What is Candidate Relationship Management Software?

Candidate Relationship Management (CRM) platforms enable agency recruiters to build deeper relationships with candidates and have full visibility on the talent available to them. Staffing agencies that best utilize their CRM give themselves a competitive advantage due to the speed of access to candidates and reduced costs of not having to repeatedly advertise for all roles. However, not all recruiters are using or optimizing their CRM for success.

Additionally, the acronym CRM is not to be confused with Customer Relationship Management from market leaders Salesforce or Hubspot. These are valuable tools for staffing suppliers, however, they are not equivalent to candidate relationship management platforms.

How can Staffing Agencies Use Candidate Relationship Management Software?

CRM tools for recruitment enable staffing agencies to track, manage, organize and engage candidates throughout the entire recruitment cycle. Relationship building is central to recruitment and modern CRMs allow staffing agencies to grow and nurture large candidate pools.  Furthermore, automation enables all candidate interactions to be captured in the system and creates seamless touchpoints with candidates. This saves time on manual data entry and frees recruiters up to invest more in engaging their top candidates.

What is the Difference Between CRM Software and an ATS?

An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is the software used to manage job orders from end-to-end. ATSs were the first technology innovation in the recruitment space before the arrival of the CRM. A CRM platform is still used during the job fulfillment phase, however it can also be used in the pre job-order work of a recruiter when recruiters are mapping the talent market. There are also speed benefits to using a CRM system as demonstrated in the image below. Here the CRM platform powers the Talent Community:

Key Features of Modern CRM Software for Recruitment

Native 2-way SMS Communication

A typical frustration of recruiters universally is the constant phone tag and repetition of communication efforts. In a world of instant communication, 2-way text messaging is a modern CRM platform feature that overcomes this challenge.

This feature will ensure recruiters are able to 2-way text within the platform exclusively. That is, recruiters don’t have to juggle between their phone and CRM system, then manually update as everything is recorded in the CRM. Thus, all communication history is in the LiveHire candidate profile.

This evolution of text messaging to being embedded within CRMs enables rapid responses. In fact, LiveHire’s technology has a median response time for text communication of just 17 minutes, compared to waiting hours or days for responses to email, as an example.

Further benefits of this feature for recruiters include improving candidate experience, reducing time to fill, improving fill rates and enabling meaningful conversations.

Talent Pool Management

Modern CRMs can overcome legacy systems and enable innovative talent pool management.

As staffing agencies are always building and nurturing candidates to keep engagement high, the best CRMs provide a digital home for these relationships. This means recruiters can pre-qualify leading talent before a job order arrives, and get ahead of the competition.

With the volume of activities recruiters do on a daily basis ever increasing, leading CRMs also now utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to suggest candidates based on specific criteria set for any given talent pool.

Additionally, recruiters can now bulk communicate with an entire pool of talent in lightning quick time, using pre-prepared message templates.

Advanced Talent Search

The search functionality within a CRM system is key to enabling speed.  Leading platforms today enable recruiters to quickly identify talent and their availability for contingent roles. System features recruiters can expect include: Boolean search, tagging and rating systems, and dozens of filters to quickly narrow your search criteria to drive rapid results.

Multi-Brand Engagement

LiveHire enables companies to recruit for multiple brands under a single Talent Cloud. With many staffing agencies today launching and managing brands for certain industry verticals, as well as industry consolidation and acquisitions, this feature ensures these brands are well represented.

CRM platforms today enable staffing agencies to manage everything under one system, while still leveraging each brand. This ensures the candidate experience is tailored as per the brand, with candidates receiving communications from the brand they are familiar with.

Targeted Messaging

Given so many recruiters are working to engage the limited talent pool, a targeted messaging feature in modern CRMs can significantly improve communications, enabling recruiters to avoid generic emails and protect their brand. Research indicates 38% of candidates are more likely to accept a job offer when they have a positive candidate experience. Thus, this feature customizes bulk communications to specific pools of talent leaving memorable candidate experiences, and keeping those relationships alive for future placement opportunities.

How to Find a CRM Platform That Meets Your Staffing Agency’s Needs

Define Requirements

Start by defining exactly what you need the CRM to achieve. What is it that you expect your recruiters to do in the system, that is different to what they will do in your ATS. What is that will get results and enable you to achieve business goals.

Get Workflows Right

Understanding the territory that each recruiter has, how they segment and how they engage is a helpful task when understanding the workflow requirements of the CRM system you select. Essentially make sure it enables your team to succeed.

By undertaking any necessary configuration at this stage you give yourself the best chance of maximizing recruiter utilization, ultimately improving productivity and performance.

Data Migration

Understand from the CRM provider of choice how they manage the data migration from either a legacy system or from spreadsheets that recruiters are using. This should be a key consideration, so you are not losing valuable data. Also know how quickly the provider you go with can get this done to not impact business continuity. The final piece here is understanding how you transition data from a previous CRM supplier.

Analytics

Think in advance what data you need to see and visualize to see what is working, and what is not, from an engagement perspective to ensure that you are making informed decisions with advanced analytics.

Benefits of Using LiveHire’s CRM system

LiveHire has been building a best-in-breed CRM since 2012, and was recently awarded a leader in the Ardent Partners research into Digital Staffing Platforms. LiveHire’s extensive investment over this period has seen leading, strategic product and design visions come to fruition. Key benefits of LiveHire’s world class CRM include:

Responding to Requisitions Instantly

Given filling roles is highly dependent on speed and even more so for contingent roles, LiveHire has invested heavily in this area.

Staffing suppliers utilize LiveHire’s talent pooling feature to build pipelines of talent and gain rapid engagement with candidates and clients. This is done by leveraging 2-way text messaging to quickly communicate with candidates.

Improves Recruiter Conversion

Conversion rates for recruiters are constantly scrutinized. LiveHire took this onboard and invested in functionality that enables recruiters to identify the best candidate, and all by the AI-powered candidate matching which finds the right skills and experience for each role.

Furthermore, each candidate profile in LiveHire’s CRM contains deep data on specialties, experience, and preferences for job matching.

Delivers a Better Candidate Experience

LiveHire was built as a ‘candidate first’ platform. This means that the system is built around people, and not jobs.What does this deliver? LiveHire clients have achieved the highest candidate net promoter scores (NPS) globally and a 96% positive candidate satisfaction rating.

This result has been realized by LiveHire’s targeted job invitations and personalized, mobile communication which is core to responsiveness. Ultimately candidates are treated like customers and delivered an effortless experience.

Accelerate Business Growth

Furthermore, LiveHire’s CRM is set apart from other systems in the market because of our commitment and proven results in accelerating business growth of the staffing agencies that use the platform.

This blueprint for growth leverages LiveHire technology to drive greater productivity, improving top-line revenue and gross margin, in turn enabling users to expand their client base and market reach.

Conclusion

Candidate Relationship Management platforms enable staffing firms to significantly improve key hiring metrics across the board. From instant communication to improved conversions, accelerated business growth and great candidate experience, a great Candidate Relationship Management platform is an essential ingredient for staffing firms to remain competitive in the current market.

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For more information on LiveHire’s Candidate Relationship Management capabilities and how they can help your business, book a demo today.