It can be an intimidating experience when choosing the right recruitment CRM (Candidate Relationship Management) for your company. Multiple vendors, various free trials and all claiming to be better than the competition.
Companies live and die by the quality of hires they bring on board. Additionally, they want to know quickly if there are any candidate profiles that have already been screened and waiting in the pipeline ready to go.
What is it that you really need?
If you aren’t careful, it will be all too easy to get distracted in the vetting process of recruitment software. Between the product demos, sifting through the handouts and collateral that use the latest buzzwords, you almost forget the whole reason why you started looking in the first place.
Before getting lured in by salespeople and feature lists, there are a few questions that we hope will help guide your staffing software decision making a bit better.
Do I really need a recruitment CRM or an ATS (applicant tracking system)?
If you already are an agency recruiter, no doubt you know the benefits of using recruitment CRM software applications. As often the case, you may only be used to using an ATS.
So, what’s the difference between them? For the most part, ATS systems will manage and process applications, a CRM, on the other hand, allows you to start sourcing, build talent pools and nurture candidates that haven’t applied yet as well as those who are applicants.
Check to see if these indicators help if a CRM is appropriate:
- You are actively sourcing all the time.
- You are currently using spreadsheets when managing your candidates.
- You are frequently challenged with difficult to fill roles.
- You notice significant time-waste on process and admin work.
- You have a large applicant or resume database that you are not tapping into to use.
What is the reason that you are looking for recruitment software?
What prompted the search? Is your current system lacking in specific functionality? Quite often, it is either trying to get older software to do new things or finding out new functions are available in new software that your old one will never be able to integrate, for example, sourcing and engaging passive candidates.
Could the following recruitment CRM features help?
- Building a strong talent base (network) from one centralized searchable database.
- Source, attract, engage and manage both active and passive candidates.
- Customizable online career pages and applications, both desktop and mobile.
- Auto-posting job ads to leading job sites.
- Employee and social recruiting.
- Use advanced workflows to facilitate all hiring activities, including.
- Automated recruiting emails.
- Job and offer approvals.
- Interview scheduling.
- Background checks.
- Pre-employment screening.
- Digital offer letter delivery.
- Use of dashboards to measure recruiting performance; specifically, its use of analytics and report features.
- Use of built-in compliance functionality.
Last Thought
Using a CRM will help you solve problem with a poor candidate experience or lack of communication (with the candidate or hiring team). Additionally, the CRM will resolve manual processes using inefficient, unorganized manual hiring practices.