones so they hear it over and over again."

• Commit the time to learning. "I cannot hold them accountable for something that I don't even know all the details about."

• Identify your rock star. Find the team member who naturally adopts new tools and use them as a peer advocate.

• Be an ambassador. "If you're not, no one's going to care."

And if incentives work? Thibodeau's not opposed. "I am not above saying, 'Hey, we're going to have a contest. Let's see who can get the next candidate to apply.'"

Turn your database into a talent pipeline with Phenom Talent CRM. Watch the product tour